starting lots of sentences with conjunctions and independent clauses, like you do

Being the 381st commenter on the blog post "15 things you absolutely must know about social media or your face will melt off and get eaten by goats", you can see I have deeply studied the greats. Yes, there are loads of things people really shouldn't do with their blogs, but pouring your heart and soul out isn't on that list. If everyone really did pour their real hearts and souls out, I believe this world would be a much better place, but writing funny posts like @TheBloggess does is pretty awesome, too.

If Pinky had one wish... I said that 42 days ago.

When I was first crawling slowly back out of my cave on my hands and knees and blinking in the poisonous sunlight stabbing my eyes, I hung on to everything Jenny Lawson was writing until I was able to stand up and take my own wobbly steps. What really helped me was knowing she didn't live on either coast and is within a day's drive of my house. Not to stalk or anything, but you know, out here in the middle of all the backward people who still don't understand Batman isn't from the devil. By the way, NO ONE has ever cross-shipped Batman with Xev. unless you count "Stevie BATMAN Sanchez" pinning Xev on pinterest. And no one has ever done a Xev vs Catwoman character analysis. I really hope my presence on this earth helps correct this.

I've spent so many years getting here. Flayed my own skin off, gutted myself, ripped my own heart out, pulled my brain apart looking for answers before I realized I wasn't asking the right questions. What was my question? The answers are all around us, we just don't know what to do with them until we know what the questions are.

This was me in emotional shutdown for 8 years.



I generally try to steer clear of the deeper triggers, mostly because I don't survive them. But something new is happening, after something changed. It was like finally getting past a barrier, like through a locked gate, or over an impossibly high wall, or across river rapids during a neverending flood season.

This is me changing over the last year, the me I am now. The me that knows this is my destiny. The me that accepts the layers of my life, and owns all the feels.



I know exactly what I wish for. I also know I may never get it. And if I never get it, I know it's my own fault. But after carrying this for so many years, coming to understand so many things, I will never stop wishing, because what I wish again was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Imagine finding someone who not only gets you, sees through you, but even challenges you in ways no one else in the entire world can. Imagine someone who amazes you with hidden talents and ideas that no one else you know comes close to, or gets to see. Imagine having a person like that for a friend and never even realizing you're holding that one rare jewel you always dreamed of, that one special prize you always wished for. Imagine someone said they could give you your dreams come true, and you realize you already have it. Imagine how I wish I'd said that when I had the chance.

Oh, yeah, NOW I'm all poetic and mushy. I'm still not very good at being friends with people. I'm trying.

I'm the blogger. Millions and millions of words have slipped by. I ~get~ all the things now. I will never not be sorry, and I'll never stop wishing. I'll never move on, because there will never be better, or even adequate. There is no replacement. That spot will always sit empty, and I will still always have the table laid out and the candle lit. But it's ok, because now I can embrace that. It took 8 1/2 years to realize that's who I am. I'm the one that sprains people.



This is me surging over the top of all those feelings all these years, never quite knowing why, until just lately, still feeling that surge of joy, because I love remembering how I felt. This is me being thrilled I got to experience the coolest friendship I ever had.



I've really gotta stop embarrassing people. But it just can't be a secret that this is all part of who I am, and I'm still really cool with it.

all my best pix are taken in bathrooms

Today is kind of my very last assessment day for one year on this blog, and I can't think of a better way to celebrate and thank you guys for clicking my links than to dig up my bathroom selfies and maybe find out the stories behind them.

Before we start, first of all, I never dreamed this post would hit all time top. Ever in my wildest dreams. I'm blaming whoever is in the Ukraine. Ok, and the rest of you guys, too.

(Explanation: it was originally an Easter egg post and exploded once people found out it was there.) (But you still don't know the answer to the riddle behind the pun.)

Second, I really am blown away by the view count. I've done everything in my power to weed out spam, bots, pingbacks, and crawlers between three trackers, GWT, and Google analytics, and I'm left with 35 countries coming in on every conceivable device and even logging in at work. (Be careful, some of you might not be aware your work ISPs actually name your companies.)

Ok, down to bizness. I know some of you are facepalming about selfies in a bathroom, but considering how long I went on the webs without posting a single selfie because I'm one of the most reclusive introverts you ever met in your life (I know, really hard to believe now, right?), I think it's pretty cool of me to make you guys think I've overcome that hurdle, just another way I toy with your minds. Plus I was inspired by Jenny Lawson writing about hiding in bathrooms, because I've done that all my life. Click the pic for the book. Click here for her blog.

All my selfie pix will click to original posts.

This is my 'professional' pic at linkedin. It was taken in a bathroom at Mercy hospital in Springfield, Missouri right after I had a 2-day holter put on, and I found out later that while I was taking that pic, I was experiencing bradycardia for the first time in my life after years of SVT and surgical correction, so if I was goofy enough to take this pic just because I thought it was funny, I blame it on poor oxygen delivery to my brain. I think I figured out later I must have accidentally taken my blood pressure pill twice that morning, and no wonder I was so loopy driving into town. And then I thought it would be funny to use a 'stupid day' pic as my professional pic because it truly represents my life so well. This is aspie spoonie executive jetsetter. That and I love mocking professionalism. I can't get through a day without shredding hosiery to save my life. I've retailed professionally. I left that off my linkedin profile. On purpose. Even though I was really good at it. (They called me the Bra Nazi.)

aspie spoonie executive jetsetter

This one was taken at Mercy Fitness in the locker room by the bathroom stalls. I'm not a mirror person, rarely stop to even look at myself, but one of my first experiences as an aspie kid waking up to a sense of objective self was in a department store fitting room with opposite mirrors. This was one of my first pictures coming back out public after years of health fail, this time as a self integrated Pinky, one year before I went completely public on my first Pinky blog. No more private blogging. Ok, there's private blogging, but it's called writing a book now. Everything that's not book material goes public out of my head in real time.

Same fitness center, different day. Actually three months earlier (2012). I was wearing this awesome Lexx t-shirt. I thought this pic was funny enough to put on facebook, and a friend of mine who wrote this book told me I look mean, lol.

Yep, my bathroom again, and this was one of my first public Bluejacky pix in a 2008 post that now resides in my aspienado work blog. It's kind of a big deal since it's right in the heart of about 3 years of really rough health fail and I actually got a decent picture.

This is from a series of photos what wound up becoming my G+ avatar representation. I think they're hilarious because it's so really me and I don't give a crap what people think. My sexuality is ambiguous, partly because I'm allergic to makeup and my hair was still just coming back in, plus I really loved that old shirt. This was taken Thanksgiving day (2012), and I was home alone waiting for my crew to come back from the Turkey Trot. From that point was a jolly little compulsive jaunt into finally setting up a Google account, which now officially verifies all my Lexx stuff. Yes, from a bathroom.

That's right, I've been Lexxing from the bathroom for years. This is from my guest bathroom looking out onto the kitchen way back in 2006, after I received a bunch of autographed stuff from Brian Downey, probably about 6-12 months before the big health fail first started its slow avalanche. If I made this public anywhere I sure can't find it, unless it's in a Lexx related forum somewhere, so this clicks to my pinterest.

Notice I didn't put it in an obvious spot, and it's 3 years old now and still hasn't been liked or repinned. I buried it. Sometimes I tuck things in little pockets of spacetime to see how hard people lurk through my stuff. (My most repinned pin has over 500 repins. My most repinned fandom pin has over 300. My most repinned board overall is Lexx, but it doesn't look that spectacular unless you add up all the repins from over 200 pins.) Anyway, my point is that I successfully buried my most personal fandom photo in plain site (until now), and you never know what you're going to find sitting around in my stuff.

I had a niece who would hide a note or penny behind a picture frame in hotel rooms. My daughter hid little random notes to me throughout empty spirals for me to find later (and dated them) and never told me, and years later I still run into them. *snif* So it's kind of a family thing. We're sneaky people. We say I love you in mysterious ways.

I've got more bathroom selfies, but I think that's probably enough. These handful span about 7 years.

I just want to say thank you. I'm feeling mushy and gooey right now, which has been a rare thing most of my life until stuff really started opening up here on my public blog the last few months.

There IS method to all this madness. I'm very serious saying there is a real Plan. Also, I'm getting lots of help from a Bunny today. It's taken 3 1/2 hours to cobble this together in between very busy girl stuffs.

I'd also like to thank #MondayBlogs and Rachel Thompson who created it and especially Vicki Addesso for dragging me into it until I got a clue. I know I'm terrible to tongue in cheek mock analytics and stuff, but these are rock solid real people coming through that pipeline, and it is definitely appreciated. I try to remember to pin blogs I like onto my 'Blogs I like to read' board, but many of the cooler #MondayBlogs in the feed slip past me, so click that last link for the feed.

Bunny just went down for a nap and I need a brain cleanser so bad. Laterz.


Completely forgot to mention the reason I'm smiling in my twitter avatar is because I'm in a bathroom. (Per a comment, my twitter avatar pic is NOT a mirror pic, omg, plz to not make me asplain why I'm smiling.)

Sorry, I'm back. HAVE to add the Sharknado tee selfie I took in bathroom in a Houston restaurant and loaded to facebook because a person actually snarked me coming in the door as white trash. Hellz YEAH.

Unorthodox Arch-Nemesis of the Chocolate Indoctrination

You guys need to go check this out. I'm always amazed at how many ways this wonderful woman can find to raise money for various charities, and this one is so cute and fun that you won't be able to help jumping into the community hot tub with the rest of us. Yes, click the pic. It explains the title of my post today.

THIS.

I regularly go through microwave fear and scour the internet about once a year to make sure our 1980s Montgomery Ward monster microwave is still safe (because the internet knows, right?), and here is today's perusal in case you like scaring yourself silly and feeling calmed down by lengthy discussions in old forums and jaunting off into distraction.

Turtlenecks and Ugly Couches: The Montgomery Ward Catalog of 1978 (yes, kids, I am this old)

Hilariously Ambitious Cookbooks from the Dawn of the Microwave (this was awesome)

How safe is it to use a 20-30 year old microwave? (it's so hard to tell, because my 80+ dad has his jury-rigged and it still takes 5 minutes to heat a cup of water, BUT he's still alive so it's obviously not nuking him- this is pertinent because it's identical to my microwave, which is in way better shape)

4 Ways to Check a Microwave for Leaks (easy, cool, erroneous- according to the next article)

microwaved- microwaves resolved (Scott, I'm gonna put the netbook with our network on it into the microwave for a sec, ok? Your fantasy teams might freeze up.)

'reducing the life expectancy of the magnetron'-Does this happen? (I find comfort in techy yap by real engineers, and they seem pretty cool with my microwave without even having seen it, so I'm good now and can move on with my morning.)

One week till Thanksgiving!!!!! I had the most wonderful luv fest live tweeting the Macy's parade on twitter last year, laughing my head off at the tweepers who grumped about it clogging up their timelines, all the hilarious stuff my beloved fellow Americans were saying about floats and commercials and the commentators and the crowds, and when you've had as much hot chocolate as I had that morning (spiked with way too much real vanilla ~wink~), it becomes a float fest in more ways than one. This year I'm going to take a pre-burrito pain pill and a xanax and really float. I have watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade nearly continuously since I was tiny. Five decades, people. I've missed maybe 5 years, tops. Y'all know KISS is in the lineup this year, right?

When I was a kid, Thanksgiving was awesome because we played games all day, sometimes with cousins all over the place. I really miss that. I have adapted to Thanksgiving football since I married Scott. The best parts for me are the tailgating competitions (Guy Fieri is my fave!), the commercials, the decor on the commentary sets, and the awesome fans out in the crowd that go all out smashing turkey cosplay into their regular team spirit craziness. My party pretty much goes on all day, starts at dawn, goes into the night.

AND- we get burrito while mama starts Black Friday shopping, yay! Last year Scott went with her and tag teamed, they were popping in and out of stores and I was updating their locations on twitter and facebook like I had a stopwatch. They scored one place in ten minutes flat. I remember when I worked retail, whole families came in and fanned out with walkies, maps, and instructions, like cool real time scavenger hunts. I loved it. I wish we'd done fun stuff like that when I was a kid, but back then no one shopped on Thanksgiving or lined up around stores all night to shop the next day.

I grew up in a family that never went out on Thanksgiving unless it was to someone else's house. No one ever drank, and the only thing we kids did was play games, watch the parade, and eat turkey while the grownups talked about politics. I got in trouble for something nearly every time we wound up in other people's houses, like nearly stabbing my thumb off and blood everywhere, or throwing up on the carpet (yes, I got in trouble for being sick), knocking my drink over all over the nice tablecloth... Always something. Experiences like those solidified me being much more laid back as an adult myself. Stuff happens. The harder you try to make something perfect, the more realistically the world (or a kid like me) proves to you that there is no such thing as perfection. Pictures in magazines are just pictures. Chillax. I always had more fun at the kids table, anyway. I miss that.

Look at me wasting time, it's nearly 7 a.m.! Here, study this so you know what NOT to do next week when crunch time is on (like, invest in a real pan...)