Some of you seem really interested in the grim weird stuff, based on the hard hitting lately, so here's a thought-
I keep wondering if anyone else is going to bring up the probability of all the MK lawsuits once the industry is torn down. So many actors coming out now hinting and even saying they sold out so they could be famous (fast tracked), and then going through crazy rumor mills and paparazzi problems before they wind up in detox or disappearing to other countries, and ultimately framed by the industry as wacko drug abusers dying crazy weird deaths. Who knows if this is even true, right?
One more question-
Do you ever wonder why they keep bringing up and remaking the same things over and over, like why do we need so many film versions of Alice in Wonderland, right? I mean, I love those books, raised my kiddo on the Disney cartoon version, loved Sammy Davis Jr. as the Caterpillar, and Andrew Lee Potts is my fave Hatter. But is there rhyme and reason? Who and what are the White Rabbit, and why is this so deeply ingrained into our culture? By the way, I love Pink, she's awesome and totally kills this.
3-day cervicogenic headache aside (mimics migraine), I thought our first weekend with Bunny moved in went really well. I have 2 days left in physical therapy this week (doing my usual fibro-flare kickback against all the local stimulation and then sleeping better with my neck in a weird position, plus dental chair for teeth cleaning, yowza to the neck #uffda), my blood pressure seems to be settling around 116/78 kind of stuff (huzzah! CPAP, guys), I finally broke through on that stupid fluid retention from the big med change in January (still can't believe how much that bossed my whole body around), and yay we're finally back to Monday routine.
Allergies- don't wanna jinx myself, but CPAP is super duper for helping control so far. April is my bad month every spring. The air I breathe through the night now is double filtered. So far I'm using only half the antihistamines I was using last year and breathing comfortably, but oak pollen is just now really ramping up (birch is already high), so we'll see where I am a week from now. People around me, meanwhile, are struggling. I've talked before about how quickly pollen saturates a house in a variety of ways with tips on how to manage that. the definitive last word on living through a ragweed tsunami
Still euphoric, but it seems to be pretty controlled. This is the 12th day, which is usually about where it starts tapering off for me. Feeling pretty confident that I won't go through a crash and burn once it does. I think this is the best controlled big euphoria I've had, and despite all the extra stress around me, I still managed to float through quite a bit of it even though I was controlling the float level.
I'm not letting myself look at work I feel isn't getting done. I'm hugging myself for getting through all this huge stuff intact and not worse off. I think my family is a good team because we know each other so well and we're all into problem-solving, and somehow we all seemed to click into about the smoothest problem fix transition we've ever gone through together.
Number one lesson learned- no matter how smart a 3 year old seems, the probability of treasure winding up in one's tummy is 100%, pretty much just a matter of time. Bunny's amazed disbelief at how in the world it had to and actually did make its magical reappearance still cracks me up. Watching this learning process has been delightful and opened up all kinds of new thoughts about thought processes in my own mind. The conclusion, as always, is that humans in general don't 'know' anything without conscious investigation and observation, and all our knowledge as a species is cumulative. Left to our own devices, we'll always just keep swallowing metaphorical rocks and not know what to believe.
Quick summary- I'm tired, and we've still got a long way to go. I can do this.
This was my lullaby in my headphones last night after everyone else settled in. One of my last thoughts before I finally drifted off was how I never seem to talk about how much the Joker has filled background gaps in my head since I was a kid. I saw all the old Batmans in the 60s, the cartoons, all the movies. I love Jack Nicholson, but I think Heath really nailed it.
There are some youtube vids I generally avoid. The weird ships are ok, they mostly make for great protagonist forays with good action music since action/violent scenes lend such a good visual companion to sexual subtext, but the parent/child AU smashes are completely opposite and rather devastating. There are a lot of those. It's rather stunning to realize how well each actually understands the other when it comes to vid story construction, but still can't break out of whatever vicious loop they might have going in real life. Or maybe it's just that I so rarely stop and think about these things.
Yes, up at 1:30 a.m. again. I go in for 6-month psych follow-up (the one who prescribes and can't get me to commit to meds) and I'll have to come clean and say no, I'm not sleeping that great. Totally split shifting again for several weeks now. At least the total is still coming up to 6-8 hours in every 24. I'd so much rather just get up and move around and then go back to bed than zombie out solid and not be able to move in the morning.
So this was my first October in over ten years where I managed to keep some kind of real time cognitive involvement going pretty much daily without bombing into complete distraction to survive. No teeter-tottering through emotional shutdowns, no significant time disorientation bubble breaks, no angsting over a daily plan...
The daily plan thing is a toss-up. I feel like I'm bombing because the angst of stuff piling up is visible on my kitchen table, but even the least amount of reflection recognizes I'm easily keeping up with daily living nowadays as meals and chores and writing automatically happens without much conscious thought, much less having to create daily planning around them. Same with simple grocery shopping. I spent several years making elaborate lists of places to go, errands to run, things to pick up, and would still come home with it mangled up. It's nice being able to remember a few things now without having to write every little bitty thing down. Still, the daily planning was a very good habit, the root command under all the crawling back up the mountain stuff, but I think my conscious discipline is becoming an unconscious automatic routine.
Enough quickie psyche assessing. I'm stalled on the Mantrid post for good reasons. I've already spent every day in town this week, and not all of it over my own stuff. Bunny has something going on that we're watching, other people close to me have stuff, plus holidays and family birthdays and their baby stuffs have started popping in and out of scheduling, so I'm generally just not even on the computer much lately. I see several people are still wondering why I'm not personally responsive online, well, I'm actually functioning better in real life, so yeah, juggling 100 people means prioritizing and it's taking some of you a really long time to accept that. If I were a good cartoonist I'd create a panel visualizing calamities galore dive bombing all around and me holding a hand up and saying "Wait a sec, someone I've never met needs me online" while I'm bent over a failing phone or glitchy laptop. Social media is fantastic, I'll never say different, but the hilarious idea of aspienado being on-demand for people who've never met me in real life hasn't quite sunk into a few heads yet. My empathy is sketchy, and my time is extremely restricted. I apologize.
But you're blogging. You have time for blogging. But I'm not sleeping. I should be sleeping. If I'm up working on my own head/life stuff while I get through a pain problem that won't allow me to sleep, I don't owe anyone a pleasant conversation. I've spent incredibly long sleepless hours in the past online with people who were actually in hospitals or getting through other people being in hospitals, many hours logged keeping people company online sometimes right up to their last hours, and to grind my head back down to people demanding interaction of me simply because they are ~*~bored~*~ or restless (not being more forthcoming) kind of twists my head up. I'm saying this as kindly as possible to several people. The reason I'm public is so people can talk to me publicly. And having said that, if you do tag me, I can miss it because I'm tagged a lot, and if I still don't 'like' every single thing I'm tagged in, it doesn't mean I'm not paying attention or hate anyone. It just means I'm not going to slow down and hit the 'like' button a hundred times. In case anyone still feels left out or put off because I haven't personally acknowledged your presence lately, just wanna say you don't see anyone in my family complaining about me paying more attention to people I don't know than I do them.
Actually, kinda rambling while I listen to the latest SNews. Just put coffee on. It's about 3:15 a.m. now.
Ok, where was I? AU parent/child youtube ship smashes.
I grew up fantasizing having different parents. I imagined so many different scenarios and how many ways my childhood could have turned out. I've imagined having other kids, which I've discovered in 2012 is actually common for parents who've either lost or never managed to have babies or children.
Fantasizing relationships is a form of problem solving. It can get weird, yes. People can seem like creepers when they share what's going on in their heads. Exploring situations and conversations that never happened irl (in real life) is no different from imagining doing other things we either enjoy or don't normally do, like riding a horse or skiing or decorating a cake. Brains are pretty awesome for projecting scenarios.
But it's possible to get stuck in scenarios without resolving why one is there in the first place. Getting stuck in fanfictions, either in our heads or in actual print, without moving on to new or different material seems like a red flag. I've read some really excellent fanfiction, and I've tried writing some, but in the long run, I don't find it satisfying. I do find it helpful, but youtubes go way faster getting ideas across. I like the kind of anguish I can zip through, like ripping bandaids off with lawnmowers or something. I feel like I don't have time to slow down and lolligag around feels.
It hit me yesterday while I was driving around again (driving way too much lately) that part of my problem processing emotions in real time might be that it takes too long, so half the time I just shut it off. Emotions are really different from absorbing myself in technoweenie garble, a completely different kind of jigsaw puzzle. It's probably an apple and orange thing, like soduku and crossword puzzles. I'm not crazy about either one, but I'll take the crossword puzzle over the soduku if I'm desperate and there is no other distraction available. I think AU shipping vs real life is like that. Whether it's coworkers or significant other or family structure probs, it's just easier to turn to the distraction of puzzle solving scenarios than actual puzzle solving.
There are games that are never over. Chess and checkers definitely have an endpoint. Monopoly gets a little fuzzy, especially with rule-bending that allows credit. I'm a repeater, I like gaming for the fun of gaming, playing for the fun of playing, thinking for the fun of thinking. I think that's what the vids are, emotional game playing that never really has to end. Like soduku. It doesn't matter if you've solved a block, you just keep moving on for the sake of doing soduku.
I'm not good at feels, so I shut mine off and watch other people grind through theirs. I learn all kinds of stuff way faster than I ever did in real life. That SNews show I linked up there is the same thing, going over and over a scenario and outcomes, taking sides and leveling up in the debate arena with facts over something that is fiction. It's good practice, and provides interaction opportunities, just like shipping vids and twitter do.
Sooner or later, I can tell, I'll need to tackle the parent/child stuff. Since I've reached the point where I'm starting to deal with glitchy/missing memory stuff, this kind of struck me. There is more about the story setup in the youtube description, if you need it.
I have absolutely no interest in this pairing, nor the reason for it (back to regular shipping), but it's just a really well done vid story. A show we were watching on TV last night quite bored me for a long five minutes and prompted me to blurt that I never went through that poor me love stuff in high school (asexual aspienado's so facepalmingly aspie), and it hit me I'm sitting next to a guy who's managed to stay married to me for more than 20 years despite me so epic failing in the whole relationship department. This kind of video actually helps me 'get' stuff about other people that I otherwise don't normally even notice or go through myself.
For someone who doesn't get romance and can't flirt to save my life, much less even look like a girl half the time, I've been amazingly lucky. What really struck me about that last vid was the idea that part of the relationship revolved around a traumatic incident. Most of my life is one long traumatic mess of incident after incident, but I know that's not uncommon. What is uncommon is winding up in a successful relationship in spite of that. What's even more uncommon is having no idea how and having to look back to figure it all out.
I'm the sort of aggressive person who triggers into extremely destructive violent thoughts if I go into the angsty places too long (don't worry, just my style of fanfic shipping, if I had one), so it's time to spring back into the mockery I make of normalcy and get all over my day. I told someone earlier this week (or last, maybe) that I credit being pissy with getting me through the hard stuff, and since this week has gone a little further off the rails getting hard again than I projected, I wound up making another playlist to deal with it.
And if that doesn't do it for you, I like the softer stuff, too.
Not real often people see me out of a t-shirt. Metaphorically.
You can click on that to click on each pic to see better.
I'm so matchy. Even had a green umbrella.
Extra points to this guy for actually making it all the way into town like that. Hey, he's green, too!
So I got a yes on some of the degeneration thing we were watching earlier this year, but in a good way. If that makes any sense. The new stuff will be assessed again later. It was a good day to get out, at any rate. I made myself pay attention and soak in some autumn. It's going really slow this year, peak is lasting forever.
I would love doing this in a jigsaw puzzle.
Ok, this is getting a little ridiculous. Non vous aussi, LinkedIn.
Thanks to an incoming lurker from a referral link, I've discovered webmii.com (seriously, I don't go looking for this stuff, this one's apparently been around awhile). Spock is sort of impressed with how thoroughly they gathered my public info compared to other ranking sites I've seen.
This is actually the sort of thing I've been shooting for, in case the ridiculous amount of time and effort going into my fleet seems like a waste of time. I know this score doesn't look very high (for "Janika Banks"), but it's actually not bad out of millions (and more millions) of web profiles on the internet.
It also shows how crucial it is to find a stand out name on the webs because when I tried Pinky Guerrero, it totally smashed me and several other Pinkys together, abysmally lowering the klout score, among other things.
I know, silly time wasting stuff. Like I said, hipster coffee shops. I'm in one of my twisted funks where nothing looks right because I'm way too tired. BUT HEY, I was ready for early Halloween and it didn't happen, lol. At least I'm actually ready this year. I like to make goody sacks packed with treats.
I think I'm still sad from all that death stuff I finally dealt with, but it's hard to tell because I'm so good at not lingering on dwelling. Well, ok, I dwelt all spring and summer and partway into the fall (after 8 years of shutdown, part of my head points out), but I mean it was a more angsty kind of confusion because I had no idea that's really where it was headed. Now everything is just really quiet in my head.
I've rather carefully never wished for anything in my life, not really. I'm the sort of person who sees the futility in wishes and hopes, and if stuff doesn't happen, you either just make it happen if you really want it, or walk away and don't whine about it. Imagine spending a childhood like that. If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride, right? Adults actually said that to me. But something is sneaking up on me. No one sees the horses in my head.
"What we are we cannot be, what we are not, we are."
emo_rainbow_unicorn (Jess)
click pic for source
I think I'm feeling a wish starting to form. I'm not really sure what it is yet, but I know it's there. If Pinky had one wish... I wonder what it would be. Or is. It's already there, lurking, not letting me see it yet.
It sure is making for an interesting Pinkyween this year.
I'm a self-styled amateur linguistics enthusiast. The first time I heard the word 'homophobic' I thought That's me! because I'm not keen on leaving my house. I thought people were talking about other people who preferred holing up in their caves on the webs as opposed to chattering in real life to real faces. I tend to obsessively look up new words now since that one got a little awkward when I used it in a sentence. Out loud. To a real face. People think I'm smart now because I'm getting so good at hiding my dumb first.
My fave thing about the word arachnophobia is that it doesn't force me to spell or speak the word spiders. Unfortunately, it inspires other people to talk about spiders, bomb me with pix of spiders, and even throw spiders on me. That last one is a really good way to find out how fast I can violently break furniture and hate, despise, and loathe someone for life. Me dealing with my arachnophobia is more about dealing head on with facing up to my trepidations about stupid humans than it is about actual spiders. Trust no one.
2nd breksbest, like a Hobbit
We had a Bunny sleepover, which went really smooth this time. I learned yesterday that toddler aged cartoons dealing with photobomb probs are a thing, and that is a good way to eat breakfast, camped in front of the TV on the couch. Scoff all you want, when you have super ADHD kiddo in the house, you bless anyone who creates something that helps them sit still long enough to eat a real meal. We didn't eat in front of the TV growing up, and we didn't do it very often raising our own kids, but I'm all for anything that lowers stress levels and makes hanging out more pleasurable. Good vibes and good memories are important. My memories of grandparents are a bit on the fear factor side.
I rarely sit through TV myself. I know I live tweet sometimes and mention watching this show or that, but you guys don't see me pausing my show constantly to hear something again or start a discussion about it. I'm like a pause button bomber (what else would you call that?), and I'm probably lucky that alone hasn't destroyed my marriage.
"One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. There is no problem with changing the course of history—the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end. The major problem is simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be descibed differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is futher complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father. Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later aditions of the book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term "Future Perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be."
I bet you people getting this on a reader instead of the blog really hate it when I use light blue. Some of you guys on mobile are missing the cute little autumn leaves.
I need coffee but I don't want it to be 2 hours old when @bonenado gets up. I guess I could turn the pot off when it's done and he can microwave it. That's gotta be better than old overcooked coffee. Hang on.
Waiting for coffee... This is what you do when you wait for coffee. Click it to see Good Mythical Morning's "4 Real Cases of Time Travel". That's right- it's the bacon guys. You're welcome.
Hufda, little strong. Made it in the dark.
Today is one of those doctor follow up appointments where I hope I get my flu shot so it's done and out of the way. I carry my own latex-free bandaids around ever since I got a big ol' hive underneath one after a flu shot at Walgreens, and that came in handy last year when the nurse at my regular doctor's office discovered they had no latex-free bandaids anywhere. I know, some of you are anti-vaxxers. I grew up like that. I'll never forget my dad going DOWN and then being terribly weak for 6 weeks on a big flu year. Since I've done that with something that wasn't even the flu and then spent months recovering, I don't lightly scoff at anything that is estimated to kill percentages of people.
Coffee installed, brain calming down, maybe I can get a little nap in before I hafta leave. Yes, you heard me, coffee to calm my brain down. It's a thing. I've had a really big week dealing with stuff on Pinky blog, I'm a nervous wreck going to the doctor even on a good day because years of stuff, and this song has been on constant playback in my head for days. I can tell my anxiety is up because time suddenly started jumping around and I can't seem to fixate back into a right now orientation. But that's ok, I haven't messed up any bills yet.
This was really hard to write. I beg forgiveness if anyone who knows my mom misunderstands any of this content. I sincerely write out of love and respect, and I know aspienado sucks sometimes, but this is my journey from my point of view.
Watching my sibs do friends-only Mom memories on facebook. Here is my fave ever pic that I took of my mom.
If you don't want a trip down another memory lane, dive outa the moving vehicle NOW. #tuckandroll
2007- Still pre-loss, but I was DPOA and Mom was already living in the nursing home. I was getting a little snappy.
And that was nearly a mess and a half. I've noticed some of these new Walmart kids coming through the registers aren't always savvy on sacking strategies, but when a young lady turned my HOT deli chicken sideways to slip into a sack right next to a gallon of milk, I did that "uh-uh-uh" thing you do automatically when a 3 year old gets into something really scary and you know you can't reach them in time and the words don't come out fast enough. I know I embarrassed her half to death, but if I hadn't immediately rescued that chicken, the juices would have leaked all over that sack and my jug of milk, not to mention warm up my milk and cool down my chicken.
I was reading in my mom's super old gigantic recipe book the other day, always find something surprising in there. This time I ran into "alligator pear salad". ?? Turned out to be avacado. That is the coolest book. It's nearly 900 pages and missing the cover and the first 50 pages, so I don't have a clue who published it or when. Wanna make a pidgeon pie? It tells you how. They start off with fine table settings (that not even 5 star restaurants adhere to any more) and ends with basic food preservation and pressure cookery, but you can find *anything* in between. Well, I haven't yet run into anything on how to kill and eat a bear, and it was obviously published before the States had food franchises and international cuisine on every corner. They've got a whole chapter on coffee service alone. There are at least 10 different ketchup recipes. I mean, this was even before bottled ketchup. Wild, huh? People used to make their own ketchup. And there is a sauce for just about anything. You name just about anything unpalatable, this book will tell you how to cream it or make a sauce for it that sounds out of this world.
Had my 2nd progress exam with the chiropractor today. I've made it up to 56% improvement. I went in for the back injury, but I'm getting help healing now from other old stuff that I've tolerated for years. This is the first time in 25 years my neck hasn't hurt. It just suddenly quit hurting a couple of days ago. I have lived with that so long. I can even kind of bend my neck back now and look up without feeling like I'll faint. I haven't been able to do that since I flipped out of a car when I was 19.
2008- We didn't know we still had one more year to go and we were all very exhausted.
I got this corn bag from a girl I worked with years ago at Kohl's during a Christmas gift exchange. She was a single mom of 3 boys and very poor, but she made the cutest corn bags for everyone. Her uncle had a bag of seed corn or deer corn or something, and she used scraps of material and her mom's sewing machine to make 'corn pillows' to put in the microwave. This is the BEST gift I have ever gotten from a work gift exchange. I didn't like her much because she was kind of a trouble maker, but I am grateful for this gift every time I use it, which lately is several times a day. I even heat it up and take it in the car with me. I know I've had it at least 5 or 6 years. We've never run into anything in a store that even compares to how versatile and tough and easily moldable this is. Might go ahead and send Dad an anniversary card to take in to Mom. After the big deal he made last year to me about stop sending cards and flowers for everything, (....) I keep hearing from Dad about everything Mom still gets on her birthday and whatnot, and I'm like- this is crap. Why list everything other people do for her if I'm told not to do it? And their 50th anniversary is coming up either this year or next. Waiting on an email back from the other sister on that now. But I'll have to get that mailed by Monday. (confirmation, this is the 49th)
I think the hardest thing to go through, besides losing a child, is watching your parents go down.
2009- The year Mom finally left us.
First of all, hopefully on a funny note, this is the year of the wacked out greeting card fiasco. I had started a sympathy card to M when school started back up in August, wrote a whole sentence and laid it down, walked off. Last week I ran across it and suddenly HAD to finish it, HAD to get it off into the mail, wrote something under the sentiment inside that I was using up one of my dumb cards on her. Didn't find out until later that (her other gramma) died that ~same day~. Just a tad awkward... So C's birthday was coming up, and bless that kid's heart, I have been uber late on her birthday every single year since the Bell's Palsy. I decided that's not going to happen this year, got a card with $10 off, and the day Mom died (her gramma), she opened a card that said, "Celebrate!" with a big balloon on the front. Awkward, awkward, awkward... As for hanging out with Dad, man. That man is weird and a half. Before Mom died he came back to the nursing home with some brand new pajamas in a sack, have no idea if someone had left them at their house years ago, he said we should bury her in those like she was asleep. They were 3X, she was 130 pounds... That argument was so aggravating and senseless and stupid. Everyone else blew him off, guess they're used to him. Then the next day after she died we ran him around doing final arrangements and signing papers with the funeral home, and he argued up one side and down the other about the payment method, because it was insurance paying the nursing home a huge sum of money, and Dad getting the leftover check, which will actually be fairly large because the burial was so cheap (just over $3000). Dad was doing everything in his power to push them into dispensing the money his way so that (and here he didn't outright admit this was his goal) he wouldn't have to report it on his taxes. The way he planned it out, the nursing home would be helping him to commit tax fraud, but it would all be perfectly legal if they would just listen to him. By the fifth round he stood up and told this lady to "Just be quiet and LISTEN", and dang if she didn't find a way to make him shut up again. I think she'd been through this before with other old men. It would have been pretty embarrassing if people all over town didn't already know him so well by now that they're used to it. Fortunately, I was drugged out of my mind and didn't get pissed off at him.
The rest of this is how the world looks through the eyes of someone who has just lost a parent after many years of continual care and phone calls. It's outrageously both funny and stupid, and if you think about it, a blessing.
On the other end, G. is calling us every half hour driving us ~crazy~. R. went to Minnesota with her instead of Scott, but as much as she calls, Scott may as well be with her in the car. Her nerves are so racked with the upcoming game, rumors going around sports message boards that someone on the Packer team is planning to break Favre's knee during a play, and Scott had to calm her down, it's just crazy fan talk, yada yada. I *told* her to take her xanax. Wonder if she left it home.
A few days later during the memorial service, she kept texting Scott the football scores. I've been thinking for years how I need to get someone set up to text me something trivial throughout her memorial service when it's her turn. I'll be like my husband and forget to mute my phone. Ok, I'm kidding. I hope some of you reading this know that humor is how people deal with hard stuff. It's just that memories of my mom passing will be forever tied to memories of other people eyeball deep in football fever. Whatever gets us through our days. It's all good, and there are way worse memories in this world, so I'm cool with this. Besides, my mom was keen on irony. I'm pretty sure I got my love of irony from her.
The main thing is that @bonenado and I survived each other.
And it all kinda balled up on me in Walmart today. My entire nervous system suddenly just fried, and I was unable to get past the frickin' pain for a solid hour. All I could do was just sit real quiet waiting for it to pass over. Scott got me home, I took a pill and laid down, slowly coming out of it. I think I'm going to be ok. I think what happened was my body demanded to know what the f*#k we were doing in the car again... It's been a LONG weekend. I'll be glad when Scott finally figures out he doesn't have to emotionally knee jerk react to it. He's doing better, but at this rate, I'll be 90 before we truly synchronize with his brand of empathy. The man just doesn't know how NOT to hit every single pothole or have me bracing against sliding toward the windshield at every stoplight. And when he says to stop everything and we'll go home when my pain maxes out, then suddenly whips down another road to go get a danish, then drives around the parking lot twice unable to decide what to do because I question that, then leaves without the danish which utterly wasted the crap he put me through, yeah, I'm gonna be grouchy. Grouch happens, deal with it. If I were a dog I'd have bitten him.
2010- I'm about to disclose some hard stuff. No offenses intended, but this is how I'm able to understand that going through the death day of a parent (especially the first one) can make everything look ridiculously outa whack, especially if a person has an emotional challenge or cognitive difficulty to begin with. (Experience makes us wise.) I myself don't empathize well at all, and I can come across as a very hateful person when I have no idea that's how I look. This is why aspienado doesn't talk to family and friends very often and blogged privately for so many years. I can look back now and feel very blessed to have so many caring people in my life, but back in my egocentric heavy painload days, I was secretly pretty awful.
Today has been a year since we buried Mom. I wouldn't even have thought of it if my uncle hadn't texted yesterday at 8 a.m. with a basic 'thinking of you' reminder. Good way bring down the weekend first thing, right? I've never understood social 'niceties'. I see stuff like that as intrusions that disturb my little pond. I have no idea how my sibs are feeling about it, and I'm not in a very good empathy position feeling so gross like this (glands ~really~ hurt behind my jawbones), so I'm just keeping to myself in my cave, hoping no one calls.
Poofing is molting, like a poof of feathers exploded out of a feather duster.
Dooney poofed this morning. Macy stopped laying a few days ago, wonder if she'll poof soon. Spencer is nearly done growing back.
Skip loads of personal stuff.
I'm in xanax taper, my glands hurt like hell, I've lost my fantasy game 4 weeks in a row now, and I have to deal with Scott going mental on me while I drag around doing the laundry and dishes by myself. I am so tired of this. We will be arguing about Twink until the day one of us dies. I'm so sick of their mentality I could scream.
That was actually about comparing his kid to someone else's who was in our house for awhile. Skip loads more personal stuff. I know this is extremely passive-aggressive, but I was using my blog back then to NOT fight with him. I would clean out my head, dump all the baggage, and then engage later in a somewhat nicer way. By nicer I mean not eating his head and spitting it back out off the deck.
First of all, Scott, I'd appreciate your timing being better. Today is the anniversary of my mom's death and burial, do you MIND???????????? My entire family would disown me if he pulled that crap. I don't care how idiotic his own family is, he's NOT smashing the fragile ecosystem I barely have with my siblings. It's all I have left. Maybe he hates his own family and refuses to go to his mom's house when they're around, but displacing his crap onto my family is going to get him hurt pretty badly. By moi.
He doesn't hate anyone, I was just blowing off. But that really is a picture of my whole marriage from my own point of view, no matter how important something might be to me, something else ridiculously popped up and became consumingly more important because I'm surrounded by very in-the-moment people. Aspienado married ADHD and was juggling way too many things at the wrong time when that first anniversary hit. The fact that I could intellectually understand what that setup was underneath everything is probably what has helped saved this marriage many, many times.
But, at any rate, my mom's first death day was horrible for me in ways no one ever knew, because everything I needed to deal with got mowed over by a plethora of other way less important stuff. Other people's dramatic emotional crises are why I have always wanted to be Vulcan since I was a child. I'll get really super honest here- I'm one of those people who, if everything went all wrong one day for me, IF I happened to be the sort who blew up over stuff accumulating, would have no problem blowing up buildings and going on shooting sprees. Yes, I've brought this up with my psychologist. Given that I actually don't dwell on these things as a problem solving method, and given that my first real life instinct is always a super nurture response, he's not worried about me and I'm not either. BUT, that is how unempathetic I am about other people having bad days, especially on top of MY bad day. You guys want school shootings to stop? BE NICE. Notice how stupidly and awfully you mow other people over with your tantrums and snide remarks and poor me and angry at the world dramas. The quiet ones might just be corks about to pop, but you'll never know if you don't just shut the frickin hell UP.
Very few people have ever seen me lose it. The ones that have actually told me later I scared them. I scare people. I found that difficult to believe at first, the incredulity of me actually hurting someone seems so laughable. But after a few years of thinking, I have to admit that just underneath all that pent up emotion is an actual trained killer skilled in dismemberment, and I do realize that scares me sometimes. Thank goodness for private blogging.
I'm not particularly upset or depressed. Just sick of it. I don't even have the energy to be resentful. Used my energy doing the biggest pile of dishes you ever saw and several loads of laundry. Have been surprised at how much I'm able to keep getting up and doing even with my glands hurting this badly.
2011- The year I actually snapped and had to be supervised by 3 doctors crashing down off two hormones, which took several months. By the time Oct 3 rolled around, I had lost 50 pounds and was in a somewhat controlled hyperthyroid condition. Mentally- both cognitively and emotionally- despite my psychologist helping me get through and stabilize (amazing how much body chemicals can affect the brain), I was in no shape to handle thinking about my mom, so I simply didn't.
I think I'm rounding another corner in spinal nerve trunk healing. Last week chiro bubbled out how he was able to get as rough on me now as he does the high school athletes that come in. I doubt that, but yes, I'm handling adjustments 150% better than ever, after-adjustment nerve reverb and fibro rebound is so much less and easier to tolerate now. Except after last Thursday, I woke up around 1 a.m. in a brand new kind of jaw spasm on the right side, lasted several days and started wearing me out, although initially I slept even better for a couple of nights. I've noticed nerve responses after taking pressure off them sends me through a variety of sensations, especially around my head and face if it's my upper neck. I think those sensations are a lot like the Bell's, nerves realizing communication is restored and running diagnostics, Hey, Ed, blink that light switch over there, etc. Usually calms down pretty quick. But I slept so hard and good Thursday night that I think I had a fibro seizure take over and squeeze back down on the nerve again, so by this morning I sure was ready to get that popped out and take the pressure back off.
Distraction is always good when you can't handle something lurking beneath the surface. This kind of blogging is me practicing distraction. I was experimenting with changing how I blogged, turning the dumping into storytelling.
!!!*!*!*!*!!*!!!????
You know that noise you dread hearing when your guy is on 3 story scaffolding and the extension ladder sounds like it plummets over and scrapes down the side of the house, and you know you have to go outside and look just in case, and there is this horrible dread you'll find his unconscious broken body laying in some horrible twisted shape? **He's ok!** My nerves are shot. I can't even be out there watching him. He was trying to get one more platform on the top bit of scaffolding, which I couldn't help noticing is on WHEELS... and that platform is what went crashing down the side of the house and tried to take the ladder with it. "You couldn't rent more scaffolding with feet???" "It's ok, the wheels are locked." omg, just turn around and walk back in >now< before you lose it and freak out...
Here it's all done, put together and the show off is ready to start staining.
2012- Still staunchly not dealing with my mom's death day, but had come back out public a few months before. I was double blogging, publicly at grandfortuna and bluejacky, and privately on yablo. After years of cognitive and memory challenges, my brain was coming back on and I was working on staying as busy as I could (distraction approved and encouraged by my psychologist) as a way to handle severe depression as I continued to taper off meds and improve my overall health.
Back to my usual shorter sleep night. Been awake since around 1. Made myself lay there and wound up getting up around 4:30 with the beginnings of a neck headache. Guess I was in town too long yesterday.
Got C's birthday card off ahead of time this year, yay! Well, barely ahead of time. I like to mail cards at least a week ahead, but her birthday is Saturday. She's 16 this year. She's already on probation at school for winding up in a fight with someone. I told J at least she'll have good stories to tell. And you know how they are nowadays, a 'fight' isn't the good old fashioned slugfest it used to be, all you have to do is look at someone cross eyed any more to get in trouble for 'violence'. I don't think they even had the chance to pull one another's hair. When I was in school in New Mexico, I saw kids beating the crap out of each other in the hallways every little bit, and girls got pretty nasty.
Scott dropped down into the 170s over the summer, now he's packing it back on, and he doesn't seem to care any more about his blood sugar. We went out to Celito Lindo's for lunch yesterday (I took a packed lunch), and wow, he cleaned up. And then last night he ate two grilled cheese sandwiches and soup, which is super carby. I had him trained to avoid carbs for awhile because spikes made his heart beepy, but now that he's getting used to it again, he says he doesn't notice it any more. And if his doctor says anything next checkup, he's just going to try going on the metformin. I'm just going to sit back and let him get fat again. His choice. He's talking about joining the fitness center with me, though.
Meanwhile, I'm still holding around 187ish. Better than gaining. I'm too old to gain.
Need to do a lot of cooking today. Got dishes done yesterday morning before I went to town. Really need to get the new spray bottle filled up and going in the bathrooms. Need to do a lot of stuff. Staying home today, guess we'll see what gets done. Working on an article to post, plus I have the Halloween survey I want to get done, plus I'll need to start another Lexx post soon. Started looking through my notebooks thus far, going to have to sit down and just grind down on the work. I WILL NEED A COACH. I have many questions about how you did your stuff, so next time we chat, remind me, just whenever. Little technical details.
Plus I have 4 library books to read. Finally caught up on a month's worth of Dr. Who shows piled up on my dvr. I can't get over how burned out on tv I am, I couldn't wait all summer for those to start, then I just never watched them.
Ok, already up and down doing stuff, better post this over before I forget about it.
That was one of the emotionally healthiest blog posts I'd written in a very long time on October 3rd.
2013- By this time I was blurbing publicly at syfydesigns and all over twitter. I hadn't yet committed to public blogging. I think I might've liked my sibs' mom memories and photos on facebook but I don't think I acknowledged my mom's death day any other way, even four years after.
2014- I finally hinted at accepting it on my mom's birthday in June, but I was still unable to handle dealing with it in private and reclused, barely hinting that it was an important day at all in this public post.
2015- That's today!
It's been six years. After years of watching other people spill their grief over losing and remembering lost parents on facebook, twitter, and blogs, here I am finally making a public post after working all year on a book that will begin with this tagline.
A lot of parents out there are raising kids like me, on the autism spectrum. You are probably at your wits' ends half the time wondering if they'll ever come around and understand how to share that they love you, or even acknowledge that you love them. I know your feelings are hurt because a parent's deepest instinctual need is to be loved by their children, and you might not be getting those signals back.
Please know it's all getting in there. As someone a little deeper on the Asperger's spectrum than most that I see online, I can tell you it's all there.
I've actually blogged quite a bit about my struggles growing up with my mom, and some of her struggles emotionally coping with the world telling her she wasn't a good mom when the question of me came up. I even dealt a little with the loss here and there. But the first time I really came out about my personal relationship as an aspie kid with my mom in public was in a survey on August 18, 2012.
Has anyone ever made you cry just by saying I love you?
This has way deeper significance when you know that person literally cannot say anything else and hasn’t been able to have a conversation with you in over two years, and you know it’s getting close, and they look you in the eyes and tell you they love you, and you know they mean it, and there are millions of unspoken words that come with it that let you know everything is forgiven and nothing is in the way any more. Yes, you go home and bawl your eyes out. ****Ok, I let this one sit awhile, and I keep coming back and reading it, and it comes across weird and creepy, so I’ll clarify a little. My mom died a long slow death from several big strokes that left her very deficit both physically and cognitively. I was not close to my mom growing up, felt rather picked on continually for what none of us realized was Asperger’s, never felt forgiven, and never really felt loved, although I’m sure she never meant for that to happen. When she started having strokes there were so many unfinished emotions that never got resolved, and despite the relief I felt that I no longer had to tolerate her unceasing judgement, years of taking care of her and watching her slowly spiral down were anguishing. I learned over that time that nothing means more to our lives on this planet than resolving our relationship issues before it’s too late. There is just nothing else comparable to the real meaning of life that goes round and round your head, if you don’t get those solved you feel like you failed somehow at why you were here. During her last couple of years I was seeing a psychologist for help with my Asperger’s and social skills and whatnot, really eye opening stuff for me, and I began to realize and understand what it must have been like for *her* to raise a child like me. She’s not a bad person, but without her own social safety net and support system, she was lost and flying blind, and made ever so many mistakes. My memories of my childhood are fairly tragic in places. By the time she reached her last summer, I was reaching a place where I could let all that go, where I wanted God to erase it all and just make it ok, because we really had made it through our stuff, and I no longer wanted or needed validation or recompense or some kind of understanding or forgiveness. I just loved her and wished I could go back in time and give her lots of hugs and tell her everything was going to be all right. And that is the magic. The last time I saw her awake and somewhat responsive, and I guess this sometimes happens when people with brain problems near death seem to snap back into momentary coherency, she suddenly locked eyes with me and grinned so big like she was not only glad to see me (that had never happened in my life), but like we had a big fun secret just between the two of us. And for the first time in my life, as well, especially with the Asperger’s, I locked eyes right back at her and grinned right back, and every bit of it was “I love you, too”, no hesitation, no baggage. That moment, as in a previous question further up, was PERFECT. And then I went home and bawled my eyes out, because one moment was all we got. She went blank and never looked at me again, and died a couple of months later.
I woke up this morning with this song in my head. I can't help thinking my mom would've really loved Heath Ledger. I know my family might not see it, and I know she herself might never have admitted to that and many other things, but this represents the common ground between her and me (I knew her longest of all the kids), a link, a love of good guys and bad guys and entertainment. She pointed me in the directions she could not and dared not go, because I am the Elephant's Child and never stopped asking questions.
It took several years for me to embrace the somewhat daily discipline of touching base with myself on blogs. Once I got into the habit, it took another couple of years to embrace the interruptions that keep me from focusing on enjoying the brain workout of daily blogging. That's really what it is, isn't it? Writing something down every day is an exercise, and sometimes it's hard and sucks the same way that committing to a 30 minute workout every day does. So when alone time with one's brain creeping out into the soft static of the world Borg mind becomes enjoyable, something getting in the way of that can make a person feel kinda pissy. And then learning to let it go can turn it into work all over again when it's time to get back into routine. Routine iz hard, yo.
That's why I blog the way I do. I make it really enjoyable to come back because I would otherwise be so bored and frustrated with the written word that I'd maliciously envision visiting horrible consequences all over my laptop, either in forums or actually on my laptop. ZZztTTT There, you stupid keyboard, want some COFFEE? Can you keep up NOW??? See, if I had minions, they'd look more like spiders because I'm evil and would go on gleeful stomping frenzies.
I'd rather be cool, you know? Not just someone losing it and throwing things.
A wise man once said, "Don't dream it. Be it." I heard the playwright actually got that off a cigarette ad, but who cares.
You thought I was done, didn't you? I'm not done. I actually did do some writing over the holiday weekend. I've been noticing over the last 8 weeks that writing seems to suddenly have become remarkably easy. I'm no longer struggling when I sit down and continue painting my canvas. I was kind of joking about the whole thing through April, but I guess it was real.
I couldn't read until I got into the second grade. Thankfully I got a teacher who was all into phonetics. Suddenly words became a game.
My third grade teacher made sentence structuring a game. I began to write.
My fifth grade teacher made reading a game. I had the second longest bookworm in the class.
My sixth grade teacher showed me with a special projector that I'm actually a speed reader.
I figured out by high school that I can glance through books and accurately summarize them without being conscious of what I've read.
College was like a circus smorgasbord at which I excelled without understanding, and learned that my communication skills were dismal. I discovered a secret key and unlocked a door to a gigantic maze.
The internet was a joyous brawl without direction until I learned I can make and lose friends.
Blogs helped me practice in the long, dark nights after my world shattered and all hope was gone.
A psychologist helped me understand that my problem really is me. I saw myself for the first time.
I am Aspienado. I've worked long and hard to reach this place. There is no magic involved. I'm not that savant. (I believe we are all beautiful and magical.) Because I kept pushing myself into a routine, I am writing.
I'm writing pain.
And I'm writing joy.
And one day, Lord willing, you will see it. Time to GET BACK TO WORK! >=l
From a private post written on November 5, 2008. If there is chaos and destruction coming, I believe most of the problem will be various media inciting 8 billion people to panic.
Here we go, have finally unlocked brain fail. Usually starts before the holidays, so since I made it through January without even a hint of it, thought I was home free. I'm as scattered now as a squirrel running out into heavy traffic dodging buckshot and three dogs.
Behold, my bwainz. The guy at the end looks stupider than the squirrel, cracks me up.
I don't feel this cute though.
I think it's a matter of readjusting all my brain chemicals again. Heavy duty benzo loads last week really screwed the ol' protracted withdrawal aspect of being a chronic low dose user for twenty years, which in Better Call Saul speak is like a cleaned up meth user shooting up out of the blue a couple of times for pain/anxiety management, as if that could work. Took me two years to clear off my own stuff, so imagine the rebound I'm going through. And before the inexperienced say anything, I have a cousin who made it off meth (only 3% successfully do that, and I bet there are a lot of you out there starting up for relief from stuff like spinal injuries, like he did) and he confirmed that benzos are basically the same thing. Going cold turkey off benzo meds is so dangerous that it requires medical supervision and oftentimes a 'rescue'. I went through a rescue after a cold turkey in 2009.
Med addiction is really common, and many people have no idea it's a real problem complicating other problems in their lives that get covered up with even more meds. My doctors initially shrugged me off and even laughed when I first brought up the possibility of med addiction because my doses had always been so low, but it turned out to be no joke getting off these meds. Fixing brain chemicals is a good thing when people need it, but keeping chronic patients on low dose chemicals for years as part of a pain management program without reviewing the possibility that they're covering up daily low dose withdrawal symptoms with other meds can become a nightmare. I wrote in 2009 that even though I had the medical history giving me a right to legalized med addiction that had me more screwed up than a Hollywood star scamming for vicodin and not showing up for work (I never missed a day of work in years until I just couldn't work, period), I wanted OFF.
I did it all wrong at first, it got scary, went through rescue, did my research, made a PLAN, and over two years I got off the remaining tail end of handfuls of meds. I should have taken pictures, my daily regimen was impressive. I drove 'drunk' to and from work for years, sometimes got pulled over, once was driven home by highway patrol at 10 a.m. Try explaining ~that~ to your boss. I got so good at being covert and timing my meds that coworkers came to me all the time asking how and when to mix this and that. I got to know the deeper culture of legal addiction and 'carried' all the time, making me everyone's friend behind closed doors and the wizard of medical jargon.
The links below were my journey to independence from big pharma and government/insurance controlled dosaging. They are lengthy and technical, so I don't expect anyone to actually read them, but that is how desperate I got trying to find my way out of that terrible maze (and look at me NOW, I'm HEALTHY). You guys need to question why govt is part of legalizing drugs and alcohol and how it's part of the whole big picture of proletariat control. Ask yourself why it's ok now for 'nice' people to be avid fans of a TV show about a meth dealer and support that show by buying toys for your kids (but you'd probably freak if there were a meth house on your street). I won't go so far as to say the government or anyone else wants you all accepting ideas of self medicating and surviving alien invasions and threat of worldwide death via virus, but I think it's pretty weird that show after show after show is profiting from slowly turning many of us into organized live response knots of shellshock before bedtime every night. How many of you can go to sleep and wake up rested without some kind of adult beverage or scripted sleep aid?
IF you actually read through all that, please to note that even on full disability now, my monthly out of pocket insurance costs come up to about $300 a month. There is no such thing as 'free' health care. If I weren't married I'd be extremely destitute. Since I know someone my age in exactly that position, I know what I'm saying.
From 6-9-11.
Have been dinking on facebook this month, mostly just filling in the profile stuff. My religious preference is the cult of cthulhu. That one has really struck me funny ever since it was on South Park and the Goth kids were so disappointed in his return because nothing really changed for them. I keep trying to think of oddball people who have inspired me, today I put in Snake Plissken. Already getting really bored with facebook again.
Ok, down to business. Things I have learned in the last week, thanks to benzo loading so I could be still in MRI tubes without exploding back out like a space alien-possessed astronaut in a syfy original movie.
1- Got the serious talk this time about pain clinic and surgery. It's there whenever I need them. Personally, I'm holding out for an opium patch first, but I have a feeling I won't be as lucky as a couple other people I've met on opium patches. One chick actually rides a motorcycle around town wearing an opium patch. Dang, I want an opium patch. I have really missed vicodin ever since the big acetaminophen reaction thing blowing up on me. Anyway, I'm going to try something else first before I let it all go invasive, because there's no going back once the shots and surgeries start up. I know too many spinal surgery fail stories to think that's my answer.
2- Unofficial cancer watch still goes on. I may as well accept this is how the rest of getting older goes. I've been cleared for defcon (again, how many times now in the last two years, geez), but told to keep an appointment in March with another doctor, so vagueness continues to rule my starz.
3- I will probably be a protracted addict the rest of my life. Going through withdrawal symptoms all over again sucketh mightily and right now the only thing stopping me from throwing a chair through a window is the thought of Scott having to replace it and then me feeling bad about it later because it's a really nice window. Oh, and maybe also that it's only twelve degrees outside and I'd freeze, but that was only an afterthought. The thought of Scott coming home every night keeps me sane. Scott is my rock, and aside from nearly pitching him through the window a few times (I'm so lucky he doesn't spontaneously reciprocate, given his ADHD nature), he's been extremely tolerant of me going Sarah Connor on his butt every little bit.
If you think you or someone you care about might have a medication addiction problem, click this.
Always remember. Anyone, any time, any place. It's real. last time survey
Sorry about all this. Sometimes I just gotta dump the crap out and yell DUCK!!!!
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