I've had a few complaints concerning difficulty reading pinky blog for awhile (years), but I didn't care. I was actually changing the background today and apparently overwrote more than just the wallpaper with one click. My bad. I used to highlight links in my posts in different colors, those are all gone now. Sorry. I can colorize them going forward, not sure if I can fix the past, and I'm not going to worry about it. Anyway, for those of you whining for monochromatic white on black, here you go.
Here, have a pic a friend shared earlier. It's a Ben sammy. 😂 Oh, I kill me. To me it looks like Tom and Ben had a son, but turns out it's two Toms with a Ben in the middle. Whatever. Maybe it'll help us feel better about me torching the fun out of pinky blog.
I had a flirt with ID theft this morning on top of being stalked, if you don't follow me on twitter, too bad, you missed the whole thing, lol. I had one of those stupid weather headaches all weekend and I'm still a little woozy brained, so nothing surprises me today. I can't seem to touch anything without a chain reaction of things going out of control, so I'm kind of not touching anything any more today. I'm also realizing that a double bag of instant coffee in one cup wasn't my brightest idea and I'd better quit only a third of the way down if I want to sleep at all tonight.
I'm currently listening to this guy. I love him. I hinted last month that maybe (woot! I think I fixed the link colors), anyway, there might be some synchronicity to Dave, right. Well, David here, which I did not know when I wrote that silly post last month, actually has a book out on synchronicity. So there you go. This video isn't about that, this goes further back, I think. Anyway, in case you wonder how it's going, I've got David's voice bouncing around my head while I do chores.
My house reached a serene state today. Even the hamster voluntarily came forth when I appeared with a baby leaf of romaine, and there was joy across the land.
All flu germ evidence is being dealt with post haste. Trash, towels, sheets, dishes. All.
I suspect it's the weird mix of being low key affected by flu B and the tamiflu, but last night I dreamed the Brady Bunch was a real life reality show family, and that season one Mrs. Brady had been a different person, and season two Mrs. Brady was in real life AND ON THE SHOW having an affair with Greg Brady, and the whole family knew about it. Alice didn't even give a crap, and Mr. Brady was kinda getting into Cindy, and I think that's about where my brain went ohHELLno and woke me up.
Oddly, not one spec of it had anything to do with minecraft. My dreams usually go all minecraft on me. I've barely been playing over the last week compared to my usual. I did, however, get Bunny to take medicine by promising to let her play all by herself on a singleplayer, and she went to town spawning parrots and donkeys and going all pyro with a flame bow. She plowed down and fell out of the world once, but she did pretty good trying to place blocks for a little house. She's only 4. The first five minutes would be excellent, one hand on arrows, spacebar (up), and shift (down), and the other hand toggling pointer and middle finger clicking and the hotbar wheel. I know, right? But she hit the wall pretty consistently after five minutes and after that would be tired of it and going back to Paw Patrol, thank goodness.
I barely got any down time for nearly a week straight. Last couple of days were literally 12 hour stay on alert days after a very long weekend of all of us being miserable losing sleep. I'm going to coast out on this song while some of you stay glued. You're probably feeling rotten, too. Hope you feel better soon. 💕
So the commentonyesterday's postmentionedEOTS (here's moreif you're interested), which cracked me up, but I can't help wondering how someone else might react to the kind of stuff happening that I mentioned in my reply back.
This kind of stuff has been going on lately anyway, and it's easy to blow it off, but technically, my phone isn't supposed to be able to activate apps and make decisions to do things without actually being in my hands or being verbally instructed by me to do these things. I had to search out a hidden app download last week, like you do, that uber hogged my phone memory, one of those sudden out of the blue downloads from Google Play. You know, because that's totally normal for phones to do without any kind of activation. I live way out of town near a state forest, both my data plan and local internet are encrypted, I'm the only one in the house, and my phone is just doodling around on its own because it's bored.
My family history goes back to theVisigothson my dad's side. The Masons and Moors go back that far, too. A lot of people don't know world history and it is being forgotten. All our religions and belief systems are being stirred together now and marketed to us as consumables. We buy smash art on our clothing, our decor, our tech accessories, and our entertainment, and most of the time don't even recognize what it really is. A great example is goth sugar skull. Sugar skull is originally colorful and meant to be respectful as part of a holy practice. It got coopted into an occupying religion, and is now corrupted into an art form against that religion, and none of this has anything to do with the original reason for sugar skull. All this stuff goes way back. Moors, Masons, and Catholics were the major players for well over 1500 years, and they all wanted their own kind of world order. They used religion as their motivation and reason, they kept their own banking systems, they pulled political strings and orchestrated wars, and now here we are, smashing all our cultures into a new thing. My very real Goth heritage is just a cartoon now, something to appropriate and mass market until no one remembers what was real.
My family history winds all through the nation state boundary lines moving around, the bloody wars breaking families up, the new governments experimenting on their own people to the point of mass famines, and even as I was growing up there were still immigrants fleeing from the Czech Republic and trying to flee from Cuba. None of this has ever really stopped. While Americans are currently being distracted with an orchestrated presidential scandal investigation and immigration standstills, people all over the world are still struggling with very real political problems upending their economies and even tearing up their towns. While we grumble about the news we're allowed to see and watch the TV shows we're trained to stop our lives for, people all over our own country are going missing. It happens so often that it's not even news, it's even boring, and oh look, a cute puppykitten in our social media feed.
I'm not into genealogy, but it's handy. I happen to be born into a family that has kept track of its genealogy for many generations, or at least knows the ancestral history behind who we are. While my dad's ancestors kept moving away from one war after another for generations, my mom's family was in government pay. Being a king's legal counsel was dangerous. I look back on these ancestry lines and wonder how we ever made it this far. Life was definitely not a piece of cake. I wonder what they'd all think of us passively surviving what almost boils down to emotional slavery. We are challenged daily to survive our depressions, urged to comply with copious amounts of medications, pacified with entertainment till we are lulled to a dull sleep and feel helpless to really do anything to change a fragile world we know can't last. It's easier to just believe it will and keep shopping.
Scott asked me tonight what he should do if I ever disappear. I said make a big deal about it and point to all this stuff that I write and share. I'm on a list now. 😂 He'll probably do nothing and feel free of me until he runs out of laundry and gets sick of hot dogs and Chinese takeout.
Let's revisit the email they sent me."Consistent with our commitment to transparency, we are emailing you because we have reason to believe that you either followed one of these accounts or retweeted or liked content from these accounts during the election period."They have reason to believe that I interacted with a malicious account. It's weird how both vague and very to the point that sounds. I was contacted by a legal team for nothing more than this. The deemed 'malicious account' could have been tweeting pictures of cats and I would never know. Why do I need to be alerted to this? Especially if the malicious accounts are being shut down, right. Why in the world do I need to be told by a legal team that my account has been flagged? I've spent 5 years peeling off so many crazy weird accounts off me that cover everything from how long bugs orgasm to political tiffs in Venezuela, or like the time I got super mobbed by Arab accounts, hundreds of them suddenly following me. Not a peep out of twitter. It's up to me to fend for myself, vet the hop-ons, mute the stupidity, and steer clear of the marketing machine bumbling around. Excuse us, but we have reason to believe you liked a tweet, so we are being cool and letting you know we know but can't say we know.
Meanwhile, tons of hatefest tweets still rage through my feeds blaspheming all they want to without a care....
1500 years of human struggle and it's boiling down to whether I liked a tweet now.
*looking for the stupidest Ben youtube I can find* *settling for Strange because I've seen all the stupid ones because I'm an addict*
I know what books I'll be looking into this next year, thanks to this video, Earliest Examples of the Mandela Effect. That chick's research goes back to 1999 and actually uses some well thought out science, which will be fun. I watched another vid, which lines up with conclusions I've come to myself over the years.
For instance, I discovered that the most interesting thought process follows the question "If I could go back and tell myself anything, what would it be?" I took that question very seriously for years and decided that everything I am doing NOW is the result of this question. Everything I ever wanted to understand about reality and why we are here is all coming to me. I concluded years ago that I am affecting my past, and that a lot of the weird stuff I seem to go through might actually be from me at a later date. I've had far too many coincidences, remote views, dreams that come true, and deja vus in my life to not be meaningful in some way, and I gravitated to synchronicity as I was looking for answers, which I've talked about many times. I've 'always known' who I need to be and what I need to be doing, I just didn't always know how and with what at the time. It's like I had to accumulate experience and knowledge, like you do in gaming, to be able to level up and do bigger things.
Here is one example of that process. For years I questioned faith if people assume praying changes nothing once a certain time has passed. How can an omnipotent god be constrained by something like time? (Especially now that we can visualize stepping outside of time ourselves.) I didn't realize I had the opportunity to test this until I found out later it worked. I was on my way to nursing clinicals at an insanely early hour, and about halfway there I had a sudden urge to pray for my kids to get to school safely. That was not a daily habit back then, and I was very distracted with pain issues, so it felt weird for that to come so strongly into my mind. I took it seriously and focused a few minutes on asking for my kids and I to all arrive home safely that day, and that the day be easy for all of us because it felt like things had been so hard lately. After we were all home hours later, I found out the school bus had just missed being broadsided on a major highway by a big transport truck. The kicker was that happened before I prayed, so where did that big urgent feeling come from? I immediately thought of quantum reality and figured time going forward or backward has no power over anyone I could possibly pray to about affecting reality, and that meant my prayer was still very meaningful and important after the event had passed, particularly because I didn't know about it. I think that the not knowing somehow gives us more power to affect change, and I don't mean that *I* changed anything, but that I inadvertently asked it to change and it did.
The key is the not knowing. The whole point is about going with your gut and focusing on what you want. What do you REALLY want? Give that all your focus for a quiet minute or two. This has become a daily habit for me. I use the form of prayer because I honestly can't not believe in someone being more powerful than me being able to see all this stuff from the outside. Given the new breakthroughs in cosmological thought about simulated universes, this isn't that big a stretch. I think our wording is very misleading, instantly lending to downplaying intent and purpose, but it makes total sense to me that we mimic our bigger universe by creating more digital universes ourselves.
I've turned this process into a shared journey.
clicks to source
And of course I played around. Since every time I do a search for ANYTHING and Benedict Cumberbatch usually pops up in there somewhere (hence #bengruity lol), I thought I'd do a deliberate search for "Benedict Cumberbatch Mandela Effect" to see if anything pops up, especially since he's got one of the largest fandoms in the world possibly mass mind quantum changing everything around us, right. Well, guess what. The only things I could find at all were one person swearing his name had really been Cumberpatch, one person certain he'd played Doctor Who at some point, and one person swearing they'd witnessed him dying in a car accident with a girlfriend that apparently doesn't exist now. You'd think there would be a lot more weirdness around as big a deal as him. Maybe the fandom has locked him into place. Benlocked.
Sorry about that, left you guys hanging for a few days. Yesterday was one of those marvelous dives into aspienado obsession along with real life ironies like Scott's ex hanging out in our house and laughing at Bunny antics over a cheese sampler plate. Despite every kind of awkward that a pending cancer demise brings upon a family, I appreciate foremost that, being the one who has learned to step back the most, awkward social situations is something I now see the older women on my mother's side conquering most graciously when I was a child. Etiquette under pressure is a skill I've fled most in my life but funnily happen to be kind of good at. Also, it helps being utterly obsessed with a misguided notion that someone could conceivably mess with my villagers on an ungriefable claim, which kept me busy and way under the radar for hours while other people around me coped with very hard stuff.
This is probably hard to see, but that is a double fence row. We're supposed to keep 250 blocks between us when claiming, but I'm already claimed out and can no longer expand, so I allow other players to build near me. I've even said go ahead and claim right up to my lines. I like that I have neighbors, and you can see that cute house in the distance, right? That little house is between my big Yablo claim and the village I claimed that I'm currently standing on a little platform over. To the right of that is a big build by a player who has already been banned, and the big build to the left is a player who has actually been getting free fence from me without mentioning it was going all around my village claim... joke's on me.
Time flies on a server, and I was off doing other things while these big structures went up near me. I didn't even see them until I ran into them yesterday going to check on my village, which used to be out in a rugged wilderness and now seems to be a rugged outcrop in New Jersey, possibly just outside Philly. I actually like it, not complaining at all, because it makes my builds look way more metro and cool, considering we're only a short distance from my huge claim with the big glowing TV glasses and the big sculpt glowing in the sky.
But. I also discovered that all that player has to do to get into my village now (formerly impenetrable since grief proof means no one can open a gate and no one can break blocks near it without claiming blocks) is place a dirt block next to their fence to get on top of their fence, then simply jump over both our fencelines onto my claim. I have no idea if from there they could mess with my villagers at all, probably not, BUT simply being near or in there would have all the mobs spawning in the vicinity, and mobs kill villagers. I was down to 3 by the time I went there yesterday checking on them, and I know I had at least 7 a coupe of weeks ago, and that they were having babies, a first for our server where other players have really struggled trying to get their villagers to reproduce.
How to prevent further deaths and still retain aesthetic integrity... I elected glass dyson dome. Yes, I know, my default sux and you guys have cool mod packs, go suck it, ok? Also, I turned down an offer from an architect on server to turn all that into an invisible barrier. I spent DAYS collecting sand and smelting it into an uber treasure of glass blocks and then HOURS yesterday placing all those, there is no way I'm throwing all that work away for one fell swoop of invisible barrier. I want people to SEE the work I put into that, sheesh.
Oh, you noticed. 😋 I'm mocking the economy by converting the temple into emerald blocks. The entire village will slowly convert into a fun little place, but for now, it's mostly just on hold.
I probably shouldn't reveal his whereabouts, but what the heck.
Couldn't resist.
And since we are the BEN clan...
And I got a little subtle, this is a fave Ben Stiller character.
There are a few more. OriginalSteve apparently got mobbed, but Jeff survived
along with a couple others I didn't name and don't think are cool enough puns to share, so. OH, and BenedictCumberpickle is gone, too, wah. Oh, well. It was a cumbersome name... get it? Nevermind.
I'm a bit rankled last few days and kinda cranky online, but so is everyone else irl in between crying jags, so I don't feel like talking much. I know people wanna help, but I can't handle when it comes from all sides. I can't pretend to be sweet when I'm going pure shutdown and all I see through the flames is other people not listening to what I really really need, like an hour of quiet time, because y'all don't see a very busy tiny person zooming around my house and I'm just trying to stay sane without small talk making me crazier because I'm on the edge of internal meltdown. The autie stuff I read doesn't even begin to cover this level I live with in my own head and begs off with too much disclaiming and redefining, and I'm here to say hellz yeah I'm obsessing because it's my frickin escape from flaming everyone into charcoal. Escapism is real and it's good for the soul. And relationships. Plunging into rabbit holes keeps me from blowing everything up between me and the people I love while I'm having trubba coping emotionally because I'm in core meltdown and hard shutdown and the words don't come out my mouth and fingers right in real time. The only way to stop it is for *me* to stop talking, and that's what I need to do.
This was me last night not doing /abandomallclaims and deleting moc off Jawn's hard drive. My mood was horrible.
A moment of appreciation for our troops in Kazakhstan. We have a Lexx fan over there. I always feel a bit humbled when I see hits like that on my Lexx blogs.
Most of the rest was written yesterday, what I call 'live blogging'. I imagine the general public envisions 'spoonies' laying around on the couch being tired all the time, and oh how I wish that were the simple case yesterday...
This is a writing exercise while I deal.
Years ago, all my symptoms were a big vague nasty mess. Over time we've been sorting it all out, alleviating this, working on that, slowly sifting all the things down to specific locations and causes, which isn't easy to do with referred pain from nerve injuries on top of a nerve disorder like fibro.
Today is one of my tough days. It's not anything new, or particularly different, except that now we're much more aware of what's going on, and it's becoming so easy nowadays to connect symptoms to triggers. Once this particular thing gets triggered, the symptoms get very confusing. My blood pressure spikes to the moon, I feel confused for awhile, sometimes my throat hurts for no apparent reason, ears ring like mad, face goes numbish, a maddening itch behind my eyeballs drives me crazy, and occasionally some sort of headache shows up. I've lived with this for 35 years, and it's been weird enough to make EMTs jump and flummox doctors. I've lost count of the variety of imaging scans I've had of my head, neck, and brain, with no obvious causes. Things that keep being ruled out are multiple sclerosis, autoimmune flare in the blood vessels in my brain, strokes, tumors, syrinx of the spinal cord, bone spurs, whatever you can dream up, they've looked for it.
My latest conflicting treatment challenge is CPAP. I love it. I sleep so good with CPAP. My apneas are down and I'm having a really good spring in general compared to years of extremely difficult springs, but it's focusing my attention now on this other thing.
I survived being ejected from a car and lived with and tolerated thick scar tissue that grew around one helluva whiplash for decades. I've been through so much pain that it almost seems ludicrous to still be having problems since we've been able to knock the pain levels way down via several years of physical therapy and now sleeping so well on CPAP. The problem, as much as I can tell now, is laying a certain way that puts pressure on the craniocervical area for too long, and then spending the next several hours or a day getting through some pretty outrageous blood pressure spikes as that area readjusts to the pressure being taken back off from laying on it. CPAP sleep hasn't necessarily made this worse, but it's almost accidentally helped highlight it since I hold still much longer at a time in my sleep, and since it's also helping me feel better enough to notice more specific cause and effect.
I lived with that pressure for so long under so much duress that you'd think this would be a piece of cake. Sudden high blood pressure coming from the top of the back of your neck feeling squeezed right under your skull is technically considered a possible emergency situation in some cases, since it could be from so many dangerous things.
It's very uncomfortable living like this. I can hardly believe my normal everyday life used to always be this. I've come to enjoy relief from this more often that not nowadays, but once in awhile, all my attention is riveted to waiting out another triggered event as calmly as possible. There is nothing more miserable during this kind of event than an ambulance ride, strapped onto a gurney putting pressure on that spot through all kinds of traffic for at least half an hour (because I live in Mirkwood) and then spending another 6 hours in ER and finally being offered a pain med that I'm not supposed to even take because there is nothing else they can do, and the pain med super spikes the apneas, and then it's all about recovering from going to the ER. So... I'm blogging instead.
I've talked about other triggers I wait out on some days, like costochondritis pain mimicking heart attack or pulmonary embolism pain. Thank goodness I'm not having actual PAIN pain today, but it's still very unnerving. I've learned how to remain calm even when my blood pressure goes nuts and it usually comes back down over time. I'm still holding 157/102 a couple hours into this, and if it doesn't come down I'll probably go in. My neurologist has a pending MRI on order if symptoms change, and today was unexpected, so I've called and got an appointment for this week, but ER might just do it themselves if I go in.
And since this may be involving CPAP, I might have to pull my sleep doctor in for opinions. I keep telling myself people can live for years with this kind of stuff, and then a little voice says "Yes, and I already have..."
~4 hours later~
Triage just checked me in at 201/115, so I guess I made the right decision coming in. This isn't my usual flare response. Kinda going into overkill, so super flare maybe. I've been firmly removed from grocery duties going forward, per @bonenado. As careful as I've been not lifting Bunny or doing any heavy work, I guess something caught up with me and now I'm paying for it. (A 15 pound frozen turkey has inspired Scott to shut down all my grocery shopping for awhile... I make poor decisions when I'm shopping alone, and this isn't my first backlash on overstepping weight restrictions.) Welcome to pain management 501, where it's all so old hat that I'm the most laid back person in a waiting room full of people popping with emotions and misery. One guy got so hostile with fear and panic that security had to escort him to a private room and hold him.
I wish @bonenado would live tweet his thoughts from the waiting room. He'd be super popular if he'd live tweet at all, because his sarcasm is unique to him, kinda cartoony. I'm just glad he drove me in. I told him he could go home and come get me later, but he'll entertain me by alternately crabbing, sniping, and mocking in really funny ways.
I've reached nirvana. Everything is surreal and I'm almost floating out of my body. The pressure around my upper neck is unreal.
And the cosmos perfectly timed that with triage calling for Randy Marsh. It's official- I'm in cartoon land. Wo, and the cops just escorted that other guy out.
~~~~~~~~~
Ok, now it's today. It's not unusual for my blood pressure to spike during pain response. What's unusual is for it to not come back down after 2-4 hours, or to keep steadily rising. High blood pressure doesn't frighten me any more. I've lived with pain spikes for so long that it's become more drudgery than anything- oh, this again *ug*, guess I'd better go make sure I'm not heading for a stroke... You know, because my mom went through hundreds of TIAs before she graduated to several major strokes. So far I've never had one vascular accident, and my blood pressure has gone much higher than my mom ever clocked hers at. At the core of my blood pressure management is pain management, so this is a pain management problem. But I wasn't having 'pain' this time. Just that godawful pressure at the base of my skull feeling like my head was being pumped up like a water bed.
First thing is always look into what's going on in the area, and the ER doc x-rayed and dx'd neck strain (one doctor years ago couldn't believe I was walking around with a "sprained" neck, he couldn't believe I lived like that for years) and they mostly just waited out the blood pressure and sent me home. What was so weird to me was that this is the first time I've gone through that without PAIN.
Any big change in a major nerve trunk area is a big deal. Not feeling pain isn't always a good thing when the ship thinks it's going down. I *hope* this is a good thing, that I'm progressing into a more healed state, but even a mild sublaxation putting pressure on the nerve trunk right below skull can be ~not good~. You wouldn't believe some of the long-term treatment options some people go through for that kind of stuff.
Just a reminder- anyone thinking I might be making a big deal, just wanna see you live through being ejected out of a flipping vehicle, which I didn't talk about or bring up for YEARS while I was hiding all kinds of problems and challenges, and now that I'm aging through all this nerve damage, I'm finding out just how much suck can really suck. Every day has to be strategically planned or I have a very bad day. Yesterday was me dropping the ball.
Anyway, I'm fine, but my neck is super tight and the rest of the week is designated recovery now. Just rest and keep my workload light. I'll visit with my neurologist tomorrow (:edit: Thursday, lol, just discovered it's not Wednesday) and see if he wants to continue checking on this, possibly cave to a steroid shot in my neck if he suggests it (*ug*), continue with my home core stabilization exercises.
>=l Stupid frozen turkey... I can't even carry 15 pounds 25 feet from my car to the fridge.
Ok, let's focus back on having a good day. 😁 Special nod to a couple lurkers in Europe who I know have been fandom webmastering for years through ugmo conditions (I've super lurked you, too), and the rest of my day is scheduled out- be silly, play minecraft, fold laundry, be silly some more, eat something, get supper laid out, maybe get a shower, be extra silly and play more minecraft at the same time before my people come home, and then love them while they eat supper and decompress from work and daycare, because they're why I'm still here hanging on.
I was plowing through another old stack of stuff, grinding away on the shredder and getting ready to move a little piece of furniture when I ran into some old measurements from 2012 after I lost that 50 pounds in 2011. I have since gained back 20 of those pounds, and this is the impact of 20 pounds.
Thigh- gained an inch around (ug)
arm- gained an inch around (ok, so I'm an inch bigger all over)
waist- gained 3 inches around (WHAT)
stomach- gained 4 inches around (no... this can't be right)
hips/butt- gained 4 1/2 inches around (facepalm)
That is 20 pounds of pure fight against sometimes twice yearly prednisone and this latest stupid gabapentin thing that screwed my diabetes to the moon and I'm still grappling that fasting glucose down to at least the high 90s 3 months later.
This has been my hardest year for diet and exercise since 2011, even though my blood work is super healthy, my diet is awesome, I'm finally sleeping the way doctors want me to, and I'm very controlled on nearly everything with as little medication as possible. Well, that's not entirely accurate. 2012 sucked quite a bit because I was still dragging to gym with so much challenge that I could barely handle nustep and basic lower core. But I was skinnier. Well, fat skinnier.
This is unacceptable.
April is always hard, so focus has to stay on controlling allergies. I've already cut out cheese, fish, and corn (I already ate very little corn anyway, because diabetic) because high histamine foods. I'm itching all over this morning for whatever unknown reason, and all I can do is keep taking antihistamines and avoid histamine triggers trying to stay off pred. Breathing is first priority, cardiac under stress is second, and everything I do is about avoiding developing congestive heart problems as I age through super spoonie challenges.
I've been around nursing homes and hospitals through other people's stuff enough to know that how much I weigh when I crash will be how difficult it is to care for me, help me move, keep my circulation healthy, avoid pneumonia complications, etc. I know I'm too young to even be thinking like this, but since I've already had my foot nearly in that door, I want to be more in control of how I finally do go in that door.
I lost the equivalent of a 50 pound bag of dog food, or 5 10-pound bowling balls. I've got 2 of those bowling balls back. I don't want them. Even if I'm in less pain and better health, this is still unacceptable. It's a quick slide back down a very slippery slope if I'm not careful.
As much as I loathe this part, I'm going to have to just start actual counting calories again. The first time around, it was simple. No special plans, no exercise, just stop eating after I hit 1500. That's all it took. 50 pounds melted off in 4 months with nothing more than that. I had incentive back then because my health was scary dismal and my food allergies became frightening, so now I'm looking for a new kind of incentive. I've got 3 other people in my house eating whatever they want, and one of them being 3 years old doesn't help. I'm not able to trick myself into believing I earn anything for achieving a goal like this (my biggest incentive has always been food, alas), and I don't have enough self awareness to really care what other people think of me in general, so it really is up to me to just own wanting this. So what do I cut out when I've already cut so much out that all I get for a treat is an ounce of chocolate chips...?
Looking at you, third cup of coffee with evap milk in you...
I'm feeling mean, so here's the most annoying Benny vid I've ever seen.
Remember when I moved 197 files to a stick, deleted them off my laptop, dumped the trash, and then immediately accidentally wiped the stick? And then as I went back and started redownloading and collecting the files, the one I wanted most had been removed and was irreplaceable? plowing face on the dance floor the Question >=l
Of course I just let it go and didn't allow myself to keep obsessing about it, so I failed to notice it being snuck back onto youtube 6 months later. I can't believe a year and a half has gone by since that happened. Anyway, I nabbed it again and I feel better now.
I talk about my stuff here on Pinky blog, but I don't name names and I don't get too gross with details. Actually, as much as I yap on, I imagine some of you are getting tired of my dodging around not sharing more, because I leave out quite a lot. Why that vid struck an important note with me has to do with how very emotionally shut down I was as a child. I would have been capable of being the child in that vid if I'd had a proper handler/trainer. I was so caught off guard at how that twisted into an entirely different story, and it gut punched me like nothing had in a very long time.
I know a few people like me. We grew up the same way, we all hit the same weird existential walls, and most of us figured out why it's important to choose positive emotional connections over remaining in a shut down state. Those of us who learned to choose and act on our own wills are virtual power players among the people around us, subtly changing histories all around us 'simply' by being kind and gentle. It does seem simple, but it's an everyday grueling sort of thing that goes against our natures, and sometimes puts us at odds with people we love. But we choose to open our eyes, take the extra step onto a precarious balance, and reach out to others like us, others who are waking up and changing the world in ways never before imagined in human history.
That sounds lofty. I say it that way because we are living in an age that has never before happened in human history. We can all see each other now, all over the world, any time day or night. We can all whisper our secrets now, share our sadness, and talk about our dreams in a way the world never could even a hundred years ago. But so many are still caught in sticky webs, trapped in lies, hostage in their own families, doing what they have to do to survive.
We live on a planet where wars are fought with children, where children are rented and sold as sex toys, where children are beaten from very young ages for the most minor infractions by dysfunctional adults who were broken as children themselves. What we see on the top- schools, malls, churches- is just a cover over what we don't see underneath. Right now there are children in cages in every country on this planet, and we talk about someone rescuing a kitten in traffic. Right now there are children acting more grown up than everyone reading this because they've learned they have to hold it all in to survive being a rape toy. Right now there are children in training to be super soldiers, and yes, we are seeing this more and more in TV shows, and my opinion is that the more we see stuff fictionalized, the more calloused we get to reality. We fuss over filming details. We follow actors around.
There are very important things going on all around you every day in real life that you don't see, because you've been trained to stay asleep, keep your eyes shut. Open your eyes. Notice the person who is different and apart. Smile at them when they glance up to let them know you really saw them standing there. You don't have to do anything else. Just let them know you saw them. Let your presence on this earth touch people who are closed off because they have secrets you know nothing about. It doesn't matter what those secrets are. What matters most is that they feel like someone saw them, because they are part of us, and not something to ignore and hope goes away and never touches your life. If you knew the half of what already touches your life you'd throw up.
You can't fix anyone, and you most likely can't save them, and if you try to reach out without knowing what you're doing you might wind up in all kinds of mess. But you can plant seeds. A genuine hello via eyes and smile is a very human thing to do for someone who is hiding that they are having a very bad day and possibly a life you wouldn't survive yourself. They don't have to smile back. They might even look at you funny, or get upset. Just look away again and mind your own business, it's ok. The important thing was that you made an invisible connection, a tiny change that down the road might make a difference. We don't see how that happens, so we aren't rewarded for doing that, are we? We just have to trust that it works.
It worked for me. I remember every person who made a genuine invisible connection with me when I was my most closed off. Those teeny tiny connections added up to a great big thought forming in my mind, and that thought started changing the way I see and live. Sometimes the most fleeting glimpses into a kind stranger's soul can make a lot of difference.
In the meantime, that vid (movie short) I'm talking about is 20 minutes of deeply haunting story with all kinds of dangling questions, and you can read more about it here.
First of all, the in-blog Rick Lagina searches across several states from that last post was like watching lurkers come out of the woodwork. Some of you were already IN Pinky blog and just came alive like I announced I'd hidden Easter eggs. I was honestly not even expecting that. I cannot say clearly enough- "Rick, GET A BLOG. And I'm not your secretary."
Well, @bonenado is, too, so there you go, really cool busy guys are off doing cool things being busy.
Second of all, you hafta admit he's hawter than Benedict Cumberbatch playing Doctor Strange, and I'm the only person in internet history that has combined these two gentleman into one search history, so no wonder y'all hang around here waiting for moar. If I were more considerate I'd do this more often, but I'd rather be playing on Mo Creatures, so... Sorrynotsorry.
See, I totes get that this is important. I know you guys all over the world are suffering and working really hard to find any new info you can about this awesome guy doing really cool stuff that no one's ever done before in our entire world history, right? But you know what? I actually have a friend in Michigan and other friends around Nova Scotia who've never even brought the guy up, so it's not like I have a standby fan crew ready to go out on fact finding missions like the Cumber Collective has. I'm afraid this is the closest you're going to get to seeing Rick Lagina naked.
I've made the horrible confession before that I'm behind in the series. Bad fan! BAD!! If you are behind like me, you can catch up by clicking on this next pic. You can see way more Rick Lagina there than you can here.
And of course, you can go to History's official youtube channel and watch it there, too. 😊You're welcome. (In case this playlist doesn't show up 3rd party on your device, you can see it here.)
Disclaimer- I'm not connected in any way to the History Channel or the Lagina brothers. I'm not paid to link anything and I don't speak for anyone. I'm just a fan being silly, and I really do love the show. I have every single one saved on my DVR. Also, I think it's hilarious how hard Pinky blog gets hit by other fans every time I even whisper "Rick Lagina". I really don't know what else to do for you guys, but I do feel your pain. 💗
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.
Pretty sure this was a regrettable maneuver. Papa wound up having to lift her over and over after that.
I'm one of those chillaxed meemaws who remembers being a kid.
I remember wanting to experiment with different kinds of utensils and people sternly telling me "do it right" or it would be taken away. Scientists and artists and philosophers don't do things 'right', they create new and exciting ways to see the world.
This one is a bit longer, but it turned into 'get meemaw' and all heck broke loose. Maybe that'll translate to regionals in volleyball and baseketball down the road, like her mama.
Today is more physical therapy and a couple of errands. I have 2 days left to finish my library book. It's a one-time loan via mobius, I can't recheck it. It'll be a challenge because heavy book is a lot of arm work, hard on my neck holding still to read even if I rest the book on a table, and still kind of hard on my eyes because nerve overload and headaches, BUT it's the coolest book and would make an awesome movie and I really wanna finish it. So I might not be tweeting much for a couple of days.
And @bonenado was awesome and totes replaced my $80 phone case yesterday evening because it's been taped together for months, and no matter how crazily and violently I drop, toss, and ricochet my phone, my phone still actually works just fine, so this is the best case ever and I'm actually saving the original for backup in case I destroy this one even worse. It's leather with all those tiny rock crystals glued on, so it takes loads of impact. It's called Brilliance and you can get it in several colors for several kinds of phones. If I had the right phone I'd have gotten rose gold. I got the last one for S6 in the whole store because it's discontinued.
I'm already time skipping, have been thinking for several days that we're in December now. I don't bring it up much but there's this thing- Is Fibromyalgia Aging You?
This is still so new that the studies aren't really completed enough yet to give definitive answers one way or another, even though you can run into a list of headlines screaming about fibro and gray matter loss. I've always known I'm losing cognitive function, I've been in and out of glitch and super glitch, memory impairments galore. I can feel my nervous system going down in super slo-mo.
It hasn't killed me yet. I can still laugh in the moment with my family. Pinky blog will help me stay focused, and I will continue to do my things.
As a generalized observation on personal blogging, I think self discovery through things like autism and ADD and other diagnoses, chronic illness survivalism, embracing depression and other mental illnesses- seeing ourselves through what we share with the world is the new human expression. Adding ourselves to the growing library of the internet is how we find ourselves in the global human race. Looking at ourselves and watching others look at us giving us ways to see ourselves through different eyes is our new method of healing. Learning to see each other, feel each other is the new age.
"I was here."
"I see that you are/were here, and I like what you did there."
Us.
It's been awhile since I had some Benny C on here.
Ah-HA! My scales are lying to me! Thought I'd step off and step back on, totes got a whole different number. Guess it's time to cave and get a new one. Maybe we're in battery death or something.
I remember when I brought this one home, everyone was ticked that it added 5 pounds.
Not saying it's boring now, but I fell asleep during The Walking Dead last night and missed the live tweet. ~sorrynotsorry~ We'd had such a big day, between @bonenado finally getting a deer, putting the first of the lights up, and getting a bunch of vacuuming and other cleaning done. Here, I'll toss a couple of pix here, heads up for the deer pic.
Ok, keep scrolling so it's off your screen.
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WE'RE CLEAR NOW.
Missouri has been back and forth on button bucks (partly in response to some kind of deer disease that periodically sweeps across the U.S. and affects hunting regulations because population controls), but it's still legal and hard to tell from a doe in this level of bracken, even through a scope.
I've about decided I've got a very sophisticated pingback bot looking for a way into Pinky blog. This particular country is very unusual for bot patrols on my blogs, and the last time I had a bot like this was from the Ukraine and it turned out to be an app probing for a hack entry. The only thing I can think of that connects me to France, in a rather strong way actually, is my paper.li newspaper (Pinky Press Review on twitter, auto payments go to a corporate street address in France). They made a big change a few weeks back, restructured how manual controls over content works (I don't like it), and for some reason that change obliterated the embed coding for my blog here, so I just took it out. SO. I'm this close to concluding that they've picked up internet VD of some kind since this big change that is probably ping swarming all their clients now. It started within the last 2 weeks, the same posts keep getting hit over and over like rote every so many hours, and I'm wondering if it's activating in sync with a staff member logging in. The time zone kind of corroborates.
I've been thinking about dropping paper.li for awhile. Maybe it's time to just let it go. I had a good run with it, it was fun to a point, but I can't say I'll look back that fondly on all the content wrangling I kept having to drag through. Maybe I'll let the Pinky Press Review run up through the holidays, and then start 2017 fresh without it.
I just wanna say I have NEVER been bot swarmed in any fashion by SyfyDesigns, and I have links back to Pinky blog and Lexxperience all over that place. Myke has been really tight with his spam controls, and I sincerely appreciate it.
TODAY. Continue the excavation I started in my kitchen yesterday, money and calendar sync, finish up laundry, catch up the dishes, and hopefully keep working on my list thingy. I've been scattered off and on, but haven't been THIS scattered since I went public again. Srsly need to get on the scattered thing with the list thing.
TOMORROW. Physical therapy, psyche guy, and Hy-Vee for CHEESE. I have looked high and low for several different reserve aged cheeses I enjoy, not finding them *anywhere*. The only place left to look now is Hy-Vee. I live in a strange area, between a super church and lots of other churches and a gathering of wealthy families in our touristy-manufacturing-giant retail metro spread and several big feeding the homeless type operations, stores get wiped out very quickly and regularly for upcoming par-tays and soirees, and this is not the first major hunt I've gone on before holidays. And if Hy-Vee is also wiped out, I'll be looking into an actual cheese store, but I know from experience that doesn't always get me the cheese I want. Had a long talk with a cheese guy one year about how this area really isn't into the finer cheeses, and I was like dude, you run a cheese store, get this cheese in and FIND OUT. A good imported aged cheese lasts awhile, it's not like he's going to lose perishable inventory right away.
Kinda reminds me of the year I looked for saffron *everywhere*. We have it now, but a few years back, no one knew what I was even talking about. I was like hellooooo, we live in a high import area, I can find things from Asia many Americans wouldn't even know exist except for food shows, Indian-American professors and doctors abound here, how can you not know what saffron is??? Meanwhile, I could get cactus, tomatillos, and purple cauliflower...
Anyway. Cheese irk. All I ask for is an aged gouda. I was actually able to find it for awhile. It's gone again. Wah and grrrr. Ok, I ask for other cheeses, too, but you know what I mean. No, I don't want your smoked gouda. Who is wiping out all the good cheeeeeeeese???? STOP THAT.
Only one of my friends ever gets this stuff.
This was fan made inspired by an interview answer.
All over it this morning, shower at 4:30 a.m., coffee now while I'm online getting my life in order- prescription refills, money syncing, stuffs. Flu shot today, then assess back into physical therapy after that.
~caution for triggers~
My head is way better now. I can't even blame those Halloween meltdowns on candy since I avoid carbs because diabetic. I love everyone again now. Seriously, probably another one of those repressed memories about Halloween. It's funny how my repressed memories are never about sexual abuse. Kinda makes you wonder what other horrors musta happened. I mean, besides seeing a dog nearly beaten to death, killing and eating my pets, watching puppies brains being smashed out, learning to properly kill cats, and pretty much handling 800-1200 pound animals regularly, including difficult births filled with all kinds of death and sometimes screaming animals. I was always the stoic one, now I'm the one falling apart. Like my mom did when I was a little girl. The survivalist lifestyle might look glam, but it's pretty tough on the soul. I actually jumped into an argument on FB about animal murder vs vegan and took it upon myself to explain that the exsanguination process actually isn't the torture nonexperienced people think it is, and then I caught myself because I've been experienced since I was 8 years old and I live with PTSD triggers now, and you really don't know who went vegan over something psychologically very disturbing to them. It's really not my job to get out there and educate people freaking out about death.
Pasting this over from facebook so it doesn't get lost.
I am both Irish and a dx'd narcissist. I stand for freckled soulless egocentric survivalists worldwide. Mock all you want, I can't hear you over all this me in my head.
(for some clarity, I'm also German and several other things from all over the world, so... standing up for all y'alls.)
My psychologist views my narcissism as being part of the cushion between my severe autism spectrum depression and mood swings and self harm, self medicating, and suicide, but I am one of the lucky ones. "When viewed from a certain perspective, narcissism can actually be seen as a positive thing."- fromWhy Narcissism Is a Profoundly Misunderstood Psychological Disorder
I scored a 17 on that narcissism test that was linked in that article. I was being a little conservative, but I don't have a hardcore top of the line dx, either. But celebrity level? Yep, hahahahaha.
I'm actually still dealing with a headache, so I really don't know how skewed my results are. I've had a very long headache day and I'm having trouble pulling my brain outa here. I do have this song on my mind though.
All you guys out there casting stones, both real and virtual- one of the most obvious signs of internal problems is displacing onto others, like a brain-trained puppet and a really more messed up person than those of us stepping out being targets. Whatever fear you have of things not running 'right' or being 'supposed to be', I went through that too. There is so much freedom letting go of hating people and being judgmental over others being different and having problems.
Join us. Loving is easier than hating. Hating takes way more energy and causes stuff like metaphorical fire damage and social viral entropic cascade. The entire human race is broken. We are all suffering. It's ok to admit you are flawed. I don't think God made a whole big thing just to throw most of it away. That's super inefficient and very anti-forgiveness protocol.
Today is a little delicate, super spastic fibro spaz in lower back started coming on after the bed at the sleep clinic. It wasn't a bad bed, actually slept ok, but I'm so used to getting up to move around or switch to the couch to prevent this kind of muscle response that it's feeling very 'old days' before I figured all this stuff out. I may be having to switch off ice and heat and doing lower core and stretches off and on all day just to keep walking, and I daresay sitting to 'rest' won't help as much as make it worse. I'd say this sucks, but saying stuff like that prematurely tends to make the cosmos bwahahaha in You think THAT sucks? Try THIS and then I'd probably wind up staggering from countertop to chair back kind of thing wishing I had a walker or a couple of canes. In the old days I'd be able to hands and knees if I had to, that's very simply out now. I cannot resort to destroying what's left of hands and knees sloppily dealing with this without strategic planning.
Those of you with alt remedies on the tip of your tongue, don't even go there. If you really think I haven't tried just about everything short of risking paralyzation in surgery, you either don't know me or you're dumb, so nip it and don't even start. This ain't my first rodeo, and I've already gone through several rounds of not being able to walk, one lasting for months. Unless you've lived like this, you can't fathom it, so back off.
I've thought a LOT about Stephen Strange wrecking up his arms and hands in that car wreck (pre Doctor Strange thoughts). I know what it's like living with all that nerve pain, losing control of fine detail function, the frustration that comes with all the clumsy little things your hands go through. I totally get the guy going from arrogant to pissy and grim determination to f* it all and keep plowing through anything to find some kind of answers or relief, because the only alternative is to quit. Most of you comic book fans are loving all this hype, but not as much as the fans who know what Doctor Strange is going through emotionally being trapped in a crap body and feeling useless and hopeless and very angry about it. It is all our dreams to be able to overcome our challenges and be useful or to be able to once again express what we are good at without ugly pain and clumsiness in the way.
Ok, enough of that. I've got things I need to get done today in between and around all this twingy back stuff, so time to get all over it. Definitely need some go music. Ok, here we go, totally dorky and something I can move around to.
Someone in Bangkok wants to know why Rick Lagina doesn't get married. Search phrase- "why rick lagina doesnt want to get married" Seriously, I'd quadruple my traffic overnight if I'd just write a few sentences about Rick Lagina once or twice a month. All it took was two posts mentioning him a year ago and he's still my top search referral.
29% of all my keyword traffic comes from people running into those posts during searches. These searches are worldwide, many of them rabid to know more about Rick Lagina's sex life. Highest impressions (vs click-throughs) on GWT analysis are from "Rick Lagina death" or "Rick Lagina dies".
Guys, Rick Lagina totally beats out "dr evil leo" (srsly, next top impression), Khanlock, Megavolt, and "Benedict Cumberstitch". And then we see "Rick Lagina bio" ranking ABOVE Benedict Cumberbatch in searches where Pinky blog comes up, and you know how much Benny C I've got in here.
I'd obviously be a fool to never mention his name again. Mildly facepalming over whether catching up on the last season in a post full of screen shots would be worth a little extra time this month. I've actually been wanting to make more memes. It still looks like I'm the only person in the world who's ever memed the guy.
Kinda looks like Doctor Strange's mysterious brother or something, doesn't he? No wonder people are going crazy over Rick Lagina. Here is Ben on set filming Doctor Strange.
And now I'm the only (so far first) person in the world to link Rick Lagina and Benedict Cumberbatch into a combo search field. You're welcome.
Here's a clip from The Curse of Oak Island. I reeeeally hope they find something. I have every episode saved on my DVR. Season 4 renewal has been confirmed. The premier date on the History channel has not yet been announced but will likely be later this fall, like last year.
The Autisable guy asked in passing on facebook how long it takes us to write up a post. This took about an hour between coffee, fact checking, and linking. Don't forget that the season finale 2-parter for Fear the Walking Dead is on tonight! @bonenado is really into that show. I'm still in countdown mode for The Walking Dead, #teamNegan.
Oh, yeah, and super awesome Syfy live tweet last night for The Crooked Man, that rocked and now it's deflating into people mistaking it for a Trump hashtag, so I'm not going to link it.
And now I need some Stephen Strange and more coffee. Don't forget to set your line ups and have a great day.
click to take a beautiful tour through a stained glass art gallery
There are days I think my stories really aren't that big a deal, maybe I'm just making a big deal out of nothing, and I kind of walk away and go do something else for awhile. And then another day comes along, like last night watching Blindspot, Roman asking Jane if she remembered the rabbits they were given as children to take care of and then told to kill, and how he wimped out and couldn't do it but she could, how she always had it in her to get the job done. And I'm thinking Ok, not only does that validate my own childhood story, but mine trumps it 100% because of other stuff, so if that doesn't make me a badass coming off childhood trauma, I don't know what does, and that was just one little incident in story after story after story that leaves every professional I've talked to cringing.
I have such a disconnect that I don't realize the impact I have on people. When I first shared my rabbit story with a beta reader, I didn't even think to caution first. This whole project I'm wanting to launch first before anything else will necessarily have to be labeled with trigger warnings galore.
I was talking privately to a friend about something this week and suddenly realized I was way out of my emotional depth again and quickly tossed out how severe my disconnect is and I'm not sure how to relate, even though I obviously have no problem engaging and understanding. Despite having to continually shut down this weird hyperawareness I have of people around me, I cannot feel some of it. It's like having a sort of numb empathy. I'm still struggling with how to express this because it's crucial as part of the journey I'm sharing about what it's like in the mind of an aspie child on to adulthood.
I've attempted to communicate this description in a couple of my Lexx posts regarding the undead character Kai. I've studied in depth what research I can find (actually extremely detailed) about programming people via break and rebuild and how that creates the disconnects needed for people to be able to handle doing some really horrific things without falling apart. I've super briefly mentioned in passing a few times over the last couple of years that I believe this is what happened to me as a child via 'natural' societal brain training and culture clashing held firmly together with rigid belief systems, and how this is ideal for mass enculturing future citizens.
Aspienado is the East Wind, as Mycroft fondly taunts poor Sherlock with.
The interesting thing, to me anyway, is that I'm no longer angry. I'm done with the anger part. I'm in the more practical, even heuristic part of all this discovery now. Having actually experienced this life has lent so much more depth to learning concepts that any amount of mere research could never aspire to. It's one thing to make statements based on opinions based on what others report, it's another to make statements based on experience.
I know I bring up Sherlock a LOT, but I can't escape that the rabbit they're looking for is named Bluebell.
click for an incredible hint
That's actually beside the point, but the entire Sherlock thing was perfectly timed with my pinata cracking open and all the jeweled candy flying out, and the blue rabbit is just one of the jewels I'm sorting through.
One of the most interesting conundrums I've run into, and it happens quite often, is talking to people who don't realize they've been traumatized. Children are very easily traumatized, especially if there is already an emotional and/or neurodiversity schism in the family (including mental illness in either or both parents), and so many of us have been taught to suck it up and be tough that it takes years of gentle excavation into a person's psyche to finally help them see they've so plastered over a traumatic event that undid them that even they can't see how traumatizing it was until they finally break through and then have nervous breakdowns. Or sometimes the breakdowns come first, and then it's all about sorting out the stuff that flew apart. All those sparkly memories...
The human brain is very good at systems recovery, for the most part. There are so many ways a human being can continue to seemingly function, and even function well, despite having gone through trauma that would easily break someone else who grew up sheltered and never learned all the little tricks for self protection. This is so common that the people who have developed these tricks actually take pride in them, and sneer down on the weaker ones who fall apart over more trivial nonsense. After all, what is dropping an ice cream cone on a sunny day compared to being horrifically abused in a very dark place with no rescue?
My blue rabbit wasn't exactly abuse. In fact, I'll vouch for it being the most absolutely brilliantly 'innocent' abuse ever invented. I will make a case that this perpetual breaking down and rebuilding machine that is society goes so far back that we think it's part of our group psychological health, and that the very people who shun 'bad' things themselves perpetuate the ability for bad things to keep existing.
I completely broke one sunny day somewhere in the first grade. I didn't cry. I didn't understand enough to cry. But I can go back now over all the moments floating through my tiny head and see that I went into a sort of permanent shock. I grew up without a single emotional connection to a single adult around me, including my parents, and it wasn't because they were mean. It was because they'd already been broken themselves.
The beta reader wasn't able to talk about it very much except to relate that it was extremely upsetting, just a few words telling a childhood story. The odd thing was that even writing it, I barely felt anything, but I somehow knew it was important. That was the first time I shared it with anyone, and now, just from that one reaction and talking to my psychologist and a couple of other people and loads of thought afterward, I can see that what I'll be sharing goes far beyond simply growing up autism spectrum in a rigid world.
I'm so glad I never got that published yet. I'm at this *wow* place where I can see a whole bunch of crucial plastering I still hadn't peeled down yet.
Ok, back to my day. I just did a retweet spam of last night's Benny C Pink Floyd crash (yeah, right in the middle of this, thanx @bonenado).
Yeah, that #bencongruity was exciting, ok, moving on. Back to my own little world.
