The article that pic clicks to might seem unnerving, but at least it's not Skynet.
Whiny robots are unacceptable. Whiny robots irritate people. #transparency is one thing, #uglytrewth is another. I will quickly power point the current root causes for whine and move on.
Post acute withdrawal syndrome. I'm only 2 weeks out from surgery, and less than that back off opioids.
Nasty headache.
Lost more weight than I went in with because virus on top of recovery and couldn't eat much between the two, imagine how hungry I am.
And now I will entertain myself, like I've been doing for years when I actually had no one to talk to.
Or how about an HTML5 version of the original Lemmings game, including the original sound?
But you don't have to load the game to listen to the music!
So when you have arthritis in your cervical spine and a history of trigeminal pain and they do airway for surgery, then have you lay in one position for extended time, the resulting fibro flare is off the wall once the drugs all wear off. Not whining or anything. Just saying. The Lemmings music in my headphones is helping. It's like a brain stim to distract me from paying attention to my nerves pinging over and over like BBs pelting the side of my head.
What was I posting in the old super pain days? Lemme jump back a few years and grab something.
Oh, here you go, my old Sikes and the Alien Nation (all the youtube vid codes got wiped in the Xanga server move). You might not be able to see that on mobile. And that post led to Gary sharing something I put into another post at EMP threat- imminent? Interestingly, just yesterday North Korea demo'd they can reach anywhere they want now with a missile, and next comes a nuclear warhead 'test'. You guys know that 'testing' a nuclear warhead in the atmosphere above the U.S. would knock our power grids offline, right, not to mention the fallout. So I was saying that back in April 2009.
Well, full circle I guess. I ran into Treat Me Like An Athlete, and I'll pull part here and leave it at that. This is an excerpt, because I was still voraciously super wordy back then and this is only a part of that. Bluejacky wasn't a top blog or anything, but got really good traffic on some things, and it was the first blog I tried being both public and myself on, although back then I never shared who I was anywhere else.
Ok, guys, I felt mean the other day, so I'm gonna partially retract and make an apology, but not because anyone got hold of me and demanded one. And I'm not doing this to get attention from anybody, because I've got recs and comments turned off anyway. I made a post called'puny' blogs, which I still stand by because I'm aspie and that's the way my head works, but I can look back and see that it was still a punch below the belt, and I feel like that's not who I am and how I operate. I'm not trying to do ~this~.
And here I put South Park's infamous cripple fight, which is now blocked for content rights stuff, but here's a snip.
I'm a big believer in the whiny crabby people being the ones who survive. I have watched others 'wisp away' under the burdens of their illnesses, and even though med info pages on the internet insist that things like lupus and fibromyalgia are NOT terminal, those others I knew have passed on already. I'm still here, and my whiny crabby butt says hell yeah it's killing me, and dang if I'm gonna lay down and let it. I'm not against anyone talking about their stuff on their blogs, that was NOT what the 'puny' blogs post was about. I've got a private blog popping with my crap, and the reason it's private is because the things I say there are things that help me survive, and that includes my black side, my bad attitude, and all the mean feelings that come out on my really bad days. I don't want to share that with the public. To me it looks like a big tangled mess of ugly confusion, probably because I see it all the time. To the few allowed to sub there, it probably looks more like endlessly long boring posts about being sick all the time and every little thing that bugs me, which is probably a real drag to read. Aspies can be notoriously wordy.
This next part is a big deal. Very few people dare to stick out there and really be REAL without apologizing or masking or faking or fighting. Just being real.
So it's only fair that I bring out where I'm at *right now*. I created this blog to share information, to 'be real' about stuff like Asperger's, but as I've pointed out in a couple of posts, I feel the Asperger's is what's giving me the edge on surviving the illnesses I live with because I notice patterns and obsess over details and collect information to the point of being irritating. So this week I'm going to assess what my situation is as of August '08, and then map out my plan of action for dealing with my stuff for the rest of the year. If you have chronic illness and feel like you are spinning your wheels in the mud, this is how I have survived 20 years of lupus, severe fibromyalgia, and a variety of complications that include things like Lyme disease, heart surgery, and a really wacky immune system.
Kinda what's been happening this week. I'm talking to myself because no one else wants to talk to me like this.
The cold hard truth about illness is that it sux. Just like with my Asperger's, I pretend to be 'ok' or 'normal' with my illnesses, too, because I learned real fast no one likes a whiny butt with a bad attitude. That's the real me, but I can't be the real me without people walking away in disgust, and I have learned to hide the howling blackness so I don't scare the straights. But the real me is the survivor. I don't whitewash the crap I go through to myself. I punch the virtual walls and grab myself by the collar and shake me. There is a piece of brain that refuses to go down with the ship, and thank God I go through the really crabby stuff, because I think it has helped save my life more than once.
I actually do this to people that I love-
Because, damn it, it takes a mean person to survive a mean disease or illness. And my gut reaction is that any time I see someone else whimpering with their pain, I want to kick *them* into full blown whiny shit kicking mode, too, so *they* can survive. This isn't about life sux so someone owes me something. This is about Indiana Jones hanging off a cliff and climbing back up. It's about Jack Bauer breaking people's necks after he's been tortured nearly to death. It's about Cat Woman getting fed up and raking her claws around rich bastards. It's about ~*~surviving~*~. I personally know a woman who wisped away to her death, refusing to make the necessary changes in her life that would have made all the difference and possibly given her 20 more less miserable years, in spite of surgeries and medications galore. There are a number of corporate conglomerates, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical CEOs who aren't going to like what I have to say in this post.
True story.
Yes, the imagery helps. If your senses are too delicate for this post, go away, and don't pretend to feel sorry for people you don't understand. True story. Years ago I was working in a hospital. I was preparing to put my things away and step onto an elevator to move on to another floor when a couple of older ladies stepped onto the elevator with me. They were dressed in nice clothing, had nice hair, nice jewelry, but they were not being very nice. The lady they had come to see was on the cancer floor, and since I'd cleaned her room earlier and spoken to her, I knew she was terminal any time, and that she was distraught with a number of issues about being afraid, stuff about her family, feeling all alone since her husband died, etc. So the ladies on the elevator (probably from this woman's church) were disgusted that they had taken a really expensive beautiful flower arrangement to this sick woman, and she hadn't even said thank you. She had gone on and on about something going on in her family, and she didn't even acknowledge that they came out to visit her and bring her flowers. And I'm standing there thinking- You expected her to be a gracious *hostess* on her death bed???? My God, people, the woman is ~dying~, and you're griping about her failure to say thank you for the flowers. And that leaves so much wide open to wonder about, like how those nice ladies could judge someone in need like that and think they were better than her because they played a *social game* correctly. They weren't really there to comfort a dying woman. There were there for brownie points. And I can't help but also wonder if the church paid for the flowers, in which case the nice ladies were even that much more ugly about getting that thank you.
Srsly how I feel about comments. I don't need pats on the back cheering me on. If you can't get out there and plow walls with me, just stand back before the bricks fly with me tearing that wall down.
So if you've never known anyone personally or yourself lived with chronic or terminal illness, your advice is not welcome here. (My mom used to be very eager to give others advice on vitamin E and herbs and stuff without any experience or medical knowledge whatsoever, so I'm a bit sensitized to that kind of zeal.) This is partly why I turned comments off. I don't waste my time with ignorance and pretense. It's my 'aspie way'. I am who I am and I don't care if someone gets upset about it. The rest of you who agree with me, thank you, but I don't feel the need to show that off to anyone by hosting it in visible comments.
I go on, but that's the gist of it. THAT is where it originally all started. Pinky blog is a continuation of Bluejacky. Bluejacky is too gut punchy. Pinky said tone it down a bit.
click pic for more memes
Now where were we? I started out looking for fun, wound up with nukes and a crabby rant. I need to get back on track. I was thinking that maybe in December (tomorrow) I need to go in a different direction than last year. Last December I did a countdown thingy and facepalmed midway over the archive stacking up with identical title beginnings, and by January I was just weird. I floated into dissociation land and wound up on handfuls of meds and then spent nearly the entire year dealing with ignoring a real problem (surgery this month could have been done 9 months ago) and winding up with multiple problems swamping me because I was over medicated.
pic clicks to interesting demotivational collection
And I'm still talking too much, but surely I'll be cured by the time someone is free to hang out on game later, if all works out. My internet was pretty sketchy today. Thankfully, a fiber optic crew has been out this week getting the entire subdivision prepped for a massive fiber optic installation, and their equipment is all parked up and down the street in front of my house. They made it to my house just as it was time to stop and go home, so first thing in the morning it's going to be noisy. Can't complain though if I wind up with fiber for Christmas.
I am admittedly worn out from this post. I just want to lay down for a bit before I get on game. Hopefully I don't fall asleep and miss anyone. I'll pass along what got shared to me today, it's really cute.
Wonder if that would happen a lot more if I'd boost this post. I've never boosted a post on Facebook, but I probably will once the book comes out. One of these will click to the twitter link, which already has over 400 impressions in less than 12 hours, the other will click to its new Autisable home.
And I really don't know if that had anything to do with waking up to a Google Alert that Janika Banks has been added to a German white pages listing on Denmark internet.
This is translated.
And I wanted to see if that's a real thing, and sure enough, comes up on page 3 in a Google search for Janika Banks. Brand new out of the bag.
A couple of years ago someone told me they were going to write up my Wikipedia page, and I laughed and said sure, go ahead. No one really has yet, but for some reason I've either been auto-boosted into legitimate search or manually entered by someone on a job or weirdly obsessed. I'm going with auto boost for now. There are so many automated info pages out there I could claim (traity was dumb, I had it for awhile and let it go), but that's way too much work.
Like I told a friend privately a few days ago- "If I don't get my crap done by end of summer, I'm an idiot. My launch platform has never been more visible."
So I get a porn boost right on top of #netneutrality, crack me up, and then I get a major Google Alert on top of my self-stim post. Never in any parallel dimension did I wildly dream of sex selling anything about Janika Banks. Wow.
:edit: Space Cowboy suggests putting pretty girls in vids to sell merch. Pretty sure some of us are in it for the actual music, so here you go.
Also, this is a thing. I have lifetime potential earnings of $33, crack me up. Bet that would change real quick if I could get some of my friends talking with me about Lexx and stuff. Anyway, you can get into this and click around, kinda fun checking out other channels. Very handy.
All the stuff in that article has consumed me much of my life. I've written at length on reality and perception, and have been openly being extra careful and letting people know when things aren't feeling 'real'. Friends on twitter may or may not be aware of this, depending on how often they might link over to Pinky blog, but that article kinda condenses things into a nutshell for me. This bit especially- I can tick every single one of these in this list.
What Causes Depersonalisation Disorder?
What causes depersonalisation disorder is not fully understood, but it is thought that it is linked to a chemical imbalance in the neurotransmitters of the brain. This imbalance may make the brain vulnerable to depersonalisation disorder when in states of extreme stress.
According to the Mayo Clinic, causes of depersonalisation disorder may include:
Childhood trauma such as witnessing domestic violence or being abused
Growing up with a significantly impaired parent, such as by mental illness
Suicide or unexpected death of a loved one
Severe stress such as relationship, financial or work-related pressures
Severe trauma such as a car accident
I'm noticing it's much worse lately, so it's time for #transparency while I have a little time to share. I usually handle stuff on delay because of aspienado shutdowns, where I turn into Pinky Robot and don't have to feel all the stuff going on around me. Lately, though, I'm having to crunch some of that processing through a little faster as multiple deaths are rolling out and I feel oddly situated as a major player that's mostly not really inner circle, so I can't exactly be a wall flower and let it float over me, or float over it, or whatever floating usually takes place, but still vitally connected in sometimes crucial ways.
The best way I can describe the time jags are like when I'm playing on server and there is a bit of lag and my character gets jerked back a couple of steps and has to break a few blocks over again, or the lag might even spam a little, and the blocks blink in and out of existence no matter what I try to continue to do. If the lag gets bad enough, I time out and have to relog, which is what shutdown feels like. I don't often feel like I'm in 'real time' with other people, and have spent a frustrating lifetime figuring out this is what's really going on in my brain and that it's not normal. I'm so used to it that I take it for granted, and I've only really started talking about it the last few months. I mean, I shared the big reality break from 2012 that was a result of a supervised double hormone crash off meds that took about 3 months, but that went beyond my kind of normal lag/jag stuff. I'm not having a med or pain crisis to the point of causing this again, but emotionally *bam* I'm getting knocked off track a bit more than usual and it's really catching my attention lately.
I am still struggling to keep broken bits of timelines in some kind of order around certain parts of my life. I'm still attempting to reconstruct through old bits of papers, like my college class schedules, or a list of work experience I kept around for resumes that included to-from dates, or even like the time my oldest daughter suggested I look in the toilet for the year I got married because we built the house that year and toilets are dated- no wonder I thrive on social media timestamps. I can't blame the time jags on anything specific, because my brain is wonderfully adept at some things, but time itself slips out of my grasp. Y'all know I get my days, weeks, and even months mixed up. Well, it's kinda worse than usual this year.
So this weekend has been really tough, some of it was very public because we lost a friend but a lot of my personal stuff wasn't, and today should have been a typical epic fail mode where I forget stuff and stumble my way through, but it never happened. No, today was brilliant, I got all the things done, and I handled everything beautifully. But I wasn't 'me'. At least not the usual me. The me from the old days took over, the me that got me through high school and part of college, the me that showed back up in a new morph and got me through the 5 grueling dark years before I pulled myself back together with Pinky.
I knew as I was pulling out of the driveway this morning that she was back. I was cognizant the whole time and I (the 'me' who is typing this) pretty much sat back and let it all happen. I didn't fight for control, in fact, I was relieved and grateful. I hadn't seen that side of me, to use a phrase, take over like that in a long time. The me who survives no matter what.
She has a name. I very rarely ever share it. The morph part has a very public name. I don't often use it, either. Together they are very strong, and I say they because I didn't feel like I contributed to that strength. Normally we all fit together and we are 'I', but today, I definitely switched out for awhile.
I begged my mom to take me to a psychiatrist when I was in high school. In college I walked into campus counseling and asked to be tested, because I told them I felt like I was crazy. I have been assured a number of times by several professionals that I'm nowhere near crazy (I passed an MMPI just fine in college) and that I'm handling life rather well. Inside I feel like a messy wreck, and I don't feel like I'm handling anything well at all. My current psychiatrist mentioned I'm feeling dissonance between what is real and what I feel is real. It goes a little beyond the kind of self flagellation that people do when they're down on themselves, but the weird thing is I don't do that. I have never done that. That's where the narcissism has come in really handy. I don't think I'm all that and a bag of chips, but I do think I'm an important person in people's lives, and I believe my being here on this planet is important and supposed to change things, but that only works out if I get off my butt and actually do stuff that makes a difference, so it's really rare for me to fall into a self pity pit.
I believe we are ALL important and here to change things.
I believe it's ok to believe this, and I'm pretty sure that's what's kept me going. Reality is what I make it, and the reality I create around me is my 'real'. It may not always mesh with other people's 'real', but at least I can be part of other people's lives.
Pinky has been wrestling all the snakes back into the peanut can, but I don't think that's going to happen now. Claudia burst forth today, bringing Jacky with her, and dayam if stuff didn't GET DONE. I would wish I could be like that all the time, except when I'm in Claudia mode, I'm usually pissed and don't give a f* about whatever, and I'm kinda tough for people to take like that. Jacky brings an undercurrent of dark emo med addict withdrawal kind of personality, and together they kicked ass today and told me not to worry about it.
That was my 'real'. I didn't fantasize, I didn't make up internal dialogues, I didn't think about it, I just sat back for awhile working on word stuff like I love doing. And now this is me practicing for getting thoughts organized before the book goes out. Lotta people out there analyzing autie stuff half to death, and I am soooo way past omg I'm autistic. Let's apply it to #allthethings now, shall we? And ppl who read my stuff, don't rip this off and run with it on your own stuff asplaining it all out for the noobs like you own it. Own your own stuff. This is my stuff. Everyone needs to get on personalizing their stuff. Really tired of this 'we' crap. (I changed that last word, Claudia was trying to take over.)
I am the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me. -Kipling. My tagline since 2007. Bluejacky: Existential Aspie
Antibiotic brain after I unfollowed a bunch of accounts again this last month, right? I almost kept the steampunk account but decided it was too sexist because no men or machinery, just beautiful women, which I'm not against at all, but it was disappointing me.
So last night I dreamed I was decked out full blown steampunk, lotta awesome and looking hella cool, and especially my marcasite boots. Yes, you heard me, marcasite. Solid marcasite. Yes, the entire boot. In case you are not familiar with marcasite, the boots would look the same as this stuff. Click to see way more, that is a really conservative start.
And I was late for a final college exam with a visiting friend in tow (another account I might have unfollowed?), some guy from some country who I couldn't tell was crushing on or using me to step up to the next level somehow, and the final consisted of doing surgery, which was funny because I had told someone at my dad's house to hang on because I would be back after class to do surgery on him after a weird accident that had blown some twisted parts into his gut.
Anyway, there was running through buildings because parking is never close, and it was raining, and one of the classes along the way was a Stargate class full of awesome stuff (ok, that one I got, pretty sure that dream thing came from @thegatecast wishing me a happy birthday this week). And of course I left my lab tools at home, so I had to use the nearly useless generic equipment scrounged up around class (I really do have lab surgical tools in my real house), but I still pulled off a successful surgery, and then I remember facepalming and having to tell my friend to put his pants back on, after which he valiantly (very publicly awkwardly) proposed and I suggested maybe we get a hamburger and think about it because I was starving.
"Choosing to consciously make new experiences rugged looking Marcasite has a multiple personalities. This dark, grey-pyrite helps the wearer to walk through new doorways to philosophical and reflective change. It is also believed to infuse courage in the wearing individual and is referred to as "fool's gold". Known to be a desirable gemstone among people, it is as well acknowledged as pyrite because of its same chemical formula though has different crystal system and inherent qualities.
...Made up of iron sulphide, it is an interesting mineral that has been confused with other types of minerals for generations. Known to be a brittle stone it can crumble easily and is lighter than pyrite. Usually yellow in color, this striking stone has a brassy look added to it. With a twinned crystal habit, this unique distinctive gemstone occurs when the surface to form the head of a hen. Mythologically associated with pyrite like properties, it is well known among Chinese, Greeks and Mayans for thousands of years. Having a calming effect, Marcasite attracts wealth and inspire creativity. It frees the wearing individual from the feelings of hopelessness, over-sensitiveness and help to re-calibrate, re-assess, re-design, release, and reincarnation. Being gentle with the wearer's body, it holds on the wearer grounded as well as balanced."
Sounds about right. I didn't even know that. There's lots more if you want to click over and read it.
"A dream about shoes may symbolize how you are moving forward on your career path or spiritual path in life. May represent your understanding of something, since your shoes are under you when you stand."
There's lots more about whether the shoes fit, where you're wearing them, if you change shoes in a dream, losing or forgetting them, and the type of shoe. For instance, mine were boots.
"Boots may symbolize taking a firm stand on something; or it may be a pun on “getting the boot” or getting fired. “These Boots are Made for Walking” also comes to mind."
So I'm walking around in these magical healing boots doing surgeries. Sure, why not. I'll take it.
That guy, though. Really not interested in that way, and seriously could not tell if he had an agenda behind all the pizzazz, so I just let him tag along at arm's length, because I did enjoy him. Not exactly the greatest person to arrive late with to a surgery exam though.
The rest of my week is wide open. I haven't been able to say that at the end of any month this entire year. There is so much I want to get done. Guess we'll see what happens.
This Pinky blog will be 2 years old in 3 days. Pinky blog originally came from Pinky Robot blog, which suffered a server migration.
And that blog actually started after this- Are you a robot? For some reason, that question was like a little snowball that eventually avalanched my whole mountain down. See what happens when you put 'pinky robot Janika Banks' into a search bar... She never knew me as Pinky Robot.
10 1/2 months after I first ripped open about Pinky Robot in hybrid- how robots go on, I finally got the courage to put her name and city into a search bar. I was thankful to find this post, because it was such a relief seeing how I felt already worded out so I wouldn't have to. I know that sounds weird coming from someone who writes nonstop, but seriously. How The New Mexican Government And Prison System Failed Its People
As I ripped open, starting a little over a year ago, my blog hits doubled, and then tripled, and lately I've let it slide back down a lot because I found a lot of my answers and got busy playing on minecraft. Despite this being my slowest month so far since March 2015, this is what my stats look like right now. No, I have no idea why, nothing obvious is standing out in referrals and other incoming like bots in my past have. I'm going to guess it has something to do with the Olympics though, because the majority are going straight to dotcom page instead of posts, probably from bio links on twitter and facebook.
And the reason I say Olympics is because alla sudden I've got all these countries showing up in stats this last week (blogger only shows top ten in any list)
and month
and I had that big tweet on the 5th that's still pulling in impressions
and pages like this showing up in my referrals lately. I'm going to guess my tweet got pulled into content curation or something. The page wouldn't translate for me, you can click that and try if you want.
And while I'm in stats, let's see what you all look like.
Top browsers this month-
Top operating systems this month-
This is usually what I see in visiting countries because of Lexx, Merlin, Sherlock, and other fandoms.
This referral cracked me up. Don't worry, it didn't tell me who you are, it's just I don't usually see it announced like that.
It's been a very long week, and I know some of you guys probably still think all I ever do is twitter and facebook and minecraft and then TV when Scott gets home from work, but I actually do read once in awhile, and today I got lost in some really cool write-ups about labyrinths throughout human history around the world, including Going Around in Circles: The Labyrinths of Theosophy. "The pattern of the classical labyrinth looks like the brain, and walking it is a dance with the forces of the universe. Just as in life, the goal is to reach the central source, but the path to it takes one close and far away by turns, until finally, the center is attained. At this point, the seeker realizes that his journey is only half done, for now he must dance the energy of the source back out to the world." Plus a lot of other good paragraphs. If you'd like an easier version, try The Labyrinth: A Brief Introduction to its History, Meaning and Use.
Social media is my labyrinth. I meander in an out, sometimes walking with others, sometimes walking by them going other directions. Sometimes I am silent and contemplative, sometimes I am moved as I move.
I'm not sure if I'll be posting again real soon or not. I have a minecraft date in the morning, and Tuesday is 2 appointments, psyche guy and sleep study consultation. Tomorrow around noonish my scheduled Autisable post goes live again. Several of my original Bluejacky posts are starting to show up on my new Autisable blog, and you can see they go back 7 years. I forgot I even wrote this one 5 years ago- Psyching Up – Becoming Liberated. I was one of my psychologist's very first adult autism spectrum patients. We both hung in there, and I've come to trust him completely as one of my most solid relationships. I'm not sure yet what kind of new material I'll be submitting, but blogging has definitely helped me communicate better when it comes time for more one on one with my psychologist. It's like getting all my thoughts rounded up and weeded out first.
Bluejacky, Pinky Robot, Aspienado... All my ways of dealing.
Ok, I need to escape this post and move on. THIS. Out just today and going viral.
I started this post yesterday. If you have depression and are easily triggered, please exercise truckloads of caution if you try sticking through this post, ok? I really went there.
From a post I made 4 years ago at janikabanks.xanga.com. The html is abysmally screwed, but I fixed what I could. Only one person has ever been told what I intend to do with this, so the private title is in the queue and one of the projects I'm working on.
My fave thing ever is pirates. I read everything I could get my hands on about pirates when I was a kid. Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini captivated me at a pretty young age, and I absorbed the The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas (j'adore Dumas!) almost through the pores in my skin. My fave ever Pirate movies are Blackbeard's Ghost, Yellowbeard, The Pirate Movie, Cutthroat Island, and the Pirates of the Caribbean series. My other fave 'ship' movie is the Horatio Hornblower series. I didn't grow up anywhere near an ocean or even a lake, but I have this kinda private thing about ships. I'm working on my own thing now, but a few years ago, this is the kind of stuff I liked doing.
Ok, hopefully that doesn't kill the wrap on the rest of the post. I had to go after those words heading clear out to my livingroom and wrestle them back into the corral. *preview* Ah, yes, working just fine now.
This week is already weird, and I desperately need to pull back into a touch base here, so let's just start off with my face feeling prickly and itchy. Nothing puffing up, yay! Just the nerves. The first time it ever happened I was in my late 20s and my doctor tried me on several different meds until we finally just gave up. The phantom itching is maddening, and after a few years of absentmindedly scratching around an eyebrow or beneath my lip or by my nose, a doctor commanded me to STOP before I wind up with cellulitis. Thank goodness it never got to that point! SHOULD YOU SCRATCH THAT ITCH? MAYBE NOT
So I switched back to beta blocker, histamine level spiked (yay, allergy season!), and now my face is all itchy and prickly for 'no reason', but it's all the same trigeminal spots I've always had to deal with, so apparently neurontin and cartia together impact my nervous system differently than neurontin and my original beta blocker dose together. Incidentally, I can't prove anything because my weight stayed steady this whole month, but I've worked really hard on the 1500 calorie thing, and I seems like whatever I lost got replaced by fluid retention. I swear I'm more jiggly now. Not cool.
Med changes, yo. At least I'm not craving brownies like last month. But srsly, where's the tranq gun for the maddening bursts of itchies sparkling up behind my eyeballs. Ok, enough of that. I'm very seriously thrilled it's not doing this down my throat. Those kinds of days are terrifying.
K, got on here to FOCUS. I need a super power point, hang on. (Coming back to this sentence during proofread and just shaking my head.)
Ok, Autisable went live today. I'm not staff, but I was one of the early contributors. Not paid. This is not for profit, I think. Anyway, Joel started this community of networked writers on Xanga before the big server move, and I've watched him survive and rebuild pretty much from scratch, and that inspired me more than just about anything to hang on, keep working on my own stuff. Again, for those of you who've never lost everything you've built in a server move, including specialized coding and a really excellent cutting edge mobile platform, the stress is unbelievable. I would compare it to an internet earthquake or hurricane or something, just everything wiped out and gone and having to pick up shreds and pieces and literally start over with a new foundation.
MY POINT. See what I mean, I'm super scattered because this itching is so distracting. Anyway, I've created a special Aspienado facebook account to share my Autisable submissions. Autisable is what inspired Aspienado to come out in public and start working on Existential Aspie. My tagline will hopefully be the preface to my book.
If you could go back in time and do one thing, what would it be? I would go back and give my mom a big hug and tell her everything is going to be ok. –Existential Aspie
I need to review a few other things going on. Organization!!! Thank goodness for back to school. Ok, went to my phone to find a pic and played on FB for 15 minutes. Here we go. This is my back to school purchase, along with a CD holder not pictured (because I have CDs scattered all over the house and the cases are getting destroyed and I keep losing CDs the way people lose their keys). I've pulled together a reading list for the year (sploit, I'll send you the books as I finish them, so don't buy them), and I've decided I need to get back to watching a show during the day while Scott's gone to keep me off minecraft when I go ditzy, because I've lost swaths of time 2 days in a row switching back to the beta blocker. I need to focus back on time awareness through the day, so I'm creating a new syllabus for myself, hopefully it'll get me through the holiday slide intact. (omg, I forgot about the time I discovered a search for 'holiday slide' landed me back on this post.) But yes, I do need to share actual real brain stimulation going in for all the people (including my psychologist) who wonder if I'm taking the broadcasting out part of my life too seriously. You people really have no idea what I actually do most of the time, so guess what, I'm giving myself book report assignments through the fall.
I think I shared my new backpack on twitter last month, hang on. Yes, here it is. Aspienado is really bad to get into ruts and use things till they're so messed up or messy that I'm a walking disaster, so freshening up the ol' bugout bag was a must. I treated myself since my last backpack was a $3 leftover after Walmart had been savaged and left nearly bare, and it was initially targeted for ten year old boys and really didn't hold that much. This one holds my whole house.
I've also liberated my new umbrella of its tag. I've been using really old and almost broken umbrellas since college (I cannot believe I've had that blue umbrella since the late 80s, THAT tells you a lot about my ruts right there, and the green one has to be nearly 10 years old itself), so when I saw this one in a pharmacy, of all places, on a rough day, I pointed to it and @bonenado totally got it for me. I'll have to take care of it because the entire handle is wooden and has an auto button to pop it out, very James Bond kind of thing. I know, some of you are questioning the whole going more feminine thing when I've been neutral for so long, but butterflies and roses have special significance in my family, and I really did have to have this. Plus there are pocket watches (me and time problems) and keys (key to the Lexx), so yeah. hello goodbye
Grasping that becoming Pinky to the world is how I am emotionally surviving isn't necessary to understand, but Bluejacky coming back out to play now is extremely significant. It means I'm healing.
At least in my heart and soul and mind. My body...? This is a hard summer guys. All I can do is just keep writing until I literally can't any more. It's too hard to tell if I can still hope for progress, because I'm sliding down so hard I'm not sure I can finish what I started. I keep telling myself hang in there 5 more years. I can make it 5 more years. I mean, it worked when my kids were in grade school and middle school, kept shooting for target dates and actually kept making them, and even though I honestly never dreamed I'd make it this long, I know the only road forward is harder than ever now. blinking in the light (the original reveal)
If you've never read Hinds' Feet on High Places, THAT. @bonenado and I had a really good talk over this last weekend. If I'm in final sprint (and it could be another ten years, I can't see the future), it will take everything I've got.
I'm just glad I'm getting all my head stuff worked out. I feel like I'm getting all my homework done on time. Assignment: Earth- You will occupy a body and learn to use this body to play well with others, share your toys, and learn wisdom. This will count toward your dissertation on Why We Are Not Mean To Each Other. Once you've satisfactorily completed this assignment, you will level up and move on to other things. Some call this the Hard Class, the pass or fail class, but think of it as extra credit and you'll be fine. You'll each be given Time and Space allotments to complete this assignment, and the only thing you'll be graded on is whether you manage to pick up on what becoming an autonomous being is all about. The only way to learn this is through experience, and you won't be able to take your notes with you. Good luck.
I need to be sweet and remind a few people that I'm not critical, ok? I'm just facing that I'm heading there. We don't know when or how soon, watch me make it to 80 now, right? But for those who are still pretty new to the real me, yes, this is actually how I have lived raising my kids, day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year. I haven't taken a single thing for granted since the car accident.
But the race is on. And I wanna win.
All this writing encourages me, so if this is bothering you, you need to go do something else, ok? I'm *focusing*. Writing is just as athletic as any other sport. You plan, you practice, you assess, you practice some more, and you keep doing it and doing it until you're good enough to play hard enough to win. Sorry so long, but it's just that kind of day. Minecraft isn't helping right now. And I don't wanna talk about this on twitter and facebook. I only link it so it's easier for people to check on me if they want to. BACK TO SCHOOL. The syllabus construction. So among the reading challenges and rearranging my days so I'll be more aware of time and consequently more productive, I have several projects I want to finalize this year. One of my biggest challenges is this mobile office and the sudden interruptions. I've been working on organization for years, and it's amusingly hitting me that it's been so long that most of what I need to organize is truly useless now, and I can start throwing a lot of it away. When we were going through bankruptcy, we had to compile and keep tons of information, same thing again with my disability case, and between insurance changes and EOBs and all the junk mail on top of it, plus bank account stuff and keeping bills straight and forms filled out in timely manners, and then taxes and renewing car plates, and all of this being regularly poofed like leaf piles through birthdays and holidays and sick days/weeks and all kinds of other stuff, and then tech fail, omg you guys, I have lost my book contract in the shuffle so many times... Yes, both digital and hard copy.
But I have to keep my head on straight enough to remember to write groceries down on a list and then actually follow that list, and I'm failing simple list goals just running to Walmart, so of course I feel overwhelmed. But look at all the stuff I keep getting done. Look what I did this morning. I grabbed content I already had and used it to help promote a site announcement. I feel good about it, I feel like it helps point me back in the right direction, and I feel like the rest of my day is ok now because I spent a few minutes doing something useful. It doesn't take much, just a little bit every day. Five minutes. It really does add up over time.
So, August. My anniversary is tomorrow. I'm glad I wrote that, I got @bonenado a card and hid it, so now I'm going to go find it. I'm usually too scattered to even get a card, but I actually have one this year, and now it's out in time, instead of laying in a drawer, yay! Ha, it might be the last one he ever gets if I keep staying this scattered, though. You wouldn't believe how utterly ditzy I have felt the last 6 months.
*screaming gear change because that made me think of brain fog*
I was in my 20s when I was diagnosed, and I got that diagnosis within a month of seeing a doctor who fast tracked me to rheumatology because I'm such a severe case. They knew next to nothing back then, even though they already had criteria established on how to diagnose. I know from experience that getting back to a normal life might never be an option for me, because nothing we've ever tried has worked very long helping me pretend normal is even an option. Fibromyalgia Has Central Nervous System Origins
I got disability on the first try. What Does It Take For Fibromyalgia to Qualify As an Impairment Under the New Ruling
What I'm saying is that I'm one of the first patients in the medical field to be diagnosed so early and live this long with it, and they don't yet have a 'lifelong' definition for this kind of thing. They're talking about cases that last at least 3 months and still insisting there's a way to live a normal life, and I'm not seeing anything legally or medically definitive on someone who is 25 years in on something like this. There is no research on how people age through this. It's still only conjecture, and they're still studying it. Fibromyalgia linked to decreased brain connectivity
We've ruled out MS, AS, RA, and Lyme is still being considered a nonplayer even with antibodies. This article is only a year old. Fibromyalgia now considered as a lifelong central nervous system disorder
It's about defining what living a normal life actually means. I'm fighting to stay functional in my own home. I think for me, it's more about living a useful life. What can I still do when it seems like I can't do much at all? I can type words.
I have made it through at least 2 1/2 hours of what I call a really rough morning. I was kind of laughing with another snarkalec one day about how those of us in the most pain have such blow off phrases for how we feel, yet those of us who live like this totally get the code. I have a pain rating system that most people don't have a clue exists. The doctors use a 1-10 scale, and I insist I'm using the Princess Bride scale (not to 50!) in a 1-10 world, and on 'really nasty' days, that line runs right off the scale and keeps going around every wall in the room. If I'm 3 walls over, it's a shitty bad I'm in hell kind of pain day, and there's no way I'm going to talk about it beyond calling it a nasty pain day. There is just no way to convey context in a world where simply having a migraine and an emotional meltdown rates a 10 (and I do apologize, I don't mean to trivialize that at all, it's just I'm so experienced at that being a side order on a main dish of fibro). If I say in a doctor's office I'm at a 10, I'm either violently throwing up, unconscious, or spasmodically weeping with no way to console or comfort me, and believe me, I have scared ER doctors even after pain shots.
Pain scales are extremely relative and subjective, so I've had difficulty trying to convey meaning to what I'm attempting to communicate to a doctor who hears '10' from people calmly sitting in their chairs without even a facial flush going on. That has actually happened right beside me in a triage room. The woman saying it looked bored. My blood pressure was 193/110 and pain was nearly blinding me, and it just sounded so stupid for me to also say '10' right after her when I was obviously feeling so much worse. I once told a triage nurse 12 1/2 and she thought I was joking. You've no idea how badly I hate that 1-10 pain scale. That's why I invented the Princess Bride pain scale. If a doctor or nurse has seen the movie, they have more context, and then we can talk about me being in the 30-40 range on a decent day. Just because I'm able to function and smile doesn't mean my pain level is a 5. Actually crying driving in to appointments rates a solid 8, and from there it's minutiae to me. You know how on the earth timeline of 4 billion years humans have only existed in the last seconds before midnight? That kind of minutiae. So much pain context is crammed into those last 2 digits. I'm like if there can be 50 words for snow, I've got a hundred different phrases for particular pain levels if they're looking for context.
I can handle big loads of pain. Some days you feel like body slamming walls and trees trying to make it all shut up, other days you curl up in the dark and just keep everything really quiet. Those are rough days. Really rough days are me not caring if I break something and it's all I can do not to break windows out of sheer need to smash stuff just for distraction. I can totally see how people just lose it. Nasty days are just past that, where you if touch me, you die, and one look will wither your soul and you'll think I never loved you at all because it will be so awful. Really nasty days are hanging on in hurricane days, the kind of days where it's so bad that even breaking your legs or slicing yourself up barely ripples your attention, when even the words 'self harm' bring out maniacal laughter because it seems so tiny compared to what you're already going through. If I weren't in this amount of pain, I would totally be a self harmer. And I know several self harmers, so I'm serious saying this.
But the really worst days are the ones where it's not even that bad and your brain suddenly goes through a chemical dump, and there's not one thing on the planet you can distract yourself with that could keep you from doing something really stupid, so you reach out to hang on to other people and hope to God someone's available, because you cross that blurry line into unreal numbers territory, and you can't be sure what you're doing is really what is happening because your brain is so tired and so fried from all that overwhelming screaming you went through for days on end that nothing seems real any more when it finally quiets down a little bit.
~~~~~~~~~~~
I stopped there for awhile to get a lettuce and turkey wrap and some cheese. The prickles and itching are finally calming down. Really thought this post was going a different direction when I started it. Oh, well. I could delete all that or just let it stand. I'm sure I spoke for a lot of other people feeling frustrated with spoonie stuff, too.
I'm going to make it. I can do this. But I need a nap first. I feel like I just swept out my soul, and those crazy stacks of old EOBs will be next.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sometimes naps don't work at all. Since I'm breaking so far out of my ruts lately, I decided back to school means I'm getting new stuff in my house, too, so I laid there in the dark scrolling around my phone. I never do that. I so rarely shop at all, this really is breaking out big time for me. I burned out really bad after doing retail for 5 years, so I just never browse unless I really need something, like replacing a crockpot. I decided today I need new sheets. @bonenado bought the last set at least 2-3 years ago and I've never liked them. So now it's my turn to torture him, lol.
And I've been wanting one of these for years. I bet Bunny will think it's awesome.
Also looked up the tracking number yesterday on the sunglasses I ordered last month (I tweeted about them), yes, they're really coming from China. They're super cool if you want to check them out. I'm surprised how little I paid for such nice glasses, plus free shipping, so no idea how they're even making money. Well, I'm assuming they're as quality as they look on the site...
Oh, now I'm yawning. Going to go try this again.
~~~~~~~~~
Nope, just not one of those days. And then the second I get on moc, someone is getting banned for using xray, so it's a day for everybody, I guess.
Got a call to make an appointment for next week, totally forgot I was submitted last May to be a genetic candidate. I'm old enough now with enough family history to get a consult to see if I'm likely to get breast cancer. I go in next week, guess we'll see how that goes. I've been on and off alerts all over my body since my 20s, nothing ever shows up. Really don't know if I'd survive treatment very well, @bonenado already decided a few years ago if I ever test positive he's just going to take me to mayo or something. ~~~~~~~~~~~~
TODAY.
click for fun glitter graphics
Nothing special planned. Maybe I'll go pick up a couple of filet mignons and seasoned veggie grill mix and a tiny cheesecake for supper.
Got a little glum there yesterday, didn't we?
If you haven't figured out by now why I'm already a Doctor Strange fan, then you don't know me at all. It has nothing to do with Benny C because he's made tons of movies I've never seen and I don't go around watching all that just because he's in it. It also has nothing to do with Sherlock. Just for a second, imagine Stephen Hawking watching Doctor Strange. Yeah, that. Lotta people in this world gonna be latching onto this one. Continuing to use our brains to keep surviving when all else fails is what it's all about, kids, and you know I'm sharing the brain glitching part so some of you know we can still do this.
Aspienado in lifelong nerve fail. Wow, just summed my entire adult life up in 5 words.
Trip to town this morning for my annual date with another man on my anniversary. This is follow up with primary, thankfully early because they'll undoubtedly issue heat index warnings again. My head is way better now than Tuesday, so I'm adapting back to beta blocker just fine. He's not going to be happy about my blood pressure going back up a bit, but I think the thrill of me feeling like getting athletic shoes back on for some real exercise will outweigh the compulsion to hit a target number. I think once I get moving around more again I'll feel better about moving forward.
Bluejacky is back, and I finally nabbed aspienado in a FB address.
Bunny bomb is almost imminent.
My niece just intro'd me to Notepad++. I'm understandably very excited.
I see psyche guy today. I have no idea what we'll talk about. I seem to be dealing with all my stuff on Pinky blog lately. @bonenado has noticed I've become more intense on the neurontin, more brain energy available now that a significant portion of nerve chatter has been muffled. I hope it lasts.
Speaking of intense, yesterday turned into deep convo day with several key people in my life, and I noticed I was able to handle it sooooo much better on the neurontin, another reason I hope this med lasts with me. This is for both my kiddos and their kiddos, my niece, my Sam (everybody needs a Sam), my sisters, and my fave MIA who managed to throw a smiley at me, and especially @bonenado, who laughs with me every day even when it seems like everything is sucky hard. And all the rest of you, too. Please to have good days, because I love you. Yeah, it's the med, but I still mean it. (I actually told the nurse and doctor I loved them before and after colonoscopy one year, because I. love. everybody. on sedation.)
I made this in '08 or '09 by rendering a screenshot of the carpet pattern in the hotel lobby of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas I've been Yablo since the Sprite commercial first aired. Yablo is alive and well deep in a tunnel somewhere in the MoCreatures server. omg they have a mug all the yellow words are linked
I seem to have stopped dropping my phone every single morning. Poor thing still has the case all taped up together around it. Finally hit the spot in my neck that is apparently putting the squeeze on a piece of nerve like a big bad mafia boss. My therapist had me doing twisty things with my neck I haven't been able to do voluntarily in years.
So now I can do chicken tricks! I can bend my head around and see the world in whole new ways! Yesterday, for the first time since I moved into this house, I backed into the driveway actually looking back at the driveway over my left shoulder. O_O srsly, right? Wow, just discovered wry neck is a real thing with chickens. I've lived with chickens all my life and never once seen a single wry neck problem. Well, that made me feel sad... Now I'm going to dig through my photobucket and look for stuff to cheer me up.
And that quickly escalated into ducks...
@bonenado has brought up the subject of painting. It's not a solid plan quite yet, but we might spend the weekend with me finally stripping out the kitchen and him finally repainting the ceiling after all the whole replacing the roof thing. Things will get interesting if he winds up going down the walls. Good thing I planned on chili dogs this weekend. Guess we'll see what happens. Nothing's ever set in stone around here.
Memorial Days get weird for me. I'm usually 'left behind' while other people do cool fun stuff, so I try to stay busy. One of my toughest Memorial Day weekends looked like this, pure oily sauteed more than boiling hot mess. That's right, I dropped a pan. I have no idea how it didn't melt the linoleum or even splash on me and burn me quite badly (I've seen second degree burns from hot oil fires in the kitchen, very healthy fear of getting burned!), but I have dropped so many things in my life that I've learned to jump and dodge as soon as I feel something start slipping (that becomes automatic when a knife literally stabs you in the foot). I remember I cried a little because I was home all alone and already in so much pain and barely able to bend well enough to even clean it up, so I tried to cheer myself up taking pix and laughing about it.
It's ok, that wasn't as bad as 2012 when I went off the rails during the supervised double hormone crash and then came back out public the next month.
Memorial Day weekend is really stressful for a lot of people, and just yesterday, Twink tried calling 9-1-1 for a fight that broke out in traffic right behind her, guys jumping out of their vehicles right there in traffic and duking it out, and no one was answering. I'm sure their phone bank was swamped with calls. This time of year really sucks for tension and traffic and all kinds of social pressures and people trying to get off work and whatevers.
I've done a few flashbacks of different times of year, but I don't think I've ever done a flashback of Memorial Day weekends. So here is Memorial Day through the years. Bluejacky was born on a Memorial Day weekend.
Yeah, wasn't writing much in public yet back then. What I wrote privately on May 28, 2007 is sad (not because of death or anything) and I'm probably never going to share it with anyone, but I will share this bit about the chickens.
I'm perplexed with my chickens. Last fall I tossed two strange chickens into the coop which resulted in one of my original girls getting beaten nearly to death over a week's time. Things settled down over the next month as the new hens got better food and more freedom. When one of the strangers died this winter, leaving only 3 hens, there was no movement for leadership, no matriarch was established. Now Luella, the stranger who had done all the vicious beating, has chicks, and the tables have suddenly turned. You would think that her being a mom, on top of her past history of abusing others, would establish her as the lead, but surprisingly, Marzipan, my most peaceful chicken, has turned into a monster, and not only pounds her, but goes after her chicks as well. There is definitely discord when they are penned up together, to the point of Marzipan not even letting them eat. You'd think that letting them out to graze would solve the problem. Nooo... Marzipan just waits for Luella to come sort of near her with her chicks, then drives them apart. It's like she delights in making it difficult for Luella to take care of them. Fortunately there is plenty of space out there and they rarely cross paths, but it happens, and I'm watching Marzipan go from sweet to arrogant and having a hard time with how I feel about that. I'm all for having chickens who feel tough enough to defend themselves and their territory, because they are literally surrounded with danger where we live, but to delight in the abuse of another isn't cool. As much as I hate to admit this, I'm really looking forward to getting rid of Luella and the chicks when I take them to Dad's next month. And I will never, ever, EVER mix a flock again. They are having a good Memorial Day, though. I bought fresh corn on the cob yesterday, went out awhile ago and husked some. Very exciting! They love fresh corn. And later they'll get watermelon rinds. That's about as close to chicken cake and ice cream as it comes.
A fox solved the Luella problem a few days later. Salut to the political karma of nature. The chicks were fine, sent them to live with Dad, they flew up into the trees to roost, and then owls got them. *sigh* I saved pix of Luella and her chicks here.
May 27, 2008 our selves
I won't repost that since it's public and you can click to it, but I was starting to slug them out and I wasn't holding back. Little did I realize at the time that Bluejacky had spawned an Aspienado.
Privately I wrote "picnic and pie". It was a typical stupid big family weekend because people were crabby again, and I met my ex son-in-law, and we were staining the siding for the Quackerdome, our chicken house. I'd love to share, but our dirty laundry gossip is insane. (I sometimes joke about being recompensed for all my emotional sufferings with a best seller after a few people croak off, but I seriously say that in jest.)
May 2009
Publicly I was still ranting about new Trek. Privately I was withdrawing off years of very addicting medications in a desperate effort to get some control back over my life. I'd been granted full disability and was declining so quickly that I feared complete nerve fail (I was mimicking every symptom of CNS lupus except strokes and seizures). I wound up needing a 'rescue' because I was incorrectly withdrawing from a very long term benzo med and went into DTs, which can actually be quite dangerous. This is an example of my ignorance.
Anyway, yeah, this withdrawal has gotten really interesting. Last evening I started feeling like I was being nipped really hard in random places off and on, as if a deer fly were biting me. If you haven't felt a deer fly bite, think fire ant, sorta in the same intense get-your-attention category. Then it felt like something was crawling through my hair and nipping my scalp a little here and there, thank goodness I'd already looked up withdrawal symptoms, so I wasn't too bothered and just kept doing what I was doing, ignored it. It wore off after about an hour.
But this also happened, in case you like weird gorey nature stuff.
I've deemed this next story a little too gory to go on the chicken blog, but we've never seen or heard anything like it, and I've gotta tell it.
Earlier this afternoon Scott and I were sitting out on the deck in between rains, nearly got involved in an epic woodpecker battle. They're called red bellied woodpeckers, but this is what they look like.
Anyway, there's this super aggressive one chasing another one from tree to tree and around our deck, when out of one of the trees comes a fledgling of some kind, made it across the yard to the gutter at the edge of the henhouse. The second it landed, that aggressive woodpecker was all over attacking it, and even picked it up by its head feathers in its bill and flew down to the grass with it. A male cardinal zipped down and met it on the lawn, and as the woodpecker was violently spiking the baby's brain with its long bill, the cardinal was trying to drag it off and actually got it off the ground before the woodpecker snatched it and carried it into the cherry tree. (I had NEVER seen or heard of birds carrying babies in flight, and I saw it twice with two birds in only a few seconds.) The cardinal flew after it but was too late, and there was horrible crying in the tree. Scott went out to see what happened, came back with the bloody dead baby, still didn't have much in tail feathers, but enough wing feathers to fly. At this point I have to go back and mention that 3 cowbirds, 2 males and a female, also zipped down to the lawn and witnessed the whole thing within a foot of this fight as though they were intensely interested, but didn't get involved. So we're wondering if a cardinal family raised a cowbird baby, and the cardinal tried to save it, and the cowbirds were watching because they know where they put all their eggs and keep on eye on things. Anyway, we looked the baby over, and it was undeveloped enough (and we're not educated enough) to identify whether it was a cardinal or cowbird, even couldn't tell by the beak, still too wide and babyish.
We've been wondering if this super pecker is the reason why we haven't had any orioles or hummingbirds the last few days (we've seen him hanging on a hummingbird feeder slurping up the juice), and have mutually decided Scott needs to pop it with the pellet gun. If it was targeting a baby cowbird, fine, but if it's targeting ALL baby birds making first flights and driving other birds away from the feeders, he's got way too much testosterone and too much time on his hands. He's as bad as having a stray cat in the yard.
May 2010
Privately- I was able to start watching TV again after several years of nerve problems (ears, eyes, severe headaches), so I rambled about a couple movies I'd seen and whatever. I was on the right track getting off meds, and even though my demeanor was perking up a little and things had started looking funny again, I don't have anything public for most of that year. Kept kitchen and laundry done up all weekend, then made a punkin pie for Grampa next door (war vet, and thanx for all the fish, as it were) and a lemon pie for Scott. Funny how a person can keep forgetting they don't have a mixer, eh? I never whipped a meringue by hand before. Never really got to a fluffy peak stage of any kind, but made it to the white and glossy thick stage and decided that was close enough. Cooked up real purty, tastes just as good, just looks like a flat sheet of toasted marshmallow crream. Sorta makes you wonder how in the world the French invented all this whipping up stuff, because way before we had electronics they were whipping up fancy things, and I'm getting this scenario in my head- one geeky pimply French kid apprentice is battling it out with another geeky chef wannabe, Oh, yeah? Well, watch THIS! and he whips his little bowl of cream an extra 10 minutes till his arm nearly falls off, a sous chef walks in to yell at them and gets distracted by the fluff in the bowl....
May 2011
The year EVERYTHING changed, thanks to a new doctor who took my whole being very seriously instead of just trying to throw pills at me. I started a 'spaz' blog and wrote my problem with healthy food. If you are strugging with diabetes, start there. I'm doing pretty awesome with it nowadays. I still wasn't owning my public self yet back then, but I was done being just private. On Bluejacky I was throwing silly surveys out right and left- 3 things survey. And on my private blog I was writing about sitting outside in 100+ degree weather to get away from the whole house reeking of fresh stain while Scott stained the siding. Kinda noticing a pattern... staining a chicken house, staining our house, maybe painting in my kitchen on ~gasp~ Memorial Day weekend!
May 2012
This is about the only thing I can share from my private blog from Memorial Day weekend that year, and I had gone underground again, so there was nothing public until I erupted back out in June on twitter and July on my original blog.
What a thrilling snake year we are having! First it was the monstrously fat king snake in the quacker dome, and yesterday it was a 6 foot black snake being disturbed enough by Scott's drilling to come out from under the quacker dome and zip down to the woods. The underlying problem seems to be a very extended family of mice that is apparently thriving enough to keep said snakes not only interested, but very well fed. So we're doing the mouse traps, have already caught two mice inside the quacker dome, prolly have a hundred left to go. And then Scott is going to have to put chicken wire up around what's left of the big pen that doesn't already have reinforcement before we can move new chickens in there.
A little over a year later, I finally wrote on syfydesigns about what was going on underground in 2012 just before I came back out public. That thread has 12 posts and over 3000 views, which is partly because I think people can relate. It's the first time I say anything really REAL about myself to public after years of being a behind the scenes fandom website owner. I'll paste the important part over. It's still just a hint at this point, but I've since confessed that I 'broke' into bubble worlds and couldn't tell which bubble was real during a medical crisis where 3 different specialists supervised me over 2 months crashing down 2 different hormones, which does really weird things to brains. During this time, I spent a week seeing and talking to a child I'd lost as if I'd never lost him and he'd been in my life all along. 'Waking up' from that was about the most depressing thing I've ever been through.
I'm not going into the details here, but I should have another kiddo in my life about Colin's height, looks, and just a wee bit older. I used to wonder how fans get so 'insanely' attached to actors and the characters they play, well, I had a chance to learn that last year for myself. It's very personal stuff, but sometimes something happens and you break a little, and you patch over with a borrowed bandaid and keep it together. As I went through this myself, it finally made sense to me what I was seeing in other fans who get a little more intense than is probably psychologically healthy. Fortunately I knew exactly what was going on with me and had help and I'm doing very well, but not everyone gets that. I've already written articles on the benefits of mythology in our lives, the way we use stories to help us figure out who we are and how to handle problems and decision making, but soon I'll be writing more from my new experiences.
May 2013
Both daughters were pregnant, I was getting ready to fly to Houston (my fear of flying is about claustrophobia), was on at least 2 different cancer watches, and had started public blurbing at SyfyDesigns a few months before the big Xanga server move, and that year I published pix from a family reunion. I also got silly and posted Stargate Pie on my original Lexx blog. Through it all I felt like I was hanging on by my fingernails to a crazy rollercoaster ride. It was marvelous. It was the most exciting my life had been in years. It was also wildly depressing in so many ways, and I'm really not sure how I got through it, except that I was determined to stick to producing public content.
May 2014
I had completely stopped private blogging. On Memorial Day I published the Drew Carey show tunes post on my first public Pinky blog, and the day before on SyfyDesigns I confessed my severe arachnophobia, and shortly after I was stalking Mike Bilinski.
May 2015
Wow. there is no U in aspienado Fully integrated public Pinky now. Dealing with all the things. Confessions left and right and going places I never dreamed I'd go as a public person. Breaking open and really starting to heal in mind, body, and soul for the whole world to see. Owning my stuff.
And only a handful of people know the full circle I've come and what I'm not saying behind all this. I've said elsewhere that everything I've done on the webs was inspired by one person, and everything I've become on the webs was motivated by another. Neither one knew any of that.
But back to Memorial Day weekend! I have absolutely nothing planned beyond chili dogs, assisting @bonenado with whatever, and tunneling my way through MoCreatures. I hope I get a few naps and some good TV- OH!!!Zoolander 2 is finally on Dish, definitely want to watch that this weekend.
Real life- I mopped my floor yesterday. I'm not sure what came over me but I kicked into high gear and tore into this house. I think part of it is we're breaking through another wall in physical therapy, and my energy level is coming up. Paying for it today, though. It's taking forever to patchwork this one together in between lots of breaks.
This playlist has been my go-to all week for motivation. Most of it is pretty upbeatish.
And if you're having a really stupid Memorial Day weekend for whatever reason, here you go, some really good bad mood music.
Now I'm going to dig through my photobucket and look for stuff to cheer me up.
