At the time, I was deeply struggling with appropriately sorting private and public content about progressing through psychological challenges that include a variety of mental diagnoses and remaining public about it through the roller coaster of social medias. In short, real time interaction stymies me.
Over time I got my stuff mostly sorted out and stopped using Pond of Death, excepting the occasional freak out, which I used to do on private blogs but no longer blog privately.
Pond of Death is very useful for defining that public/private boundary and how I keep my balance. Beyond that, some of the material was toxic inner turmoil dumping that I struggle with and goes nowhere because I'm generally mistaken and just having nerves, so I've pulled that back.
Pond of Death still isn't listed for search engines and still doesn't support comments, but I've gone through it and picked out a more permanent archive.
Aspienado has super spilled a lot of personal stuff onto the webs. Pond of Death especially showcases who I am, what I'm doing, and why I'm here. I felt iffy about that blog for a long time, unsure of its worth or potential or possibly fail, but with a little water under the bridge, I feel it is a unique collection of inner working turmoil that comes with multiple mental illness challenges, and therefore vital to public access. Some of us work very hard to survive, and many are none the wiser and later quite stunned when someone suddenly commits suicide or blasts up a party or a school. I think it's important to share how hard I have worked to still be here.
And as always, I repeat that I believe we all have *something* and most of our 'innocent' bumping around is all our different neurodiversities figuring stuff out. Some of us will never learn to get along, others of us will finish the race with flying colors. In the end, we all wind up on deathbeds with regrets unless we're unlucky enough to get our lives ripped away in accidents and crimes.
If a person reads the Pond of Death blog all the way back, you see where this post title comes from.
I'm otherwise thinking about retiring Pond of Death. I think it's usefulness for me personally was a timely thing, and not meant to be entertaining or a continuing toxic unloading zone. It will stay as is.
What evil despot doesn't want an obsidian chessboard built into the floor?
Can't help remembering Eddie Izzard's British space program skit (from Dress to Kill) when I see the moon over my elevator.
I've also started the structural support for a roller coaster and started testing the stained glass wall mural thing.
Family is a funny thing, isn't it? All this pressure around Mother's Day and most of us have so many problems with real life junk that it's almost impossible to either live up to it or play into it or coast over it without some kind of trigger going off.
Was talking to my dad a couple weeks ago, he confessed he shot my niece's dog, and yes, it was over his chickens, which are allowed to roam freely on another person's property but anyone else's pets are not, but this time he got back way more than he dished out. I've been chuckling every little bit over the sass he caught back, and I'm sure that's putting it very lightly. I didn't hear penitence in his voice, but I did hear 'oopsie' behind the having me look up schnoodles on the webs, which I'm wondering if he paid for, or at least offered to pay for. I hope so, anyway.
I grew up with my dad killing dogs over stupid trivial things, flogging dogs half to death over killing one chicken, and mercilessly taking puppies away and killing them until his favorite dog could no longer stand to be around him and ran so far away that he finally gave her to someone kinder. I was sitting in college classes (I commuted every day) when Dad shot my own dog because it killed one of my chicks. I really need to repeat this. MY dog killed one of MY chicks, a little ball of fluff, and my dad SHOT THE DOG. That chick cost me about $2. That dog was a rescue and had just gone through a spay surgery and shots that cost me $50. I never got an apology or an offer to replace it, and I never expected either after the way I grew up. The emotional abyss ran so deep between us that I barely even questioned it, although the anger has never gone away.
My dad is not a bad person. He never beat me growing up, never drank, never cheated on mom, never gambled, never anything bad that you can think of. He was there for every holiday (even though he didn't believe in them), there through thick and thin right up to the day my mom died, and he's still there for all of us in his own weird way. Incidentally, he visited the nursing home nearly every single day during the 5 years my mom lived there. The staff said they'd never seen anyone do that before.
My dad was a mixture of somewhat kind and extremely pragmatic. I know now that he's probably deeper on the Asperger spectrum than I am, and I have come to realize I myself am a difficult person to live with. I am much kinder, but I'm still extremely pragmatic. I grew up not crying because I was raised to be tough, but as I've grown away from that, the crying doesn't stop.
I had to have my own dog put down a few years ago by a vet when he was only 4 because the arthritis eating him up and freezing his spine had become so horrible than even daily pain pills for horses could no longer stop the pain, and when his kidneys started failing, I made the decision and then cried for days. I had never cried over a pet before. I don't know if my dad has ever cried over a dog. I know when he was a boy he had a pet chicken out of 250 that would come to him to be held, and while I don't know what drove a young boy into a chicken pen to hold a chicken, I do know that he and all his brothers left his family farm (they are Mennonites), and only one ever came back after both parents were dead. I've heard the barest stories about his father being hard to live with. Somehow, chickens have become extremely dear to my dad, and he will break his human relationships over any other pet killing a chicken. Since I eventually also lost it over a chicken, I think I get it.
That might sound dumb or strange, but not when you've been broken. I'm pretty sure my dad was broken at a fairly young age, and he found a way to survive. He cut the parts off that hurt and kept going, like I also learned to do growing up. He was never hard on me like his dad was on him, at least not physically and verbally, but intellectually he put me through the ringer forcing me to debate religion and politics at ten years old, and emotionally epic failing by having me help carry the puppies to where he killed and buried them. I'll never forget seeing puppies' heads stomped open.
Something was very broken in my dad to be able to do that. He didn't have any emotion doing it, didn't explain it away to me or even think about my feelings. By the time I was ten I could handle pretty much anything, even my dad, and I was the one who later pointed out that allowing a dog to have puppies over and over and killing them over and over was a bit of a waste of the dog's health, but he still thought spaying was more of a waste of money. You don't waste that kind of money on a dog, even if you love the dog.
Mother's Day is weird for me. I've written in the past about making it through Mother's Day to the end of a college semester and then having an abortion, after which I wept continually for months. After a lifetime of seeing animals killed (I grew up on a farm), I allowed the pragmatism to extend into my soul and mortally wound it. I came to the conclusion that no one had ever broken me more than I broke myself.
Mother's Day triggers every bad memory imaginable. My mom, of course, yes, all those years in the nursing home and beyond. But there is so much more stacked up in my head, like all the sheep, goats, and cows that Dad had to help birth without a vet. He was very good, but his hands were too big, and some of the mothers didn't make it. I felt so helpless listening to a goat scream because I wasn't strong enough to turn one of the babies all tangled up in her myself. We should have called the vet, but of course, that's a waste... I watched him perform a cesarean on a cow and then autopsy the stillborn calf, whose liver was already yellow and crumbly. The cow lived, but obviously could never have another calf without being properly stitched, so she was sold for slaughter. She was a sweet cow and had lived through so much, but was hustled off into a big truck to a scary place with horrible smells and noises and was probably terrified right up to the end. I don't think my dad was capable of giving that a second thought, but it still haunts me for whatever reason. But my dad visited a nursing home to eat lunch with mom nearly every single day for 5 years even long after she was immobile and unable to talk. What really gets me about that is how many spouses aren't able to show that level of commitment for some reason. I know it was really hard for me to handle visiting, and I even fled the building a few times feeling very sick, so I completely understand. But maybe my dad was so broken he could tolerate the shockwaves...? For all the refusal to help her with her diabetes when she most needed it while they still had the time (he didn't believe what diabetes was, or that high blood pressure was a bad thing {was that a waste, I wonder...}), for all the blowing off he did of her feelings through past years, he was there for the entire decline and was probably the reason she lasted so long in her condition, even when she clearly needed to let go. He couldn't let go. And then after it was all over, I spent a year with him on the phone going through those shockwaves crashing over him. I don't know if he ever shared with anyone else what he shared with me, but he was a very miserable and wretched soul, and I forgave him everything, even though from my point of view it looks very much like my mom didn't survive being married to my dad. He never beat her, was never unfaithful, but the emotional neglect was just too much. Why did she stay? I think she could see how broken he was. She was all he had and all he loved all those years. She may have used religion as an excuse for the duty of staying, but she hinted a few times at how devastated he'd be if she ever really did leave. I have modeled my life on that level of commitment. Recognizing how broken other people are is something that doesn't come easily or naturally to humans, but I've written before how drawn she was to the broken people in this world. how to give to charity, Charlie Brown
I have a fascination with incongruity and irony. I speak often of both. I have looked deep and long into the abyss that is being human, and I see many broken people surviving the best way they know how. Oftentimes they don't realize they continue to break more people, like a row of dominoes through ancestral time. Oftentimes we don't realize we perpetuate what breaks us. For all our wit and wisdom, humans can be so very stupid, and I used to loathe that with all my being. I was angry with God since I was a child for making me be born a human. Over my years in this body in this life, however, I have grown to see people as broken and sad underneath a society of masks, and I ache to find words that will help change this.
I am a mean person. I say very mean things to people when I feel they're about to pass their last opportunity to jump free from their broken ways and save themselves. To choose to continue breaking the next generation with our broken ways is unacceptable to me. I'm afraid I've been pretty harsh on a few people. And I'm about to get harsh here, so if you can't take it after all this, you really need to switch to another page right now.
I raised my kids to be tough. I showed considerably more kindness than my own parents, but I did NOT make their roads soft. I didn't feel sorry for them, not because I didn't know how with my Aspergers, but because I see kids who turn out awful when parents feel sorry for them and make their roads soft. Poor, poor pitiful me. I never once thought that growing up. If I had, I'd have killed myself at least 20 times by now and be swilling in alcohol and drugs so deep you'd never find me again. Sometimes I lurk around on social medias and have to turn it back off before I tell people what a big bunch of whiny babies they are. Really. There are so many of you continually tweeting about how miserable you are. I'm glad you have an outlet, but dang, change something. The two friends I lost this last winter, the two who tagged me the most day in and day out for years, I finally couldn't take it any more. If people wanna drink themselves into self pity stupors, fine, be my guest, but I'm not going to pat anyone on the head going aww, poor you while they do it. The day I broke free was the day I started stabbing. Oddly one of my memories this mother's day was losing a friend who was angry at both her moms and bombed my private messages on Christmas Eve about it. Must be nice having two moms. Someone mourning losing a dad couldn't grasp the pain I've been expressing all over Pinky blog this last year about finally dealing with losing my mom, and made the horrible mistake of dumping venom all over me on a holiday over something that was probably self inflicted to begin with. Well you know what? Life sucks. I said it, I lost two friends. Well, I said more than that. And that's the last time I contact people I don't know in real life privately and ask if they're ok, because I got sucked into a neverending whirlpools of self pity that required layers of head games to navigate. Some people don't want to be saved. Expecting someone to sit around and drown with you is extremely selfish. If either of those people had been part of my family, I'd have said a lot more, and I have family that can attest to the way I establish how I feel about creating our own messes and dealing with the choices we make.
True kindness is acknowledging other people's pain. I love my dad. I know he loves me. I know Mother's Day yesterday must've been like a Schrodinger's cat day for him. He was two people, the broken one who misses Mom really bad and he's all alone now, and the survivor that stays on the surface and doesn't dwell. I have no idea if he has a middle ground, but I suspect he's been growing one since she died. I'm feeling a little delicate, but I know I need to call.
The chess board floor in my evil lair represents all the chess I played with my dad. I was preteen and the only one who would tolerate sitting through being bullied all over a chess board. He wasn't kind, and he never let me win. When I finally started winning, he stopped playing. I've never stopped playing. I may not have people to play with me, but nearly every day a chess board pops into my head, even after all these years. A chess board is part of my personal coat of arms. All those dark and light squares and the pieces that move around them represent many things in my life.
I remember my mom in the background while Dad and I butted heads over that chess board. I think she was relieved he had something else to focus on besides arguing religion with her. I know she was wary of me even having a relationship with him, worried he'd turn me to his side on the whole religion debate, and even told me later my dad was going to hell because he'd been baptized wrong. She didn't sound at all sorry about it, although now I am able to look back and see the anger was probably a cover for sadness and regret. The things we torture ourselves with... But I do remember watching my mom out of the corner of one eye while I watched my dad's thoughts all over the board with the other eye. I learned the whole parry and thrust strategy in the middle of a ruthlessly intellectual and emotionally bereft marriage. My mother was the white queen, my dad the black king, and nary the two would ever accept the other until my mother's memories had been wiped with strokes and her body relieved of duty to her husband. And right up to the end, he was at her side, never wavering, despite all the disagreements and misunderstandings.
I don't need a chess board in my own marriage. We put it away years ago. My own husband is the opposite of my dad, a man of deep feelings and few words, and kinder than anyone I've ever met, even on his crabbiest days. He too survived being broken, but like me, he decided as a child that he would never be like what he went through to his own kids. That personal decision changes our paths.
We can change future history, and keep changing it, generation by generation. I believe in a future where one day we will all see kindness as logical, and pragmatism as a waste of being alive. All my life I heard "It's not necessary", and what I've decided is that we are all very necessary, and the beings and things we love are all necessary.
Until we learn this, we will continue to break ourselves and everyone around us.
Plz to forgive me for weirdness, I'm trying to readjust my blogger template column widths, and search says the average laptop is over 1300 across now. I've got it set at 1200, which is allowing bigger sized pix now, but if you're on a tablet or older tech, I may have just mangled Pinky blog for you. It's also not helping that my new windows 10 settings in combination with my chrome sync are showing me several different things and I don't have a clue if I'm smooshing my columns for some of you. I'd love to think your tech will sort it all out, but mine actually overlaps the columns a bit if the pix are too big. Too many words already, let's go!
My day-
Woke up to a spider over my bed. It's cool, though. I think it takes the place of coffee. Not that there's any shortage of coffee beans here, but I'm still having difficulty with the idea of coffee I can't actually drink. Some day when we get brain chips, I'm sure I'll enjoy minecraft coffee very much.
This is the first face I see when I wake because my love is already gone to work.
Guess what her name is. That's right, lol. And she's a bossy nag, fussing at me continually for not staying home more and helping with the dishes and sweeping and stuff. Naturally, I run away as quickly as I can because her breath is atrocious and I find her unibrow deeply disturbing.
This is what I see when I look out my bedroom window. That is where Kai goes to work. Sometimes he works all night long. Maybe another day I'll show you his work.
Most days I get into some kind of trouble. Yesterday I sent a sheep on a roller coaster ride. Last week a spider took a ride, it was pretty funny. I didn't have my camera with me that day.
Last night I got my staircase of satan built, going up the hill to the temple and the portal to hell.
This guy inspired the whole thing. Possibly NSFW for language.
I'm still a noob so I stay in /gamemode 1. I have developed a false sense of bravery that I'm sure will quickly dissipate, but for now I get off on creepy stare downs with the locals.
The pond of death has exuberantly evolved. A creeper got caught and went down like flushing a toilet. Wasn't fast enough with the camera.
Today I explored an underground cave network for 45 minutes. That's a euphemistic way to say I got super lost. I had the wits to set up beacons at every twist and turn so I'd know where I'd been, but after awhile I realized I was going in wider and wider circles and never coming back to the original opening. Eventually I facepalmed and remembered /gamemode 3 and flew outa there, but not before this dork freaked me right out of my Galaxie Gurl skin. Worst. Nightmare. Ever.
While I was down there I ran into a million zombies huddled around this poor little guy. Pretty sure they were making bets before I scattered them.
One of these days I'll find that huge cavern again, big enough to build a cave house. Maybe I'll attract bats to a belfry or something.
All that exploration really wore me out. Well, I'm sure it was my long week in town on top of recovering from this nasty chest cold, but you know what I mean. My brain is coming back though, worked on several different projects today.
In a very healing place in my head now. I was needing this so bad.
I don't talk much about some of my fandom history.
There are wonderful things I wrote and deleted and dearly wish I had back that have nothing to do with Lexx or anything else you've seen in any of my blogs.
One of these days maybe I'll go there. In the meantime, most of you know I have a very wide range of friends in all beliefs, genders,
===BREAKING===
You know those quizzes on facebook that you have to allow to see your stuff and post for you? There's a new one from en.vonvon.me (don't go there, I think it's bugged) I did a few minutes ago, and I believe 'took over' my other applications that use java. Java is a great back door and that's why a lot of sites don't use it any more. However, blogger still allows java scripting, so there you go. Anyway, auto-save got pulled up short with this cute little flag-
I had no control at all and couldn't make it stop until I both deleted this post completely AND closed facebook. These are things your internet protection softwares don't warn you about or stop for you. Mine is super up to date and totally looked the other way.
Live blogging at its finest. Where were we? Oh, yeah, I have a LOT of friends around the world in all walks of life, all ages and beliefs and stuff, and what I'm saying is you guys really don't have a clue how deep some of my fandom roots run and how far back they go. I really mean it when I say "I love you guys" here and there. Fandoms keep me right.
We ALL have things to hide. Every single one of us. We all have secrets of some kind that we don't share. The one thing we all have in common is that we are all hiding something. Many of us hide truths about ourselves for our own safety and the safety of our families. Some of us come out into the open and take the crap.
There's a lot of line drawing and fencing in this world, and there are sometimes very good reasons for that. Pinky blog is a no fire zone, for the most part, unless I need to throw a few people into the Pond of Death, but don't worry, I don't really kill them.
I do have definite beliefs. There are definite rights and wrongs in this world. That's not why I'm here. I feel a little disappointed (again) in a few famous people who private post and force fans to wade through miles of belief muck just to be friended to a fave actor, but that's their prerogative and I respect that. My social media mantra is if you don't want someone seeing it, just don't say it. If you're a control freak and like that kind of power, more power to you, but real power lies in not using your powers. It's not a contest, but more people read my stuff than read theirs, and preaching to the choir seems like a waste of breath to me.
I have a huge day, time to pull my head out of the screen and get all over it. Love you guys.
It feels kinda like being back in high school learning layups during gym class. I got really good at them, but for awhile I was made keenly aware of how near the bottom of the loser pit I hovered. Despite majorly sucking for arm stuff nowadays, I can still pull a decent volleyball serve. I know this because I had a blast playing ball on the stairs with Bunny's brother the other day. Yes, we play ball in the house, but we keep it on the stairs. When my kids were younger, we went through a snowed in month that drove us crazy, so I broke out the badminton birdies and the ping pong paddles and we went to town on those stairs. Nerf guns are pretty awesome, too.
I should put that as one of my LinkedIn Skills and Endorsements-
Top Skills-
Can still serve a volleyball
Janika also knows about-
Badminton birdies
Ping pong paddles
Playing wild made up sports on the stairs
Nerf guns
Yesterday got really hard. The big arm thing. Nerve suckage. Nicely compliments my holiday slide feels.
Today will be really hard. Today is about Bunny. It won't be fun. We hope it won't be sad.
I see the tweets about a commercial making tears. Today is a day I shut off all the feels so I can do the hard. I don't care about tears. I don't care if the world cries, because my Bunny will cry, and that is already too much. Discovering you have tears during a commercial means you're not doing life right. If the tears aren't every day, you're doing it wrong.
I love you guys, and you know I'll be back after I'm with Bunny. If my arms still work.
I had a long complicated dream last night with @LisaMarieBowman in it. (She's my all-time fave reviewer, in case you haven't run into that yet.) It was weirdly all mixed up like a gigantic twitter-movie splat, and what really stood out remembering it when I woke up was that she had an awesome car like Oh the Boov made for Tip.
It was probably the Paris line that triggered the dream smash. I think I really miss #latenightmovie chat sometimes. In case anyone wonders how in the world, I missed the gang for a 14-hour Bunny day wherein I was able to memorize everything about the Boov, and I think I finally processed through that last night after a big dose of antibiotic started shoving an 'acute maxillary sinusitis' around that I hadn't realized I'd been piling up like Risk pieces in my head. Full takeover was imminent, as I mentioned in my last post, I was nearly completely hypnotized into just laying down and feeling delicious while all those germs fed on my brain. Get it? Germ warfare.
I've gotta run out my door again. Yeah, I know, live tweet write up dragging on.
I have been waaaaay too serial lately, need to get back into fun stuffs.
Puttin some pinkytude on.
Time to get the Halloween tree up.
You know, I srsly did not know Halloween trees are a thing. This one is my favorite.
Not creepy at all....
I can barely tear myself away from Halloween trees, so many super awesome ones out there. Christmas trees are ruined for me now. Quick, what else can I look at? Ok, besides Halloween tablescaping, I got lost in there, too. Um O_O no... Don't stumble into pink Halloween baby shower. Just don't. Ok, lol, here you go, scary cat wallpapers. This one looks kinda like a weird ghost cat.
Wo, pink gothic wedding dresses. Peeled myself outa there 3 times. I think this chick's hair is perfect, she needs one of those pink goth gowns on. She's from a French page. You're welcome.
Nooo, this is bad...
Sorry, went way off the beaten path.
There's stuff out there for Jeff Vader, by the way, in case you didn't know.
~hours of thunderstorms later~ I can finally log on, huzzah!
old Farscape pic from my private stash, sorry no backlink
Yeah, pix from the ~lab~
me irl
Ok, who does this remind me of...
Those of you hugging your screens.
Me daring you to hug the screen anyway.
Me inviting you into the monitor. It's cool, I have nachos.
Me telling you guys FOCUS! GET TO WORK!!! >=l
You guys going on a nice adventure with me.
Some of you don't make it...
CLOSE YOUR EYES, IT'S AN OLD SCAR >-< *ew* Yes, titanium staple reaction.
I sized it down so you won't puke on your screen. You're welcome.
Recovery time. Fix your makeup before we whiz off again. One of the many things I regret dumping is a pop out manip I created where his leg looks like it's coming 3D out of the picture in large wallpaper size, along with an entire folder of awesome Eddie stuff. Lexx wasn't the only thing that suffered.
I think these come closest to what my new glasses are going to look like, except my local eye clinic tacked $20 onto that. I'm getting the latest upgrade on hi-def digital lenses, which I think basically means my no-line multi focal changes will be a little more gradient in all directions that I point my eyes. They couldn't believe what great shape my 5 year old glasses are still in, despite many abuses that include actually walking on them in the dark, dropping them lens down on chat a few times, rolling over on them in bed, accidentally flinging them around like I do eggs and tuna, sudden yankings off my head forgetting I'm wearing headphones still attached to something, and many other things. Yeah, Bunny snatchings, for sure. My old frames are a more expensive wire/plastic combo by Michael Kors (eyewear not sold through that site, look here), so I don't expect solid plastic to last as long, even from Vogue (eyewear). The frames I had before these old ones lasted 8 years and were my fave glasses ever, alas, discontinued style.
I generally shell out around $800 cash every time I get new glasses because I get extras and warranty, so yeah, I know glasses. I've been wearing them since I was ten. I've been told I can't do contacts because my eyes have had almost continuous inflammation since I was a child, and very frankly was expected to be blind over ten years ago, but we live in a wonderful golden age of better health and nutrition and wonder drugs, so I'm doing fabulous, even with nerve damage causing continual pain and tear duct problems in my left eye. When I have serious talks with people who know my health history, it's understood that 200 years ago I'd have been dead by now, so the fact that I'm doing so well has everyone in the medical field cheering me on. I think we'd all agree that spending $800 for glasses once in awhile is preferable to being blind.
What a dismal post this is, bleah! Let's lighten the mood. I have this t-shirt. I got it way cheaper at a Penney's back to school sale one year, though.
The Succubus is the ep where Cartman gets glasses. You can preview a clip for free here that might try to sell you a download.
Oh, here we go, Benedict in glasses. That is one very eyewear savvy guy. By all means, click and enjoy, because I had to make it tiny to fit on my blog. When you scroll down a little you get Martin in glasses, too.
If you're still not sold on eyewear being all the cool rage, just check out Felicity Smoak, my uber girl crush. Even if you're not an Arrow fan, you've gotta admit she rocks. If you deeply need more Felicity, here you go. Give that time to load, it's tumblr. Yeah, I know I'm being mean not throwing pix here. I'm trying not to get sucked further into the internet. Those of you into serious self torture, just put "Felicity Smoak Benedict Cumberbatch" into a chrome search engine. Ok, I have no idea how this happened, but you see what I mean about getting stuck in the internet.
Ok, I totally caved. This one actually clicks to more stuff.
*need serious intervention* Pulling out the big guns.
Ok, I'm going to have an awesome Friday killing bathroom germs and making awesome crockpot stuff and not worrying about anything because right here right now, it's all good. I hope you guys have nice little surprises through your weekends and nothing sucks, but if it does, #aspienado gives you internet hugs and you know we're all in this together, wave little flags and let people know you're there, ok? Be your awesome selves.
