Some of these are categorically indeterminable, so I'll just jumble them up together.
I flirted back. She was a brunette Brienne of Tarth and one of the friendliest cashiers I've ever had, second only to the Taraji Henson-esque Big K cashier who flirted with me in right in front of Scott a couple of Christmases ago. Scott's been guy flirted with in front of me, too (last guy I saw try it was like a Hiddleston-Jack Nicklaus smash), so we're fairly even on how we score. We just generally don't flirt back.
My olfactory receptors are functioning on 'optimal' and I swear I could smell a couple of people growing cancer. They didn't smell 'bad', just different, and that was through their hazes of early morning cigs and booze, their laundry detergent, their pets, their attempts (or non attempts) at mouth odor control (I could probably even correctly tell you whether that was before or after their nutritionally poor breakfasts), and the car smells still lingering around them.
I bought more stuff than I intended, but so far I have absolutely no twinges of regret. We'll see how @bonenado feels about it tonight.
Driving still sucked because, with the super pings muted by the med, all the other stuff loudly complained. However, I felt more alert than usual. That could have been from getting real sleep, though.
I got Bunny's cake ordered and the bakery person was extra special nice to me because I felt extra special nice because I wasn't getting zapped around my left shoulder and chest constantly. I felt like we were in Happy Land together or something. I wonder if she thought I was high. I bet she wishes everyone shopping was high like me.
I've come all the way back and brought in groceries and had lunch and doing this and actually thinking about minecraft and haven't laid down yet. I normally have to crash after a morning out in town. I can tell, though, that the second I think of doing something useful, #napclub will immediately wrestle me down and I won't do anything to stop it. I'm still having no twinges of regret about anything.
I'm actually still counting my calories, in case you guys might be thinking I'm stuffing my face without any regrets.
I shouldn't have even spelled #napclub...
This is close to what Bunny's cake will probably look like. It clicks out to Walmart cakes at a location very far from me, not sure why I can't find a local pic.
I think I want a giant Dr. Strange cake for my birthday that I can fall onto, but yeah, maybe I'm a little bit wasted... I was a little miffed that I can't get a Dr. Strange lunchbox yet (srsly guys, back to school), hafta wait till November.
I impulsively bought this body pillow and matching blanket yesterday. A very tall guy couldn't take his eyes off it in my cart and had to stop and ask where I found it, then had to share with me his struggle with watching TV in bed. I nearly asked him if he'd thought of just raising his TV up a bit, like mounting it on a wall or something, but the rest of my brain nearly smothered that part gagging me, so I escaped fairly quickly. Two aspies meeting in Walmart is worse than a time travel paradox. I've wound up in 1-2 hour convos like that.
I have 5 gallons of blueberries in my freezer. My sister had an awesome blueberry year, so we bought up to the leftovers to sell to Scott's coworker who makes yummy blueberry wine. We also have another gallon in the fridge for us. I'm really wanting to try making something like this, except ours would be regular juice. It clicks to a whole page of wine popsicle recipes.
Our electricity was off half the night because of storms. I got video of the very mild beginning. Right after I got that, it dumped so hard that we couldn't hear the TV, and after that it turned into wind lashing and hail hitting all sides of the house, and finally losing electricity through the night after it blinking and surging for half an hour. I think I'm the 5th Snarkalec to lose electric just in the last week, so these storms have been fairly nationwide.
I finally started my own realm on minecraft that allows me to invite other players, which I'll talk about at StarrStrukk on pinkybluejacky. (I haven't written that yet.) It's private so people can only get on with invitations, so only people I've known for awhile (like Snarkalecs), and that way if we feel like actually touring each other's creations we can. I turned bad mobs off and set to peaceful, no fear of structural damage. I created it to play survival and all my stuff wound up looking like military compounds, and I was so busy just surviving that I never made it past the first 1000 blocks, so it's wide open beyond that and totally unexplored. For now I'm just leaving all the original stuff I started at world spawn like it is and moving on. Maybe it'll eventually turn into a city. I (we) should make a welcome center or something.
I've been getting a visitor behind Bunny's back again. He's been eating her chalk and slyly taking a few older baby toys home. He looooooves anything utilitarian, and my house is pretty awesome for snooping out useful gadgets. I hear he has his own little vacuum cleaner that really works...
Batman has a broom thing, too. He does all kinds of big work at his house. Imagine the two of them together, my house would be spotless in no time.
I'm this close to doubling up my zyrtec again. This close.
Let's see, what else. Seems like there's so much going on. My mouse button is sticky. I nearly lost all my work multiple times all week long because somebody played with it with watermelon hands. I need to run a tighter office, I really let my people get away with far too much.
I should let this go and get busy on something. Everyone I know in the U.S. traveling for the weekend- be safe. And don't do stupid stuff with fireworks. You need both your eyes and the full use of your hands and stuff.
My first thought was thank goodness it wasn't in my house so I didn't hafta clean it up.
I don't mind nonchalantly tossing a jar around to explode spectacularly all over the chips and shoot glass shards at little kids (calm down, no one was hurt), but I do mind every face in a 20 foot radius focused on me describing the exact very long title of a snobby sounding jar of spaghetti sauce.
It was awkward. It happened right at the register, and in front of everyone around me I had call out over all the noise to make sure the associate who volunteered to go get another one knew it was Bertolli Organic olive oil, basil, and garlic, because no, I can't be just any ol' person and grab a jar of sauce, I hafta scour the shelf and find one without 'natural flavors' since that could mean a citrus-based acidic being used as a flavor boost, common with tomato products, salad dressings, BBQ sauces, meat rubs, etc. Citrus isn't legally required to be labeled as an allergen, you see. So here I am, the snob in the Walmart line with my hot pink Nikes perfectly matching my hot pink novelty tee and my cute little special order pink purse with little animal clips hanging from it reminding everyone around me it has to be organic, and the associate couldn't even pronounce Bertolli and had probably never eaten such highfalutin sauce in her life. Yes, that's actually a real word. Highfalutin. She was sweet, though, had us all laughing, so thank goodness no one was glowering and hating on me for getting the line shut down for cleanup.
Needless to say, I made homemade meatballs from scratch and we had a very nice supper.
And then this happened last night. Clicks out to the tweet if you feel the need to pop those pix open there and check out that cool crossbow.
That's right.
So that takes care of the teaser gift I was going to put out this weekend, I guess. Twink and Bunny will walk in and say, "Hey, where's ours?" haha
Ok, need to get my head on, where's my jam.
I'm actually more in a Dave Pratt & the Sex Machine mood, but they don't have Red Christmas on the list, so I'm listening to Pizza and Beer instead. Yes, at 3:30 in the morning. I've got the original album, maybe one of these days I'll load a couple things up that I can't find online anywhere.
I didn't actually lay down on a Walmart bathroom floor (convo), but yeah, this was me in a Walmart earlier today drawing absolutely no attention to myself whatsoever. At least I hope I looked this cool.
It was hard to tell, but I think security kept an eye on me loitering around doing stretches all over my cart after it eased up enough to move around again. Associates kept sauntering by me asking if I was finding everything ok. Security used to have me do that at Kohl's when we watched people.
I'm the first person in Mercy therapy center history in the city of Springfield to bring in Diaper Doo in lieu of massage lotions, oils, creams... I was doing ok on shea butter up until last year, then one day my whole back exploded into this charismatic neon pink like I'd gotten third degree sunburns, and we didn't realize at the time that was my first really big latex reaction. Does Shea butter contain latex? Anything and everything with nuts and citrus has been out since 2011, so I've even tried emu emollients, but that actually kind of grosses me out since it's not much different from using goose grease in the days of yore, basically an animal had to die for the product. (Here, let us smear dead animal fat all over you...) What's nice about the Diaper Doo (thank you, Bunny, I owe you one for this) is that it's mostly lanolin from sheep wool. Keeping our fingers crossed, but so far so good, not even a hint of a reaction, which is awesome since I grew up with sheep and have had plenty of time to develop a sensitivity to lanolin. I pretty much smell like a sheep shearing barn right now, but I'm good with it.
(great, got stuck in alpaca memes, pack a lunch before you click this pic)
You know how last year I forgot to pick up Halloween candy? Remembered at the last minute today. It's getting easier to find Halloween candy that's gluten, peanut, and tree nut free now, mostly just stay away from the big chocolate candy manufacturers. Unless you have food allergies yourself or have or know kids who do, you have no idea just how scary Halloween really is. Bogus rumors still fly around about candy being laced with this or that drug or toxin, but no one pays attention to all the people who have to miss festivities because allergens float so freely amongst the populace and every surface they touch. Ironic, isn't it, that a death holiday really is a deadly holiday for some people. I think the scariest Halloween character should be Mr. Peanut. Click this pic for instructions on how to make the costume. I find it way more disturbing than a grim reaper clown smash.
My recovery goals are partially met- high protein lunch (tuna junkie), all over the hydration (plus hot tea, mmm), time to get a little nap (if possible), then bounce back up and make popcorn balls (I promised). Just finished putting a little pot of chili together.
I was looking for an Oswald Cobblepot Sherlock smash and ran into a bunch of Sherlock Clara Oswald smash. +_+ I like Clara, but I can't go there. I'll just stop where I'm at, it's horizontal break time.
Or, irl, as it's acronymed. All of these things happened over the last nine days while black ice and 6-8 inches of crunchy frozen snow kept us more indoors than out.
She doesn't dig the snow, either
Like living in a glass forest
Paper Towel Death
Since our kids are moved out, Scott and I usually eat together in front of our massive TV (the bliss of empty nest), unless he's superglued to fantasy stats or some such on his PC screen. It's not uncommon for me to walk past the couch the next morning picking up the odd paper towel or glass out of the cup holder. The other morning I chanced across a paper towel tightly twisted into what looked like a piece of rope laying on my favorite couch pillow- Was this a message? Had I irritated him too much? Was he subconsciously (or even consciously, egads) thinking about doing to me what he did to that paper towel? Everything Freudian imaginable popped into my mind, and it all pointed to DEATH.
I was right. After Scott got home from work and we were once again eating together on the couch, I paused the show we were watching and said "Hey, by the way, there was this paper towel all twisted up on my pillow. Are you thinking about killing me? Because if you are, I think letting me know what's bothering you and me changing my behavior might be more beneficial, because otherwise you wind up eating fast food every night. And cereal. That thing looked like you were making a rope, and you laid it on my pillow, dude." Turns out he was. He'd been watching one of his uber violent assassin shows the night before and had seen something that triggered him to remember Jackie Chan uses anything around him, and wondered if a paper towel could be made into a strangling weapon, and even sort of demonstrated how he had tried it on himself to see if the paper towel would tear apart. It didn't. Then he forgot to throw that towel away when he got up and took his dishes to the kitchen.
Whew!!! That explanation is entirely plausible. Between some of the shows I've watched with him (including everything from black and white samurai movies to vampire bloodbaths) and his fascination with zombie defense strategies (which I first learned about when he was going through an autoimmune blood vessel flare and a big load of steroids that made him super yappy), Scott is pretty dark in there. Maybe we need a cute brain cleanser now.
Coffee Races
Scott usually leaves me a couple cups of coffee in the pot when he goes to work, and I just microwave them when I get up, unless I'm up with him and drink it fresh. On weekends it's all fresh, which rocks, but Scott is one of those older gen guys whose little mind I can toy with. I call from the kitchen to him in the bedroom, glued to a monitor- "Hey, I'm going to make fresh coffee. You want this last cup before I pour it out?" I hear a muffled 'yeah' and know he's not moving because #glued. So I call back with a little louder voice, "Then bring your cup, I'm pouring this out in ten seconds. Ten... nine..." I hear a mad scramble out of his chair and a wild hunt for his coffee cup. "...five...four..." He's actually running into the kitchen with his cup. "...two...." His cup is under the pot that I'm holding over the sink just as I say "...one!" and start pouring. He knows I'm not bluffing. I haven't yet figured out why he still falls for that when fresh coffee in a few more minutes would have magically appeared anyway and he'd never have missed the old cold stuff, but it revs things up and makes the day more exciting. I like it.
Someone wanted a milkshake
The Pros and Cons of Having No Responsibility
This is more like a think tank game of wits that pops up every little bit. It usually starts with something Scott sees on a TV news flash or hears at work that crosses his mind, in this instance, a group of people camping or living up in some snow laden mountains and other people worrying about whether they were ok in all this horrible cold, and Scott blurted out it must be nice to have no responsibilities and just go live in the mountains, and I can never tell if he's actually jealous or what, but I once again see an opportunity for sport and jump into the deep end with "Well, you have the responsibility to stay alive, which is probably a whole lotta hard work when you're living like that", and then we launch into a discussion about all the work it takes staying alive when a person has no responsibilities to society. We usually don't get anywhere with it, partly because Bunny calls and babbles, but when we're not interrupted, we run on like that sentence up there.
Because WORK
Cripple Fight
Sometimes we reach an impasse while we're both stuck in the house together, and the only solution, as throughout human history, is to simply just kill each other. It would be preferable to do that with our battery operated computerized Battleship or a multiplayer video game, but the first is too slow and way too much sitting for all the adrenaline Scott continually processes with his ADHD, and the second gives me optic nerve migraines and him motion sickness nausea and we both wind up crawling off the couch sorry that we ever tried duking it out with our thumbs. So sometimes I take a shortcut and just slug him really hard, and then we don't talk for 3 days. I know I'm really lucky that he doesn't slug me back, and that it hurts his feelings when I do that (long history of sad reasons throughout his life that I understand I trigger), but sometimes I get 'stuck' and 'act out' and then regret it the rest of the day. In short. aspie gets frustrated processing communication and emotion at the same time and briefly gets violent, which I sometimes fail to control. I dread a future of being labeled the combatant patient in a nursing home one day when my mind deteriorates and I go Bendii Syndrome all over the staff.
I can take him ANY TIME
Anyway, this last weekend, as we hit another stalemate, I mused on the fact that recent events have left me nearly incapable of getting a good slug out, so instead, I turned from the stove to Scott watching out the kitchen window for suspicious activities going on with the neighbors and said "I never was very girly, and yet here you still are" or something like that, put my good arm around his shoulders and said "Lucky I can't hit you right now, eh?" and we laughed. If we could go back to younger years and do this all over again without all my stupid challenges in the way, it would be fun to take taekwondo and stuff together. He's always wanted to go ghost hunting, and if we were equipped for defense and strategy while we were at it, we could scheme and do stuff all over the place. But here we arrive at a place where the phrase 'cripple fight' means 'as you wish'. I'm not sure I'd give that moment up to change anything. One must embrace cabin fever to truly evolve. We both got gold stars on our foreheads that day.
One of the big kids
Walmart Bunny Rodeo and the Missing $20
Bunny's mama was assessed in the third grade by the area's top pediatric neurologist, who diagnosed her with full blown ADHD, saying he'd never seen a child score a ten on both tests before. Bunny is a cute little clone with all the signs of busy energizer bunny (I used to tell her mama that all her bunnies were bouncing out of the box), and already at only 19 months she is such a handful for 3 people that we have become a weekly shopping team. The 'problem' is that this kid already knows who she is and what she wants, and since we are still pre-language with her, reasoning doesn't work (negotiating worked beautifully with her mama once I learned the tricks, which I'm really good at because I'm aspie), and I'm juggling 3 genetically hardwired go-go-go people with poor communication skills. In Walmart.
Constantly moving equals joy
The key is to split up and run into each other 'randomly' (Bunny has no clue we're touching base on the phone at first)- Grampa uses an owl 'backpack' leash that makes Bunny feel grown up and they go walking (super fast walking, she doesn't meander) while mama and I race our carts around with our lists. We have about 15-20 minutes before Bunny and Grampa get too frustrated to work together, and then we start switching off. Sometimes mama shows up with a cookie from the bakery which Bunny can have only by sitting in the cart (helps to take her hungry when we go shopping), and if I run into them first, I have so far successfully gotten her to sit in a cart twice (which is huge) while we hunt for a special box of animal crackers, which she is allowed to open. I doubt this strategy will keep working beyond another 2-3 weeks, but at least we get our shopping done without too much entertainment that inexperienced bystanders might not appreciate.
It has helped me greatly through the years to remember that these ADHD loved ones of mine are direct descendants of the Daniel Boone clan, and that possibly it took people like this to survive being pioneers starting towns and networking local governments and whatnot, as opposed to sitting around croaking off. I also can't help but wonder, every time I hear of a family dying in a house fire during the winter, if they might have gotten out safely if they'd had a Bunny in their midst with enough insomnia to keep someone awake around the clock. Heavy sleepers croak off in fires and raids, light sleepers scream and get out windows. Maybe ADHD running through 10% of the world population is an ideal genetic variant assuring society survives in particular ways. Whenever I get worn out, I remind myself these are the people that get things done. We're very jealous of zurrito sitting in a cart, although his mama assures us keeping him in one has been a fight the whole way.
At any rate, by the time we hit the register lines we're pretty frazzled, like we've done toddler olympics or something, and our brains are all falling out. I asked Scott last weekend if I should put money on the gas card, and he said sure, $20. Neither one of us caught a miscommunication between a checker running away to puke (pregnant? sure hope it wasn't germs, ish) and Bunny reprogramming phones again while we were unloading two full carts, and I failed to grasp that I was supposed to put money on the gas card AND get cash back. We figured this out hours later when we needed the cash... Ah, yes, the Bat signal has a few bulbs going out again, gotcha. As long as we're not skidding on ice and have food in the fridge again, it's all good.
Losing internet for only one day was awesome
Squirrels and Crows vs Deer and Birdies (not counting bluejays)
Scott and I take sides. He spends a little cash putting out winter treats for the deer and birds (NOT 'wildlife') and I secretly don't let him know the wrong mouths are scarfing it all week while he's at work. I'm a softie, not a racist, and I say it's all good, let the hungry come and feast. Besides, if I think it's a little unfair, all I have to do is open the deck door and the greedy hogs whoosh away, relief washes over the forest as shouts go up "Hooray!", and the tiny little cuties (who are actually super aggressive themselves and just as mean, if you watch long enough) swoop in for leftovers. I figure the deer are big enough to walk on anybody they choose if they want a little corn, so I don't worry about it, but then, it's not my money we're spending, is it?
Over the years Scott has tried a lot of things, and over the years we have learned just how super smart the freezing famished can be overcoming obstacles. We've tried splitting up feeding stations and learned that 'common knowledge' on how to feed wildlife doesn't stick at all. Doves will eat wherever they want to eat, crows and squirrels will work together like corporate team members to solve a problem, pretty birds will kill whoever gets in their way if they feel desperate enough. The biggest wrench in any plan Scott makes is the deer. They don't cooperate. They'll eat bark while corn or hay sits 3 feet away if they suspect something's wrong. Their heads rotate up periscope for what seems like hours while crows at their feet scoop up all the good stuff. When they finally let their guard down enough to sniff around, they don't get upset if it's gone. Where other animals compete for available food, deer shrug it off and go about their business. Scott has gone through some very frustrating weekends trying to figure all this out.
TODAY, I got 8 deer on video meandering through. They do this all the time, but deer are smart enough to change their routes and times and never repeat their path. They all looked healthy and even played around with each other. That's the beauty of deer- they can live on next to nothing, like horses. Horses are made to survive on scrub, deer are made to survive forest winters. Knowing this doesn't change anything. I'm sure my video will only step up Scott's game. In the meantime, as Tosh would say for the rest of the critters, "And for that, we thank you."
