the fork in the road

age rating on the blog this pic links to, although that particular post is safe for work

"You look sad, when you think he can't see you." -Molly, Sherlock. But John does see, doesn't he?

Yesterday was sad, and I know it was seen. We can play our little games, but I'm tired of games. I don't hide the sad. I don't tell other people to hide the sad. But someone is sad, and I am still sad, and I don't see a resolution as long as someone has to keep pretending that everything is ok. I feel angry when other people pretend. I grew up angry watching my mother pretend. She never got the help she needed because she was always so busy pretending she was ok. It's hard watching people you care about do that. They're there for other people, but they don't allow other people to be there for them. Unless it's a head game. But I guess it's not my stuff any more, is it? I guess this is where I finally really just get off that road. Being friends with me was obviously a mistake. All I can think right now is if you only knew what you're really missing now, because all the things I said were true, but I guess that wasn't enough.

clicks to source on facebook

You guys know all you see is the surface, right. You only see what Pinky lets you see. You guys didn't see this. "I was thrilled thinking I might not have to do all my hard work alone, that maybe someone would be around with me surging into awesome. I have a vision, a dream, and I'll be going there. No more stalling, it's TIME now. This is the year, this is my opportunity to shine, I've been preparing for this for ~years~, and there is absolutely nothing that is going to stop me from doing everything I can to get as much work done as possible this year, barring actual death." But you guys did see me stall out for the first time since 2012. THAT is how much losing a friend affects me. And now, if I really want to get back on track, I've very seriously got to let this go now. I went underground and leveled back up, and I've got people waiting on me to turn away and go with them now.

click for gif

I've switched all my blogger blogs to https now. I Lexxperimented and discovered my Lexxperience.com and PinkyGuerrero.com domain pointers have no problem sending traffic straight to the encrypted versions, yay! I was conflicted over whether to give those up, but now I'm going to keep them.

Also, I was contacted privately this month by someone who thought I was other Pinky on allwomenstalk, and I was nice enough to dig up the link back to her myself and say Sorry, I'm not the Pinky Robot you were looking for. Ok, I didn't say it like that, lol. Anyway, of all the Pinky Guerreros out there, I seem to be the most aggressive with my web presence, and I feel like I need to be teaching a class to the other Pinkys on how to properly link and hub all their medias, because as you can see, other Pinky didn't. Several of her hub sites are very poorly linked, and this one isn't actually even hubbed, so...

Ok, back to physical therapy today. I'm doing once a week for 2 months this time. I was supposed to be doing homework this week, but I slacked because extra Bunny time and extra chilly out this week. Also because it set off charley horses in the long muscles up both sides of my spine (my tenderloins, lol), and if you've never had a charley horse in one of those muscles, you basically twist into pretzels trying to work it out, and if you're lucky, it won't trigger spasms around your ribcage and make you feel like you can't breathe, and if you're really lucky, it won't trigger a nerve center beneath either one of your scapulas and make you feel like you're having a heart attack. It's loads of fun disentangling fibro in ER, 4-6 hours of tests and scans and when it's all over you finally get a pain shot and a doctor going Huh, is that all. And by the time I finally get the shot I cry like a baby because laying on those stupid beds so long with a charley horse in your back sucks super bad, and anything coming through a needle is a godsend. So no, I didn't trigger that this week during chilly weather and lots of Bunny time. I need to buy a bigger heating pad and do warm ups before and then heat after so I can control that whole triggering mess, so a heating pad is on today's list.

Fibromyalgia is a nice word for charley horses from hell, and we're talking everything from tiny strings of muscle turning into diamond filament tether fishing line (I have muscle fibers in my hands that feel like guitar strings, they don't even feel like human tissue) to synchronized ballet as entire sections of body seize up.

And that's the kind of morning we're going to have. I just got stuck in the Futurama wiki because of the fishing line link up there. Click this if you need to get lost.

We've got a fine herd of cave crickets up and coming. @bonenado has been putting tape down in the basement and trapping 50 at a time since they were cute little wee things, now they're big and fat and still catching 50 at a time. He's thrown hundreds of them away. And now they're filtering up to this level and surprising me in the laundry, which is hard to do because I'm so fastidious with laundry. Got two this morning in the kitchen, casually asking where the coffee is. I have no idea what those things are eating, but they are fat. If they're famished enough to wipe out something like a possible termite population, yay! I can't even imagine. Maybe this is why we're not seeing any spiders...

This coolness arrived in the mail. Click it to go to amazon. In case you're not familiar with your physicists, Carroll has been hot on the heels of Kaku for years and is now being hailed as one of the greatest human thinkers of this generation. Future scifi rests on this man's shoulders.

I spent yesterday jumping up to clean every time my router got blinky, which was basically every 5 minutes (remember, our electric had been out the night before) (yes, I reset the router 3 times, it was blinky because our electric was still blinky), so the laundry is caught up, bathrooms are clean, dishes all done, bedding washed, plus I got a lot of little chores done in minecraft working in the nightclub. It's a blend of Goldmember's Studio 69 skating rink and Casanova Frankenstein's disco room.



Might take awhile to get enough gold to make the walls gold... Or I could go purpley-blue like in Mystery Men. I'm experimenting with a disco ball, actually strobe lights for the time being, not crazy about anything I've tried so far. I still need to make a 2nd tier observation balcony around the wall, will try to strobe that but I don't think the railings will cooperate. For now it's all lit up so I can see to work, but eventually I hope it's dark enough to spawn mobs, lol. Except hopefully we don't wreck the place up killing them. It'll be awesome and just an all around bad scene, like a real underground club.

This wins tweet of the week for me.

I have have half an hour before I have to get all over a very long morning out and then come home and crash through a rough afternoon. In case you need to get lost again, here's a good place to start wandering around.


And in case you really do need an exit cue, like me, here you go.

the fire in my life

Turkey Day unlocked, and now on to the terrifying steepest part of the freefall that is the Holiday Slide before the big fling into the New Year. I have changed my laptop wallpaper accordingly.

Loveliest. Turkey Day. Ever. I got a whole hour of alone time and then probably not even two hours of visitors. I actually saw most of the parade and barely ate a thing. I got the best part of the turkey, after the big bits are cut away and the tenderest juiciest parts are left on the bones. After that I got a real nap and woke up to an empty house. It was an aspienado dream come true.

I feel kinda dichotomized. Part of me is still doing pretty ok, which is fantastic and really unusual for this time of year. The other part of me is ready to go back in time and rip apart the parts of history that inspired the creation of Thanksgiving in the first place. Oh, nothing, just feeling hateful for no reason that I can think of, unless my entire past history of Thanksgivings crowding into my head all at once alla sudden without warning caught me by surprise and being hateful is just a self defense maneuver keeping me from swan diving into the infinite depths of paralyzing depression. Yeah, I like it when I say it like that, that's it. I'm hateful because I'm saving myself from the paralyzing depths of depression. Someone high five your monitor with me. Everyone else #bumpit.

I've got that wallpaper rotating with this one.

Many years ago this was a greeting card someone created.
The original designer is gone now.
Alas.

Festivus was a fun cult thing, now it's becoming mainstream. Raise your hand if you've read, purchased, and given as gifts the original book before it became a cool thing. (That's right, I'm raising my hand.)

I usually put surveys on Surveypalooza. Well, this is a really old one that was never public. I'm putting it here in public for the first time ever. Surveys have been a really fantastic way for me to focus through all those crazy feelings crashing around through the years.

March 30, 2008

My Parents Little Secrets!

Lets Start With Me...

My Name Is:: I loathe my real name.  It's so common that I regularly get my prescriptions, dry cleaning, doctor scheduling, and even my voter registration mixed up with at least 5 other "me's" in the area, and I could never publish under my real name because there are already 3 other people doing that.  On top of that, I spent my childhood having the same name as my cousin, who was a couple of years older than me.  Now, who in their right mind gives their child the same name as their sibling's child???  Good grief.  So, I have made up my own name for myself.  And guess what, it's so unique that

You can try this out at How Many of Me.  And no, I'm not going to tell you what that name is because I don't want there to be two of me.  Guess I'm a little paranoid about that now.   

(Yes, we all know now there is only one Janika Banks because I have this posted in widgets on several blogs. Here on Pinky blog it's in the footer.)

Were You Planned or an Accident?: I was told, after I had my own child, that I was a surprise that cannon balled into existence right after my mom miscarried another child.  That really gave me the willies, thinking that another child had died so I could live.

How old are you now?: Too old to run through a sprinkler shrieking with joy.  That makes me sorta sad.

Were your parents married when you were conceived/born?: They have always been the most married people I have ever known.  I can't even begin to explain how loaded that sentence is.  Imagine a rebel Mennonite pseudo-science weirdo farmer and a scattered psycho-nut joining in holy matrimony.  Nothing against my parents *ahem*, but that was one strange childhood.

Where do you live?: Next door to a really nice chicken.

Do you hate your parents right now?:   I am appalled that you would even ask.  Just kidding.  No, it's kinda hard to hate old geezer people who honestly believe they are absolutely right about everything, no matter how ludicrous they sound in the face of modern science and the information age.  It's funny how me getting older changes all that.  I just hope I don't ever look like that to my own kids.   

Do u get along with your parents right now?: I let Dad talk to me by the hour about the tribulation starting in the next 3 years.  I kinda hope he gets to 'go' before then because he will be so extremely disappointed if it doesn't happen.  He's been looking forward to the end of the world all his life.  He's 78.

Are you expected to get good grades in school?: Dad was upset when I went to college, said I would be brainwashed.  He could have cared less about my grades.  My mom rarely even brought it up.  I have no idea if she ever had any idea what I even studied.

What happens if you do/dont?: The higher the grades, the more I was being brainwashed. 

Do you go to public places with your parents?: Not any more.  I still don't know if I'd be able to hang out with Dad very long in Walmart without being embarrassed half to death to find us having a deep discussion about something politically incorrect that he might completely misconstrue and know terribly little about but of course he'd be absolutely right, and passers by would shoot looks at me.  Last time I was with Mom in Walmart (after she started having the smaller strokes, before the big ones put her in the nursing home), she threw this weird little fit in the aisle with Nair removal stuff and scared a guy walking through, he practically scuttled away.  It's kinda funny to think back on it now, but at the time it was a little unnerving.  Kinda iced the ol' psycho mom through my childhood cake, only it turned into psycho gramma in Walmart.  All the same, I always enjoyed going out to eat with them.  Dad once picked his teeth with one of those long skewers from a sticker pot at a really nice Chinese restaurant.  That was probably the closest those waiters had ever come to a genuine cowboy.  I could tell we were being watched.

Have they ever embarassed you?: You mean before that when they were sorta saner and younger?  Con-stant-ly.  I did my best to embarrass my mom right back with subtle but odd mannerisms in public places. 

Have you ever lied to your parents? If so.. About what?: It's an interesting bit of trivia that even though aspies are born feeling compelled to be truthful, I learned to lie to my own parents to survive, especially my mom.  I'm a pretty good liar.  It doesn't come naturally, and I don't like it, but I'm serious about the psycho-nut thing.  As for Dad, sometimes you just have to get the guy to stop talking or change the subject.  You can't imagine how exhausting it is to talk to someone who really truly believes that the overweight epidemic in this country is because people use too much lotion.

How often do you talk to your parents?: I cringe when Dad calls up and says "Here, talk to Mom" and then hands the phone to her.  I challenge anyone on this earth to keep up a running dialogue for ten minutes straight with a parent who never before let you actually do the talking, when you know they are on the other end staring at a wall and don't remember who you are.  Between that and Dad's latest obsession with public television channels being a complete and unchallenged source of world information that is severely lacking in UFO research nowadays, maybe about once a week.

Are your parents cool, or do they suck?: I've got everyone else's weirdo parents beat hands down.  Give me some sunglasses and call me cool. 

Do you ever start a fight between your parents?: If my parents were somewhat more normal, maybe we'd have had fights.  Mostly it was just this mental thumb wrestling with aliens from other planets.

How many brothers/sisters do you have?: I was the oldest and totally displaced by each successive progeny (which other aspies also seem to take personally), so I refuse to count.    It's ok, I'm over it now.  *walking off without numbering them...*

Do they get more stuff than you?: The more I was displaced, the more attention and goodies the others got.  But nowadays it's completely reversed, because I should be showing more support as the oldest child, but I live the furthest away and feel too yucky to get over there.  So the others GIVE more of themselves than me.  That feels strange.

Let’s get to know MOM & DAD a little better...

How old is MOM?: 67, far too young to be completely disabled and vegetablized in a nursing home.

How old is DAD?: He'll be 80 in a year and a half.  No medications, doesn't believe in doctors.  Has some pretty weird ideas.  He thinks the reason he's NOT diabetic is because he lived with Mom so long and became immune.  Yes, he believes diabetes is contagious, that's why so many people have it.  He's the last of a dying breed...

Do your parents work? What do they do for a living?: Dad drives in to 'work' every day to eat lunch with Mom at the nursing home.  All the employees there greet him like one of them.  He has a shining reputation for being the only man who has come in every day to see his wife for the last 3 years, practically unheard of.  The staff treat him like royalty.

Do they fight about money or anything else?: OH, man, they used to fight.  The arguments over every jot and tittle of the bible were ~end~less~, even though they both agreed on 95% of it.

Does MOM hang out with friends?: Dad cruises her around in her geri chair and they 'do lunch'.

Does DAD hang out with friends?: After Mom goes back to bed, Dad chases down the visiting preacher to argue the finer points of Revelations.

Do either of your parents go to church?: I grew up with major debates over what the definition of church was, and whether 'going' to one was actually wrong since God's people are the church.  Mom went, Dad didn't.  That made Dad bad, and Mom made sure that got hammered into our heads.  I think she was evil in a tormented soul kind of way, innocent in her mental illness, although I was the first to break the ice and suggest such once I hit my 30's.  In the end, I decided that if the 'good' Christian tortured the 'bad' Christian with anger and accusations for not performing a faith correctly, the 'good' Christian was worse than the 'bad' one.  Aspie logic.  Whether either one sits on a pew with any regularity is rather irrelevant in that light.

Have either of your parents ever been to jail?: Been TO, or been IN?  There is a big difference.  They were never arrested for anything as far as I know. 

Have you ever drank alcohol with your parents?: I used to drink narcotic cough syrup behind their backs.  That's about as wild as it got with my parents.

Would you like to follow in either of your parents footsteps?: Let's see, psycho nut or rebel psuedo-science Mennonite.  Tough one. 

Have your parents ever taken drugs?: Mom lived on darvocet for awhile and nearly destroyed her nose with dristan.  Dad accidentally drank gasoline once.  Do those count? 

Do they have other children?: Yes, I believe I confessed the problem I had with other siblings showing up in my life.  Or this could quite possibly be referring to kids from other marriages...?  I couldn't have been so lucky.

Have they ever lost you in the store? Or misplaced you?: This is TRUE.  They deliberately walked away from me in grocery stores to see what I'd do, at several different ages.  I can't tell you how devastating this is to a child with autism spectrum disorder.  Dad wanted to 'experiment'.  He wanted to train me to think.  I eventually got the point, and I've been very careful to teach it directly to not only my own children, but others as well-- if you are lost, STAY PUT.  The more you walk around, the harder it is for someone to find you.  Now, how hard was it to just SAY it???

Have either of your parents been divorced or married before?: Nope, there was complete and utter lack of experience on both sides. 

Do they complain and nag at you alot?: Not any more.  Not sure if Dad's 'advice' should be listed here, though. 

Do they support things that you are interested in?: Dad thinks making a chicken blog is crazy.  Why in the world would I want to do ~that~?? 

Do they encourage you to follow your dreams?: See above... 

Do you sometimes wish that they would divorce?: I used to *pray* for them to get divorced.  Don't get the wrong idea, it never got violent or abusive between them, unless you count Mom throwing something once in awhile.  I was just sick to death of the constant seesaw of Dad's really skewed 'logic' vs. Mom's emotional roller coaster. 

Anything else you think your friends should know about your parents?: "They were humans once."  HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!  I got that from the last survey taker, but you don't know the story.  Anyway, I guess after all that I should insert that I had a lot of fun around holidays growing up because Mom kept us busy stringing popcorn or decorating cookies or eggs.  I wish it could have been like that all the time, although it was still just busy work, not really interaction on a personal level.  And I think you should know that I am so surprised that Dad actually buys and eats pizza now, after all those years he spent growing his own fruits, veggies, and animals, and worked us half to death processing it all to eat on all year.  That just cracks me up.  It's so weird to even think about, a 78 year old Mennonite farmer eating pizza.

Mom’s weakness?: She really sucked at being a drama queen. 

Dad’s weakness?: It never dawned on him that Mom was trying to be a drama queen.

Hmm, nice place to end...  No strengths?  Oh, well.

I've had this song stuck in my head all day. I am super pro-world sharing because of stuff like this. Too bad my parents couldn't grow up with more.

lyrics

mystery coffee

So @bonenado's all like I must have a brain disease because he sleepwalked before it was even the middle of the night and made coffee and went back to bed, popped awake hours later long enough to go turn the pot back off and go back to bed, and then got back up an hour later trying to put the pieces back together while I made a fresh pot because that pot was toast.

This is me gearing up for the big SDCC hashtag watch.

The last time I did this (pre pregnant mama-burrito-Bunny) was 2012, awake for 2 weeks straight filtering incoming into a sweet little feed of my own while I watched everything live about anything having to do with Merlin at San Diego Comic-Con, back to back with the live filming in Pierrefonds. Because of that little maneuver, I got picked up for a hawt feed on conferize behind my back and didn't even know it. I went ahead and claimed the account and have been getting invitations to some pretty sweet conferences around the world ever since, some at virtually no cost. I never log in and network, so I have no followers, but it's pretty cool that I have a special con-only feed out there. Ok, enough yapping, need to round up my day and get my surf board ready.