I didn't make this, but google clicks it to the generator and not the finish.
You know how I used to make lists? And then I'd check in on how the lists were going. I'm noticing all that kind of buzzes on automatic now in the background, and nothing is truly being screwed up much any more even though sometimes it feels like it. I started the actual Plan in 2008. I'm just now feeling like I have my whole brain synced up. That's how long health fail and nerve damage can take, but it's so much better than being stuck like that, or worse, gone by now.
I'm still here!!!!!!!!
Ok, where am I now and what am I doing? I'm liking the auto posts that roll out. I'm liking that they tag-thread into a story. I'm liking that I can walk off and not think about that while I work on other things.
One of the more recent things coming up is getting into the old fandom forum for salvage work. Tech support is in now, and the next few steps will involve making decisions here and there about where to house and maintain. I'm cool with whatever we need, the salvage itself is the goal.
Server staff meeting happened this weekend, and my two major assignments are to get back on platforms and research a new End spawn area. That's my homework the rest of this week in between real life.
Google super changed analytics, and all my properties unhooked. I have to go hook all those back up by the 25th.
I still haven't deleted Kaspersky and I really need to shut that auto pay off. Any time now, I think. Facepalm if I missed that. My email has been so screwed on my phone, finally got an app on, now my phone is so bossed around that I just don't even check it because I'm ignoring it so hard. *sigh* I know, not good business practices.
I have been using a Janika Banks address for Klout, and I'm thinking about making it my official contact address for property ownerships. I have to put something down, so that might be a thing.
Real life mode, have made it through this far into tree allergy season without resorting to using a steroid. This is typically one of my big airway rescue times of year, and I'm very pleased that I'm living more normally than ever through it happening all around me. Really cranking the antihistamines, still using hepa all over the house, still running my washer like a crazed maniac, still stopping most of it at the entry room doorway.
Tomorrow is a huge day, two appointments back to back, and Friday, depending on how I assess, I might be done with another round of therapy. No idea yet, but kinda looks like I'll be released. I can always go back later in the year if my shoulder flares up again. This area has turned out to be a crucial key to major pain referral and the reason I finally caved and got on gabapentin in the first place. I don't see me getting off the gabapentin, in fact have increased the dose this spring, but since I'm in Plan C now, I'm not going to waste time frustrating myself. The goal is to work within the parameters for best function as long as possible. That means continuing to control my blood sugar, don't get dehydrated, get plenty of real rest and good sleep, and eat as nutritiously as possible. Medications cannot save anything. They are bandaids, and they bring in setbacks of their own, so I have to be smart about this.
I don't talk about my real actual life a lot, but here is the thing. I don't run around doing much. I don't go to the mall or theme parks (I'm in a tourist area), I don't go to theaters or restaurants, I don't go out in the sun for outdoor events even though I very much wish I could, I don't over plan and over do, and because of all that, I don't wind up laid out on a couch for 3 days recovering. I'm a super spoonie, I know my limits. However, because I am diligent, I am able to drive my own car, do my own shopping, and be there for others as needed (within reasonable limits) because I haven't worn myself out doing all the other things. I am able to self care, self motivate, and self monitor because I try to stay in a good place for depression swings. The worst thing anyone can do for depression is spike their blood sugar and live with high blood pressure, and drag in the door laden with pollen and pet allergies to the point where the house falls into disarray and there's no energy left to clean anything up. I've been there. I've been so down physically and emotionally that I hid in bed for weeks at a time. I had to consciously decide to rearrange my priorities, my needs, and my wants so that I could find my way out of continual super fail on all sides.
I don't sit around, either. I cannot sit and watch TV very long without creating new joint pain and headaches. I can't sit at a computer for a long time doing whatever I want without seriously crashing my day, because I'm so useless when I stand up and I can't think any more. I take lots of breaks moving around and getting chores done. I do touch bases with several groups or family, I do my nerve glosses and stretches, I line up what else I need to be doing through the week/month, and I feel good about being able to do these things.
I don't dwell. I don't dare. The minute I go into 'poor me' mode, I lose. Profoundly. I sink into a bog and ruin the rest of my day with sadness. There is no one I know anywhere who can pull me out of that, and they shouldn't have to, in my opinion. If my mood is entirely dependent on another person boosting me back up, and they don't do it continually, then we both lose. I wear someone out, the relationship fails, and I'm alone. It's up to me to want to live badly enough to stand up myself. I want to live in a clean home. I want to eat good food. I want to look a little better than just rolled out of bed. When left on my own and no real humans, I'm the worst bachelor in the world. I'll wear the same clothes for a week, won't comb my hair, forget whether I've eaten, and utterly fail to meet anyone halfway by making it to an appointment. Because other people are in my life, I rise to better, and I'm glad I have those challenges. Without them I would be a blob of gross wasting away, curled up in a dark room with headphones on and medicated out of my mind.
I had a good mother's day this year. It's one of the first ones I've made it through without a big depression dive. Between that and still floating above the tree allergies, I'm pretty much having a phenomenal spring.
And since I have memory fail, I'm putting it all here so I can come back and see that I had a good day/week/month. 😊
I forewent buying my usual bag of chocolate chips this last week and everything has gone all to hell. Well, I'm doing great managing and juggling and accomplishing, even organizing, but I'm mentally smh (any interpretation on that works just fine) and accidentally doubling or skipping coffee, and once that slippery slope sends me slithering sideways surreptitiously (I have honestly never used that word before, I hate that word because it's used far too much in all things print- seriously, do you ever hear anybody actually use that word in real life?), nevermind, went off course and I no longer care if I properly finish that thought or sentence.
~ the next day ~
I could go on about how cool it was getting my own radishes out nearly all by myself in a number of years and everything hurts because physical therapy but look at me go, or I could just drop it and move on.
Not sure how I'm doing it because super fail on several fronts, but actually remembered to get my own daughter's Mother's Day fleurs ordered before the blackout dates (nothing like having a child right on top of Mother's Day and not one florist would get flowers to her after a really rough delivery 5 years ago and I have somehow mixed up my days ever since), and I can't even with the rest after so much dealing last month. I'm closed for the rest of this month.
Ok, not shut down entirely, just not dealing with any more gooey sappy reminders of sad for awhile. Done with sad. The hangover after finally processing a big sad leaves me nothing for anything else, so this month I am hiding from the world party in a metaphorical bathroom.
What evil despot doesn't want an obsidian chessboard built into the floor?
Can't help remembering Eddie Izzard's British space program skit (from Dress to Kill) when I see the moon over my elevator.
I've also started the structural support for a roller coaster and started testing the stained glass wall mural thing.
Family is a funny thing, isn't it? All this pressure around Mother's Day and most of us have so many problems with real life junk that it's almost impossible to either live up to it or play into it or coast over it without some kind of trigger going off.
Was talking to my dad a couple weeks ago, he confessed he shot my niece's dog, and yes, it was over his chickens, which are allowed to roam freely on another person's property but anyone else's pets are not, but this time he got back way more than he dished out. I've been chuckling every little bit over the sass he caught back, and I'm sure that's putting it very lightly. I didn't hear penitence in his voice, but I did hear 'oopsie' behind the having me look up schnoodles on the webs, which I'm wondering if he paid for, or at least offered to pay for. I hope so, anyway.
I grew up with my dad killing dogs over stupid trivial things, flogging dogs half to death over killing one chicken, and mercilessly taking puppies away and killing them until his favorite dog could no longer stand to be around him and ran so far away that he finally gave her to someone kinder. I was sitting in college classes (I commuted every day) when Dad shot my own dog because it killed one of my chicks. I really need to repeat this. MY dog killed one of MY chicks, a little ball of fluff, and my dad SHOT THE DOG. That chick cost me about $2. That dog was a rescue and had just gone through a spay surgery and shots that cost me $50. I never got an apology or an offer to replace it, and I never expected either after the way I grew up. The emotional abyss ran so deep between us that I barely even questioned it, although the anger has never gone away.
My dad is not a bad person. He never beat me growing up, never drank, never cheated on mom, never gambled, never anything bad that you can think of. He was there for every holiday (even though he didn't believe in them), there through thick and thin right up to the day my mom died, and he's still there for all of us in his own weird way. Incidentally, he visited the nursing home nearly every single day during the 5 years my mom lived there. The staff said they'd never seen anyone do that before.
My dad was a mixture of somewhat kind and extremely pragmatic. I know now that he's probably deeper on the Asperger spectrum than I am, and I have come to realize I myself am a difficult person to live with. I am much kinder, but I'm still extremely pragmatic. I grew up not crying because I was raised to be tough, but as I've grown away from that, the crying doesn't stop.
I had to have my own dog put down a few years ago by a vet when he was only 4 because the arthritis eating him up and freezing his spine had become so horrible than even daily pain pills for horses could no longer stop the pain, and when his kidneys started failing, I made the decision and then cried for days. I had never cried over a pet before. I don't know if my dad has ever cried over a dog. I know when he was a boy he had a pet chicken out of 250 that would come to him to be held, and while I don't know what drove a young boy into a chicken pen to hold a chicken, I do know that he and all his brothers left his family farm (they are Mennonites), and only one ever came back after both parents were dead. I've heard the barest stories about his father being hard to live with. Somehow, chickens have become extremely dear to my dad, and he will break his human relationships over any other pet killing a chicken. Since I eventually also lost it over a chicken, I think I get it.
That might sound dumb or strange, but not when you've been broken. I'm pretty sure my dad was broken at a fairly young age, and he found a way to survive. He cut the parts off that hurt and kept going, like I also learned to do growing up. He was never hard on me like his dad was on him, at least not physically and verbally, but intellectually he put me through the ringer forcing me to debate religion and politics at ten years old, and emotionally epic failing by having me help carry the puppies to where he killed and buried them. I'll never forget seeing puppies' heads stomped open.
Something was very broken in my dad to be able to do that. He didn't have any emotion doing it, didn't explain it away to me or even think about my feelings. By the time I was ten I could handle pretty much anything, even my dad, and I was the one who later pointed out that allowing a dog to have puppies over and over and killing them over and over was a bit of a waste of the dog's health, but he still thought spaying was more of a waste of money. You don't waste that kind of money on a dog, even if you love the dog.
Mother's Day is weird for me. I've written in the past about making it through Mother's Day to the end of a college semester and then having an abortion, after which I wept continually for months. After a lifetime of seeing animals killed (I grew up on a farm), I allowed the pragmatism to extend into my soul and mortally wound it. I came to the conclusion that no one had ever broken me more than I broke myself.
Mother's Day triggers every bad memory imaginable. My mom, of course, yes, all those years in the nursing home and beyond. But there is so much more stacked up in my head, like all the sheep, goats, and cows that Dad had to help birth without a vet. He was very good, but his hands were too big, and some of the mothers didn't make it. I felt so helpless listening to a goat scream because I wasn't strong enough to turn one of the babies all tangled up in her myself. We should have called the vet, but of course, that's a waste... I watched him perform a cesarean on a cow and then autopsy the stillborn calf, whose liver was already yellow and crumbly. The cow lived, but obviously could never have another calf without being properly stitched, so she was sold for slaughter. She was a sweet cow and had lived through so much, but was hustled off into a big truck to a scary place with horrible smells and noises and was probably terrified right up to the end. I don't think my dad was capable of giving that a second thought, but it still haunts me for whatever reason. But my dad visited a nursing home to eat lunch with mom nearly every single day for 5 years even long after she was immobile and unable to talk. What really gets me about that is how many spouses aren't able to show that level of commitment for some reason. I know it was really hard for me to handle visiting, and I even fled the building a few times feeling very sick, so I completely understand. But maybe my dad was so broken he could tolerate the shockwaves...? For all the refusal to help her with her diabetes when she most needed it while they still had the time (he didn't believe what diabetes was, or that high blood pressure was a bad thing {was that a waste, I wonder...}), for all the blowing off he did of her feelings through past years, he was there for the entire decline and was probably the reason she lasted so long in her condition, even when she clearly needed to let go. He couldn't let go. And then after it was all over, I spent a year with him on the phone going through those shockwaves crashing over him. I don't know if he ever shared with anyone else what he shared with me, but he was a very miserable and wretched soul, and I forgave him everything, even though from my point of view it looks very much like my mom didn't survive being married to my dad. He never beat her, was never unfaithful, but the emotional neglect was just too much. Why did she stay? I think she could see how broken he was. She was all he had and all he loved all those years. She may have used religion as an excuse for the duty of staying, but she hinted a few times at how devastated he'd be if she ever really did leave. I have modeled my life on that level of commitment. Recognizing how broken other people are is something that doesn't come easily or naturally to humans, but I've written before how drawn she was to the broken people in this world. how to give to charity, Charlie Brown
I have a fascination with incongruity and irony. I speak often of both. I have looked deep and long into the abyss that is being human, and I see many broken people surviving the best way they know how. Oftentimes they don't realize they continue to break more people, like a row of dominoes through ancestral time. Oftentimes we don't realize we perpetuate what breaks us. For all our wit and wisdom, humans can be so very stupid, and I used to loathe that with all my being. I was angry with God since I was a child for making me be born a human. Over my years in this body in this life, however, I have grown to see people as broken and sad underneath a society of masks, and I ache to find words that will help change this.
I am a mean person. I say very mean things to people when I feel they're about to pass their last opportunity to jump free from their broken ways and save themselves. To choose to continue breaking the next generation with our broken ways is unacceptable to me. I'm afraid I've been pretty harsh on a few people. And I'm about to get harsh here, so if you can't take it after all this, you really need to switch to another page right now.
I raised my kids to be tough. I showed considerably more kindness than my own parents, but I did NOT make their roads soft. I didn't feel sorry for them, not because I didn't know how with my Aspergers, but because I see kids who turn out awful when parents feel sorry for them and make their roads soft. Poor, poor pitiful me. I never once thought that growing up. If I had, I'd have killed myself at least 20 times by now and be swilling in alcohol and drugs so deep you'd never find me again. Sometimes I lurk around on social medias and have to turn it back off before I tell people what a big bunch of whiny babies they are. Really. There are so many of you continually tweeting about how miserable you are. I'm glad you have an outlet, but dang, change something. The two friends I lost this last winter, the two who tagged me the most day in and day out for years, I finally couldn't take it any more. If people wanna drink themselves into self pity stupors, fine, be my guest, but I'm not going to pat anyone on the head going aww, poor you while they do it. The day I broke free was the day I started stabbing. Oddly one of my memories this mother's day was losing a friend who was angry at both her moms and bombed my private messages on Christmas Eve about it. Must be nice having two moms. Someone mourning losing a dad couldn't grasp the pain I've been expressing all over Pinky blog this last year about finally dealing with losing my mom, and made the horrible mistake of dumping venom all over me on a holiday over something that was probably self inflicted to begin with. Well you know what? Life sucks. I said it, I lost two friends. Well, I said more than that. And that's the last time I contact people I don't know in real life privately and ask if they're ok, because I got sucked into a neverending whirlpools of self pity that required layers of head games to navigate. Some people don't want to be saved. Expecting someone to sit around and drown with you is extremely selfish. If either of those people had been part of my family, I'd have said a lot more, and I have family that can attest to the way I establish how I feel about creating our own messes and dealing with the choices we make.
True kindness is acknowledging other people's pain. I love my dad. I know he loves me. I know Mother's Day yesterday must've been like a Schrodinger's cat day for him. He was two people, the broken one who misses Mom really bad and he's all alone now, and the survivor that stays on the surface and doesn't dwell. I have no idea if he has a middle ground, but I suspect he's been growing one since she died. I'm feeling a little delicate, but I know I need to call.
The chess board floor in my evil lair represents all the chess I played with my dad. I was preteen and the only one who would tolerate sitting through being bullied all over a chess board. He wasn't kind, and he never let me win. When I finally started winning, he stopped playing. I've never stopped playing. I may not have people to play with me, but nearly every day a chess board pops into my head, even after all these years. A chess board is part of my personal coat of arms. All those dark and light squares and the pieces that move around them represent many things in my life.
I remember my mom in the background while Dad and I butted heads over that chess board. I think she was relieved he had something else to focus on besides arguing religion with her. I know she was wary of me even having a relationship with him, worried he'd turn me to his side on the whole religion debate, and even told me later my dad was going to hell because he'd been baptized wrong. She didn't sound at all sorry about it, although now I am able to look back and see the anger was probably a cover for sadness and regret. The things we torture ourselves with... But I do remember watching my mom out of the corner of one eye while I watched my dad's thoughts all over the board with the other eye. I learned the whole parry and thrust strategy in the middle of a ruthlessly intellectual and emotionally bereft marriage. My mother was the white queen, my dad the black king, and nary the two would ever accept the other until my mother's memories had been wiped with strokes and her body relieved of duty to her husband. And right up to the end, he was at her side, never wavering, despite all the disagreements and misunderstandings.
I don't need a chess board in my own marriage. We put it away years ago. My own husband is the opposite of my dad, a man of deep feelings and few words, and kinder than anyone I've ever met, even on his crabbiest days. He too survived being broken, but like me, he decided as a child that he would never be like what he went through to his own kids. That personal decision changes our paths.
We can change future history, and keep changing it, generation by generation. I believe in a future where one day we will all see kindness as logical, and pragmatism as a waste of being alive. All my life I heard "It's not necessary", and what I've decided is that we are all very necessary, and the beings and things we love are all necessary.
Until we learn this, we will continue to break ourselves and everyone around us.
I saw that vid last night and wanted to hang onto it. It doesn't quite fit the mood, but it fits what I need, I think.
One of those I want to admit defeat weeks. These are really rare. Getting up this morning was hard. It's been hard all week. When I say hard, I don't mean the usual daily grind wearing me down, I don't mean depression, I don't mean life sucks. I mean actually hard. This week has drained me, and the rescue inhaler is the only thing helping me barely hold it together.
As per my usual, I dragged awake, grabbed my phone, checked notifications, and this is my inspiration today. This is a real person, 26, grew up with and still living with a terminal illness. Burying Your Friends and How to Get Around Why it Wasn’t You If you don't have some kind of motivator for your hard mornings, you really need to get one. No platitudes, no moralistic principles, just cold hard truth.
I cried exactly like that one year, except it lasted 7 months. I was about 28, I think, somewhere in there. The year before, I had run into a giant speedbump (a long dusty road, a vision I had during alcohol withdrawal and liver toxicity), and this came hot on its heels a year later. It's not even titled. May 5, 2008 The video code broke during the server move, and if you're on mobile you may have to turn your phone sideways to read it. It's a vision I've never forgotten.
I'm still here. We often think about people who've gone ahead, what the world would be like if they were still here. Well, I'm still here. I haven't left yet. And today, depending on whether plans are still in place, I have two appointments, one with my psychologist and the other with my chiropractor, and then I may be picking up a Bunny, a light in my life I never dreamed possible.
I can do just about anything for my Bunny. I can blow off pain and endure hardship in a way I never could with my own kids. I can step outside of myself and step up far beyond what I could before she came to this earth. Because of a Bunny in my life, I have been able to work harder, be tougher, and smile sweeter. She is here partly because I helped talk her mama through a very hard day where a decision could have been made for her not to be here. I couldn't bear to see another person go through the kind of crying I'd gone through over losing someone who never really existed. The loss is still terribly, horribly real, compounded with the burden of being the one who didn't save that history from being erased. Is it any wonder some people become obsessed with time travel ideas. How do we go back and tell ourselves not to make the biggest mistake of our lives?
This is the first time I've ever connected those two visions together in a time order.
Because I am still here, I can still share. I'm still learning, still surviving, still connecting. I know my lurkers include bruised and very broken souls, and I know how it feels barely hanging on through the long, dark nights and the flat, empty days. Keep hanging on with me. I will keep telling stories and we will keep loving someone, whether in secret or out loud, and when we look back we will say, "I'm so glad I stuck around." Sometimes hanging on is the secret to changing someone else's history. Every day is a big day for Bunny. Time machine achieved.
We were all tiny once. In the big scheme of things, we're all still very tiny. Find your fit, stick around, and be the one who makes the day better for someone. Even if all you do is hold back your own bad day, you changed history. Find your raison d'etre and devote yourself, commit yourself to being that force that stands up to the wolves of time that ravage us.
Getting a little thick in there, some of the bulbs need to be thinned out. Usually have three times that many.
Batman is having a sickie week, so their back to back Mommy's Day / 2 year old birthday will hopefully have naps in them.
Bunny and Granny will be popping in for a grill party, so four generations in the house later today. Yep, we've got a blanket fashionista, her woobie goes wherever she goes.
@bonenado and I have finally caught up all the Sherlocks made so far, and like my awesome comic book loving dentist bemoaned with me this last week, although it's truly awesome that our fave John Watson has joined the Marvel Universe, it'll be even harder than pulling teeth now getting those boyz back together for more Sherlocks if they're all over the world getting more famous, dang it, because we both think their best work ever is on Sherlock. I'm so pumped about the third brother that I'll be a nervous wreck by the time 2016 gets here. Pic clicks to Season 4 news.
And of course all those rumors about a Doctor Who crossover and bing, suddenly we're hearing about a Sherlock Christmas special, which is generally a Doctor Who thing, right? Guess we'll have to wait and see.
This video was made by someone for her mother for Mother's Day. I don't know the personal story behind it, but it's beautifully done and moving and sweet. I know some of us are missing our mothers now, and my mother has been with me in my mind throughout this current writing project. Hugs to all my friends and family and new acquaintances all over the world while we celebrate Mother's Day here in the States.
