just enjoy the game

you get far enough down 'thanksgiving walking dead meme' in google search, you forget why you were even there

I got lost in that search last night before I caved and went to bed. I think I'd go to sleep faster with a brain chip letting me mindlessly cruise nonsense.

So last week today I was 203 pounds and super calm before surgery. Within 24 hours I'd zoomed up to 215 on IV fluids and whatever my body started hoarding because it must've thought I'd been attacked by ice picks and had a piece of me stolen slick as slick. That was a little alarming so I looked it up, guess it's common to do that with surgeries, basically just take good care of yourself and let the fluids sort themselves back out. Today I am down to 206, which is fantastic compared to some people in the med forums, and apparently means my kidneys are in great shape chugging it out, yay! And that is why you wanna take care of your kidneys, people.

Another thing I learned, since I'm not a surgery queen and usually stick to the more mundane whiny chronic stuff, is that an ileum is about the last thing to come out of the whole knocked out stupor, and everything trying to leave ahead of it is like the worst traffic pileup you ever saw. I wasn't given after care instructions on anything diet or digestive except start slow and eat what I want. By day 4 I was becoming an expert on looking all the things up, and after all the stuff I've read from every point of view imaginable, it really doesn't matter a hill of beans what you eat and you should always have a bottle of milk of magnesia on hand anyway. Softeners and hydrating didn't work at all, moving around more while slacking off on pain meds backfired into every conceivable regret, all the correct food in the world can't make a difference if it's at the back of the line, and probably the only thing I'll do next time I have surgery is stick to clear fluids the last 12 hours or something. At any rate, we're all very happy now. If you've got a friend or family member going through surgery and don't know what to do for them, trust me, a bottle of milk of magnesia is pretty wonderful and will make you the hero.

And then of course, I just started typing in whatever question popped into my head into the search bar. How long do my incisions hurt after gallbladder surgery? Hundreds, maybe even thousands of people had asked the same thing. Some people hurt for weeks when they sneeze or move wrong or sit too long, so grain of salt, I'm keeping in mind that I got stabbed by ice picks and there are lots of little nerve endings in skin and the tissues underneath because being able to feel stabs kept our ancestors alive longer and they probably fought back, ducked and dodged, or ran for cover while I was knocked unconscious and purposely stabbed under some big lights. That stab memory will probably always be there locked in the tissues now, and it'll just become part of my overall nerve pain disorder if it becomes bothersome. Other people yapping about weeks later sneezing took a big load off my mind. It's easy to imagine the worst when someone else pokes a hole in you.

And I got to thinking, it's funny that people will let their gallbladders go defcon and become emergencies while they ignore them, but then fret over ever little sensation while they heal after surgery. Humans are weird.

Bottom line, if you're not taking good care of yourself before the surgeries start rolling in, don't expect to heal on demand kind of thing. And the opposite is true, too, ran into a lot of people getting back to their workouts too quickly and winding up back in surgeries to fix rips in what wasn't done healing yet. Y'all need to chill. Just because you think your body should such and such in your mind doesn't mean you're the boss of reality. Just because people are going back to work in 3 days or a week doesn't mean everything super healed super fast and you're a chump because you can't live up to a rumor standard. As far as I can tell, it all sucks, we all suffer, and it all takes time.

When I was in ER earlier this year, hanging out for a few hours in the waiting room, there was a guy dripping blood down his arm who had managed to elude everyone and went straight to the public coffee cart. I was mind numb with pain in a wheelchair after an ambulance ride, still waiting to get triaged, everyone around me pulling back from this guy and I'm parked right there. I just smiled and said You need to keep pressure on that. I mean, crazy or not, I'm probably crazier, so who cares. He got bashful trying to cover the blood dripping and getting coffee at the same time, evidently priorities are a problem in his brain, and he said he pulled his IV out. I laughed and said It's not like TV is it? I did that once, ripped it out in a bathroom, blood everywhere like the zombie apocalypse. And then everyone around us started relaxing and people finally found the guy and got him to the police desk to get his arm bandaged, and someone else cleaned up. I cleaned in hospital one year, I had no problem with that blood. I am OSHA trained and cleaned stat contagion many times all over the hospital. I was also the only one who talked to that man like a human being. The rest was just funny to me, but I thought that part was sad.

Around Thanksgiving, Americans make big deals about going to homeless shelters and feeding people. There were plenty of people in need around me in that hospital waiting room. One woman was clearly homeless but very organized. She had a travel case with wheels and a couple old pillows tucked into the pull out handle. Everything she needed was in that bag, including a book. I take a bug out bag with me nearly everywhere I go, too. I feel safer when I have all my little comforts with me if I wind up stuck some place waiting for something, like having my car worked on. When pre-triage came out to get her vitals, she clearly stated she was there because it hurt to pee, and apparently knew how to get help about it, was probably the best behaved person in the whole waiting room because she knew how to stay out of trouble. Conveniently, it was also better than being outside in the cold. I'm sure she knows every public area open through the night all over town. On my own really bad days when I can't stand being alone, I take my bug out bag and go hang out at the library or the hospital, some place big where I can move around a bit and still have facilities and people around me. I used to hang out at the airport when I was younger. I don't think I'm alone doing that. I think a lot of people hang out all over town like that. Some people go shopping and don't realize they're using the excuse to be doing something when they really just want to not be alone. When I retailed, there were customers who knew the store better than we did.

If you don't know what to do with yourself or your life and you want to be helpful, go hang out at a hospital on a holiday. Just move around from one waiting area to another, check out the coffee shops and gift shops, notice the families camping out around births and deaths and horrible accidents and cancers and stuff. And then go check out the opportunities board and ask about volunteer positions. Volunteers are awesome in big buildings. They train you to help move patients in wheelchairs after check in, or answer questions at a desk, or other stuff. A lot of places have volunteer programs. You don't have to just do it on holidays and twiddle your thumbs the rest of the year.

This meme cracks me up because I saw someone actually do this on a minecraft server, just purposely dump a lot of leveled up diamond armor and weapons into a deep ocean after a bad day. Sometimes you let go of the material stuff and just enjoy the game.

click for diamond memes

I've got Bunny tomorrow while her mama works, and Papa's work is having an employee cookout, so I think me and Bunny are going to try making shortbread cookies. I'm stuck with gluten free flour and no xantham gum, and it hit me that shortbread might be the ticket. There are no eggs or leavening, just 3 basic ingredients, and from there I can add gingerbread spices or melt chocolate chips into butter or whatever, and we can do cut outs and colored pinwheels, and I also found a shortbread spritz, so we can get the cookie press out, too. I haven't had a real cookie day from scratch in a long time, and I think tomorrow will be a really good day for that.

I've also been getting my own Turkey Day menu assembled, getting that cooked up today so I'll be out of the way tomorrow. I'm making cornish hens with homemade herbed biscuit and cornbread stuffing (yes, all gluten free, super allergic to wheat), a mashed tato and steamed broccoli. I'm going to record Macy's parade on Thursday in case Bunny misses the balloons, because she's high energy and will probably be too excited to be that patient. I stopped my pain pills so I could save one for tomorrow and one for Turkey Day, so today I'm having a little bit of a withdrawal headache, but I'll be ok. Me and opioids probably go back through several lifetimes, I'm pure addict on those, and have mentioned my love for vicoden in the past outweighing my love for anything and anybody else. If you know someone who has quit drinking or doing drugs/meds over the holidays, please be kind and gentle with them. They won't be feeling well because it's a real bitch dealing through that thick haze of suck, and it takes awhile to get through it. I still crave every single day and it's been at least 25 years since I quite drinking and smoking, plus here I am back on an opioid for surgery and doing low dose xanax this year staying mood stable (I check in regularly with both psychologist and psychiatrist). Holidays are very stressful. If you're stressed out, then you know the person in withdrawal is very stressed out, too. Not the best time to talk politics and religion. If you can't just enjoy your family over a nice meal, maybe make other plans that are healthier for your mental and emotional function.

Sorry so wordy, this might be my last chance to hang out on Pinky blog for awhile. Not sure how the rest of the week is going to go.

Love you guys. All my people. You know who you are. 💕

resuscitation

I wrote this on Sunday afternoon of the 28th when Pinky blog was still closed.

click for wallpaper

So I put myself on bed rest, because I'm terrible for grinding myself to an actual standstill even when all the sirens are going off and defcon warnings are going on system wide. I've made it, what, about 3 years now since an autoimmune flare? I'm in severe fibro flare, and some kind of spinal nerve trunk flare, because my left leg and foot ache really bad and all my toes feel like I broke them on a coffee table or something, but so far so good on appetite, sleeping, and the usual restlessness. I'm trying to medicate more, y'all know I really hate that and any doctor would heartily laugh and then go, Yeah, NO, like this, and then triple everything I'm taking and then I'd morph into a lethargic reptile. I mean, no offense against reptiles, but srsly, I'd be like that.

Played single player for a little while in between surgey power stuff because big storm last night shredded the forest a bit and threw a few branches around, hit a bored jag and dug through wallpapers for awhile, then played around with the search bar, plugged in variations of Pinky, by the way here's other Pinky if you really wanna check her out, she's actually pretty cool.

Anyway, I'm flipping search engine pages and run right into 'pinky, guerrero, hypertorus, rulz- giphy' and thought, hm, I've never loaded anything to giphy, what's up with that? So I went over there and saw that, indeed, there was Pinky blog listed as a source for this thing.

And it does click to the post I used it in, but MY post sources it correctly from blingee. I don't know how and why stuff like this happens, no idea if it's auto curated or someone manually loads.

K, just discovered I have more followers on Quora... I never go there. Not even going to link it.

Yeah, I know I'm talking to myself because Pinky blog is still dark, I'm just waiting for it to flatline. I mean, srsly, my stats have looked like a heart rhythm for months. Too bad most of it was from one source or that might've been cool.

Personally, even being a search engine queen and a super lurker and part time stalker, I have *never* opened up anyone's page multiple times a day, certainly not for several days in a row, much less for weeks and even months at a time, and even though I have actually been lurked hard in the past (my heaviest lurker back in 2008 opened my blog nearly once a day for 8 straight months, and I had full stat details every single time, including location and service right down to street address) by a number of people with no idea how in the world I could possibly be that fascinating, ok long run on sentence where was I. Oh, yeah, even with my own skillz, I've never been obvious. I imagine there are a couple of people who have noticed me because they're like me and pay attention and I was actually stalking a little bit, but dang, I never did it like anywhere even close to this level. It's completely not like anything I've ever seen in all the years I've been blogging. I'm very experienced with stats and being super lurked and even stalked.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now it's Tuesday.

Monday was hard.

Ok, Sunday evening I got some stuff thunked out. This last month I've been snacking. A LOT. Especially this last week. On carby stuff. A LOT. Years ago before I got my diabetes dx, I remember all my joints hurting real bad and feeling miserable, and my doctor back then kept throwing prescriptions at me instead of letting me see an endocrinologist (she finally relented after several months and we discovered my TSH was horribly flying right out of the solar system), and it helped to get that med adjusted FINALLY, but it didn't fix all the things. I remember back then that she wasn't worried about my blood sugar reading, which surprised me looking back once I discovered she had noted my ketones were high. A new doctor in 2011 dx'd diabetes and my whole life changed and I started feeling better, and everything since then has been about recovery and healing and coming back from years of immobility and excruciating pain. My diabetes has been well controlled for 5 years.

Until now. I checked my fasting glucose Monday morning, was 110. There are jobs out there requiring their workers to keep their fasting glucose below 100, so you KNOW that's the best predictor of lost work hours. I started sliding all through May, since my empty nest routine has been skewed into a whole new lifestyle and I'm surrounded by high energy people eating very high energy food. If I really look at what I'm doing, I bet my ketones are going back up and that's why I hurt all over and feel so tired. I'm dragging through sticky blood sludge and backed up getting the trash out of my body, and simply calling this a fibro flare is just me being stupid. Time to get back on track.

Point blank, I did this to myself, and I know better. I created this internal misery that affected all my systems and other health problems and threw my psychological balance off on top of it all because I felt so rotten. I felt in the way, got super crabby and peevish, and we can't just blame all that on autism spectrum complicated with anxiety and depression. Diabetes affects brains. If I don't want to be a drag on my family, NO MORE JUNK FOOD. My brain cannot handle carb loads, and woe be to ye if that's what I'm doing.

Aside from that, Monday sucking was a whole lotta neurodiversity hurricanes going on in my area that would make for great TV. I just stayed out of it as much as possible. I know the brains around me only see the klumsy outside of me, and I don't always make sense, and I don't emotionally connect well, so they can't believe that on the inside of me I really do get how their brain styles shape their world views and that they can't see several moves ahead on the chess board like I can, and they don't remember and learn from the past the same way I do. They don't see themselves objectively, the way they assess their situations is different from the way I assess mine, and their missing gap is a vital problem solving skill set that I was born with because I'm autie. ADD and autie working together makes a great team, but when we're all stressed, it can be pretty disastrous. I know I'd have handled things better if I'd been taking better care of myself physically, and I see controlling my diabetes as first line of defense against life sucking in all other ways. I cannot have a good life if my brain is flailing around in sticky blood sludge and I hurt all over.

THAT is aspienado's problem solving skills. Start with me first, assess, organize, prioritize, schedule. Get my own stuff lined up before I step into trying to fix anything else. Other people's lives are their own business, but I can make things easier by smoothing out the wrinkles as they fly by, and that makes me valuable. I like being a valuable person. I can't be valuable like that if I'm stuffing my face with crap.

So here we go, #transparency. Going to spend the summer getting the fasting glucose back down, shedding a few pounds, getting my workouts going again, and focusing on positivity and feeling better. That's my job. Sliding into depression fueled by carbing out and chain reacting a serious disease across all my other issues is stupid stupid stupid. It's one thing to live with depression, it's another thing to coddle it and support its cancerous growth.

That was fun. What else is going on? Hang on a sec, I need to say something, if stalker person ever actually reads all my stuff instead of just poking me over and over. Dear Person Doing This- I'm not a mind reader, and I don't do head games. I'm busy. You could be Christopher Pike stuck in a chair pushing a button, or you could be a brilliant psychotic enamored with Pinky, or you could be a 5 year old with someone's stolen phone, or you could be... you get what I'm saying. If there is a point to this, it's getting lost. But if this is what I think it is, maybe this (below) will make sense, and if it does, then I hear you. And that is all that needs to be said as long as this continues without real change. All I care about on my end is what I got out of the flatline and then the resuscitation.

weighing progress against fail

click for instructions on how to use the fail whale

I've got facebook on my case threatening to make one of my pages invisible and Lex G showing up in my dreams wondering why I'm not working, and when the dream finally got to the telephone part (there's always a phone in these), it was a bunch of pay phones in groups in a park, but they'd all been dismantled and were out of service, with a sign about repairs and upgrades coming soon but no way to connect. Since I saw Dawn sprint by, I'm pretty sure that was twitter.

So my conscience is starting to really hammer at me now. Btw, thanx GeekAaron for taking the time to show up in my dream, as well, wasn't much but I think the point made in my brain is balancing family, hobbies, and work, and your family has been an exceptional role model for me.

Had a super fantastic visit with my psychologist yesterday, though, and it was the best I've felt physically since I met him, so I can't fault the progress I've made. I may be dropping the media balls, but I'm all over the court getting physically and psychologically healthier.

Also I'm dropping weight on this medrol pack, so I'm very happy. I'm back down to where I was at the start of 2017 before the big gabapentin mess, yay! Finally, that took months.

I've been meaning to ask- Anyone notice that I'm letting typos go? I've been letting those slip through since 2017 hit. I'm chill. I mean, I fix stuff, but I don't go back and quibble over with should have been which and stuff like that. Honestly, I see that as a good sign. I used to be so freakishly obsessive that I'd drop everything just to fix a typo from years ago, even if it meant springing back out of bed and booting the laptop back up.

I think Mo Creatures is helping that. I have laughed a few times in chat about being freakishly obsessive and in accumulation overload when people bring up how 'rich' I appear to be, and it really is the very picture of how I operate. If I were like this in real life, I'd be dx'd with severe OCD, but I always trained that into my writing instead of torturing people around me in my house. I know they'll go Well...., so yes, I'm still very bossy about wet towels and used dishes, but I back off on the rest. My house is NOT a museum, it's a fairly laid back sanctuary that visitors call the Nap House, so big win over OCD on that one. When I was more able, I was obsessed with deep cleaning on a weekly basis and would tear the house apart doing windows, rugs, and curtains once a month, stuff like that. I'm still pretty gung ho over laundry, but I've relaxed a lot over time so my poor body could focus on recovery, and it was important to train my brain to let go so my stress levels would go down.

I still want to do my writing. But. And this is important. This is the first time in so many years I have enjoyed playing. Just playing. I'm not pain free, but this is the closest I've come in so long that I can't even remember enjoying sitting in a chair for any length of time, and talking out loud about it still brings tears instantly because it's been so hard. I just don't talk about this stuff out loud.

But yeah, I do think maybe I should pay attention to this dream and revamp my priority list a bit or something. But right now I'm going to enjoy my coffee and run around my claims killing trolls and manticores. fam

my poor nails, srsly

Autism Awareness month is coming up. Some of us are a little burned out, so here is a diversion post to soothe the intensity a bit. Disclaimer- I am #actuallyautistic, see dx.

I'ma power point since I've already submitted an article and did a bit of research. Don't know about y'all, but I go straight to work before coffee and then I play while my brain winds down, and I'm perilously close to the winding down part. Here are some things in my field of interest this week.

• My physical therapist has DPT after her name. I >looked that up<. "By 2020, physical therapy will be provided by physical therapists who are doctors of physical therapy, recognized by consumers and other health care professionals as the practitioners of choice to whom consumers have direct access for the diagnosis of, interventions for, and prevention of impairments, functional limitations, and disabilities related to movement, function, and health." I'm very much looking forward to this. Also, I'm seeing some fabulous results this month, and will hopefully soon graduate out of physical therapy into monthly maintenance at a massage place she recommended.
• My nails are shredded. Oh, it was a good plan, and it lasted about 2 weeks, and after that I went to town picking my nails. The damage is now about half grown out.
• This is my fave Ben interview and I need nothing else. I love how forthfully he spewed his real feels. Don't worry, I still love the fandom. Fans save me in the long, dark nights. Well, except I'm sleeping now...
• Nice CPAP lead-in, lol. In the last 2 weeks I've scored above 80% on my sleep score 8 times, above 90 five of those times, and even hit 100 once. This is the most I've slept in 2 decades. My brain is coming super on, and I'm loving it.
• 
• I'm raking in the punkins now on Mo Creatures. Pumpkins = currency, they're a cash crop. Some of us are building absolutely huge farms with thousands of punkins that we can collect for a penny apiece, and one player boasted $22 per haul. Minecraft stats say I've chopped over 48K punkins, which relates to $480 so far. I've also been making a little bit of a mockery of the system... slain by brian

I gently mock to remind us all that 1- we are real people under all our diagnoses (or whatever we're hiding), 2- it's ok to take breaks from intensity, and 3- we all need to allow ourselves and each other to have a good day, week, month, year. I understand needing to dig out and unload because I've been there, the need to share and heal because I've done it and it works, and the need to connect vs the dread of over connecting, because it's a bit draining, and not just on auties. We do need to give NTs credit for putting up with us. I normally don't like labeling anyone as neurotypical because I feel that has become demeaning in its own way (auties mocking NTs isn't pretty, guys), so let's just all be humans together and go play some minecraft, or whatever you like doing.

There are things I can say to her that I can't seem to share with anyone else. Yesterday was a really good day.

world of spin

Still kinda reeling from today's stats, so I scoped myself out on a search engine to see how I'm doing out there.

WebMii says I'm doing pretty good out of a possible 10 total.

I've got a silver reputation with traity, flipboard makes me look cool, socialmention currently has me at 100% strength with a mention averaging every 29 seconds across the medias (see? I told you I have to mute my phone), still over 60 on klout, and I'm already bored with this.

Basically, I'm good at linking all my stuff together, I'm set up well for visibility, I'm verified as an owner on the webs, and I touch base on at least 3 main medias just about every single day.

If I could link my mojang account into my medias, you guys would never see me again, ha.

Things people are asking me to do-

• live facebook shares (um, no)
• youtube vlogs (that cracks me up, you'd get like 2 or 3 minutes and that's it)
• shared hangouts and skype vid calls (that's a maybe on hold for a few years already)
• actually finish books (working on it)
• share live minecraft play (I do die pretty spectacularly quite often)
• meet up if I do start traveling once published (I have invitations in several countries, sweet)

Anyway, lotta no on all that. I'm not a natural socialite, I don't talk (out loud, outside of family) easily or very well (that's what the psychologist is for), and I honestly would need staff or at least a team or at the very least another talker to bounce off, and I have yet to settle in with anyone who wants to make that kind of commitment to my content output. It would be funny to record me and @bonenado yapping away because it gets so cartoony, but I always forget. His brain is seriously the closest thing I've ever seen in real life to a Homer Simpson / Philip J. Fry mashup. It's like I live with Homer Fry in real life.

And I know this looks like I care, but I think obsessing over underground caverns and giant mushrooms and flailing the skeleton apocalypse to death with my bare hands because I'm sick of lag killing me over and over before I can get my weapons back pretty much proves I really don't. I'm more irked at Google for NOT MAKING IT EASY to locate and retrieve anything on what the heck happened to their analytics (it is now Universal Analytics, and no, they didn't migrate our site verification IDs, thank you very much) than anything. I'm getting really used to not knowing what's going on with Pinky blog though because statcounter sucks for just about everything now unless someone doesn't have a clue, and blogger is lame for actual info beyond the barest Oh, here's what's going on today kinda of gossip, so I really don't pay attention any more. Probably best I don't know anyway, right? Stuff happens, and I minecraft.

lol, discovering an international search service for finding free MP3s to download, apparently my entire youtube collection of personal vids is available for people in Malaysia, Korea, Japan, and India. That's funny. Wo, just found my pinterest entirely in Swedish. Hold the phone. Just ran into a an imgur page titled 'easy photoer for facebook' that apparently swiped my linkedin bio to throw into their jumbly spam. I'm loling, I wrote in a post why I used that pic as a joke, and here I am an example of how a professional photographer could have helped me out.

I know, right? That stuff cracks me up. You can see why I'd like to find out where all those hits today came from. I've had plenty of times in the past, especially with Lexx stuff, where 800 hits in a week on one post was kinda normal, 3000 in a week on the whole blog was cool, but I've never had 1000+ hits in one day before on *anything*. I can usually see bot swarms and web crawlers, but today is a mystery. If someone shared my dotcom to another site, even if it was to hate on me somewhere, thanks, that was pretty awesome.

Ok, now I'm laughing, my linkedin bio got grabbed for an alumnus photo/bio for my college. Doi, do they even background check? I'm using a pen name, I didn't attend under this name. How funny. So anyone could say they went to this or that college and get pulled into an alumnus page even if they didn't.

I FOUND THE SURGE FROM LAST SUMMER. O_O Check this page out.
Ceremonija otvaranja Igara u Riju: Novak, Ana, Velja i veslači propuštaju defile
That's my twitter pic that went viral. Sweet. The paragraph just above it translates to "The biggest applause of those present in the stands of the legendary stadium received a team of refugees from South Sudan, Syria, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, who will compete under the flag of the International Olympic Committee. Some of the athletes were so impressed with the event opening ceremony, they could not hide the tears of joy."

I'm exhausted. I need sleep so bad. I'm craving everything right now- chocolate, coffee, vicodin (how many years has it been?), and especially pizza. I want pizza. But it's an illusion. I'm craving anything that would distract me from this weird brain buzz headache and the loud tinnitus. My earballs seem especially aggrieved at the lingering withdrawal. Maybe I'll try some hot milk.

Oh, while I'm looking for a youtube vid and ran across original Kirk stuff, I'll tell you now because I'll forget later- William Shatner is coming to Branson in October to the Welk Theater. The snip clicks to the article if you want to read it all.

Ok, where'd I put my fave Spirk vid? This song over and over will get my brain hypnotized to sleep.

spit

All righty, I'm all over the place again, so let's see what's going on. @bonenado made fun of me this morning.

Facebook says I'm going to hell. This clicks back to facebook, and from there you can click to the test to see where you're going.

I really want this blue shirt like Daniel Tosh is wearing. Pic clicks to Tosh on Comedy Central.

I am apparently one of the rarest and most difficult to deal with personality types there are, so it's not surprising that Facebook says I'm going to hell. The pic clicks to the test if you want to find out your own personality, but you can also learn more here.

It's amazing how fast the rest of your face dries out when you have to spit a lot. Spitting sounds easy, how hard is it to produce a little bit of spit? Harder than you think. Our little human spit pouches feel like a big deal until we get graded on how fast we can produce the stuff. (You people thinking bad things, shame on you.)

That's right, I've been flagged 3 different ways for hereditary cancer, and medicare does NOT pay for this, so I'm hoping my supplement plan picks some of it up. The rest will go on a payment plan. I'd rather know than not know, right? My sisters and daughter will all be curious to know the results when I get them about a month from now. No idea if I'm the first family member to be tested, so if I turn out positive for carrier, the results will get passed around privately among a national network of genetically related individuals. This pic clicks to more info.

In the meantime, @bonenado is out picking up more stuff for salssssssa. We've got a tomato hill growing on the counter that needs immediate attention. Oh, and a scope for a deer rifle. We've decided his Native American name is Man With Bad Eyes And Crooked Bow. He also got scent bombs, fox urine, buck urine, a cool vest with a slick back pocket big enough to hold a machete, leg zip water proof camo pants that'll go with his new boots, and a tripod stool for when he's bow hunting. He's demonstrating it to me now. Woops, folded up on him. He's practicing the stand up maneuver. My knees would be too locked in place to stand up from something that low. Every year is pretty hilarious. I should look through my old private blogs sometime and do a special @bonenado post.

Sometimes I just have to pause on minecraft and appreciate that I'm actually part of real time 'living' art.

Real life. I keep telling you guys I live in Mirkwood. My house is on the other side of that huge wall of jungle in front of us there. (insert- that unmown grass on the left is 5-6 feet tall, and I'm not kidding, use the mailbox on the right for context) (and so you now have a mental picture when I start whining about pollen again...)

The forest looms.

We've got several kinds of wild grapes (raccoon grapes are a real thing) and whatever berries, I think this might be bittersweet, but that's just a guess. Between the gallons of acorns, hickory nuts, and walnuts and all the crazy wild berries and fruits around here (persimmon, pawpaw, osage orange), we have no lack of wildlife. Sometimes the squirrel population explodes, sometimes it's chipmunks, other years we might see foxes regularly, it's just up and down, mostly depending on weather and diseases spreading around. Big rabies and distemper area. (Scott just let me know the number of bats in the bat house has tripled since he looked last.)

Yeah, you can tell, right? I'm evening out on my meds this week. This is now my 5th week on gabapentin, first week back on beta blocker, first week of doubled zyrtec, and I seem to be busy and juggling all the things pretty well for a change. I'm able to do things without constantly maneuvering and planning around pain. There's still a bit there, but it's a little more manageable now. I've been able to start my workouts again, and I assess back into physical therapy in a few days, so just being more capable has shifted me into a terrific mood. I know that could be transitory, but while it lasts I have been enjoying getting my new syllabus on track, where I spend an hour every day reading and/or watching TV during the day to keep me time oriented and off minecraft. Minecraft is still hard and fast but less often, and so far my money and calendar syncs are still matching, even though I feel ditzy half the time.

That was quite a confession the other day, wasn't it? I remember in my 20s it was so taboo to even say out loud "I'm depressed." Over the years it was still taboo to admit it even to a doctor, much less a friend or someone from church, because the stigma of mental illness was so prominent that it meant immediate judgement and hushing up to hold down the tittering that would go on behind people's backs. My mother never got the real help she needed because of that. She begged people for help in the only way she knew how, ways that were controlled and sanctioned by a rigid belief system, and she died way too soon because of it, even though she fought hard the only way she knew to be herself, with all her glorious mood swings and the ways she could never quite fit into what people expected of her.

My mom was one of the kindest people anyone around us knew, spending money we didn't have to make sure other people's bills were paid, actually taking food to the destitute falling through cracks, making sure lonely people got cards in the mail during their last days of long illness. I'm not capable of that, but I am capable of standing up and saying I'm mentally ill and the world hasn't ended and my life is good, and I share this because it's important, and I hope other people can learn and realize that standing up for our own truths and honesty is how we survive.

I am not an easy person. I've learned how to be kind, but I'm not naturally born sweet. Hi, I'm Pinky, and I'm ok with myself.

staying positive through the negative

allthethings

I'm so bubbly full of wordy words this morning that I'm feeling impatient. Too bad I can't just press my head to the screen and think it out to here. #waitingforthebrainchip

First of all, yes, really had a mountain lion ON MY STREET IN FRONT OF MY HOUSE this week. You twitter people ignoring that are just jealous as hell, that's all. @bonenado set up the wildlife cam in the front yard hoping we'll get a repeat sometime this summer. I think all the fireworks going off night after night flushed it out. I live among the slightly better off and extremely patriotic. It's their right and duty as 'Muricans to try to burn these woods down.

@bonenado's brexbist today. Remember that speed vine I retweeted a couple times? That. It works. I need to refresh my muffin tins, though. Using paper cups wasn't ideal.

My internet is slooooow. Wild storms galore, tree down next door, got lots of hail in the pour, now I stay in my door. Ok, let's skip along before I spring into limericks and haikus.

Quickie touch base assessment on howzit going. Cut another 2 inches off my hair this morning. I had cut 3 inches last week or so, couldn't tell because my hair has gotten so long, so I figured another 2 inches would be ok. I can't believe I've taken 5 inches off now and it's still down to my lower shoulder blades. Remember when I got so excited 3 years ago that it was growing back? And then I talked about dealing with all that, and then brought it up again in 2015. Despite the length, I've been losing hair steadily again all spring, but as far as I can tell, it's root regrowth. Hair grows in cycles and people generally don't notice randomly shedding hair and regrowing it year round because it's usually thick enough not to create empty patches. My hair didn't start growing back in until I pretty much doubled my protein intake (sometimes triple, my pre-lifestyle change diet was pretty abysmal), and now I can tell it ebbs and flows when my body is under stress. April was the hardest on my hair this year, and it's starting up again, so allergy seasons and spiking histamine levels definitely affect my hair endurance, which for me means inflammation levels.

I have been tolerating increasing sinus and ear pressure discomfort for a couple of weeks again, decided last night it's time to go back to the twice a day zyrtec, and all it took was that one boost to drain my sinus and clear my skin again just overnight. I come from very white yet red skinned people, and I've lived with an autoimmune flush most of my adult life. When I take prednisone I turn white like magic, and that one zyrtec last night did the same thing. I got whiter through the spring again while I was so miserable with tree pollen but on all that extra zyrtec, and as I tapered down again the last 6 weeks, I flushed up again.

I looked back through my medical history this week, noting dates on certain tests. I used to regularly score 1:16 on ANA titers (positive speckle) (I hit 1:32 years ago and even 1:64 once) and lived with continual moderate SEDs for years (mostly 40-80ish), but we've watched that go away the last couple of years, so I've been negative ANA and normal SEDs for 2 full years now, yay!!! Interestingly, this coincides with getting very stringent with my antihistamines. I started noticing over the last 3-4 years that histamine spikes set off fibro and autoimmune flush flares, but it's getting so obvious now that I'm able to control severity somewhat with diet and antihistamines (and I've had definite input on this from a real allergist, who called it an autoimmune reaction disorder).

I have no idea if this will help other people. I'm NOT saying antihistamines cure lupus, just like changing your diet does NOT cure diabetes. I'm just saying I'm noticing that I seem to have some control over the overall tissue response. I've had other tests scary-spike, like C reactive protein the year I had to be crashed off 2 different hormone therapies, or AST and ALT liver enzymes during steady medication years, and antihistamines don't fix any of that, so don't be dumb, ok? Just saying I'm noticing a correlation between a more rigorous antihistamine regime and autoimmune flush lightening up. You still have to take care of yourself.

Pain, on the other hand, has been off the wall again this month, pretty sure it's mostly weather related. The morphine helped knock it down last weekend but it's a fair bet it made the 'never do again' list after the difficulty I had with it, and then I ground down on daily mobic this week to keep the pain level down a little bit more, but it's just not enough to stop it. I felt great going into the chiropractor a couple mornings ago, but a very sudden wild pop up rained like a lake dumped all over us while I was in there, and I almost limped out of there feeling so rotten all over. I can't take air pressure changes, especially hard and fast, it just destroys me and there's no pain medication or treatment in the world that can stop it from happening. And I noticed last night that I'm seeing phantom light flashes in the dark again, which means I hafta back off on the mobic again before I start seeing auras. Mobic raises blood pressure in the brain and puts pressure on optic nerves, so I normally take it every other day, but this last week has been daily. Doesn't take much of that stuff to do me dirty.

Ok, I'm done with that part. Aren't you glad I don't go on about this every day? I'm just thrilled that I'm not popping into ER every other month nowadays. I've been very lucky that I've never yet been hospitalized, but it's because I obsessively pay attention to patterns over time, like I do with everything in my life.

Enough of that. Back to minecraft! This is an undisclosed location on Kai's realm. I'd never used brick before. It's a special coordinate combo using my fave number, so I planted roots there.

And it happens to be fairly near an uber giant mushroom! That realm is still survival (although I play creative more and more there lately so creepers won't activate), so I'm in process of establishing self proclaimed boundaries and I'm going to light that forest up like crazy and fence it off. Maybe I can make it look elvish or Hobbity or something. Incidentally, I've never run across so many naturally occurring giant mushroom roofed forests as in Kai's realm.

I got 4 hours of sleep last night, so I'm not sure how the rest of the day will pan out. I've actually been up doing random stuff for 7 hours already. I've got cool stuff going in my own new realm, but no pix yet and I'll put them on their own blog later. Getting Bunny pix in from a water park, maybe I'll share them later.

I'm on the verge of taking my mouse apart because that button is sticking so bad now that I lost whole sections of this just hovering over. Little sticky hands, my bad. I'm lucky Jawn's keyboard is still fairly free of problems, although he stopped going full shut down because someone changed a setting somehow. As long as the internet isn't erased, we're cool, but maybe the sticky police need to pay more attention to the tech.

I need to get moving.

never bring a silk touch pickaxe to a witch fight

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.

some diamond clouds

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, then I 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.

You guys know I'm a huge Jim Kirk fan. (Over 17,000 views on that now, thanx guys.) Pinky totally approves the direction Star Trek Beyond is going in. Remember, my fave ST series is Enterprise, so I know all the pre-stuff, plus I was the one who brought you the key timeline history through the comics to the Into Darkness movie. I spell it out in the second link here, but the first link inspired the work I put into it.
the wrath of the search for spirk
Things to Do on Your Phone When You Can't Sleep

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.

waiting for Vizzini

Where was I? Oh, yeah, I was stumped. What kind of house am I going to make? Even after the mind blowing inspiration I had just discovered (rediscovered? it was all such a whirlwind of blur back then), I felt lost. What in the world could I ever possibly build that would be mine and unique and hadn't already been expressed? I felt like every idea I had was already built right here in front of me.

And then it hit me like a loose brick. Go back to where all the magic started for me.



So I went back. Just a simple hut, a simple chest, a simple bed on a shoreline. A simple stump of block with a simple ladder on it. A simple fence with a simple gate. The most elementary of minecraft practices, a brief grasp of the power I could wield in the wonderment, and suddenly whoosh we were off in the night, treading the skies and looking for a new place to start cool new stuff.

I found it. I looked at coordinates from one place to another, figured it must lie in between somewhere, and with the F3 readout to guide my direction, keeping the ever-changing integers within a tight range of possibility as I flew, suddenly there it was below me, still there like we'd left it- a tiny little bed, a chest, a crafting table, and an itty bitty hut on the shoreline. It even had villagers still huddling in it.

I knew even in mode 1 (creative) my presence would spell doom for the villagers jammed into the tiny little hut during the night, and sure enough, as soon as I landed, the zombies came in droves, the villagers opened the doors, and I had a mob of zombie villagers thronging around. That was completely unacceptable. I set to work immediately preserving the most magical place in all of minecraft for me, my leaping point into a multiverse of all new worlds of possibilities, and then I spawned new villagers. And now it is beautiful and safe, and as long as I don't go back there in survival mode and set off creepers, it'll be ok. I hope. I got a picture for posterity just in case.

That must have been what turned the little doorknob in my mind, because I woke up this morning ready to work on my house, finally.



~later~

I was going to add more, like the new stuff I'm doing now, but I think it can wait for its own post.

to the tune of Chuck E. Cheese's birthday song

When I say "cryptic" you say "facepalm".
Cryptic
FACEPALM
Cryptic
FACEPALM

This has been stuck in my head since Bunny spent the night this weekend. It really affected me as a child, and I guess you can see where the pinkybluejacky thing started. My mom also called me Elephant's Child. If you know anything about Kipling, you know he wasn't a frivolous writer.



Ok, just weirded myself out. Googled 'pink elephants illuminati' and wound up here, here, then here, and it's wild in that last one that the key number is the age I am now and the time of year mentioned is now and I've already written about my own rabbit dream for my beta readers, and so much more in this is waaaaay too close to so much other stuff, too, lol. But seriously, guys, I actually get off on coincidence, or, as I prefer to see it, synchronicity. (Weirding myself out and freaking myself out are two different things. I'm mocking all of this, ok?) (Mocking doesn't necessarily mean side taking or making a belief statement.) (This is not an invitation to get weird back on me. I'm already worn out from growing up with all this.)

Before I go on, lemme remind us all that I was raised by a prophecy and numerology super freak and wound up studying everything I could find in (and getting a degree in) human behavioral studies, philosophies, developmental religious and political histories, and social psychologies. I know all the weird stuff the brain can do. But I also know very well how easily the brain is manipulated. I'm a big proponent of group think and brain training. I know that sounds bad, but we're already doing it, so I say do it right, with human dignity.

Humans are a unique species because we are so easily imprintable with symbolism, and symbolism easily both represents truth and stands in for truth, even when we know it is false, or true but intentionally construed as false, or even openly both true and false at the same time. We see loads of children's stories throughout the ages that deal with this sort of duality, and how we work through the symbolic pitfalls of life to reveal our own self truths, whatever they may be. Part of this journey usually involves excruciating pain of some kind, either emotional or physical or both, because without the pain the journey can't be made in the first place. This almost sounds like a condonement for abuse, but very certainly not from me, unless it's truly consensual. (You might find this idea interesting- Consent of the Governed.)

Anyway, it's almost like the human brain was designed specifically to be malleable to this sort of symbolic layering. The only real question, in my mind, is who gets to be responsible for the overwhelming fallout of this kind of portent if there really is a reckoning? Otherwise, none of the rest surprises me. So many species are behaviorally pattern-printed, no wonder humans try so hard to fit in. We feel lost without a built-in automated program. Everything we do with or against society must be embraced consciously, and for that we suffer the existentialism of awareness.

Basically what I'm getting around to is the idea that symbols themselves (shapes and patterns) are our genetic printing, and the way they are activated and layered with meaning and importance (representing ideas without having to use any words) is how we behave. The shape of a pyramid exists whether humans do or not. The shapes of circles and 5 or 6 pointed stars and crescent moons exist whether humans use them or not. Angles and dots and measurements and counts and the order they come in have always existed (this is what Plato was trying to say), humans have not. To adopt a symbol and call it good or bad and take it for a unique reference means nothing outside of human behavior. To recognize mathematical expression in our universe is simply that, recognizing that it's all around us. To assign particular meaning to it and fight wars over it belonging to this deity or that is purely human. Either God owns it it all, if there is a god at all, whoever he, she, or it is, or it's just someone using symbols to manipulate societal behaviors. Either way, symbols themselves don't have meaning until they are layered and imprinted as having meaning in the brain. Why would it be so far fetched that humans have already long since figured out how to run societies based on this kind of observational science?

I had a chicken who seemed fascinated by the Mystery of the Six Circles.
OOO
OOO
The first day she ran into them, she stared for an hour, transfixed as though she'd had a vision or revelation that she couldn't figure out, then came back every day to stare again. What I could never explain to her was that the circles were simply where paint cans had sat lined up together on a board, and all we did was lean the board up against the side of the house. It meant nothing. But to that chicken, that was a very special thing, something not in her genetic inventory to help her catalog and process. She never got over it, and was kind of upset when I finally moved it. It held meaning for her. Somehow, somewhere in that tiny little chicken brain, she was stricken with the awe of something so much bigger than her world, and it opened a little door in her mind that allowed a tiny little thought of something that she could never figure out.

Maybe this is what humans look like to something else who is able to step up above the basic symbolism and meaning thing, but for humans, it is how we survive as societies. Every major house or tribe or nation had or still has their own symbol to represent who they were, and identifying with one symbol or another holds deep meaning to each person's self worth in a very challenging world where identifying with the wrong symbol can get you ostracized, or worse, killed. Still, we all know the basics, like what a lightning symbol means. Lightning is very powerful and dangerous. Dancing with lightning bolts as a sort of sash to share and bind a dancing partner to oneself depicted during a hallucinogenic state is very suggestive of torture. Pink is reality distorted (pink is used a LOT in filming to denote very specific props and moods, sometimes associated with evil or as a soft cover over a darker plot), elephants are in charge. The entire song is delightful in my mind, and probably why I latched onto it in my weird childhood. Anyone who's gone through alternate mind states during heavy pain would be able to float right into that song. Anyone else would just blow it off as weird and say it was the alcohol. And then I say Maybe, but were the writers and illustrators drunk, as well?... Something to think about. You know, because this is supposed to be a children's movie. I didn't know what alcohol was, had never seen a drunk person, and my mom gave up attempting to explain that part to me. Why would it even be necessary for a parent to have to explain that? You don't see stuff like that in kid shows nowadays. It's a transitory scene before the big reveal of new behavior, just like what brains really go through under duress. I think it was very well done, much applause. My tiny brain recognized it exactly for what it was. I just didn't have the words back then to discuss it, or the parent capable of seeing what was right in front of her face- a coping mechanism. Can we say brain training?

So scoff if you will, but like the Cheshire cat, the truth is both right there in front of your faces and yet invisible. At any rate, I was an extremely impressionable child and apparently caught all the innuendo and psychological subtext, because I have survived a lifetime of extreme pain and brokenness kind of the same way brainwashed people survive being brainwashed. I see it all around me, it's part of our culture and has been for several generations, and scoffing only shows how powerful it has become if we can now bring it up openly and not believe it. (Remember, my dad was saying ALL this stuff decades before the general public even heard of the rumors, which should have been impossible unless he's either psychic or experienced.)

But if you want to see a then/now comparison, put this pink elephants production next to Lady Gaga's career series and you'll see all the same stuff replicated- the lightning bolt, the split personalities, two different rebirth stories (think about that one), and much more. It's all there. All this symbolism has been part of our culture since our parents and grandparents were tiny tots themselves. Pretty sure it's not random.

Back to real life. Thank goodness I'm starting to feel better, finally. I still have a few good days left this week to look forward to, yay! (Please no jinxing...) I mean, I still can't do much more than whisper, and my eye is still kind of weird, the ear on the same side is itching insanely waaaaay in there, and I'm not sure my brain isn't part pudding or something, but overall, being able to eat again is extremely awesome. The first thing I headed for this morning was tuna. I'm thrilled to be feeling too hot now instead of freezing and can't warm up.

After taking a month off so I could deal with the intensity of physical therapy, I feel terribly behind in everything. I really don't know how true OCD people cope. I'm only on the fringe and the pressure to get my routine back is enormous.

Blogger has announced it will be encrypted by the end of the month, which probably has something to do with what I was talking about Sunday. Everything is supposed to smoothly switch over to https, so hopefully none of my links will screw up. I must have 200,000 links in Pinky blog by now, lol.

I've got a couple of older posts going viral again last few days, and they're not connecting to anything related to bots now, as far as I can tell. Views are 560 and 487, but blogger isn't lumping the new incoming into the overall 'all-time' totals. I mean, that hasn't hurt anything in the all-time top ten list, but aspienado has hit the number 4 spot (already! only been 2 weeks), but there are a couple others that should have shown up higher ranked than aspienado by now that don't even show up on the top ten list, so the blogger widget code for the all-time top ten must be faulty. I can't express how badly I want to get in there and fix all the math... Anyone can write code, but without rigorous usage and feedback, fancy code is just as mediocre as anything you get at a dollar shop. What's the point of novelty socks that shrink in the wash and you can't wear them anyway. I may hafta look around for a better widget and import it. I'll refrain from going into a widgetbox loss weeping spell again. That was the most brilliant thing ever and they went bankrupt. All the really cool stuff gets mowed over.

I've said yes to a book reading challenge. The book on the left just arrived in the mail. We did a trade off, the book I suggested back is really cool, too. Each pic clicks to Amazon if you want to check it out. Note- I'm not signed up to get any compensation for Amazon link sharing. This is a legitimate reading challenge swap.

  

Couldn't sit through TV tonight because I'm coughing my head off ever since @bonenado walked in, something on his clothes (dust from work? pollen?) set me off really bad despite all the zyrtec and benadryl I'm taking, so we're on our computers and probably calling it quits pretty soon. I've tried several times today to catch up on at least some of all that lost sleep, but not having much luck yet.

Feelin' silly. Need to get away from those pink elephants.



Cracking up at discovering my tag 'symbols' was always spelled wrong. May as well stick with what works. :edit: 11-1-16 Fixed it, lol.