click for the Bunny Halloween wiki
bunnies and Halloween are not strangers
I think one of my sister's girls started that one years ago, not sure if it was around Easter or what else was going on, but it has stuck with us ever since and we say it a lot. :edit:Thisis the original source.
I love you more than bunnies.
Growing up in a family where hearing "I love you" didn't happen often enough around me, or was said more out of expectation or under trite circumstance, I went out of my way to change that with my family. It was hard, but once I got used to it, it started rolling off my tongue unbidden even to strangers, sometimes in very funny or awkward places. Oh, well, lol. Maybe someone needed it.
Last night's vivid dream was about bunnies. If we could see in bunny form what humans do to each other, maybe we could understand better. Like when someone's day gets crushed by an angry person flinging their emotions around, literally seeing a bunny stomped hard with a big boot and the painful squeal of death while eyes gouge and guts and brain spurt out. Or like if someone was all best of luck to someone else whose bunny was out in rough choppy water and you could see the bunny was literally drowning in front of you. Or like sending someone off to handle something with a you can do this, and there was a very sad bunny hiding deep in a backpack or glove box. Sad bunnies would be pretty hard to push out there into the big cruel world. We'd want to cuddle them and make them feel safe.
click for tons of clip art
Today is brought to you by the letters K and MC and the number every 30-60 seconds. Kaspersky is a big bad biatch, and I really love it. Kaspersky on Windows 10 is a whiny brat. I've used Kaspersky for years, so I'm pretty good at figuring out the drags I go through and adjusting them. Our latest adventure together ramped up when I updated my minecraft game server downloads and started getting kicked off for java.io.IOException every 30-60 seconds. Kaspersky doesn't like java and tells on java all the time, so I'm well aware of the crap on my end. I fiddled around with adding exceptions and told it to ignore any more java, and at least I was able to log on. I spent an entire day relogging nearly every minute. I'm a machine, I got a LOT done in between those kicks, like renovating my player shop and farming up another $75K or so. But I got really tired of it, so I finally took the whole safe money off. I don't know what is going on with the latest Kaspersky updates and the latest W10 and Chrome duels, but I had to take safe money off just to be able to stay on a game server on a top of the line gaming laptop. Have I mentioned I'm about ready for the competition to stop? That it's time for the total integration and smooth interface of internet? That I'm ready for the brain chip? Sheesh.
If the only interesting thing in that last paragraph was 'game server', my latest post is here.
click to get to official server site
After a sweet lull in my personal allergy hell (got through ragweed season on half the usual amount of antihistamines), everything flared super big yesterday and I had to slam extra zyrtec, double the benadryl I usually take when needed, pepcid (H2 blocker) and after 30 minutes decided I'd better get on that pred burst or wind up in clinic for shots, so I'm on prednisone for 3 more days. Between our basement getting dredged for yard sale (went fantastic, yay!) and the leaf mold from autumn starting (official allergy to leaf mold), and all of it going in and out the door past me, my histamine levels were probably already popping, and then all it took from there was one of my old pain pills (some meds are well known for spiking normal histamine levels even though there is no allergy to the med), and bam. I'm not supposed to be taking those any more anyway and had gotten down to one a week, and yesterday's 30 minutes of headache relief got blitzed by my uvula turning into a lawn sprinkler. You don't mess around with that kind of reaction. Took nearly an hour to get that under control, but much better now. Guess I'd better go back to twice a day zyrtec through autumn peak. Maybe I can cut back down once we're past that.
SO. I'll be super watching my blood sugar next few days. If you're in diabetic hell with steroids for some reason, I wrote a post for that called Diabetes and Steroid Meds. If you need more, go here. I'm pretty good at this, fasting glucose was 78 this morning after yesterday's prednisone.
I think I'm getting better at cramming a lot of stuff into less space. 😋 Let's get out of here, I need breakfast and more game time. I didn't get on server for 6 whole days in a row last week, and I've been extra special good lately, so I'm going to PLAY. I don't think some of the kids nowadays appreciate that my gen inventing playing. All your tech and industries- my peeps made 4 u. Let's go enjoy something today.
I used to call this stuff tech meth. Sometimes I get sucked in and don't climb back out for hours. I documented this morning's trail so I can come back later and jump back down the hole if I want to. If you're not into techanese, scroll down to the big pink pumpkin.
So Cortana (like the chat Siri for Windows 10) let me know Kaspersky was still pouting about Java plug ins, so I thought Ok, it's 4:30 a.m., I have some coffee in me, let's do this. Because I've been ignoring it since January when I first got Jawn going, and then complaining when I can't see my own plugins on my blogs.
First I had Kaspersky show me exactly what it was pouting about, and of course, who wants something like not-a-virus:HEUR:AdWare.Win32.InstallMonster.gen in their computer, right? I mean, that sounds awfully weird and vague in an "ignore me because I'm sneaking in" kind of way. I did a search and ran into this Kaspersky Lab Forum, which wasn't very helpful but showed me that it's a common question.
* The quote not a virus comes from Kaspersky. It means that ist is not a dangerous virus. It could be a unknown program. * It could contain malware. But it doesn't have to be.
Not exactly helpful. I refined my search a little ("Kaspersky won't let me update Java in Windows 10") and came across the same question in a forum at superuser.com, and the suggestion there was to load the file to virustotal.com to find out for sure exactly what the file even is. Once the file was uploaded and scanned, I could see 'analysis', 'file detail', and 'additional information'. Most of you will think that is gobbledygook, but in the 'file detail' part I can see a pretty green checkmark by Signature Verification, so it's a legitimate file that's been legally documented the way legit business is supposed to do (pretty sure that's what a verification check mark is supposed to mean). Also, I can see things like Product, File Version, and Description. I thought Ok, let's plug 'inno setup' into a search bar, and clicking on a couple things very quickly let me see that Microsoft has contracted with Inno Setup.
I've been wondering why Jawn wasn't allowing Java to update, now I know. Had to add those .exe files to exclusions, which is really easy now, just a couple of clicks in the Kaspersky pout window and now Cortana will leave me alone. But wait a second... I still had doubts. Melepot? Did they buy Inno Setup out or something?
EMSIsoft thinks the plugins are malware across the board, but I think they're just freaking people out to sell their own product. Everything else I can find out about Melepot is in other languages, like Romanian.
How to Fix 'Java Plugins' Errors Since this looks like a Norton foot in the door, I'm not going to further aggravate Kaspersky by running it.
Back to virustotal.com. It's sitting there with it's little arms folded insisting that "The file being studied is a Portable Executable file! More specifically, it is a Win32 EXE file for the Windows GUI subsystem."
Well, maybe Cortana will let me know again sometime that Kaspersky is pouting or something. In the meantime, an hour has gone by and my eyes are already twirly before the sun has even come up. I just removed all the problems from exclusions and walked off from Kaspersky for a bit.
I know a lot of people turn off Java in their systems so trackers can't exchange info, I see this all the time in site tracker FAQ stuff, from simple user trackers to google analytics. Not having working Java isn't the worst thing in the world, but I'm on a gaming laptop, so I'm not sure if not allowing Java is holding other stuff back. Jawn can't seem to update my drivers, either, so...
click for cool pinterest board
Yes, too early to actually care. I got a new popcorn popper! Click the pic to go where I got mine. There are other styles to choose from, too.
Today I'm going to make popcorn balls, yay! I won't go too crazy like what I see on pinterest, but I might roll them in Halloween sprinkles for fun. I don't eat them myself, but Papa and Bunny will have fun eating them this weekend, and I can send a few home with her.
I don't see this addressed much anywhere, but one of the hardest things on a manic euphoric depression cycle is sedation. I can't even begin to describe how far that anesthesia threw me off and how difficult this week has been just getting back my normal brain rhythm. My memory glitching came back full force for a few days, my aspienado shutdowns have been accentuated, and I'm barely covering for somewhat my kind of normal. I'm ok, just thrown off my regular coping strategies, but I can definitely vouch for coming back from that amount of sedation being a real blow to people who trigger easily for suicidal thoughts, and I've been craving vicodin again like the old days. That's pretty much how I know it's a brain chemical thing and not 'just' feeling gloomy. And the really big red flag was not being able to get myself distracted into minecraft. Best plan was just spread out on the medias like a big float device and keep watching TV, which seems to be working out pretty well. I got a little mean on a couple of people, but I think overall I'm coming through this one in fairly good shape. It would've been very easy to snivel all over one or two people and pull them into my dark hole, but I'm really glad I didn't. I felt especially destructive this week behind all the fun.
1 tbsp of my favorite chocolate chips has 70 calories. How many chips are in 1 tbsp??? And is that an ounce, or what?
Finally found an answer, from A Comprehensive Guide to Chocolate Conversions, Substitutions and Equivalents- "1 ounce semi-sweet chocolate (chips or square) = 3 tablespoons semi-sweet chocolate chips (or, 54 individual chips) - 1 ounce semi-sweet baking (chips or square) = 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder + 3 tablespoons sugar + 1 tablespoon butter, margarine or shortening"
And that's my foil in this calorie counting thing. I added roughly 210 calories before I went to bed last night. I've decided after this bag of chips is empty, NO MOAR.
The biggest challenges I'm running into with Windows 10 is that it runs more like mobile, and I'm having to cave to dowloading apps for things I normally pull up in search or have saved to desktop shortcuts. Jawn regularly gets into fights with Chrome and Facebook because W10 keeps making it difficult to interface them with my built in programs already running. I have no idea if I'll wind up having to allow Kaspersky to be the boss about how these apps will open once I have them loaded. All I know is that I better be as protected from the world as I am myself, because I can barely move on my own laptop without stringent profiling and interrogation.
STEP OUT OF THE KEYBOARD! What?SHOW ME YOUR ID!It's me, this is my computer. THAT WASN'T THE CORRECT PASSWORD, TRY AGAIN!But I'm already logged in...YOU CAN'T PROCEED WITHOUT AN SMS CODE.Seriously? I was *just working* there. And then some of the sites start fighting back, because if it's going to be this way, forget playing nice, and they just fold their arms and legs and sit around the table with their noses in the air not cooperating. My pictures folder is getting really tired of being held hostage in corporate takeovers. I *think* I just downloaded the Facebook app for Windows 10. Suddenly it was all instantaneous and not laborious at all, but I never got a confirmation that happened. We'll see how it goes.
this meme strangely links to all this in google search
(just scroll down)
Ok, things going on and what in the world am I doing with any kind of Plan?
I need 3 more dimes and 3 more pennies to make rolls. My monthly change haul is already nearly $40.
I have a beautiful new orange 32 GB Cruzer Glide to load junk over to once I'm done with stuff. Nope, still haven't found all my other flash drives. Yep, actually been excavating.
I'm really in an orange mood lately, I think it's because I'm ready for autumn. Did you see the size of those webs Iposted to twitter? And they're just getting started. I live in Mirkwood.
I am actually working on real work. I know you guys laugh.
I've started a giant platform on MoCreatures. Lest any of ye protest that I'm on minecraft too much, my multiplayer was down for nearly 2 weeks, so nyahnyah. And 45 minutes working on a platform isn't being on minecraft all the time. Anyway, I had this idea for a cool scifi story years ago, and I'm actually building what it would look like (kinda). Anyway, the platform will be really big, like raising a town up on stilts. Underneath the platform is already very dangerous for really excellent bad guy spawns. I was killed by werewolves from hell yesterday, they set me on fire and everything, which is perfect because there is a nasty underground thing going on in my story. Up top I want to build with very expensive blocks, so I might need to extend town protection or something before I start on the buildings. It'll be like a swanky shopping plaza with a tram system, and since it's next to my evil lair, the tram will naturally run partially underneath the platform for a scary good time. This could possibly take months...
In other news, @bonenado has been checking out a cricket powered bugracer for Bunny (cricket not included, lol). No idea yet if we'll actually get it.
Massive software update came through on my phone, took forever, so I just shut down and went back to bed. Waking up a second time and no coffee is a bummer, threw my whole morning off, so even though I'm dressed and functional, I feel out of kilter and weird, like I didn't do it right.
Here is the hair regrowth I brought up a few days ago. See that little piece sticking out in the ponytail? It's not break off or from being cut. I regularly regrow patches like chickens do (many chicken breeds will partial molt year round like wild birds), which is actually a really good sign after all the crap I've been through. I'm back on more meds now, so I'll be watching this like a hawk. I've seen loads of forums of people complaining about hair loss after med changes. I still think it's related to diabetes and not getting enough protein, like the body has to prioritize what's more important for protein allocation when the diet is too carby in a dsyfunctional metabolism. All it takes is a med change to throw a fluid balance off and there you go, a cascade of systems readjusting, starting with liver and kidneys because they're the ones that filter the meds. The healthier you can keep your liver and kidneys, the more protein you'll have left for hair growth. Doctors don't have time to asplain this stuff, nutritionists aren't certified to actually say it like this, nurses are simply just run to half to death, and the 'official' diabetes groups are being funded by people who don't want you to know this (seriously- American Diabetes Association receives millions each year from junk food companies, candy manufacturers and pharmaceutical firms). When I was my sickest and most immobile, I was on handfuls of meds and my diet was atrocious. Pills don't save you from a junky diet. They only give you a sense of controlling the downhill slide by slowing it down a little bit.
"The ADA's advice to diabetics is that they can keep eating all the ice cream, sweets and soft drinks they want, as long as they control their blood sugar with pharmaceuticals," Adams said. "It's medically absurd. Diabetics need to eliminate liquid sugars and refined carbohydrates from their diets for life, and in doing so, many of them would find their diabetes disappearing."
I have never bought that guy's book, but I did my own research and figured it out myself, and then almost literally came back from the dead, as it were. You can read more about his approach here. Not being paid to link that.
I think the most important part of this is that patients are told they are 'borderline' when they are already very sick. My ketones were noted 3 years before my diagnosis. The borderline level is (likely, in my opinion) set by pharmaceutical companies, because the second you hit that 126 and cross into diagnosis, you get meds, and by then it's too late, the meds don't keep it from progressing. You just simply live in a controlled state the rest of your life as you slide downhill into old age. They compound it with advocating a very high amount of carbs as being part of a healthy diet in a body that can't properly process carbs, and that keeps you on meds so it won't kill you outright. Carbs are really big business. Think about it sometime.
Some of us are very lucky and don't tolerate meds. Some of us are forced to get healthy on our own if we want to live badly enough. My health was so bad that I couldn't walk through a store or even get in and out of a shower by myself. Diabetes was taking me down hard and fast, and there was only one way to save myself- stop consuming stuff my body can't digest properly. No more sweet tea, no more big breakfasts full of pancakes and waffles and french toast, no more giant servings of rice and potatoes and pasta in restaurants, no more cake and ice cream and pie on holidays. No. More. Cookies. Yes, it's very hard. If you have diabetes (borderline or full blown) or even insulin resistance, your body thinks it needs sweets because the sweet-o-meter is broken (starches count for sweets in the body, you'll crave bread, too), and every two hours that alarm goes off screaming we need carbs or we'll die, and you really can't help it, you've gotta do something or go crazy. The ONLY way to turn that off is to stop the cycle. Proteins and healthy fats, leafy and cruciferous veg, berries and nuts, foods low in starches and sugars. I lost 50 pounds in 4 months barely even trying, and then I felt so much better that I started exercising. I regained my abilities for self care at home and shopping for myself around town. It was wonderful getting those back.
Not everyone loses a leg or goes blind before diabetes kills them. My mom died from lots and lots of strokes, and on the outside you couldn't tell she was diabetic. She got skinny for awhile, seemed to have lots of energy, and didn't look unhealthy for a woman her age. At home we knew she suffered- her feet were going numb, it was getting harder and harder for her to walk to the mailbox because she'd be out of breath and fatigued, and she finally started losing her strength as muscles started wasting. You don't have to be fat to have diabetes.
Sorry this turned into a big long thing. I know it seems like I embellish a bit when I mention once in awhile fighting to live every day, but with all the stuff I've got stacked up on me, I'm fortunate to still be here, and I'll be very fortunate to make it as long as my mom did. I'm doing everything I can every single day to reach that goal.
I really need to let go of the chocolate chips...
And I really need to get off this post and get moving around.
We've had a weird situation where @bonenado and I have practically been accusing each other of having Alzheimer's all week. Not our first, some might remember the lost video camera and stuff, but this was zucchini. Normally zucchini mystery comes from wondering who left it on your porch, but everyone knows we know it's our next door neighbor because he has a guilt thing about throwing monster woody squash out, so he gifts it instead. When we ask him not to, he says it's for our chickens. When we remind him (we're next door) we haven't had chickens in well over a year now, he just walks off and leaves us wondering what to do with it, so we fling it off the back deck and watch it smash delightfully on the trees, and then we get deer and groundhogs coming up out of Mirkwood to eat it. He doesn't like to feed the wildlife so he gives it to us.
Ok, that wasn't where I was going with this. The neighbor finally stopped sharing his produce with us because after ten years of inedible mystery monster veggies showing up in piles on our deck, we finally just put both our feet down and said We don't want anything from your garden and then had a ridiculous convo about just trying to be neighborly and here I go again. THIS zucchini was from a grocery store. Just know that, and we still don't know how it got here. I know, I keep talking like this. It's very mysterious.
I was unloading the groceries from the cart in Walmart while I was out with @bonenado last week, and I was irked to see he'd secretly smuggled in a couple of zucchini. I rolled my eyes and didn't say anything. He's a weirdo and I just roll. Got home, was putting the groceries away and rolled my eyes again when I noticed the one yellow squash hadn't been bagged in its own little veggie bag after I handed it to him, but the zucchini obviously had, so I just rolled the yellow squash up in the walmart bag and stuck it in the fridge and never said anything.
Days later, after one of the zucchini had been consumed and I need to get the rest of that squash cooked up, I finally asked why he didn't bag up the yellow squash but he did the zucchini. Skip a couple of really weird hours where we both thought the other really had cracked this time. Turns out we never bought that zucchini. Neither one of us put it into the cart, AND we were never charged for it. We dug out the receipts, it's true. But I remember getting them out of the cart...
Explain that one. It's almost like a double homicide without the death. A healthycide? I can understand someone else possibly getting the wrong cart or playing a weird joke (or @bonenado still having Alzheimer's), but not to be charged on top of it really creeped us out.
My Batman has been sick with some kind of weird germ going around the Gulf Coast. I don't think it's Zika, but it sucketh, and now the Batmom and Batdad have it, many feels for them on the Fourth. Meanwhile, Bunny rules the world from her vaca at a water park hotel. I zoomed in on the wave. She's way up there and it kinda freaks me out. Hang on, Edge has got Jawn in a headlock. This clicks to the ridiculous help advice in case you have the same problemo. #appwars
Wound up having to reboot over complete lock up,
and then got this trying to resize. I had to go around it by saving with a new title.
THAT is Microsoft wrestling control away from Chrome. Windows 10 insists on converting to their own photo app thingy, but it just doesn't work when I'm actually working in a Chrome browser. Big fail there, Microsoft. We must learn to share our toys.
Ok, back to Bunny. I cropped it and then zoomed, she is really high up there.
This kid was made for owning the world. She's not quite 3 and she's already at home with #allthethings. It's cracking us up comparing vaca pix to our own kids (their parents) at the exact same ages- noncompliance, crying, terrified of Bugs Bunny...
Maybe our kids are just doing it better than we did.
Our neighbors have already made sure it sounds like we're in a war zone every night for the last week solid, and I'm sure will continue through the rest of this week and possibly even month, so we're naturally not even interested in anything fireworky. We just want to sleep. I can't even imagine the pets and wildlife within our 2 mile radius. The mountain lion was real, here's proof we have them, the studies predicting their return (includes maps), and a list of confirmed sightings (I'm right next to Taney County), so yeah. Let's pull out our favorite Pumaman song! First, the original scene as seen on MST3K.
We always wondered why the most indigenous looking person didn't don the Puma Man belt, since he's a better fighter... @LisaMarieBowman briefly mentioned Pumaman in one of her reviews a couple of years ago. I think she'd have enjoyed it more with the song in it.
I've had the privilege over the last month of getting to see further into myself than ever before, more aspienado waking up kind of thing, and I just wanna say thanx again to everyone who has ever put up with me. I know I'm difficult. I can't say more because I don't have the words yet. They need time to percolate through me until they spill out. It's a kind of timeline thing, the before and after, and the paradox of the unaware traveling alongside the unaware in a new awareness of being unaware.
:edit:
Btw, wanna mention that this archive post that I linked on twitter this weekend got me into a "Great Writers" list. I know lists are a dime a dozen, but the account that did it is a very serious book marketing firm in Germany. I looked them up. I'm used to being put on writer lists and being followed by authors and marketing accounts trying to network, but this was different. I was simply very quietly put into a list.
The root of all this very deep thought about being public comes from this convo, the heft of which I was the silent heart of the debate over technicalities. No one knew back then that Oct 6 and 8 are extremely important dates to me for personal reasons, and that my absence had nothing to do with sitting out the debate.
I had to log off and shut Jawn down in the middle of writing this post. When I turned back on, I couldn't pull anything Google related up, not Chrome or Torch, not my G+ page or Youtube, nothing. I'm currently working through the Windows 10 Edge browser, which is fine, but since Microsoft and Google are playing Game of Webs, neither is mutually supportive of the other. I'm finding forums on this problem going back well over a year. At any rate, I couldn't even pull blogger up until I signed into Google through Edge, which technically means I'm signed in on 4 'devices' now- Chrome, Torch, my phone, and Edge. Just signing in again on my own laptop meant security checks galore, a frenzy of email alerts, and having to 2-step verify, so I feel like the time when James Cole accidentally changed the future and wound up having to get back into the lab through Deacon and Cassie-gone-WestVII, like geeeeeez louise, it's me. Same laptop, same house, same little dot on the map, and all guns pointed right at me. As Deacon would say- Respect.
I clearly exhibited today why I'll never to be able to achieve morphine addict status. Hats off to all you guys who think it's the bomb, but all it took was what the ER doctor called a 'baby dose' to set off wave after wave of acute deep musculoskeletal pain and the shakes. Basically, I'm so adapted to screaming high pain levels that it took nearly 20 minutes to even feel relief, and not because it was a 'baby dose', which was probably 5 mg, and I say that because the nurse said it was half a dose when she brought it in. (Morphine Injection)
I so very rarely go in for pain any more. I'm so tired of all the hoops that have to be jumped before I ever get any relief that it's usually just not worth it, but today was one of those days.
Ok, now I had to all-stop because Edge decided that NOW is the time to walk me through an intro like I've never used a browser before. It is now stuck in a loop trying to import my favorites from a broken Chrome. Serves it right.
Ok, where was I? Papa and Bunny are up at the pool, I'm in a nice quiet house with the last of the morphine sliding its way out of my system, and putting the day back together. -Oh, yeah.-
I've been through this before, but apparently my pain management needs adjusting. Just sitting here at the table, streak of lightning bolted through my chest that set off the adrenaline response from heck (not to be mistaken for hell, I've had much worse), that kicked off a sweet SVT that wouldn't slow down at all, so 10 minutes of that and I decided being 16 years past the radio ablation might not mean much any more and better safe than sorry. EMT could feel the pain waves in my pulse changes, no one could get a needle in until I arrived (5 blown veins, and pretty sure my bad after not hydrating well this week after all that deep muscle work in therapy- I know better), and all else being magnificent because I've been working so hard to get all ripped like Madonna, I only had to hang around for 4 hours before I got a small dose of morphine and then cried like a baby.
They used to give me 10 mg and then I'd get all hysterical and bossy when it was wearing off. The best is when I get cocktails, but I'm so loopy after that I'm just not safe even when I love everybody, because you never know when I'll walk right off a curb into oncoming traffic like an idiot. It's just easier on everyone if I tough it out most of the time, and I've gotten so used to stuffing it down that I fall apart when drugs pull the walls down and I have no resistance.
So when I say it was a long, rough week, what I really mean is I'm exploding inside with so much pain that all it takes to break me is 5 mg of morphine. After the first 20 minutes of super ultra hypersensitivity and awareness of every cell in my entire body, I'm finally spazzing on a beach on the other side of the galaxy and it's all cool.
omg, just getting this pic locked up #allthethings again
had to reboot
NOW I HAVE CHROME BACK
I owe it all to this man ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX 2016
If everyone went through what I go through with injected pain meds, no one would ever use. It absolutely sucks being able to feel every millimeter of my entire skeleton, all the fibers attached to it all over, and all the veins and nerves and muscle fibers around them. SUCKS. Yes, you heard me right. I CAN FEEL MY SKELETON.
I can describe in detail everything attached to my skull, my sternum and ribs, every backbone, all the bony protrusions, and I especially love my shoulder blades, clavicle, and jaw. omg it sucks being able to feel all that so intimately. I don't even feel my skin when I'm in that mode. I don't feel my other senses, nothing else gets through, all I can feel are all those nerves screaming out the map of my body.
You'd think I'd want to be doped up all the time. You have no idea how terrifying it is to live with solid pain and suddenly it turns off. Completely. Like the year I suddenly couldn't feel my lips, tongue, throat, sinus, cheekbones... It wasn't just numb, it was *gone*. The nerves blanked out. I could still move just fine, and talk, but that one got me an MRI making sure I didn't have blood vessel inflammation in my brain during an autoimmune flare up, because yes, I was in autoimmune flare up.
Ok, way too yappy. I need to stop. Today was just about poor pain management and dehydration. I've exhausted lists of pills, I have to plan for 20 more years of liver maintenance, I can't just go back on a bunch of junk and expect to reach anywhere near 65 with grace and aplomb if it's not about making my health top priority. Pills burn you up. I'm living with a liver condition because a decade of meds will do that to you. I'm saving pills and cortisone shots for when I'm older, and I've gotta arrive there in as good a shape as possible if I want to make it longer on medical crutches. My people don't live to ripe old ages like @bonenado's people.
Wait, pain management. I was going to write this down so I'll remember it. When I follow up with my doctor I'm going to ask what he thinks about opiate bursts. Kinda like pred bursts, you don't stay on it, just do short term to get something under control. This week needed heftier pain management, and if I'd had a fall back (boldly says the noncompliant patient), I might not have wound up spiking into the ER right in the middle of a blood pressure med withdrawal. I'm wondering if a low dose ibuprofen/codeine burst for a couple of days might have changed this entire weekend. Maybe I could ask him if he'd let me have enough for, say, one week out of every month. Not a month's supply, not every day, because it's too easy to get addicted again, but a controlled count for one hard week a month. I already knew this week was pretty rough, and I've lived with this long enough to hoard back for days like that.
You know how many doctors over how many years tossed prescriptions out into the hallways hoping I'd chase them out the door? Not this doctor. And now I've got this whole team counting my pills, so I feel like I'm in a safer place now to actually ask for opiates. We'll see what the summer brings. I really don't want to go onto a daily regimen of something that he'll be pulling me back off of in 2 weeks and I'm back at square one. I've been a guinea pig way too many times.
This is what pain management problems look like for what a rheumatologist has labeled 'severe' in a med addict cleaned off meds. I just got my once a year baby morphine shot. Because I'm gonna be MADONNA.
Much of this post was finished up around watermelon, butter and jelly sandwiches, playing 'cherries' (HiHo CherryO), yogurt, playing ball with 3 different balls, and other massive stickiness, because coming home all sparkly clean from a long swim is just too good to be true.
So far I'm loving Windows 10. It's like the hoitier toitier side of an amalgam hinting at what you wish whatever browser you use could be. It's what facebook wants to be when it grows up but can't seem to clean up its room in time for dinner. That's right, I just called facebook a bratty high schooler.
And then last night I synced my chrome on Windows 10. A hush fell over our house as an entire mountain of data organization in a closed sleeping senile lappy magically showed up in Jawn in a single eyeblink, and within seconds the pin it button on my taskbar even showed up. I didn't have to reload a pin it button.
This is what I've been talking about, the kind of world sync that makes everything easy. The big guys working together harmoniously to give us all smoother interface without jumping through a mllion hoops. Between MS login and Google login, I'm feeling all the luv and oh so thrilled Jawn came into my life.
By the way, I did NOT upgrade to Windows 10 on previously owned tech. I waited until I got new tech that already came with Windows 10. I've been hearing a few cries in the night over the upgrade thingy. I'm sure Microsoft is still ironing out bugs.
Some of you guys know when I came back out I talked about flying blind, learning ropes, finding my voice and stuff. I have trepidations sometimes, usually as a result of painting myself into my own corners, and then wind up in logic loops on how to go forward. I keep saying I need staff, I need a handler, I need feedback. Most of you really don't have a clue what I'm talking about, and that's ok. I'm mostly just flapping my fingers out loud sifting things out of my head so I can see directions I need to go.
I have gotten some very good advice from two different people this month.
1- Let it go.
2- Step back.
Done and done. Funny how that actually time synced with getting on minecraft and learning how to escape in /gamemode 3. I'm not longer psychologically self painted into a corner. I just go into /gamemode 3 and step back through the wall, and now I'm out in the wide open yard with the wide open sky and I didn't even mess up the paint.
Allegories and metaphors are lifesavers. So are people who know me well and are cool enough to point things out and say things. Bae totally gets the aspienado thing, and BFF totally gets the biting and will jump in and bite with me if it ever boils down, so my world is getting sweet again. I'm not just an angsty aspienado on a mission in Pinky sox any more. My focus is back, my compass is working again, and I'm looking forward to an enjoyable year. I'm not sure I've ever said that sentence in my entire adult life- I'm looking forward to an enjoyable year.
My endocrinologist told me Thursday he's not going to worry about a dose change until my TSH hits 2.5, but I told him if it hits 2 and the joint pain in my feet is getting worse, I'll be calling back for that dosage tweak. I know he thinks I'm trying to over control it, but I don't accept that people my age with all the problems I've got are supposed to not be able to stop the ravages of illness and time and just accept getting fatter and more crippled. Already been there. I have been completely immobile and disabled at way too early an age. I have come back from needing help getting in the shower and dressing and tying my shoes to buying my own groceries and carrying them into the house all by myself. I have come back from not being able to coherently read a paragraph in a book to writing complex paragraphs in movie reviews. This whole sitting around waiting for a number change while something gets worse again is unacceptable. I know from hard experience that by the time it hits 3 I get the whole headache achy joint thing, by 4 I'm useless, and since I lived in the 6 range for a couple of years, pretty sure I know my own body. Some people can do that, but a TSH at 6 during untreated undiagnosed diabetes was killing me. I spent my forties plunging into an abyss that could easily have been avoided with proper medical attention. I had the worst doctor on the planet throwing narcotics and benzos at me like candy while saying "I'm not going to worry about it until..." There's just no excuse for losing so many years of my life like that.
In the meantime, what my endo should have been saying is WOW, you are doing remarkable with a virus that is taking down my other patients for 3 weeks and 2 rounds of antibiotics for the related bacterial infections, how are you doing this??? Well, Doctor, I stopped shoveling carbs into my mouth assuming pills for diabetes would fix everything, as you seem not to have caught onto yourself. Seriously, guys, that was the biggest change in my life. Your bodies can't work properly if they are continually shoveling through incoming sludge slowing everything down, and the sludge itself is what's actually killing you. It's hard enough surviving with chronic illness in the first place, kinda silly to make it a Herculean effort.
Ok, get off the lectury rant. Ha, lectury is an Englishism. Nothing like devoting an entire blog to weird words. I admire people who obsess far more than I do. I totally get sign collectors.
That's right. Bae. Her. I found the words. The last 8 1/2 years are suddenly an eyeblink, and Pinky is giddy. The darkness finally falls away and my world becomes joyful again.
Time to move on. This is part of a wicked awesome video series and the song can be downloaded on itunes.
I hear the villagers inciting to riot... I won't be able to leave my room without having to just kill them all.
Ok, never mind, I turned around and there they were. Mr. Bean is all up in my face.
Aaaaand I've already crashed the display driver on Jawn. Wow. It has already recovered twice. This is a gamer laptop and I've already crashed the display driver toggling multiple screens during gameplay. THAT is how hard I use laptops, guys.
By the way, those of you who've moved up to Windows 10 and upgraded your Kasperky, those little pop up certificates about my blog are because of one of my follower map widgets and my paper.li widget in the right column. It's not bugs. We're cool. If you're coming in on mobile you probably bypass all of that. If you've never seen the web version of this blog, it's got stuff all over it. If you're on an older computer, apologies for the lag and overheating and stuff. I know it was killing my old laptop, and I live here.
Moving on. Tweeps who've been wondering where the heck I've gone- I've extended my braincation on the advice of a good friend who knows #allthethings and especially knows how to help me take a step back without going underground again. Some of you guys are aware I do social media so I have a network of people who can monitor me without having to call or text since I'm home alone for up to 12 hours a day through the week. I'm learning to incorporate mini braincations into my daily syllabus, which is wonderful for retraining me back into planning and assessment without all the words in the way. I was getting only so far with words. (I know I'm overwhelming.) Amusingly, I've dropped from 6000+ twitter impressions a day to 1500. My klout might plummet, as well. I don't care. Doesn't seem to be hurting numbers on blogs at all. Twitter used to be my only traffic source. Things have changed.
And of course I'm dealing with all the cute little tutorials about how to handle Windows 10, like the crazy way the screen zooms in and out. There's a quick fix for that. I'm actually liking Windows 10 quite a lot. It seems way more secure.
Ok, where were we? Oh, yeah, braincation selfies!
Here I am riding my first horse. I had to look up how to get off. I was stuck on him for the longest time.
Inside the glass domed fountain. Yes, I'm showing off.
You may notice that Galaxie Gurl looks a little Brunnen-G.
Extreme closeup. I couldn't resist doing duck lips.
I also couldn't resist getting a selfie in the beacon beam.
I didn't make that, Kai did. I'm not at all proficient at this, and it will take all year because I hafta get up and move around so much. Always fun coming back and finding new toys! I've been showered with presents all week. Me showing off some more.
So I started this temple on the hillside thing, with absolutely no idea what all minecraft has available but knowing I wanted to do a hell outside the city theme, with a zombie pit and stuff, so I started constructing an open air temple and sculpted a patio and swimming pool out of a nearby rocky pond and I came back to an actual portal to hell sitting behind my temple and got so excited that I promptly ran in and got stuck. You know me, room with a view of hell, staircase of Satan, pond of death kind of thing.
This is still early on. Who knows how elaborate this will look in a few months, but I love the more rugged look of the old temple on the mount thing. Don't want to sculpt too much or it'll turn into a city temple. My idea is that the city side will be lit up, the further side will be dark.
Looking back around you can see our castle on the edge of the city.
There's a natural valley that funnels in on the dark side of the temple, so, taking our cue from the quarry idea in the Walking Dead, that's going to be our blood sport arena. The idea is to let zombies and spiders and skeletons filter in and get caught without being able to walk back out, like the way wasp and japanese beetle traps work.
Kai had the awesome idea to create a lure, kind of like the goat in Jurassic Park, only this is a villager.
I loooooooved the big flameout when the sun rose, wouldn't it be awesome to get a whole pit full of zombies flaming up all at once. I'm calling this the Pit of Despair, after Princess Bride.
Gratuitous shot of a zombie getting trapped facing hell in a worship stance. I can still open the chest just fine.
This next bit is all Kai. I currently have a zombie caught in my temple swimming pool getting zapped like it's electrocuted every time the sun comes up, so I was calling it the Pond of Death, but this turned out to be way more awesome. Check it, a zombie wound up stuck on a chicken in a real pond of death. The water flow keeps it trapped and the cactus slowly kills it.
I've done other things, too, like fly around the world and stand on the highest mountain letting clouds drift through me while I survey the horizon around me. It was breathtaking, but unfortunately, I still hadn't learned the art of screenshotting my game. This is like one of those vacation photos that's crap, but it's the only one of that thing so you hang onto it.
Don't worry, this won't be turning into a minecraft blog. It's taken me days just to get these, everything I'm doing is going very slowly in short time spurts.
Yesterday was hard. We were out of everything, so I did some extra shopping and wore myself out. (Fresh cooked chicken is pretty awesome after you've been eating tuna and soup for a week.) I had stopped coughing before that, but now once in awhile I have a really productive cough again, maybe all the extra work stirred things up. I've had a pneumonia shot, pretty sure I was a day away from full on bronchitis flaming through my chest when I finally messaged my doctor last week. Everyone around here who's had this has been sick for a solid week, so it's not just me being puny. Whatever this is starts out as a nasty head cold and turns into chest crud, which would've taken me down for a good 3 weeks and 2 rounds of antibiotics in the old days, but I've been able to keep up with dishes and laundry and shopping and appointments all through this. I've said it and said it and I'll keep saying it- I can't say enough for boosting proteins and healthy fats with paleo and getting off wheat and sugar. If a super spoonie can come back and get healthy doing that, anyone can.
I've got another appointment today, recheck on thyroid. I had plummeted back into hyper, have apparently bounced back out and shooting the wrong direction a little too fast now. We've been trying to fine tune this for a couple of years, we're talking micro-tuning, and I have yet to level out. I'm hoping he says that being sick and on antibiotics can make it do this, otherwise I'm heading back into joint pain land. Controlling this is vital to being able to keep up my workouts. My feet are always the first to go.
And now I'm just flapping my fingers. Time to scoot outa here.
