Day 5. Still hiding out from the Jehovah Witness. Curtains drawn, lights off, stealth chores going on. Outside is snow and nasty cold. Weather hasn't deterred them in the past. I made the mistake of inviting them back when they showed up in my driveway right behind me last week. I was actually glad to see real people that day because my depression was so bad, but politely declined assistance getting my shopping in. We talked for awhile, and I was fine with it and even said we could talk again sometime. When they jumped on what day next week would be good, I auto deflected with we don't have a set schedule around here. I don't invite people into my house. This is my sanctuary, my escape, my cave. This isn't a hang out for people outside my family. I grew up with my dad pulling people into the house to 'talk bible' and it would last for hours, and he even had me cooking meals so he could keep them there. He loves talking bible, and can out talk anyone, yes, including Jehovah Witness. I know for a fact that they eventually realize they are trapped and work on ways to escape. I am like my dad. I am saving them from exhaustive entrapment. I am saving us all from a not so cute cat and mouse head game. I am like my dad. I like to win...
pic clicks to wiki page
make of it what you will the USS Illuminati (NCC-60309) in ST Expanded Universe is a little over the top, I think all the good stuff is in the interactive gaming the rest flies under audience radar
So the stuff I brought up in the last post, right. It hit me later, I remembered having seen someone on facebook freaking out about finding out their kid's photo was being sold on the internet for a weirdly high price and they couldn't figure out why in the world, right. Well... maybe the cloning is a real thing. Maybe human trafficking isn't against the law when you use tissue samples from birthing and whatever (*cough*abortions*cough*) to clone cute little kiddies and people can pick them out of catalogs. Just saying. None of that is new. This is old stuff. You guys only know about it accidentally because of social media shares and internet surfs.
Those of us on the topside still have some semblance of human rights. I'm about to tell you exactly what I think since I've been so cryptic all through Pinky blog. Well, it still looks cryptic, but this is how it boils down.
Whatever comes, two things.
Your mind in the moment is yours. Even if you are brainwashed, there are times you are a lucid self, and that person is who owns those moments. No one else owns your love and kindness. You create that, in any situation. No one is ever brain broken and retrained to be sweet and kind. If you want to own yourself, be sweet and kind in your lucid 'now' moments.
We are all slaves. We always have been. We are continually used like noobs and taken advantage of with the whole freedom idea, and human dignity is a gift we give each other daily, not something someone owes us. We are the ones who give each other dignity.
Nothing else in this world holds any promises. Pinky blog assumes we are all already screwed. I am teaching you how to go forward and survive.
You don't have to believe in whatever god people hold over you or that extraterrestrials exist or that governments actually don't care about people as much as they do infrastructure, and you certainly don't have to believe me hinting at anything, but somewhere in your mind, heart, and soul there is a real person, and you easily forget to notice that we are all real people caught in a big mess. Where did the mess start? That's debatable. Did someone engineer this mess? That's food for thought. Is this mess necessary? From certain points of view, it might be. But underneath all that mess is you are real. Whether a genuine God is real is between you and God and no one else's place to manipulate you with. Some people do care, but don't realize they themselves come from a very brain trained institutionalized process that uses God to create and enhance emotional dysfunction and pressured compliance. That is not a loving God. Learn to tell the difference.
Never forget that you are real. Even if everything falls apart, or if your world is already broken, you are real. YOU are what is important. Your moments. The gifts you quietly give others. You own that.
if pinky blog isn't rankling enough for you, click to fume-snark
Yeah, I can't go there. Too many triggers this week.
I've also got other stuff on my mind. Pinky blog domain payment just went through and I guess the price went up, so time to look into that. I really had no idea how wild this would get, so many of us out there using this name and all the crazy search referrals I keep running into, but I'm caught in my own setup now and I guess I'll be riding this one out. Oh, the funny games we play amusing ourselves.
Speaking of games, I guess I'm going full blown terracotta support in my player shop. I'm still ripping down a mesa on the resource world before the regen resets, and don't ask me how, but suddenly it seems so easy. I don't know if it was my 6-day stint in single player or what, but I'm all over the new colors and loving the extra points I'm racking up while I glaze.
Started with adding on the dyed clays.
Branching into the glazed terracottas.
these 2 screenshots click back to official game server site if you're interested in checking it out
The brain healing is still amazing me. I created this player shop after the Haven move to Valhalla, so mid July? I remember spending a very confusing week wrapping my brain around the new economy, finding a reasonable balance between the warp buy and sell prices, setting and resetting a hundred signs, very much like actual retail. I spent a couple of months tweaking and finally settled on a good rhythm with the other players. When we upgraded to the latest vanilla recently I thought maybe I would just let go of clay, it seemed a little too much work. Not sure how or when it happened, but I guess all that brain work got some more lights on, and suddenly setting up a whole new shop area seemed really easy and I did it fairly quickly. I was able to keep the 16 color list straight, acquire and process the materials, and set up the signage while handling connectivity issues, player interactions, and real life. Plus all that is going on in hard survival with extra mobs, AND I was also able to keep my cash crop wealth growing.
I don't look back very often on the old blog posts that much nowadays, but this week was a mile marker so I went there. My brain still falls out a bit around the house, still getting my days and weeks mixed up, still a goofball, but apparently I'm getting math back, strategy and planning are falling into place, and multitasking under stress is getting more reliable without feeling lost, yay! I've also noticed that it's easier dealing with anxiety away from the house if I think about what I'd like to do next on the game server instead of paying attention to whatever is ramping up my anxiety. Still thinking my friend pulling me into minecraft was the best possible positive impact on my cognitive glitching, and very thankful for it.
I'm also all over executing my daily care plan, and even on pred for 4 days my fasting glucose was 89 this morning. If I can stick to this the rest of the year, I should be in really good shape by 2018. Just gotta remember I want this and not screw myself up.
I'm missing the real time ST Discovery show scheduling, but right there with you guys on wondering what's going on. Here is one fan theory.
And I've already heard rumors about this tying back to Khan somehow.
The Woodpecker Wars are going full defcon this winter. Over the years @bonenado has been plugging up holes in our siding, which is problematic because most of the holes are at least 2 stories up and very difficult to get to. Tufts of insulation sometimes trail out and look really bad. If you've never experienced what a tiny bird can do to a big house and can't imagine it being a big deal, all you have to do is search 'woodpecker damage'. And since I live in Mirkwood, it's a big deal. We get at least 3 different kinds of woodpeckers drilling holes, and since we've had flying squirrels move into birdhouses, we're wondering if we've got a flying squirrel (or even a regular sized squirrel) living in the attic now, and while some of you go 'awww, how cute!', it's actually really gross if it dies inside the house and stinks for 2 weeks. We've had mice and even a snake die in the walls, so yeah, kinda need to stop the hole makers.
(Can you imagine if that were a minecraft problem? Egads.)
I've been noticing my normally expected anxiety attacks around showering seem to be calming down lately, so I guess I'm successfully dealing with my crisis. This big meltdown thing came between Bunny's mama and I while I was dealing, didn't talk for 13 days. Reconnected yesterday, I think we're ok now. Getting through the rest of the month intact will be about focusing on my own path and not using other people's distractions to jump willy nilly hither and yon, triggering and retriggering like mad and risking burninating the peasants.
So... I went down the rabbit hole.
I've been holding back from a real rabbit hole for ages. I have a history of 'disappearing', so I made sure my personal support network was solid and that my launch platform was secure, and took the plunge. After a wonderful day with Kai blowing craters into the landscape spawning everything conceivable in minecraft all at once, I did a quick assessment and made an executive decision to release my inner rabbit and see how I do.
I made a new singleplayer world called 'uffda', which I mentioned the other day, and I have been playing sans cheats nonstop. I started with absolutely nothing, and aside from using F3 coordinates to see where I am once in awhile, and using beds I make to force the night to switch to day, I haven't cheated once. I haven't switched to creative mode at all. I went hard- missed meals, ignored TV, stopped bathing. I immersed myself until I was minecrafting all night in my sleep. But every morning I made myself touch base on Pinky blog first, and I made sure that I was tearing myself away in small time batches to run laundry through machines and make food for Scott. Otherwise, excepting brief spurts checking notifications, I have logged hours and days of solid minecraft.
While I've been super absorbed, I've managed to cut my caffeine in half, lose 5 pounds, and out of the blue coordinated my launch again. I'm writing. Sweet, unintended side effects. But realistically, every bit of this has been monitored and I'm checking in with people because I just got through one of the worst meltdowns I've had in years, like super crumble and stand back lest ye be consumed with flames while this ship goes down. This aspienado has reached a place where there is *nothing* anyone can do or say to make me feel better, and my dearest risk their lives just reaching out to get me talking. I can't say enough for one brave soul who has no clue how their own world became my float device a couple of times.
If I weren't involved with Lexx groups on facebook, I'd have shut my facebook down this last week. If I weren't focused on future sales launch, all my blogs would have gone into private this last week. If I weren't determined to see this project through that I've been working on for several years, I'd have closed my twitter account this last week. Pinky made a promise not to go away again, plus real people have access to me now. I have real friends who can actually make real life contact now, and I. am. answerable.
Despite sloughing off all those corporate and business accounts, my twitter analytics is insisting that my highest demographic is homeowners with good jobs (a third of you completed college) and a preference for premium brands, equally spread across political affiliations, and 18% of you purchased new cars in the last 6 months. Seriously, for real. It says that. Most of you prefer drama and comedy on TV, and sports is about equal with sci-fi for solid lifestyle interests. A little over 500 of you that I still follow are actual people and still currently active on social media.
In one year flat I reduced my twitter followers from nearly 3000 to just under 600 and didn't hurt my social media cred at all. My klout score has held rock steady in the 60s this entire time. 2016 is the year I proved that 'growth' does not equal WORTH. This is especially noticeable in my monthly impressions jumping another 100K the last couple of months, and if that doesn't mean anything (like I keep insisting), at least my daily/weekly/monthly engagements have held just as rock steady as my klout.
That's right, some of you just realized I'm doing the end of December stuff in November. This will probably be it for end of year assessment. Lotta people out there will be measuring 2016 in end of the year recaps by how many celebs died, by how crazy politics got, by how movies did at the box office, by Wall Street numbers, by trends in this and that games and software, by world catastrophic events, and that list just goes on.
I still have most of my friends. After 4 years. If you guys knew my personal history on the internet, that alone would sheath my house in gold.
@bonenado still has his job, despite the company he works for being on the market for nearly 3 years now.
I have gone nearly 3 years now without an autoimmune flare, and my health overall continues to be the best its been in my entire adult life since I changed everything in 2011.
I was talking with a friend the other day about how it feels when things are going good and you automatically think it means something bad is just around the corner. [11/24/2016 4:10:38 PM] Pinky Robot: I'm a proactive doom & gloomer, too. I always ready for the other shoe to drop. But it's ok to enjoy the moment. [11/24/2016 4:11:20 PM] Pinky Robot: And bad things sometimes happen because we're just being dumb and not paying attention.
And I was talking with @bonenado last night about how in shock everyone seems to be about celebrities dying all through 2016, and I was like- how was it any different from 2015, or 2014? Because those years sucked for celebrity deaths, too. And you know what? It's going to be like this from now on, because we grew up with these names and faces, we are ALL getting older, and now we're going to watch all of them steadily die off. This continual barrage of celebrity death shock is never going to end.
2017 is just around the corner. Celebrities we haven't lost yet who could go any time-
Harrison Ford (yes, all my readers just seethed and hissed at my blasphemy)
Morgan Freeman (omg, noooooooooo)
Donald Sutherland (srsly iconic)
William Shatner (I've already wept over the eulogy I wrote years ago, my most read piece EVER)
Christopher Lloyd (not Doc Brown!!!!)
Bill Murray (shtap already *weeping*)
James Earl Jones...
And apparently I'm not the only one looking up "oldest celebrities still alive", because Google search filled most of that in for me by the time I'd gotten to "oldest cele". There are a LOT of people we're going to be losing over the next ten years, and as we age with them, as social media keeps us informed up to the minute and second, O Best Beloved (Kipling), we are going to hurt every time we watch parts of our lives 'die' with them.
This is the cruelty of social media. Mass mourning is a thing now. Some of us are learning to disengage from mass mourning because it triggers too much stuff, and we wind up plowing face into that nasty depression wrecking on the highway of life thing, over and over and over.
My 2017 isn't going to be like that. I'm not going to let social media jerk me around and make me feel helpless and sad. I'm going to expect the world to keep turning and things to work out, like they usually do, and I'm going to continue focusing on my goals and why I'm here.
We have another long month to go before the end of 2016. Will social media crash your holidays? They're not going to crash mine. Not this year. I did that crash thingy last year, it sucked, and I can't go there again.
I'm an alcoholic with a history of child abuse and emotional neglect. I'm just now coming to grips with the stoicism that a- kept me alive and b- lost me all my friends over and over. I'm an aspienado that tears down belief systems and rips off masks. I'm a mess and a pissy dragon that eats people's heads. I can't be going down into a weepy bottle every time a celebrity dies, because above all these things, I am an alcoholic with a history of multiple medication addictions. Even if these addictions are considered 'mild' by some doctors, they lasted for several decades and withdrawals were wicked as hell.
So I won't be joining any of you in condolences and lamentations and remembrances every time a celebrity dies. I'm still not over losing loved ones, and I still emotionally crawl through nearly every day. Mass mourning and addiction- wow. That's a cycle that will never. end.
I ran into a couple of outstanding articles yesterday.
Depression over holidays is a real thing. Depression moves a lot of money into hands selling drugs, meds, and alcohol. You probably already know you're going to be depressed around whatever winter holiday you celebrate, even if you are singing all over your house while you decorate. You think you can beat it this year. You think you can show depression who's boss. And then that sucker punch will come- social media will hammer home someone you loved all through your childhood dying right around the big holiday, and you will fall. apart. Because that's the mask stuff over the real stuff. And you will reach for the nearest bottle of something to deal with it.
You're not weak for trying, and you're not weak for succumbing. You are hurting, and you need hugs and help.
Aspienado dealing with juggling chainsaws and eggs in public while living with depression and chronic illness on autism spectrum- ~metaphorically~
Holidays are hard. Pinky is hacking through the emotion jungle and drawing a survival map. We can do this.
I reprised the broken cheesecake. This is coffee and chocolate marble in a rice crumb crust. It's my fave holiday dessert nowadays because I'm diabetic and allergic to lemon pie (*snif*) and it's the lowest carb dessert I can find to make without fake sugar in it.
recipe- Crust- 1 1/4 graham cracker crumbs, 1/4 c sugar, 1/3 cup melted butter, stirred together and patted into pie plate. (I substitute4C gluten free bread crumbs.) Filling- Mix together 2 8-oz blocks of cream cheese, 1/2 c sugar and 1 tsp vanilla, then mix in two eggs. For the mocha swirl, I pour half the batter into the crust and melt 1/4 c. chocolate chips on the side. Moisten 1 t. dried coffee in a drip of water, swirl into remaining batter, dollop half that onto the batter already in the crust. Swirl the melted chocolate into what's left of the batter, dollop the rest of that in between the coffee dollops. With a utensil, run lines through both ways and then on a slant both ways. Bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes. Do NOT add a topping when it's done unless a label says it has no carbs because it's been replaced with artificial sweeteners. Fresh berries are ok if you don't add sugar to them, but please use your glucose meter to verify this and not my word.
This one's for Shatner still being with us and Nimoy for going on ahead and all of us left here in the wake. Bless the person who made it, and I don't know if it's the person who uploaded it, but that youtube account was created 5 years ago specifically to upload this vid. It's special, guys.
whatever cauliflower that's left from salads that you can't force yourself to finish raw, boiled and drained
whatever is left from an open can of evaporated milk after you've used most of it in a recipe, warmed in empty cauliflower pan after cauliflower is cooked
about an inch slice off a regular size block of velveeta, warmed in the milk until it stirs in
onion powder to your liking, I accidentally dumped nearly a teaspoon but this is very edible, I like onion flavor
the rest of the cooked peppered bacon that is way too spicy to finish up and you're sick of it
Awesome soup. Wait, the flavor and texture is much better than that, lemme try again.
Behold, awesome soup.
Still euphorically floating around and kinda forgetting to eat (which makes good soup awesome), but actually got a nap after several days of around 5 hours of sleep a night, so yay. Figured maybe now is a good time to get hold of photobucket since I'm too weird to be bitey. How's this for succinct?
Subject: login issues- Upload forces relogin, can't upload for 5 days
Hello- Concerning account "(me)"
Every time I click 'upload' I am force logged off. Clicking 'upload' takes me straight to 'login' and I login over and over trying to do an upload. This happens on every browser I try. Everything else is working fine. I have been a pro user for years. I even beta tested a new feature one year. I have not received any kind of acknowledgement that my last email (in this forward) was received or that this issue is being looked into. I'm staying calm in epic facepalm. I use photobucket heavily for international forum and fan site readership, and photobucket is the mainstay of most of my blog building. Please fix this. Thank you, (me)
Maybe I should send an email to paper.li about their bot swarms...
Anyway, since I can't get this into photobucket at this specific size, I'm going to put it here and see if I can hotlink it to where I want it to go in a widget, ok? Ok.
I mean, I have that around in other places, but I wanted that particular snip. And now it's getting late, so I'll finish playing with it later, whenever that is. I have stuff in town the next 2 days, and I'm pretty sure I'll feel a little beat up from physical therapy, plus getting ready for Thanksgiving. I've noticed I'm already starting to emotionally disengage and @bonenado talking to me is like through a filter where I'm only half aware of even interacting, so aspienado is already having a tough time staying on the holiday slide.
Popping awake at 3 a.m. the morning of the clock change, like you do...
clicks to official anti-clock changing site
So I finally reverted back to my minecraft realm worlds, which got me out of a few people's hair and off my twitter election depression musing (which got me over 1100 impressions, while other tweets before and after stayed pretty flat, so a handful of people actually read those), and played with new things. Here is what I have learned.
Just because a person knows how to use a fill command doesn't mean they won't waste an inordinate amount of time trying to blow up a field of TNT under ocean water. Intelligence, meet stupidity. However, I did get even more ideas for other things while I was at it.
I made my first portal, set up a base in the nether, and then went about learning about enchanting my armor and weapons. Yes, I actually avoided doing all these things for 9 months. Why? Because aspie ruts are pleasurable. Time to break out and learn to truly conquer.
Digging a depression to plant a bunch of oak trees is definitely worth a little time. I'm spoiled to the moc tree feller power chop, and I don't wanna have to load a mod just to chop trees faster when they grow 3-4 stories tall.
Now I need to learn potions and mining in the nether. I also need to learn how to plan how to build out a real establishment. I'm one of those on the fly people, and while some of my stuff turns out kinda cool, it's still very basic.
One idea I had for new moc once I get land is a pair of giant portal-looking Lady Gaga sunglasses with the weird TV screen stuff in them instead of portal mist. I have loads of ideas, and I'll need a LOT of land. If I disappear off the medias a lot, I'll be tunneling my way to wealth on the upgrade. I'm brushing up on golden shovel grief prevention so I'll know what I'm doing when the time comes.
Meanwhile, I'm ignoring @bonenado's advice on week 9 of #SnarkFF and keeping my lineup the way it is. It's killing him that I won't change my defense out. Since I get more joy out of his angsty fantasy writhings than I do actually winning, yeah. That. Sometimes I get lucky and it backfires into me getting super points on the thing he's angsty about. It could happen.
Ok, slaves, heads up. Very particular posts have been getting hit harder from other countries than from the U.S. of A., and it's not because they're bots. It's not always easy to see, but the patterns help, and then catching an hour here or there of singular hit repetition helps. I'm being passed around in facebook messaging by people who aren't even friended to me, and these people are VERY interested in the election. But you're (meaning Pinky) not even talking about the election, you say. And you are a silly brain trained sheep, I say. If you have been missing what I've been saying on Pinky blog, and particularly a particular image I shared particularly, you are so deep in the blue pill that you'll never be free. You cannot think for yourself, you already do what you're told even when you think you're making your own decisions, and you respond on cue to media triggers without even realizing it. Congratulations, rugged individualist. Your freedom rings. Hollow.
I know. I can plead 'crazy' any time I want, and you guys can blow me off for that.
We accept lies about lies because we don't love the truth, and we're even against the truth because we have been so trained to repel the truth that we can't even see other people fighting and hoping for us outside our country. We hate people who are on our side because we can't even see what side we're really on. We're so deep that, even drowning, we choose to stay in our places and fall for the last big lie- that our vote gives us power. And I say, Not if both sides are on the same side.
There is so much more than choosing a side. (Is Seagal a plant? A stoolie? A handler? My only interest is watching a chess board.) (Who is the real 'bad guy' here? *Is* there a bad guy? And if you found out what you think of as a bad guy is really a good guy, would you freeze in a logic loop?) (For those not watching, Putin purportedly loved Obama for awhile, Seagal has purportedly been against him, but that's super simplistic. The twisted path to this granted citizenship is really fun to follow, if you've been keeping track of these things over a long time.) (Jason Bourne is just a character, we watch too much TV, we let news reporting slide right by us with a little bit of snarking because we are so deep in entertainment.)
And I completely accept that this is where we are and where we've been going for decades. The dire warnings from popular prognosticators are late distractions, after the fact, part of the brain training into doublethink. It's all part of the show. Worry about something we didn't notice already happened. One of them even openly mapped out this whole path, warning to stay off the path while actually leading the sheep on it.
We are already here. The stage is set. The script is ready. At least for us in the U.S. Some parts of the world still resist. They will be summarily dealt with. No one else is our boss. Winning hand takes all. One hand to rule them all, which has already been cleverly planted into your heads.
One day this will all just be part of our entertainment culture and no one will believe it really happened like that.
OH, I finally saw Star Trek Beyond last night. The biggest thing I came away with was how close to original series Star Trek this movie felt. For those of you who never saw original series ST when it first aired, when the Beatles and Rolling Stones were still just pups and scifi on TV was brand new stuff and not the edgy huge screen monster it's grown into, it was actually pretty magical to have to use your own brain to fill in the gaps. Storytelling has evolved into spoon feeding and scientifically timed attention-getting effects, so even though this 3rd new Trek felt toned down from 2nd new Trek, it was still very watchable. There were many fails I could pick on, but the longer I watched, the more I laughed and thought Yes, this is like Original Trek. I thought This is the way I felt the first time I saw Star Trek.
You guys know Star Trek has always been leading edge for newthink, right? *wink* Go rewatch it and see what you think of the nebula, the bubble, and all those little drills eating everything. We've already seen these things happen in Stargate and Lexx. This image isn't new.
I know, I said I'm taking a few days off, so right now this is the real deal and I'm not going to post it yet. It needs to age a little.
Just after midnight last night there was a shooting at a school in a small town that I know well, or at least used to. I haven't been back there much since my mom died a few years ago. My whole family is down there (except my kiddo in Houston), and since I have history in that small town going into a book (not naming names), it doesn't matter that I didn't know the kids involved in the shooting. All it took was hearing it happened to set off an entire day of funk and memories.
Later in the day I was doing dishes and one of the sudden memories that triggered was Scott putting these almost ridiculously heavy giant boots on (think logger boots on steroids) to go with me to meet an ex family member because we didn't know if my ex would show up, and I was understandably very nervous (well, you'll understand if I ever get the book out). After the meet up was over and Scott was back home taking his boots off, I asked why in the world he wore them, and he said it was in case there was a fight. Apparently he's been scrappy enough to understand the importance of footwear in a nasty showdown, which it thankfully didn't come down to because my ex didn't show up with the other person, but when he said those words I thought, "This man will take care of me", and that was the moment that really sealed the deal on our lifelong friendship. I've always felt safe with him. Next week we'll be celebrating our 23rd wedding anniversary.
A few years after that happened, the memory about the boots triggered and I realized for the first time that my husband (we were married by then) was the only person who had really believed the stories I told about my ex without question, and that blew me away. I had been grappling with a small handful of people not believing me for years. My mom called me a liar to my face, and her friend, an elder's wife, said I watched too much TV and was trying to get attention (which still pisses me off to this day), so the memory of someone believing me enough to take "silly" precautions like putting on a giant pair of heavy boots nearly brought me to tears. And then a few years after that, he finally shared some pretty scary stories from his own childhood. Turns out he believed me because he'd personally seen abuse up close.
I've been talking about where I got the name Pinky and how Bluejacky spawned Aspienado, but I've never said where Janika actually comes from. I've mentioned that my little girl named me Janik when she was four, but now I'll say that was the town we lived in, where this shooting last night took place. Back then, Janik was an alcoholic that told her little girl to lie down in a ditch and hide if the police came. Janik survived the Phoenix underground because she survived a nearly off the grid family of in-laws and a crazy ex in the heart of Booger County, a place where people go to disappear from the law. Despite the peaceful overtones, that town is a boiling cauldron of teenage time bombs caught in the event horizon of a black hole of drugs and porn and violence lurking in shadows many fail to even see. I often feel like I escaped, as do others who move away, never to return. I met people that would quail your souls, people the world doesn't even know exist.
Janik was a survivor. Janik learned hard and fast sliding out of control during a slew of big mistakes slamming one right after another why we need to be kind and honest and take care of each other. Janik was a ringleader keeping a gang of underage kids out of trouble one year, maybe not in the right way, but none of mine got shot or shot anyone else. Three of us were shot at, but not shot. I won't bring up the people outside of Wendy and the Lost Boys that we knew who were raped and questionably murdered around that time and no one ever got caught. All I'll say is I kept my boys away from the bad stuff. Wish someone had been looking out for me when I needed it.
This came in the mail today. Over 300 hardback pages of high quality behind the scenes photos and stories about filming Sherlock. Clicks to amazon if you want a copy. Not being paid to share that.
Tuesday 7-26
I'm allowing myself an hour a day on singleplayer if I've been good all morning doing real stuff getting my life back around my house. This is from a mesa world where I've built the most hideously ugly house you ever saw over a gaping cavern and have been playing let's see what happens if with the natives. For instance, they don't all understand to come up the stairs into the house, and they hide underneath watching their family remain safe while they wind up plunging through the sticky webs trying to get away from zombies.
Meanwhile, upstairs we're having cake and watching scary movies and posing for pix, just a jolly good time.
Yes, very nice pose, got it, thanks. They love having their pictures taken. But yeah, seriously hideously ugly house.
With taste.
I may be a cruel dictator, but we still enjoy the finer things in life. Yes, that's a big screen TV on the left that we watch from the bed.
Holding a couple librarians hostage is the only way I convince the gang to come back into the house, but some of them are still stupid enough to run underneath and get zombied.
I want a real house like this over a gaping cavern.
This is from earlier, did a float outside the window peeping Tom kind of thing. It all went to hell when one of the guys stupidly opened the door for a zombie crashing the party and I wound up nearly destroying the room over all of them fleeing upstairs and turning. Totes had to redecorate.
Side notes- Back on double zyrtec, thank you rain burst over Mirkwood. It'll be like this through September now. Also, this week is full blown aspienado. You guys have no idea the 'nothing' I feel like I'm hanging onto a sheer cliff face and the people I really need not being available, the panic attack I made it through in the shower, the self doubts eating me like piles of worms, the horrible realizations that I'll realize later were lies my head is telling me. Staring at this pic on Jawn's screen and telling myself I can do this...
Scott forgot his phone today, and I conveniently have a blood draw scheduled, so I'm going to get out of the house and take his phone up to him.
Thoughts.
My best months on twitter are all Lexx related, bar none. In the past I've gotten nearly 9000 profile visits a month, and top tweet stuff in twitter analytics is always Lexx. For some reason I seem to have developed a different awareness of my public self over the last year, like I have never before felt this kind of shyness. This is a brand new feeling for me, feeling shy after years of Lexxing to the entire world, having my stuff translated and copied and replicated all over the world, talking to people in entertainment like it's all cool and not a big deal, knowing from my stats that some fairly big players glance at my stuff sometimes. I did all that not caring who saw what, who said what, who hated or liked me, it was all the same to me. Suddenly- it's not all the same.
I didn't come back out for Lexx, and even though Pinky far outstrips anything Lexx for blog stats, Lexx has been and always will be part of who I am everywhere I go online. Why do I feel shy now? STA, as a niece used to say. Something to think about.
Bluejacky is at a standstill. I am the cat who walks by himself, and all things are alike to me. quote
Pinky says maybe not.
Aspienado is past the panic attack now and looking around for breakfast.
They had to use my hand for blood draw yesterday. This is getting ridiculous. They say drink water, well, I drank water. This guy told me it's more about the water I've had over the last couple of days, just drinking water right before going in doesn't do the trick. I'd like to blame my new med arrangement, but we were blowing veins out before we rearranged. I must be chronically dehydrated in spite of how I think I'm doing.
Never chug 3 bottles of water in a row. I used to do that. You get weird headaches doing that, and it's not good for you. I drink 1-2 bottles/glasses of water with every meal, plus a couple tall glasses in the mornings waking up and meds and stuff, plus the glass in between here and there through the day, plus 2-3 bottles of water in the car every time I go to town. Is that not enough? What changed? It used to be enough. I don't know what's going on in there. I wish I could get direct cell reports and do projection meetings with organ groups.
A little real world before I go all minecrafty again. I like looking up real estate from some of the places that check in on trackers. I don't mean specific incoming, I mean the general areas. This one is pretty sweet, asking price $817,000. Nice digs.
What's funny is I'm living in a house on acreage that easily be worth half a million on the east or west coast but assesses to only 126,000 here now (goes up and down with the market) because cost of living is so much lower. We're mortgaged out because real life stuff, pretty sure half the nation is living by the skin of their teeth right on the edge of possible job loss (company sell out in our case) after medically inspired bankruptcy. It's neat seeing other real estate from incoming tracker areas, kind of get a feel for some of you. Anyway, I seem to be getting to know the southern California area pretty good in particular. waving hi
You caught that hint, good. Yeah, little bit of stress going on, some of you probably remember me mentioning Scott's boss maybe selling out any time over the last couple of years, just got more hints it could be imminent (as soon as next month) or by the end of the year or something. We've been living on this edge for so long.
And since I bring up stress, I noticed last night that a few of my family are involved in fundraising for the medical expenses mounting up on the shooting victim I brought up a couple days ago. If there is a good part at all to a shooting on school property, it's that the main target survived being shot 3 times.
Despite my anxiety surge yesterday, I noticed I handled traffic just fine. *hugs neurontin*Thanx, buddy. I think I'm adapting, though. Starting to boing out of bed early again. *I* personally think that's a good thing, my health team might not.
Ok, first off, quick disclaimer- it's amazing how much a person can do with an hour of minecraft once you're used to playing it, so all the following is NOT me playing on minecraft all day. I spent my morning yesterday during my drive into town thinking about new strategy going forward on the webs, and I'm liking what I'm thinking, plus I made @bonenado an awesome supper of stuffed pork chop and seasoned roasted mixed veg (it really was a pretty dinner), so I allowed my hour of solace in minecraft for being a good girl. I'm a nice boss.
THIS is the hideously ugly house from the outside. I love it.
Got that last room done.
Me and the guys out for a night of ghost hunting. The excitement was palpable.
Aaaand it all went to hell. I just left the vid running like a web cam and walked around doing things in real life. You get to see villagers panic and bump each other off into the cavern like idiots, and the zombies getting in. I mean, if you're bored and really need something, here you go.
*I* was bored by then, so I moved to another singleplayer world I'll likely keep. I world spawned practically in a village and there are 2 more within a hundred blocks of each other, a mesa only a thousand blocks away, and just really neat stuff. I looooove this acacia village. I'm not going to fence it, but I lit it up and fixed the doorways.
And after that I was flying around some more and this happened. Ran into a lone block hanging in the sky, was right in the middle of lighting it up for a marker when a cow spawned right on top of me. Next thing you know I'm in an episode of Can This Cow Be Saved? and throwing dirt blocks around for her to climb down on to the ground. If you don't play minecraft, you might not be aware that passive mobs walk right off cliffs and tree tops and fall to their deaths. I was in a silly mood and took her spawning right there as a Sign.
After I saved her, I knocked the extra dirt blocks back off and created a monument.
And then a trail of roses...
... to a Valley of the Roses where the treetops became natural rose-ringed temples. And the morning and the night were the first day, and the Pinky said, "All is good."
And then over the next hill there was the most nearly perfect desert temple I've ever found, so I'm calling the whole cow thing miraculous and leaving it at that.
And the morning and the night were the second day, and the Pinky said, "All is good."
This made me feel good last night. You understand what this means to a fansite owner of a show about a talking spaceship, right? It felt like a synchronicity hug from the cosmos. Tamsen McDonough voices Lucy, the spaceship on Killjoys. Well, the Lexx was voiced by Tom Gallant, and Ellen Dubin, who played Giggerota on Lexx, is also big voice actor in gaming (her IMDB list is impressive). I'm a big spaceship voice fan, all the Star Trek and Andromeda and other shows that used voice actors for ships, so this is a big deal to me, and I very much appreciate that click during this difficult week.
I'm not ready to push this one out yet. Still got some thinking to do.
This interview wins all the interviews.
~later~ Ok, it's been 3 weeks since med changes and I'm pretty sure a big part of this week's way heftier than usual funk is a result of that (years of blogging comes in so handy), so I went ahead and looked up side effects (I've learned to avoid doing that the first couple weeks so it's not psychosomatic, give the meds a chance to work) and wrote a note to my doctor. I think he's on vacation this week, but I'm on a 9-day countdown to follow up now, so it's up to him if he wants to change anything when he gets back before I see him again. I can handle a list of minor inconveniences with meds, and @bonenado is used to the mood swings, but plunging into actual exercise intolerance isn't acceptable. I've already been through that trade-off for pain management, it doesn't work. It only makes things worse in the long run to turn into a lethargic lump with puffy limbs. I suppose a phlebe remarking on my severe vasodilation during yesterday's blood draw is a red flag, as well, found that on the list for one of the meds. All together there were 14 different side effects piling up on me, many of them common, but a couple of them problematic.
It was nice while it lasted... We'll always have that first wonderful week on cartia and neurontin. I think I'm ok to make it to appointment date, which happens to be my wedding anniversary, lol. I usually wind up with psychologist appointments on that date, one year was neurologist, but almost without fail, every year I'm seeing someone besides my husband for a date on my wedding anniversary.
In the meantime, took a little ride down a lava fall. You don't die in creative mode, so it's fun messing around. Yes, totally swam back up, too. That little white square at the beginning is a block of wool. A sheep fell in and died there.
A note about withdrawing from public this week- People who watch me tend to worry, and then they start contacting when I'm my least capable of handling contact. I'm still popping up on facebook to check on family, still showing up on twitter every day, however briefly, so we know I'm ok, even though this is a very hard week. I'm not in the mood to spell out how hard. Go watch the lava fall video again. Maybe it's a form of subtext or communication from my brain about what's going on inside me. Maybe this entire post is a metaphor. I'm sure it would make a great psyche analysis, all things considered.
I will share one real thing. Weird pain running up one's chest and side of a neck for days on end while meds are excellently controlling nerve chatter and blood pressure and heart rate is still unnerving as hell, and it being muffled like this doesn't make it less scary. If it were in a different part of my body I'd wonder if I had appendicitis or a broken toe or a migraine being muffled by meds, but it's nerve centers that happen to be situated around my chest with my heart beating in the middle of it all, and I can totally understand why some people don't want to live like this. But I don't want you guys to worry so I'm not out there saying it. By the time you read this I'll be past it and busy doing something else, most likely in minecraft or watching TV with @bonenado after work, and we all know talking about it will only make it worse by drawing attention back to it, so don't comment. I have lived through 25 years of trigeminal neuralgia (deemed the suicide disease) and now this unremitting nerve pain through my chest is back full force. If you knew how many kinds of scans I've had and how many different heart monitors I've worn (and how often) ruling out heart problems, you wouldn't believe it, but it's standard protocol every single time I complain about this. Feeling like I'm being shocked and stabbed all day long in my ears and eyes and neck and chest and shoulder and back for 25 years has been very, very, very hard. But I'm still here. I feel like that is my defiant whisper back to the cosmos- I'm still here.
I've fantasized about how good it would feel to kill someone who was trying to kill me. I know that sounds horrible, but visualizing success and positive imaging are good for emotional and physical health, and I often run through scenarios where I rip someone apart with my bare hands just for trying to hurt me. I think my will to live far outweighs my need to escape this suffering, and I know it's solid because I really do enjoy those scenarios. I think the Spock/Khan fight is my fave.
You didn't see me cry a couple of paragraphs back. Pretty sure it's the meds. They're destroying my kill mode vibe. I need my evil villain-ness back.
This is my house in the winter. In the summer it's way too jungley to see the ground.
It has also occurred to me that whatever meds I start or stop, all must be compatible with the extra zyrtec I'm on now. Zyrtec shouldn't really be a potentiator, but there's a bit of debate both ways with hardcore users. This is one of the milder debates. Back in the day I was really good at timing out and pushing my cocktails, and my doctors kept me well stocked for years until I got this new guy. Well, that's not the goal now. When I'm way closer to end game, yeah, I'll just stay stoned outa my mind, on brandy if I can't take anything else (especially now that opioids are out, and still not allergic to grapes yet), but right now the goal is to be able to stay healthy enough to push end game off further, right?
~~~~~~~~~~more thoughts~~~~~~~~~~~
I have been kicking around several ideas about migrating my Xanga Lexx stuff to wordpress, an arduous job, or custom redesigning blogger, and I keep thinking but I've already done so much of this work... I've tossed around better hubbing and I can't help thinking but I already hub better than nearly everyone else I know, and the ones who are better have staff. Then I think how much time I've wasted and I can't help thinking but my launch platform survived all the stuff and is actually stronger than first projected. What it all finally really boils down to is whether I'm going to publish sooner or later, and none of the rest will matter that much once I do, so the real REAL stuff bantering around my head is whether to just lay it all out on private blogs anyway, because other people do that all the time. I'm not keen on previewing, but I'm very seriously cross with MS Word because I'm so used to a blogging format- omg, after all the work I've been through, would it really be any harder to just blog the frickin books out and manually paste the content over? I can't even tell you the kind of headache I get having to think this stuff through. But everybody does that, don't they?
I've got the titles, one is already a domain, all I have to do is put my content on the web anyway. That's it. It's where I'm comfortable, where I'm most at home. This folders and files stuff and book style format makes my eyes crazy. If you guys have never had optic nerve headaches, you cannot truly appreciate being able to use your eyes without thinking.
Whiny, crabby, bitchy me. Thursday
I think I need to release this into the wild today before it turns into its own book or something. This has been just about the worst head week I've had since I came back out 4 years ago. Pretty sure the beginning of slinging into this unreal number dimension started with that morphine shot reaction, and then the rest is just a domino effect from there.
And now Jawn is disk checking and bossing me around and stuff. I'm this close to just pouring coffee on the keyboard.
Anyways, I'm doing ok, already demanding Sharknado 4 live tweet time in the family schedule because Bunny bomb on Saturday. I normally don't dwell, so the med thing has settled into I can do this because it's working for what it's supposed to be doing, and it'll be the doctor's call if I continue and tweak. I'm not sure at this point how, but I've got to get my workout routine back. This feeling knocked flat thing might be temporary because the utter relief after living so long through such hard pain yadayada. Maybe I really did just need a week OFF that bad. I spent hours laying around looking at the walls, not even moving. I wasn't too worried until I noticed 4 hours had passed, and then another time 3 hours had passed, but when I'm on my feet I feel every minute and time takes forever to go by and I can't think what to do. Actually got my shoes on a couple of times, but what triggered shooting that note to the doctor was not being able to get past 2 whole minutes of mild exercise. THAT really is the deciding factor on what happens next.
Beating Pinky blog to a ragged pulp, I really need to let this one go. Here, look at my cool ocean stuff going on with Planet Yablo. I found 3 ocean monuments in the same ocean, so I'm linking them up and I'm going to build an underwater city. Yes, I'm sure it'll take a very long time, but something to go back to when I'm bored with regular stuff. This one actually belongs on the StarrStrukk blog, so anything else there has to wait for later.
I guess that's as good a song as any to go out on. Mood I'm in, anything could happen today.
Day 12 on neurontin. Please to notice I'm not on minecraft as much. Maybe. You might wish I'd go back to the tunnels and trees.
clicks to bacon soda convo
This is how scattered I am. I called up to move an eye appointment from the end of this month to the first Friday in September. As I was changing the date on all my calendars and pocket planner, I noticed I had the orginal time different on every one- 9:30, 10:00, 10:30... That's me moving from room to room writing stuff on calendars. I have to have info in my hand and look at it every time from moment to moment. I live like this. No one questions it. Not one of the professionals on my care team has ever expressed any concern over this.
That is why I journal. I try to get the dates right when I blog, but once in awhile I run into a post where I've written the wrong year down for something happening.
The irony? The year I finally got away from my ex, the only way I could finally force him to leave me alone was by telling him he could see the kid if he agreed to go to an appointment at a psychological assessment center and sign a paper saying I could talk to whoever evaluated him. We are talking top of the line behavioral health, this building is famous around here. He passed with flying colors until I asked the assessor point blank if my ex had given dates for when we got married and when our kiddo was born, and watched the assessor turn really white when I pulled out the documents and showed him the real dates, and he actually asked, "Can you get him back here?" I simply said "Sorry, this is all I needed", got up and walked out. Basically, if he couldn't get the facts straight and really believed whatever popped out of his mouth (making our toddler two years older than she really was, stuff like that), that pretty much validated that other things he'd said about horrible injuries and surgeries in his life being a lie, and I was able to point to documentation with a neurologist disproving that, as well.
Him being a pathological liar wasn't the problem. One of my scariest days with my ex was the day a neurologist showed him on x-rays that he was fine. The drive home was not fine, and the stories didn't change. It was the neurologist who was wrong, and that really fueled a temper that translated to abuse later as a form of stress relief. What prompted this final break was a concerned social worker at a local welfare office sending him to job counseling, and one thing led to another until someone upped the ante and filled out forms for the state to pay for proof of hardship. It was a miserable year dragging from one office to another and another, but vital to an end game I didn't know at the time would save me later.
I can remember those basic kinds of dates, like when my child was born and when my wedding anniversary is, but I have what I feel is an uncomfortably laughable time orientation problem. But yeah, it's still really ironic, I think. You could say my own going time wonky thing is karmic justice for 'doing him dirty', but back then, time orientation really was a vital part of an elaborate escape plan because child safety stuffs. Note of interest- If you are reading this and have been considering seeking legal help leaving an abusive spouse, keeping a date and time noted journal of when whatever happens is significant to your case.
People take a lot for granted. I've had to remind Scott that if it weren't for him, I'd be in poor housing and have a court appointed guardian, and likely be living so broke that I wouldn't have tech at all. It doesn't matter that I got over 30 on an ACT or was in grad school or even held steady jobs for 8 years while the kids were in junior and high school. All that matters is that I live with a calendar and clocks in every room of my house and still can't get the day right, much less the time.
You wouldn't believe how many people I've run into that say they have problems, too, but they never tell anyone. Whole lotta brain blips out there. Illness, injury, trauma, lots of people living with time jags or deja vu or even moment to moment from meal to meal, but otherwise come across pretty normal. I think time orientation is taken for granted because so many of us are on schedules for school and work and stuff, but when the schedules are taken away during vacations or job loss or in beween semesters, we feel lost. Time passes weird.
One easy fix- use the TV for a time schedule, right? Fave show, this night of the week. Nope, doesn't work for me. I float week to week having to check my DVR timer for what day it is, and several times a week point blank ask @bonenado what day it is, sometimes several times in one day. I can be all over knowing something is two days away, and without warning think it's tomorrow, or even that I missed it somehow.
Feeling this disoriented can be unnerving. At first I couldn't put a finger on what was causing some of my anxiety, and then when I'd bring it up, someone else would counter with my anxiety was causing the time disorientation, but I've lived with this so long now that I think the two are separate. I exist, time is now, and having to attach it to what's going on around me with other people is where the anxiety comes from. The pressure to be synchronized and know what to do when, like meet for a special day, is where that comes from.
I used to think this was a really big deal, but I'm finding out as I share more and more of my own stuff that other people are like this, too, and there's not always a specific start date or cause. It's just something we all go through. I'm not sure if human brains were made to be tethered to time like this, to be so aware nearly every moment of where we are in a vast ocean of spacetime, to know what our planet tilt is and where we are in our orbit. We used to watch the stars, and that would be enough.
Time sync is upon us. Our entire planet is on the brink of super sync. This reminds me of two things- the Hopi time prophecies, and the Wrinkle in Time quintet. I think what transpired on Camazotz was about the scariest thing I ever read. I don't know if L'Engle ever read Lewis' Space Trilogy, but her CENTRAL Central Intelligence (1963) isn't far from his N.I.C.E. (1945), and then Spock's Brain airing in 1968. All three of these stories use a disembodied human brain to sync control over a population.
Is it any wonder I like Lexx... (Awesome brain removal screen shots.)
If there was a point to this, it's probably subconscious. I just think humans being synced into schedules, while efficient and profitable, is much akin to being kept in boxes, if you can twist the picture around enough to see it like that.
It might not be long until the entire world is finally synced up and all of us are in perfect rhythm, like on Camazotz.
The Hopi spirit is how we'll survive the time sync. This planet-wide sync has been coming all along, and maybe the only way humanity survives the machinery of it is to hang onto what really makes us human. It may not be in our natures to handle time pressures, but it is in our natures to forgive each other for feeling stressed out. We might feel a little disoriented, but as long as we don't take our stress out on each other, I think we're going to be ok.
Also, this is Wednesday and a new Mr. Robot is on tonight. I checked.
Oh, nothing, just walking around eating watermelon...
Who else put on 2 pounds over Memorial Day weekend? *woot!*
I'm blaming the giant salad.
And it's BACK TO WORK! Yes, I actually worked this morning, on real work stuff. And I liked it.
My internet got so slow over the weekend that I couldn't get on multiplayer for about 24 hours (I was privately blaming it on space weather Chance of Storms on Memorial Day, but it was probably more local on either my end or the server end), so I went to my friend's private realm and got silly building a diamond house in a forest that keeps flaming up from lightning strikes and a lava bed spewing little sparks. At first it looked really cool, but that wore off pretty quickly. There's probably a reason we don't go crazy with house colors in real life, like maybe overload on the brain or something. Anyway, it's actually 3 stories tall now, so that roof you see became a floor.
In the meantime, documenting ponytail length. My hair is thinning out again, but at least not in patches, probably from a couple of med dosage changes. It has seemed a bit dramatic to me, but I don't think most people would be able to tell. That weird 'lump' on my ear is a piece of rogue cartilage. If it laid upright and flat instead of laying over, I'd have proof that I'm half Vulcan. Btw, still my natural hair color. My mom was completely gray and going white-headed by this age.
Movie gang got back together over the weekend, was super fun. I got a few snips, these click back if you want to make them bigger.
Anyway, we experienced a strange and very rare lack of Bunny bomb on Memorial Day weekend, so for the first time in maybe our entire marriage we actually did nothing for 4 days straight. By nothing I mean no driving around (except briefly to the local cemetery), no shopping, no visiting, no grill, no jaunts off to theme parks or the swimming pool or anywhere else, just a lot of TV and yard work and #napclub. Yes, we had sex. Yes, it was noteworthy. We also had awesome chili cheese dogs (I inhaled my dogs with sauerkraut), lots of bacon, a little pan of brownies, taco and Italian nachos (not mixed), and giant salads.
I'm getting so psyched. Star Trek is one of the extremely few franchises I'll still go suffer a real movie theater over. Star Trek Beyond
Waking up at 2:30 a.m. from a dream where I promised someone I'd order and raise 49,511 chicks (49,511???) into layers for them and then realizing in my dream that I had no money for capital and investment for the chick order, the feed they'd require, the building I'd need (I've lived on a farm with long, empty chicken houses from the previous owner, so I already have a clue), plus the hardware (feeders, waterers) and the electricity and all the gadgets that would entail, and dang if I didn't come full awake actually doing math.
I was insane thinking that plan to tunnel to 0,0 from the -8000s would be a cinch. I can tell you things about acres of lava and miles of cobblestone that would make you hate minecraft forever. I think the game is psychic, it can feel when I'm my most frustrated and disgusted and spawns big gobs of ores to run into, and alla sudden I'm getting 50 blocks of gold and diamonds and all the other stuff around them. I ran into someone else's settlement that turned out to be part of our own township that I had no clue existed (I died in lava and temporarily lost my "/back" to home base, so I popped out on top to see the countryside for a few minutes, talk about total coinkydink), and way after that ran into someone else's super long unclaimed tunnels that for some reason left all the coal intact and never seemed to lead back out anywhere, which got boring real quick, so after I nabbed the coal I just kept plowing my own path through the bottom of the world.
I kept seeing this guy die over and over in the chat log, cracked me up, finally had to get a screen shot.
Anyway, I'm in the -2000s now *dull cheer*. I am getting super rich, though. I've got so many blocks of redstone that I'm thinking about building a Chinese restaurant. I mean, I NEVER see anyone build with redstone, it would be pretty awesome. And I've got 3 double trunks of cobblestone, so I'm thinking about paving the valley between the village and my evil lair and going crazy building a mall or something.
I've gotta get back into the tunnel. Be careful with your grills, guys. (Memorial Day weekend in the States.)
Waking up at 2:30 a.m. from a dream where I promised someone I'd order and raise 49,511 chicks (49,511???) into layers for them and then realizing in my dream that I had no money for capital and investment for the chick order, the feed they'd require, the building I'd need (I've lived on a farm with long, empty chicken houses from the previous owner, so I already have a clue), plus the hardware (feeders, waterers) and the electricity and all the gadgets that would entail, and dang if I didn't come full awake actually doing math.
