if pinky blog isn't rankling enough for you, click to fume-snark
Yeah, I can't go there. Too many triggers this week.
I've also got other stuff on my mind. Pinky blog domain payment just went through and I guess the price went up, so time to look into that. I really had no idea how wild this would get, so many of us out there using this name and all the crazy search referrals I keep running into, but I'm caught in my own setup now and I guess I'll be riding this one out. Oh, the funny games we play amusing ourselves.
Speaking of games, I guess I'm going full blown terracotta support in my player shop. I'm still ripping down a mesa on the resource world before the regen resets, and don't ask me how, but suddenly it seems so easy. I don't know if it was my 6-day stint in single player or what, but I'm all over the new colors and loving the extra points I'm racking up while I glaze.
Started with adding on the dyed clays.
Branching into the glazed terracottas.
these 2 screenshots click back to official game server site if you're interested in checking it out
The brain healing is still amazing me. I created this player shop after the Haven move to Valhalla, so mid July? I remember spending a very confusing week wrapping my brain around the new economy, finding a reasonable balance between the warp buy and sell prices, setting and resetting a hundred signs, very much like actual retail. I spent a couple of months tweaking and finally settled on a good rhythm with the other players. When we upgraded to the latest vanilla recently I thought maybe I would just let go of clay, it seemed a little too much work. Not sure how or when it happened, but I guess all that brain work got some more lights on, and suddenly setting up a whole new shop area seemed really easy and I did it fairly quickly. I was able to keep the 16 color list straight, acquire and process the materials, and set up the signage while handling connectivity issues, player interactions, and real life. Plus all that is going on in hard survival with extra mobs, AND I was also able to keep my cash crop wealth growing.
I don't look back very often on the old blog posts that much nowadays, but this week was a mile marker so I went there. My brain still falls out a bit around the house, still getting my days and weeks mixed up, still a goofball, but apparently I'm getting math back, strategy and planning are falling into place, and multitasking under stress is getting more reliable without feeling lost, yay! I've also noticed that it's easier dealing with anxiety away from the house if I think about what I'd like to do next on the game server instead of paying attention to whatever is ramping up my anxiety. Still thinking my friend pulling me into minecraft was the best possible positive impact on my cognitive glitching, and very thankful for it.
I'm also all over executing my daily care plan, and even on pred for 4 days my fasting glucose was 89 this morning. If I can stick to this the rest of the year, I should be in really good shape by 2018. Just gotta remember I want this and not screw myself up.
I'm missing the real time ST Discovery show scheduling, but right there with you guys on wondering what's going on. Here is one fan theory.
And I've already heard rumors about this tying back to Khan somehow.
So, stupid day yesterday with internet out most of the day meant getting some major paperwork processing done, yay! I don't know how it happens, kinda like an inverse proportional thing where the grodier I feel, the easier it is to do the most mundane drag chores in the world.
I also went through a lot of kleenex and looked up things like neuromyelitis optica because the pain that shoots around one side of my head when my eyes look up that direction is ridiculous. Nothing says 'meh' to Walking Dead and any other emotional crisis chain yank like looking up Mayo Clinic stuff and scaring yourself silly. I'm still #TeamNegan, by the way. Hate me all you want, the guy is rebuilding 'Murica and dang if he's gonna let a few zombies get in his way. I can't help wondering if the Saviors using Daryl to help them execute a plan will be totally screwed by our main gang splitting up into their own little plans without telling each other and Negan will come back and just laugh at all of them.
You know that strange phenomenon of really old tweets popping back up in notifications?
This was kinda funny to wake up to.
By the way (skip this paragraph if you get grossed out easily), when you burn real skin with a red hot iron, you get a lot of really white stuff over super red stuff, not to mention a really nasty smell, so that little gooey spot sticking to the iron didn't bother me. I also think that guy woulda screamed really high and passed out way sooner, and his hair anywhere near that iron would've smoked and singed. Details. Pretty sure, as long as Negan held that iron to his face, he had fourth degree burns. Holding metal that hot for that long on his face would've cooked everything under it instantly and then some (I'm pretty expert with heat), and likely nearly (if not actually) kill him just from pain shock. I'm not a burn unit expert, but I've had a couple of serious burns, a friend nearly lost her hands, and branding is still a thing.
Yes, I'm worse than Negan. I see what he's doing there and I'm still on board.
Scott was gone a week (per Facebook), so we're catching up on loads of stuff that piled up on the DVR while he was gone. I'm sure we'll be behind in everything the rest of the holiday season. We were cracking up so hard during last week's Flash the other night. Caught up on Arrow last night, looooove the Dominators spaceship, reminds me of the way ocean monuments are set up in minecraft. Wouldn't it be cool to have decorative lighting like that? And then Thea arrives on the Legends ship going cooool and I'm like wow, that is so dull compared to the alien ship, it's like coming back to a locker room or something.
I doubt I'll be live tweeting much this month, if any. I've been mentioning weird eye pain for a couple of months to ophthalmologist, my doctor, and physical therapist, so far so good, but I'm going back to the eye clinic today, and if this doesn't settle down, I may be saying howdy to my neurologist sometime over the winter, and he might want another MRI, so I'm trying not to think about things like anxiety attacks. I remind myself it would be all the same if I were sitting home here or being looked at there, unless something shows up they probably won't do anything, and I ***definitely*** do NOT want anything to show up, and for everyone to all agree this is just a referred fake thing and maybe take something for a migraine, even though this isn't a migraine. The last time I felt pain like this coming on I wound up unable to read or watch TV for a long time (which they'll probably command me to stop doing just to calm the nerve back down), but I still walk the earth and I know I can do this. Just hafta stay on track and stay healthy so I can handle it, hopefully better than last time. Everybody positive vibe me and help me think this is nothing, it's just a jumpy nerve with a bad spark plug causing a misfire. Of course, having a stupid head cold isn't making it feel any better. I'm hoping the ophthalmologist reassures me about sinus pressure can totes cause that and it's a thing sometimes...
Professionals are getting after me again for powering through pain. It is really hard not to ignore pain and keep doing what I want to do in spite of it when I spent my whole adulthood learning to do that as a psychological survival mechanism. I was always expected to handle unimaginable amounts of pain in my family growing up, and I feel like I'm racing to get my stuff done before I can't any more. How many times have I said that? But it really does feel like that from the inside.
Those of you who've noticed Pinky Press Review is looking scanty (not that saying this matters if those of you who did notice don't read Pinky blog), yes, it's fading out. It's on a countdown, the list member content is being chopped down a little each day, the widgets and gadgets are folding up, and pretty soon it'll look bare. I'm visualizing it being sucked into a pandimensional nethersphere. I can already tell the creators installed triggers warning staff someone is doing that, because as soon as I turned off one of the ad plug-ins, a pop up to a live person was asking me if I needed any help. So, um, Big Brother time... (from France).... *wow*. I just closed the pop up chat without responding.
Anyway, no more powering through pain to live tweet. We're venturing into noncompliant patient stuff. Yes, I will miss it. Yes, it blows watching my interaction stats go down. Back to keyboarding behind the scenes, and who knows what 2017 will bring.
For those not familiar with Albert Einstein's The World as I See It (scroll down past the intro- there's a lot, the guy was a blogger before his time), this is actually the mindset under which I was raised and why I've struggled with the chess board all my life.
In human freedom in the philosophical sense I am definitely a disbeliever. Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity. Schopenhauer's saying, that "a man can do as he will, but not will as he will," has been an inspiration to me since my youth up, and a continual consolation and unfailing well-spring of patience in the face of the hardships of life, my own and others'. This feeling mercifully mitigates the sense of responsibility which so easily becomes paralysing, and it prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it conduces to a view of life in which humour, above all, has its due place. To inquire after the meaning or object of one's own existence or of creation generally has always seemed to me absurd from an objective point of view.
My dad simplified 'free will' down to 'predestination', and at the time of my car wreck, it ruled his head so strongly that he didn't feel the need to morally support me living through something that should have killed me, because my continued life was obviously God-willed. I've spent the last 30 years swimming through oceans of pain regarding the way God-willed healing took place, at home without any doctors or pain meds.
People who marry into 'old German' families adapt or die. You toughen up. You think your way through your problems, and you blow off whatever gets in your way that isn't 'necessary'.
Jones sifted all that down into one sentence- "Hope is the luxury of those unburdened by fate."
I, simply put, have never been burdened by hope and actually seem to thrive where hopelessness is concerned.
Anyway, if you've never read Einstein's synopsis of life, the universe, and everything, it's worth a read (get a snack, it's kind of long). Personally, I would love to be able to get Einstein's take on the 12 Monkeys (cool recap, big spoiler warning).
We've come a long way since Einstein. Well, my dad hasn't, but I ripped a new timeline and here I am. This links back, but I also wrote about it.
I'm feeling kind of random, so this was a writing prompt. Usually when I'm feeling this random I wind up getting killed by something like that little cube robot down there, because it's so tempting to try to wrest away something as cool as a block of gold. But as soon as I'd go down, at least one of the snakes would poison me during the fight, and the bear and spider would jump in, and who knows what else is lurking behind a tree, and then I'd die and lose my /back to the jungle treehouse because I haven't yet mapped out how to clear out one of my 3 /home options to make a new one. Life is so complicated sometimes...
Hope and fate are just words. There's the whole "no fate but what we make" thing from Terminator (fave), which I agree with because when everything boils down, it's about being obsessed enough with something to make stuff happen differently than it's rolling out.
How badly do you want it? I ask myself this every day, and have since 2012. It's been a living mantra all my life, but I put it into words in my head in 2012. I've talked about how I started making my plan for change in 2008, how I've spent years getting off addictive meds and going through physical therapy and practicing writing for public. All of this has been very hard. How badly do I want it? I wanna eat the world and own it.
I have been seeing myself as a timeline changer, a history changer for many years, ever since I learned to look differently at raising a stepchild and accidentally being right on time to save someone's life. If I'd died in that wreck, I wouldn't have been here to change those things. If my mom had carried her first child to term, I'd never have been born since I was conceived after she lost it and before it would have been born. I have thought of these things for so very long that I can't help believing I'm still here to change more stuff. My purpose is to knock history onto new tracks, to shift timelines, to change the world around me.
We are all doing that, you know. Most people just can't even imagine seeing it like that. This here and now is our opportunity to make things happen, to change what we wish would change, even if it's very hard and takes a long time.
Someone once told me I watch too much TV. That was at a time when I barely saw any TV at all because I was so flat broke that I was walking to work, and I was asking that person for help with a domestic abuse problem. That person, that one sentence, was such powerful motivation for me. I've been pissed ever since. I'm going to change the world.
This is for all the people who've ever gotten in my way, and I have to say, I do love Katarina Jones. It's been nearly a year since I found this Khirk vid. Bless the person who made it, because it really helps my head on the hard days.
I started this Monday morning and came back to it through the day.
R.I.P. all-time fave sock.
I've never had a memorial for a sock before. I would wonder if I've gone off the deep end except I'm at home around bedrock already.
So last night. SPOILERS.
"Hodor".
Imagine experiencing your death many years before it ever actually happens, never ever ever being able to talk about it, and then someone else experiencing your death with you both at the end of your time and the time when you lived it during a massive seizure. And then every single time something bad happens in between the seizure and the final end, it triggers those memories of previewing your death, and you suffer PTSD the rest of your life over something that hasn't even happened yet.
"Hodor".
That got me. That was such a brilliant idea, brilliant writing and filming and acting.
~~~~~~~~~
One of those coming back to this days. I just woke up from one of those super detailed dreams where you know something is another way somehow, and you do everything in your power to not only remember it in your dream, but actually find it again, and then go wow, yeah, I remember doing this, and it goes on and on, and then you wake up- none of it was real.
When I was at my glitchiest after the brain fail and time order flew apart and memories became elusive, I had dreams about losing and looking for stuff, and one of the most difficult types of dreams to deal with was knowing I had another blog or page or something 'out there' and I couldn't remember the web address to find it. Since this has really happened because blog hosts and websites are fluid and flutter in and out of real time like leaves on a windy day (I've lost Yablo's House on AOL hometown, which was 7 or 8 pages of interactive fun, plus a geocities site I dearly wish I'd been able to screenshot, plus others), anyway, since this really happens (some of you saw me go through the Xanga server move and how terribly depressing it was), waking up from one of these dreams is ~difficult~. Pretty sure anyone who's lost all their junk in myspace or suffered facebook problems totally gets this. It's depressing.
Well, I just woke up from one where I had finally found one of the neatest pages I'd ever made, and I was so happy. I was finally able to access it and was thinking about moving some of the content because the ads had overtaken everything and my own content was so far down my own page that it didn't even show up until you scrolled, which meant half the visitors probably thought the crap at first load glance was my content and it wasn't. And I remember saying in my dream- "You can tell what's really my stuff because my blogs are ad-free." I woke up and rolled my eyes...
I like excavating around the ores, like an archaeologist gently lifting bones out of the earth
I haven't mentioned this in awhile, but have you noticed Pinky blog really is ad-free? And that I don't have any kind of button or link to paypal or gofundme or any other kind of donation page? (Ditto on my Lexx blogs.)
Google analytics recently let me know that this site is too big for the crawlers and I need to set up a site map. This blog is now well over 600 posts long, and I don't have a single ad anywhere on it. I've never monetized. Every link I put on this blog is my personal recommendation or link-back to someone else's content that I get neither paid nor compensated for. And this blog is worldwide.Kewl.
having way too much fun with lava challenges
But that dream reminded me it's the time of year for me to get ready to pay for my ad-free stuff on Xanga, which includes my original Lexx blog. On top of some of the ad-free investing, I've got 4 domain pointers. All of this investment comes out of pocket because I consider my blogs a hobby, not something I'm doing to make a living. I do this for me because it helps my head to writewritewrite and play with code. Blog hosts that insist on interrupting this process don't get used much, unless I'm using them for something else. WordPress is set up for gravatar verification and not much else except place holding and private content archiving. Maybe one day I really will have staff and open up the WordPress blogs in all their imagined glory, but for now, we wait.
I do wish my dream had been real. I wish I really could get all the content back I've ever lost. It's bad enough to have your blogs and websites closed out from under you, but even worse to delete your own content and then regret it years later. There is nothing more PTSD triggering on the internet than settling down roots in such a transient environment. I've even lost everything dear in an interactive gaming site because I didn't know it was beta created by a genius kid. Lately, Minecraft has updated, and now I'm nervous as hell that everything I've built on a 60-player server will be dumped before the end of the year because it's all outdated now.
lol, looks like Christmas season
You see why I get so many screen shots and vid captures now? Imagine not only losing the game you love because it shut down, but losing your memories of it. Thank goodness it was temporary, but the attempts at memory reconstruction have been nightmarishly depressing. I think I mentioned last fall that I was finally able to reconstruct a fairly accurate time line of ten very scrambled years in my past between severe PTSD over those memories and then the brain fail during a nasty viral illness hitting my nervous system.
It can all go *poof* at any time, every bit of it. Memories are the most precious things we have, next to living relationships, and the most fragile part of our existence in this world. All our silly squabbling over politics and opinionating over what we believe are nothing compared to being able to recognize someone we love, smell something lovely (I love the smell of fresh made alfalfa hay in the field), and taste our food. I've lost smell and taste for months at a time, I've nearly lost vision, partially lost a little hearing (and lost my ability to sing on key because I went tone deaf in one ear), and I'm still fighting not to lose what I can feel in my hands. I think I've mentioned the year my entire head, face, sinus, and even throat suddenly went numb. It's very unnerving. (Get it? haha)
I don't sweat the small stuff. Every day I'm getting through something, but one of the most important things you can know about me on the internet is that I will never ask readers for money. I write because I love to write, I share because I believe it's important, and I pay because that makes it more fun for me. I take ownership of my own content.
~~~~~~~~~~
Now it's Tuesday afternoon.
Ok, here's what's really going on with all the deep mining pix. I get these weird association obsessions because that's the way aspienado deals with stuff. A friend is moving this weekend, has about a 20 hour drive, and I guess this is kind of my way of being there in spirit. While my friend packed, I purged and organized all my minecraft chests and stocked the store because it made me feel like I was helping. And now that we're down to the cross country wire, I'm obsessively digging my way through the bottom of the world to a destination myself. Our township is pretty much in the -8000s longitude, and I have this weird curiosity to see whether I can follow a latitude line underneath all the things to the original world spawn point, which is 0,0. My latitude start point is -510 and I'm trying to stick to it as much as possible at a 5 block level up from absolute bottom of the world. I've been circumnavigating very dangerous lava beds and water, and part of what I hope to run into on my journey is 1- a stronghold, 2- a mesa biome, and 3- like I said, world spawn point. I've been watching the coordinates and designated biomes move past above me, have taken a few notes of places of interest I'd like to go see when I'm back out on top, like the ice mountains biome. I've already tunneled completely under two different oceans and several very different biomes and haven't yet run into a single other demarcated township through which I would technically be griefing if I kept tunneling without going around. I'm in multiplayer, so I'm really surprised I've had all this untouched wilderness to myself, and I'm seeing wonders no other eye has seen. I'm also getting really, really rich. I'm plowing through some pretty sweet ores down there. Anyway, I've got at least 5000+ more blocks to go to get anywhere near zero longitude, then I turn and zero down on the latitude. After that, who knows, I might keep on going for awhile. Something to do in between chores while I'm counting down to Memorial Day weekend.
This is from a week ago. It clicks to source, which clicks to this clip. I've spent the whole week thinking about this.
I don't fish for compliments, but I do take them seriously because I'm a difficult person to be friends with even on good days. A few lurkers have also let me know that they get what I'm doing and they're glad I'm doing it. In a very mixed up world, so many of us get lost in the dark, and like so many of my own lurkers now, I spent years sifting through the webs on very long dark nights and very sad empty days looking for little lights that let me know I'm not alone- I'm not alone feeling sad, I'm not alone feeling scared, I'm not alone feeling lost. I'm an autism spectrum super spoonie who has navigated blindly through terrible loss and frustration and anger, rebuilding my world tiny millimeter by millimeter up what seems like a very steep and jagged mountain looming over a nasty chasm. I know the ins and outs and angles of depression very well. I know how easy it seems like it would feel sometimes to just let go. I know how hard it is believing that hanging on is the right thing to do.
Pinky blog is a map I'm working on, the path I'm finding little by little up my mountain, and I share it because I believe that what I'm figuring out about how to survive is good and healthy for not just me, but for other people, too. I believe it's important to share what we learn, the joys and pains that helped us learn, and the hope we find in ourselves along our daunting journeys. It wound up turning into a love letter to a lost friend, and continues to grow now that we've been reunited.
Depression comes to us all in some form sooner or later. There is no contest over whose is worse or where it falls on a grading scale as simply sadness versus a diagnosed chemical imbalance. Depression is depression is depression. Sooner or later we all experience some level of depression, because we all live in our brains and we all experience life.
It's very important that we not tell each other to be quiet about our stuff, or to pretend everything is ok when it's not, or to make a game of self harming or self medicating for attention. Over this last year I had to make a very hard decision about disassociating from people who have quite severe depression in my opinion, but who have become so toxic that they think it's funny or 'right' to corrupt others around them into fellow self harm for the sake of words like love and friendship. It can get pretty twisted up, and since I've been there, I get it, but I cannot keep saying it's ok just because I'm friends with someone. I have other friends sinking in quicksands and stuck in quagmires who watched me try to keep my balance doing that, and in the end, all it did was hurt other people I care about, mainly lurkers teetering on brinks. Being a public person on twitter has consequences we don't always see.
If I'm part of hurting other people through ignorance and neglect, thenI am part of hurting other people. One of the saddest things I keep running into in the entertainment industry (which now seems to include twitter and blogging) is the idea that we must play the game to get brownie points, because someone 'above' us has some magical power that will wash down onto us if we do that. NO.
Everything we do in a spotlight sets examples to other people. I've been a very bad example a number of times throughout my past. I even nearly got a young man (and several others, if I think about it) killed because I was such an idiot. What brought us together was sadness. What blew us apart was self medicating to the point of neglect of our own safety. What we really needed was words.
We needed to hear I love you from people who made us feel bad. We needed to hear kindness from people who used their own emotional messes to manipulate us for their own reasons or beliefs. We needed to hear forgiveness and gladness when all we seemed to get was accusations and fault finding. We ran away to find each other, and everything only got worse because we didn't know how to start saying new words, so we found them in drugs and alcohol, and in very loud places where people wink at the way newbies are used up like new toys while people are reassuring them they love them.
I won't go into again how and why I found myself wrenched away from that pit of human despair, but I will say find your words. YOUR words. Not someone else's words. Don't get into the habit of repeating other people's euphemisms and catch phrases. SAY YOUR WORDS. We are here on this earth to say words because nothing and no one else alive here can. (We make up stories of animals and space visitors that can talk because we dream, but WE are the ones with words.) It's up to us to get this figured out. And if you can't say them, then type them, paint them, sew them, build them, create the things you see in your heart because you love them. Live your words.
But never tell someone to shut up when they are telling the truth.
If you don't like the truth because it opens up your own can of worms that you hide, you need to be dumping those worms out and turning them into words yourself. If you don't like the truth because it exposes something you keep secret, you need to stop either creating secrets to keep or holding secrets that others tell you to keep. If you are part of creating lifetimes of sadness in other people, you need to look into what is so broken in yourself that you would keep breaking more people. But pretending everything is ok isn't the solution to anything. I see far too many people doing that.
The best television is when we see characters tear themselves open and reveal truths, or discover truths, or fight for truths. But in real life we get addicted to TV shows and self medicating because we don't live our truths. Think about that.
The coolest people on earth, I think, are the ones who rip themselves open and shred themselves apart looking for ways to share how to see truth. The best entertainment on this earth is that which pulls us into that emotional abyss that makes us really feel something. But the most ironic thing about ALL of it is that the entire industry rests on real people keeping secrets, and the viewers using the merch of industry as a catatonic because they're afraid to deal with real truth themselves.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now it's Wednesday morning.
I haven't been able to decide whether to post this or not, rewrite it or not, possibly delete it or not.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams." Some of you know this from Willy Wonka, but he was quoting Arthur O'Shaughnessy.
“We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, it seems.”
I got this snip on 2-5-16.
The witch thing in the title came from a dream a couple nights ago. Silk touch is used to enchant tools and weapons, and I've been thinking about making another silk touch pickaxe for removing ore blocks intact and using them as part of my evil lair construction. 'Distressed' ore just looks cool. I wish they had purple ores for amethysts. I think the witch thing came from me getting blasted in the face with potion again the other day, and as I was staggering away I accidentally hit inventory and noticed there was a little ball and chain emblem and a countdown going on for 'slowness'. No wonder I can't seem to win a witch fight, I'm in slo-mo. Good grief.
I'll be very curious to see if the 'Frontier invasion motif' adds history to what comes after the Enterprise series. For old and new fans alike, let me remind you that the entire series rests on Vulcans first discovering humans in First Contact, and as we watch developments throughout the Enterprise pre-TOS history series, we see humans and Vulcans struggling with precedents and rules about noninterference and very accidental, very dangerous and destructive (to Earth!) involvement because there is a race out there that is greatly offended about humans showing up and exposing their secret design to control the galaxy, and they use time as a weapon in ways that not even Doctor Who could fix. Enterprise (the series) does a very nice job setting up for TOS, and since Justin Lin is a huge fan of the entire franchise, I really hope he continues this filling in bits of ST history.
Ok, that got my blood pumping this morning. I'm kind of Schrodinger's cat today, playing phone tag about an appointment that got moved and just missed the office last night, so I hafta be ready first thing this morning for just in case whatever. Got a great start on my new list stuff yesterday and then fell right into #napclub and next thing you know, the day was gone, but hey, at least I actually made a The Flash live tweet, yay!
Storm rolling in and might hafta unplug. Time to get moving.
I wrote this first bit yesterday afternoon around 4ish.
This whole encrypted thing blogger has switched to isn't solving any problems on my end. I'm still getting the same bot hits on the same stuff. I know, it wasn't meant for that, but it would've been nice. It's all about protecting reader privacy (Google, who owns Blogger, is the one tracking your cookies), not about protecting the content creator from bug hacks. I've got 5 different app crawlers visiting regularly now. Thank goodness they're still pretty much on the more respectable side of hitchhiking.
I feel like whining lots more, but I told my head only if it can fit it into limericks. We're at a stand off. It's pretty serious when my head refuses to pop out a few limericks. Nope, we can't even settle on youtube. It's bad. I think this is about as close to absolutely stalemated as my head and body have ever come. I'm sure I've had much worse days, but the pain and depression stuff always stayed just enough off balance that one or the other could be cajoled.
In the meantime, in the darkest back corner of my head, a laugh starts to snicker, then cackle, and is now practicing its MWAHAHAs in the mirror. This, this is where the evil lurks back out of the shadows, during the stalemate that keeps the rest of my head deadlocked in disagreement.
Oh, here it comes...
I ran on and on in the snow
I looked over every meadow
I climbed every part
And dug to the heart
Looking for more I could know
I tried every corner I could
Ran up and down every wood
I knew there must be
An original key
To unlock a mind
Like a map left to find
Wherever a person once stood
And once it was found
My heart was unwound
By the most amazing chateau
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now it is today.
My dream last night was absolutely ridiculous. My dad had arranged an end of world hunker down in bunkers kind of drama that would last at least a year, and I was put in charge of inventory. (I'm really good at inventory.) As I was running perimeter one last time before lockdown, I discovered that our plan had escalated into the surrounding populace joining in, and our tidy hidey hole bunker was now raggedly rimmed with vehicles and tents and groups of people and dogs that definitely made the entire thing look like a newsworthy shanty town, and I was a little more than upset that none of these people had thought to bring their own year's supply of food. I was about to go back inside perimeter and report to my dad when I woke up, and I can't even tell you the relief.
My childhood wasn't quite that bad, but the stories I grew up with bordered on that level of tension, yes. We lived on a sustainable farm and grew most of our own food, which we processed all by ourselves, and by most I really do mean everything but peanut butter and vanilla. We also bought 8 gallon jars of raw honey from a special farm once a year, too. Stuff like that. I grew up expecting the end of the world because that's how my dad played minecraft in real life.
So. Minecraft. I'm still struggling with actually building a real house. I finally chose a place, and when I started building, it all started turning into an evil lair. Which is cool, I love it, but a house. A designated living area. I have a place ready, but it's been what, a couple weeks? And I haven't been able to start on it yet for some reason.
I ran off to the mines again to think, and spent several days mining the biggest acreage of obsidian beds you ever saw. That got old after awhile, plus I have no idea what to do with the obsidian because I want a lighter colored house, not another bunker that is so dark I need glowing eyes to see anything. Ug.
So I ran back to singleplayer, then found out our old realm was back up and ran off to it. Did some cool stuff, but man, what I'm really really good at is establishing bunkers. I tried really hard to build a little house, really I did, but it turned into more like a meet up hangout than a house. I mean, it's cool and all, but it's not a house.
I'm hung up. I can't seem to actually build a real house. Everything in me resists it. I almost can't wrap my head around just throwing some walls and a roof up and calling it mine. All I know is that I want a whole wall of stained glass and light colored floors and a very high airy ceiling. I want to feel like a billionaire with nothing better to do than to drink something very expensive and gaze up at the stained glass while I talk to a pet fish in a little pool sunk into the floor.
What I finally found yesterday goes far beyond any evil design I ever came up with. The organization alone, the dedication to project, the extensive amount of work that went into the very careful owning all the things. It's the most powerful house-tree-person representation I've ever seen in my life. I bow to the sheer vision whispering explosions through my mind.
I came reeling away going that. THAT. That might have been something I could have dreamed of building if I'd had the vision, but my own vision is so stunted and corrupted by my childhood that I keep running and spelunking bunkers through all the worlds.
Imagine the two of us together. The two extremes. Two secret evils mirroring opposites in each other. The truly amusing thing to all of this is the quiet one behind the scenes hides the most stunning stuff, and the blabby one splashing around the interwebs hides in bunkers behind the scenes. Y'all can see my head. You open that door and you get a bazooka in your face. You do not want to open that other door. There is so much more than a puny little bazooka lurking in that head.
Yesterday convinced me I'd made the right decision. Come hell or high water, a few things are going to start changing.
You remember this song? I found this last summer and it became my survival mechanism through all the things crashing down in my head. All the Americans missing what yesterday's post meant, omg you have no idea. Several fans around the world started combing my blogs again. They know it's on.
Poor @bonenado dragging out of bed for work after a big weekend doing nonstop work outside and then a late night marathoning several eps of s2 GoT. (Yes, we're behind.) Happy Monday.
Don't you 'Happy Monday' ~me~
click pic for more
Part of our big excitement was a bee swarm showing up a little too close to where we all wind up outside. It is practically on top of the neighbor's garden, and directly across that from my car. Last thing I need on top of the worst tree allergy season ever is a bee sting. Between 2 different bee crews, we'll see who gets it taken care of the fastest this morning. Lotta beekeepers in the Ozarks. This is a good way to fill a hive with new stock for free.
The hummingbirds finally showed up, too. @bonenado was actually starting to pace over it.
click for vid loop
This next is me fussing yesterday about an algorithm again. Ignore it.
I've been a little irked with blogger's inbuilt top count system because it isn't accurate at all. Out of the top ten posts of all time displayed, one never actually made it into the top 18, according to my list of anything that broke over 150 views. 2 more displayed in the top ten never made it into the actual real top ten, yet they are sprinkled through the top ten rank like they're big stuff, while 3 others that got more views never made the top ten at all. It's very disappointing to see it so mangled like this, and I have no idea how in the world their counting algorithm explains any of it (unless it's a sort of burst count on how fast views come in when first published, but that still doesn't really explain it), so I removed my top ten all time widget. I thought about making a manual list of top 5 posts, because they've held pretty steady and they're easy to check on, since the view counts are way higher than my regular highs, but meh. I already have too much real work to do. Top 5 counts right now are 629, 544, 291, 225, and 217. Pretty sure the first two are Ukraine app bot thingies, the 3rd one has meth in the title so of course it gets hit, the 4th links from my Lexxperience blog, and the 5th is featured in my right side column. No big secrets to popular posts. If I wanted to venture into 6th, I'd just facepalm about possibly being the only person in the world actually blogging about rioting if Rick Lagina dies. I really do need a blue ribbon for that title, yet it never showed up in my top ten all time, thanks a lot, Blogger. 7th is actually one that earned it's spot, and I worked hard for it, 8th was a porn gimmick fluke, 9th was a complete misunderstanding, and 10th was a thought process about identifying with characters in a TV show, and I'm a little fond of it so I'm glad to see it actually gets read a bit.
I put this here for a friend
The popular last 30 days is actually correct, and the top posts as time clicks by every day are genuinely reflected in that count. Even if an older post suddenly takes off again, it gets picked up by the counters, and as the counts drop back off over the last calendar month, the ranks go back down.
click for hilarious Russian antics
Question everything. Never take your counter widgets and services for granted. I could go on about google analytics not being the darling so many think it is, but again, meh. I actually get more hits on tags anyway (groups of posts), which only show up as overall visits, so I don't have a clue what a lot of you are even reading, unless you load the main dotcom from a bookmark or outside source. But not to worry, still can't see you because you're all smart being logged into google browser and masking yourselves. Well, most of you.
I'm being boring this morning. It's part of being in withdrawal and filling up the void with GoT instead.
do I even have to say 'click for more'?
clicks to moving gifs
One more? Srsly, bcuz #Monday.
actually clicks to other cute memes that have nothing to do with Benny C
Me yesterday after @bonenado laughed at my hair. Yes, I know, I'm not Benedict. Look anyway.
Yes, yes, one more... Just a real guy like us. Except he doesn't dare whine about Monday mornings out loud. Clicks to more Ben stuff in case you can't move on yet. I need to move on.
Thanx to a friend's character name on an RP board, I dreamed about an old boss I'm not at all fond of all night with the same name. It got weird. No, I'm not telling you. Because. Ok, all I'm saying is I nearly got caught hiding the butter, the office was a wreck, he was using an old WWII radio mic, and for some reason, the British were coming and threatening to break in and I nearly got caught stealing his butter out of the break room fridge. Yes, there's more, that's all you're getting. Of all the people in the world I never wanna have another sexual tension dream about, it's him, and one of these days one of my dreams will go epic and then I'll hafta deal with the morning PTSD of having raped and murdered my old boss in my dream. The WWII mic really threw you guys, didn't it? I think it was an allegory for how bad he was at communicating during our morning meetings. Also, I was in the store when the Twin Towers got bombed. There's way more, but seriously, that's it. Those dreams are nearly as bad as my old school bus dreams that went on for years and years. No, I have no idea what the butter was about. Yes, I'm pretty sure we can all guess. I stole his mojo. Srsly. One day he was off the clock and walking through the store in super short super thin shiny gym shorts, and of course everyone he walks by tells him how hot he looks, as he passes me I snort and blurt that he looks totally gay in those shorts (he had a wife and five kids), and everything just went spiraling down like a smoking biplane since then. He jumped on the death of a child in my family as an opportunity to harass me till I broke and left just before my 401K rolled into its 5 year thingy. The nightmares ever since then have been ludicrously laced with sexual tension and one-upmanship (I looked that up, that's the way to properly spell it). Doesn't help at all that he really was kinda hawt.
No. No new lappy yet. Tuesday night was all about @bonenado's pickup, so since I had to run in against traffic in the dark ahead of possible freezing rain, we went ahead and got the shopping done and I just canceled my appointment Wednesday and stayed home. So still on old croaky offy lappy. Yes, he's still driving my car.
My brain is all blurred up. This whole FOCUS!!! thing is only grinding my wheels on one blog right now, and I think I'm pretty much done with dredging my soul as writing practice. Some of you are going thank god. Others are going but leave in the dreams.
So, 2015- Conquered fears, processed deaths, clawed a few eyeballs, found an old friend, got Sherlocked, explained all the things, watched numbers, learned out to make tables, got a new phone, discovered banoffee, counted sox, ran with a goat god gang, had good holidays for once, decided being called a sox goddess was a little overboard with the whole Pinky sox porn pun and generally drew back into a shell, although thankfully not my cave.
2016 so far- Totally dumped a buncha twitter lists, scaling down public priorities, cut a few projects, sized down my gangs, going underground more to WORK, still want staff to help me interface with my publisher, but dang it, one last hurdle to wrap my head around called "close your eyes and hit that frakkin send button", and all kinds of Lexx about to consume my life while facepalming my way through learning more new stuffs, which my brain is rebelling against even thinking about right now, but I'm obviously in a mood to raze last year to the ground and start fresh.
The mitosis thing cracks me up.
this source rocks, click if you're bored
Meanwhile. #brainfry You guys didn't see the old days when I wrote limericks of luv to a dead assassin on an RP board as a robot head. I'm not very good at this stuff at all (although I'm awesome with limericks), but I can totally see this one if Khan ever fixated on a pet.
Oh well, moving on with the day as best one can with a 3-day (so far) headache. I actually forgot about coffee entirely for about 20 minutes because I was so brainless dragging out of bed.
This just made my day. I'm going to run this 100 times while I do stuff.
Need. Jam. Stat. Here's to 2015. Waving goodbye to the sadness and angst, although it was enlightening and, once again, life changing. Finally worked through my stuff. In full public view!!! I've come a really long way.
Coffee going in. Bunny countdown on. Wakey wakey, little brain. One more day. Bring it on, 2016.
Braincation is going pretty well, I think. The Sherlock marathon isn't moving along as quickly as I'd hoped because I keep falling asleep, but I'm glad because I'm making up for last week and gearing up for next week. I just had one of the most interactive and wonderful Christmases I've ever had in my adult life (we've been through some really sad and awful Christmases), and all this catching up napping is pretty awesome, too.
I think I've done a New Year's Eve look back through the years, but I don't think I've done New Year's Day.
1/1/2008- I had been through 6 weeks of hellish CMV infection over holidays and didn't know I was on my way further down the black hole, but hey, optimism can't hurt, right?
It's amazing how quickly we adapted to that new 22" monitor and didn't even realize it. We took the Westinghouse back yesterday and have a Samsung on order. In the meantime, going back to this little 17" feels like we're back in the Stone Age. Wild. Here we were fussing about the 22" and we already miss it. But Scott didn't like that brand, either.
I'm feeling pretty optimistic about this new year. I'm drug free again, excepting for the basics-- blood pressure, thyroid, birth control. Feeling not half bad because I'm back in balance controlling the fibromyalgia and stomach problems. Not particularly bouncing around the house, but getting things done and feeling like life might be getting a little more fun again.
Over that last week watched Mr. Bean's Holiday-- sploit, I highly recommend that one.
Oddly, the ol' crochet itch is making a comeback. Wonder if that'll result in anything. And it's a good sign, because I had so much trouble with my hands since the Bell's that I had to stop embroidering, crocheting, beading, and even writing letters. Seems to all be coming back a bit. Hope it lasts.
Also regaining an interest in my websites. Hadn't checked my trackers in months and was pleasantly surprised to see that my Lexx site has been visited from over 15 countries during the holidays. Still having cool ideas about a new chicken blog. Have been doing a little myspace work today on the Eddie Izzard space (thanx for those pjs, sploit, made a cool background... haha) and my other blog, doing some more tossing out and simplifying, so I'll just paste the rest of what I'm thinking over from there.
Hope you all have an outstanding 2008.
Rang out the old year with homemade popcorn balls and POTC monopoly (Scott is a real gloater, watch that guy), and Dick Clark dropping the ball, as it were. Brought in the freezing cold 11 degree wind chill new year with bacon and homemade cinnamon rolls, and cool new stuff. New black toile on pink satin pjs with Eddie Izzard's Dress to Kill dvd tucked inside from my sploit (just about the most clever gift I think I've ever received), a huge new makeup collection for only $15 yesterday on a red tag sale at Penney's with a gift card, and a bunch of really nice winter sox by St. John's Bay for only $1 a pair. Beat that, Walmart. Watching the Tournament of Roses parade now.
:edit: In the event you caught that parade today, it opened with my alma mater, Pride Marching Band - Bands - Missouri State University, which has one of the top bands in the nation and always put on spectacular shows. Today they intro'd the Tournament of Roses president and Grand Marshall Emeril Lagasse. Also in the event that you caught any of the parade reruns on the Travel Channel and happened to see a text 'holla' that said "Scott ur the bomb", that was me, ha.
1/1/2009- I didn't blog anything privately throughout January but I do have extensive notes in February. I was public blogging surveys back then to get through because I'd been so very ill all year and was still sinking. On January 4th I published this one, which I later moved to Surveypalooza for better mobile viewing. from old to new survey I can't say enough for silly surveys keeping me going through some really bad stuff, although that is one of my more boring ones. I started picking up a bit later in 2009 when new Trek sent me through a spectacular rant, and then I disappeared again into private blogging in 2010.
1/1/2010- I actually did this. Seriously. I kept egg charts on my chickens through 2009. That's how desperate I was for distraction in real life.
In 2009, my 5 hens laid a total of 785 eggs.
Jaizzy- 131
Macy- 230
Dooney- 294
Spencer- 99
Bean- 29
Dooney and Macy never went into molt. Spencer and Jaizzy both went through two different molts within the year. Bean went into a partial molt and still hasn't grown some of the feathers back, even after two months.
Jaizzy is several years old and lays gigantic eggs. She's a Production Red cross between New Hampshire and Leghorn who is getting arthritic, but still otherwise very healthy with lush feathers and clean skin. She had Fowl Pox a couple of years ago but didn't seem to suffer any problems from it. She's 'wild' and lives in her own pen, but very set in her habits and now allows Scott to pick her up. She will eat snakes, frogs, and lizards, and can fight like a pro.
Macy is a Black Australorp, a breed famous for being prolific egg layers, solid black from beak to toenail (excepting her comb and wattles). She missed one week of laying this year for unknown reasons, but picked right back up. She's never seemed sick, and she is the top of the pecking order. Her eggs have steadily increased in size until they are nearly as big as Jaizzy's. Very tame, allows petting, walks at my feet, inspects everything we do.
Dooney is a California White, a cross between Leghorn and California Black, bred to be super producers. She is mostly white with a few random black flecks, very energetic, very enthusiastic about food, particular about her nest, and always the first to try to fly out the pen door. She dusts vigorously and will get muddy like a pig trying to dust in wet dirt. In spite of frequently looking very dirty, she lays pretty white eggs, all identical every day right down to the small bulge near the pointy end. She lays through all kinds of weather extremes like a machine.
Spencer is a Brown Leghorn, a fancy breed that looks more like a wild chicken, and certainly acts like one. High strung, preferring natural wild food, obedient to 'herding' only when she feels the need to be part of the group. Panics easily, gets sick easily (seems to be anxiety-induced), but lays *big* pearl colored eggs with very pointy ends and giant yolks inside. If she didn't have a henhouse, she would roost in the trees, and if we had a rooster she'd probably go broody and hatch chicks out in the woods. She can fly 100 feet, and bursts into flight like a cross between quail and pheasants.
Bean is an anomaly. She is a Speckled Sussex, a quiet breed supposed to be a steady layer and good for brooding and hatching chicks, but 'twas not to be with the Bean. I believe she suffered an internal injury or illness of some kind that destroyed her ovaries. She laid very tough shelled small eggs for one month before suddenly expelling a mass of crumbly stones, and has never laid again since, and doesn't seem inclined to start back up or even care to sit on a nest. I can't tell if she's ill, seems fine and eats good. She keeps up ok with the others, but definitely low Bean on the totem pole. Just keeping her around as a pet, see what happens with her.
I'm not going to average how many eggs per month or week comes from 785 since each chicken is so different, and some of them have problems. I assume the egg production for Jaizzy will continue to go down a little over the next year, and that Bean will never lay again. Have no idea about Spencer or whether the other two will actually go into a molt of some kind or just continue to slow molt a couple of feathers at a time while they continue laying. But, I'm also not going to keep count during 2010 to compare to this year. Got a bit old about 6 months into it, and would probably be more fun if I had a bigger flock of chickens to run stats and charts on for fun. But I think we can see that I had pretty good production out of the ones advertised for that, and without experimentation with more of their own kind and changes in feed and whatnot, I couldn't be sure what affects it. The one thing that happened this year that stopped all laying instantaneously was finding a snake in the nest, but once a fake egg was put in the nest, they mostly resumed back to normal. Other than that, and besides actual molting, I can't point to weather, temperature, free ranging vs. staying in, or any particular foods that make laying better. I can tell the chickens ~feel~ better with more fats, non-grain proteins, and greens in their diet than just chicken feed, and they seem psychologically more 'up' when they can get out and run and scratch a bit. The fact that Jaizzy is still producing as much as she is might be testimony to good health care. Another point worth mentioning is that none of my chickens have ever picked up lice or mites from the wild birds around here. I've never had to treat them for parasites or infections, they've never had shots or antibiotics or medications in their feed. I've lost previous chickens to unknown illness that could only be ovarian tumor or possibly eating something like a carpenter nail. And foxes.
Enough of the chicken and egg report. Probably far too obsessed with it, but at least I've learned a few things.
1/1/2011 "2011 revolutions"
Some changes I'll prolly be making over the coming year, although I hesitate to prioritize them into my life as resolutions.
Unsub from the 'patriotic resistance' league of super heroes who have nothing better to do all day than reprint articles off other websites and freak out about them. Two years of people freaking out across the nation is enough to last me a lifetime. I seem to be the only one who understands the tongue in cheek sarcasm I do about the death of our nation as we know it and the end of the world. It's like the joke on the Futurama 4-parter about the spacetime rip showing up, the people screaming in the streets for two weeks until they're exhausted and can barely breathe out a quiet 'aaahh...'
Start ~really~ throwing stuff away. Had a good talk with Scott today about going through the trash to pull things out that he might be able to get a quarter for at a yard sale, like a half skein of yarn I've had for 20 years. If I haven't used it in 20 years, I'll NEVER use it, and anyone else so badly needing to buy it at a yard sale is really pathetic, and Scott would only be enabling them, after holding onto it in the basement for another 5-10 years first, making him even more pathetic than they are. Yeah, throwing stuff away.
On a last year's resolution success note, I have successfully stopped all paid magazine subscriptions from coming through the mail over the last 6 months by refusing to renew anything. What a relief.
Just a quickie coming through, still working on the letter, right around the part about the blue jello.
This came a couple days later. I edited loads of stuff out, but you can probably figure that out.
Such a joy being married into this family. So many good years down the drain. ...
Several errands to run while I'm out. Library, post office, Scott needs 'teeth glue'. Contemplating getting my hair trimmed somewhere other than Walmart. Seriously, I look like a troll doll with short hair on the back of my head. If I greased my hair back I'd look like the Fonz.
Oh, yeah, I forgot I was going to make his family imaginary this year. They don't really exist, it's a figment of my imagination.
Thought I'd take a look back at last year about this time, see what's changed.
1- The little cedar tree behind the deck is gone.
2- Started last year with a ton of snow, nothing this year.
3- I was running sci-fi marathons, this year I'm doing cooking show marathons.
4- I was on antibiotic for swollen glands, and going through that awful neck pain and nasty headaches. This year (so far) is much nicer compared to that.
5- The nurse of the corn made my life a living nightmare, this year I have a new doctor.
6- Went out to eat for new year's, this year nothing.
7- Chickens were laying real good last year at this time, this year nothing at all.
8- Last year a bunch of Florida manatees died of unknown cause, this year Arkansas blackbirds and drumhead fish are dying by the thousands around an area having lots of tiny earthquakes. Maybe a lotta methane and CO2 bubbles are suffocating them or something.
9- --- smashed furniture in gram's house last year, this year he's an angel after punching his mom in the face.
10- Last year we were still breaking ice off the water dishes, this year they're all electric.
11- Last year I could walk out in the bitter cold without having an asthma attack right away. This year I don't go out at all if it's under 30 degrees.
12- --- blew up all over Scott last year. A whole year has gone by and he's still not confronting her, even though we now know the reason last year with her was so bad was because she was boozing on the sly.
13- The neighbor who caught his house on fire down the street across from us is gone now because he died a few months ago.
That was just the first couple of weeks of January last year. I think we've had more change over this last year than nearly all the other years we've lived here.
I'm totally stalling. I need to eat breakfast and wash my hair and get ready to go.
1/1/2012 "the 'stuck in the middle with you' song has been on my mind all day"
I won't share, but we rang in the new year playing board games in an office a young PTSD Iraq vet had moved into because he was terrified to live in his own house for some reason. I just wanna go on public record for being there as a mother-in-law that night when his own mother wasn't. The next few months got pretty rough for him.
1/1/2013 Bunny was in the oven and Twink was moving in and out and Xanga had turned my life upside down... I finally got those new glasses just a few months ago, lol.
I've got to spend January going through the stacks of stuff I cleaned off the table and counter and just dumped into bags. All my medicare stuff, mostly. Nearly have all my old medical paid off now, only $200 left on one bill from 2011. First time in ages. Want to start saving money back for new glasses. Will be 3 years around May. Get organized on where my money will go this coming year so I don't overspend.
12/31/2014 That's today! Pinky blog hits finally ripped passed Pinky Stuff on SyfyDesigns this last fall. I look back on projections I had in 2012 and fall over laughing. I had no idea I would be doing all the stuff I'm doing now.
We have Bunny all day long. I've been up since 5 a.m. and I'll probably be in bed by sundown. I'll probably be back up in the wee hours tomorrow morning, like I was last year. I'm going to call my bluff and raise me double or nothing. Can't wait to see what 2016 is going to bring. Oh, yeah, another full Bunny day on Saturday. You guys won't be seeing me much, lol.
I'm still calling this week a braincation. Sorry social medias, I'm being mowed flat by a 2 1/2 year old. You didn't see me stopping and doing many things in between all the sentences here for the last 4 hours.
This is me and lappy going down together in our final hours together before I pick up the new laptop next week.
Quick look back.
My new obsession taking over my life.
Breaking open like a pinata last spring.
This #bencongruity kept me sane.
Khanlock drove me through the summer.
What the frak, tossed sanity to the wind over the holidays.
And I'm going out with this playlist jam. I hope you guys have awesome 2016s. Don't be stupid tonight partying, ok?
