I guess March started off pretty good. I wasn't fast enough to catch whether it was a bot spam thing or a linkback, and no idea where it happened. I'm slacking off quite a bit this year on the stat stuff, but it's still nice to catch it once in awhile.
This despite sliding down a slippery depression slope, right. It cheered me up a bit. I could see myself actually repelling people for about a week there.
One of the interesting turns being taken in stats is the more dismal I become in general, the more I'm getting hit worldwide by people who start digging through the tags. I'm seeing a number of one-off trails, like an IP here and there making single hits through a variety of pages all bearing the same tag. Real readers.
We are important to each other. We are the real life other people can see happening behind the 'news' being broadcast and scripted across the webs. We are the ones living our days, the ones problem solving our ways through the scary messes we see in the news all around us. We need to be there for each other behind all that. Just keep living and talking and finding things to love and enjoy. No matter how dark it gets around me, there will always be something I will notice that I can think about, distract myself from fear and anxiety.
One thing I notice and talk about sometimes is now synchronized most of us are on social medias. We go through the same mood swings almost all at the same time, and if you look back through timestamps, you can see this really is a pattern. I know a lot of it is weather related, some of it is time of year related (the February slump after holidays and before the last school term surge is brutal), and definitely 'news' related if you watch too much chain yanking on broadcasts or in feeds.
I couldn't help noticing there was a single day a few days ago that several people I know plummeted into the depths and said very nearly identical phrases relating to depression and anxiety. Since I get around so much social media (super lurker) and hang out in real time on a game server with players from around the world, I am able to see all the little pings going off at the same time. I wish I had thought to screenshot through that entire day, it would have made for a very interesting study.
There is some controversy over 5G coming, and whether that will allow 'mind control'. Even when your tech is turned off, it still monitors and relays info. Your GPS signal, if there is location software in your tech, is always ON, unless you pull the battery out. Most tech nowadays have internal batteries to keep atomic time sync, but what else? Microwaves will blink like clocks when power goes out, but our phones and televisions and game consoles don't do that. When we pick them back up, they are already synced and ready to go.
And as I type this, my cursor is moving around of its own free will, which is very interesting considering I have remote share turned off. Hang on a sec.
Ok. You guys have no idea how often I reboot on any given day. And my phone, too. I started noticing around 2009 that I got particular attention from Langley in my stats if I used certain keywords, because only political opinion posts got those hits. I've toyed with visibility and search engines and stats for years and I see some interesting things. You'd think Oh, I'm just a little blogger, who would even care, right. Well, someone cares. It's gotten uber ridiculous with Pinky blog, and I had to train myself to just ignore it, although I have some outstanding screenshots of geolocations that would probably drop a few jaws. I'm not bragging at all saying that, and I think it would be unwise of me to share those screenshots on a public blog. All I can say is, some of those locations are top notch conspiracy level areas, and I can nail it down to where on the street or under a tree a few of these are because someone didn't have a clue how to use a proxy. At all. Like it was a brand new device straight out of a package and full location disclosure was pure green light. I don't know if that's on purpose or not, but yeah, I got the hint. One post in particular, yes. It unnerved me so badly I made that post private for awhile, and I just got hammered after that.
You know what? I don't care. If anything mysterious ever happens to me, that only proves I was right. That is all. If nothing happens, then nothing happens. I'm probably on a list, but I'm pretty sure a lot of us are.
Anyway, back to where I was going with this. There's been some concern about 5G.
Ok, stick with me for a second remembering a few things. On Ghost Hunters one of the first things they would do trying to debunk a haunting would be to check electrical fields with an EMF meter, right, because everyone knows an electrical field over a certain power level can mess with human emotional and physical states, causing anxiety and nausea and even worse. Imagine focusing an EM field very specifically. If you are carrying around tech that continually monitors your location and even measures and transmits your movements (Fitbit, lol), how easy would it be to use that field to affect your personal state of being? Some are concerned about suggestive programming, like this.
Lol, scared yet? I'm not trying to scare you, but if you aren't aware this is very real and has been going on awhile, you need to wake up a little.
Back to here and now. I'm watching anxiety and depression levels spike up and down across medias almost in a rhythm for awhile, and this latest one a few days ago was unreal because I noticed so many people said nearly identical phrases within 2-3 hours of each other across several medias in a variety of areas, and almost to the hour expressed later that they felt better. I noticed I went through the same sensations, as well, the palpable tension for awhile and then the relief later being a bit more noticeable than my usual mood swings. I don't want to immediately jump on the idea that seemed like an experimental test run of something, but I will say that was just weird.
If you are having a bad day and don't know what to do about it, it's always a good idea to touch base with someone to keep some balance. I myself heavily use tech to keep distant people around me through the day. However, I also think it might be a good idea to take short tech breaks. Do restarts and reboots. Walk away and go do a few chores here and there. Get a little distance and see if you feel better. Take some cleansing breaths while you stretch a little bit, tidy up a room, think about arranging the next meal, take care of a kid or a pet, stuff like that, and refresh your physical vitality. Hydrate while you're at it.
If you notice anxiety and/or depression cycles hit while you are holding or right next to tech, immediately put it down and move away from it. I'm not saying be afraid of it, I'm just saying control your moment. I always use tech every day, it's part of my life and probably always will be. I've been making jokes about being in line for the brain chip for years. However, unless you have something like a parent on hospice or some other reason to keep a phone on, turn it off while you sleep. Log off your computer at least once a day, especially if you're away from the house or sleeping. Just turn it off.
Your body has a natural electrical biorhythm that needs its own default cycle to be healthy. Every day we interrupt our biorhythms with electrical fields. We get used to low grade function and not moving around a whole lot, but over time our bodies and minds degrade. We are aging faster. We live in physical bodies on this world, and they are made to keep moving around.
I think the scariest part of all of this is the idea that tech giants worth billions can influence how we use our brains en masse, and possibly even directly impact our activities. When I see so many people I care about across such a wide amount of distance hovering over their tech saying nearly identical phrases at nearly the same time, what am I supposed to think?
My first opioid since the 5 mg shot of morphine in ER last year that sent me straight into PAWS hell. Post surgery medication this time sent me super floating straight into euphoria. I. love. EVERYONE. And now that I've been intro'd to high dose vicoprofen, I'm already planning strategy getting back off it before I abruptly run out. Can't break them in half because enteric coating, so trying to stretch them out longer in between. So far handling nearly 6 hours between doses now. I know they want my pain well controlled but I started with only 20 pills every 4 hours and that drop off is going to be pretty evil.
And my dreams are wildly unreal. Everything disconnected the first night, literally watching myself doing cartoon dishes in a cartoon house, everything in my dream was animated and blinking back and forth between minecraft. Cartoon, blocks, cartoon, blocks, I finally just got up for awhile. When I went back to bed I started having memory dreams from being under anesthesia, like when my airway was put in. Felt my teeth clonk, abruptly woke up. It was fake. Felt a knuckle bump on the top of my head and abruptly woke up. It was fake. Kept falling back to sleep and abruptly waking up as I relived some of the prep before the really deeper going under, so just staying up nearly all night was easier. Couldn't really function, so just played on facebook. Sorry if I flooded your feeds with super share, lol.
The really cool thing was pre-op before anesthesia. For the first time in my life I had absolutely no anxiety at all in a medical setting. I don't know if I finally just reached a state of too tired and didn't care or what, but nothing at all bothered me or stressed me out. I knew I'd be knocked out soon and was looking forward to it, answered questions over and over again like a string pulled doll. I managed to do the smile and eye contact thing, everything went smooth with interaction, yay.
Pre-op was sad for the people around me though. A much older guy on my right was there for lots of lymph removal around his face and neck, would be a long surgery, and he rattled everything he knew about American presidential history, all the places of historical significance he'd traveled. Heard quite a lot about Andrew Jackson before someone asked him if family members were there to drive him home, then he stopped and there was a sad no. Was anyone out there for him? His pastor... Did he not have family living nearby? A son and a daughter, and neither one made the time to be there with him. He's obviously end of life in a high risk surgery and his own kids weren't there. He stopped talking after that.
An older woman on my left just quietly cried. Not quite sobbing, but nonstop quiet crying. She was asked if she'd like family to come sit with her, said no. Was anyone out there for her? Yes, her mother and her daughter. Was she sure she didn't want anyone? She answered with a very miserable sounding quiet no. I guess the relationships were better held at a distance. She wound up having a very horrible surgery involving vulva repair after leg loss, and we wound up in recovery beside each other. She was right, both her mother and daughter were emotionally distant. At least they were there, though. She got a call from her husband on dialysis during recovery, and she asked how much he'd been drinking before dialysis, sounded like he made it to fourth in a bottle of fifth and it wasn't even noon. She got after him, hung up, rolled on her side facing me and shut her eyes, didn't talk to anyone. At least he called, and at least they were there.
Through all this I reflected on my own life. I have family who loves me. We're not perfect and quite a lot of our backgrounds are highly dysfunctional, be we love. each. other. We are there for each other every day, we talk and say I love you every day, we care about each other having sucky days. And I felt fine in pre and post op knowing I was loved and I loved my people. I was truly at peace.
It's really nice to reach a place in aging life where you realize you don't have any sadness left in you about relationships. I've reached out, done what I can to heal with my loved ones, let go of the rest. Every day I do my best to reach out to someone, be there for someone. I don't always feel reciprocated, but I know those are my own brain chemicals, not theirs. I know all I have to do is say "I need help" or "please help me" and they'll be right there. If I feel blown off, I don't sit and sulk like I used to when I was younger. I ask the TV to be paused and I start talking. We talk until I either get tired of my own voice or feel like I said what I need to say. No one yells at me, and I know my own tension is a burden so I try to reign it in. I don't put head games on my people because I know I'm the one with the personality problems from my mental health diagnoses, and I do my best to communicate clearly, effectively, and succinctly. I need you, I love you, thank you.
And then realizing all the changes I've been working on also helped-
I changed my diet in 2011 and started healing my diabetes damage
I started physical therapy in 2011 and worked on better mobility and endurance
I have been working with a psychologist on depression since 2007
CPAP has been wonderful helping me get my brain problems under better control as I'm learning to sleep properly
Being on gabapentin has helped so much with the nerve pain that my anxiety levels have gone down in general
Being able to see success in what I'm doing through stats gives me goals, something to work on, so I feel productive. I hadn't looked at stats on wordpress in a long time, so when I got a real question asking for help yesterday with a real problem, I got to work focusing on helping someone instead of whining about myself after surgery. And then I looked up my stats and was blown away. Aspienado is my most viewed wordpress blog. I don't like using wordpress and rarely check stats, and Aspienado is a work blog for my first book and mostly private. But what is available to read gets found, from all over the world.
I also spent much of today downloading and reading a new book that I'm writing a review on, and I want to do a good job because I know it'll be seen over time by thousands, including a handful of directors, producers, actors, and a worldwide fandom. It's important to feel successful doing real work, and opioids through pain have made it really easy over the last 24 hours to focus on work. This is how it was for years, opioids and pain. I remember feeling good about being a difference to someone even with so much pain. Lately I've diverted into genuinely enjoying playing and being creative on a game server with a family of very diverse people, some with their own physical and mental/emotional challenges, but it felt really good getting back into writing over this last 24 hours. I'm glad I have built all that up to fall back on. I've come from hermit to twitter gang to facebook groups to #clanfam. I have a large network of people who care if I show up, and I love seeing them online, as well. I even got a phone call today and was elated. Barry is glitchy, too, like me, and we're both working on reconstructing how our friendship started. Imagine years of memories just falling right out of your head. We both know what that's like.
And most of all on my list of how I've come to be at peace is my joy. I was depressed for so many years, at times quite severely, and I hung on so hard. Bunny's little face very day is my joy, and I'm glad I'm still here every time I see her. She's my baby's baby, my pet kid, my challenge, sometimes my boss, lol. It's very fulfilling when a little kid genuinely loves you. I guess I was needing that.
Through all these things I've been learning how to balance my natural innate negativity through embracing publicity, challenging my baditudes and praying to be good for other people. I have prayed for 2 things for myself through the years. Usually prayers are for other people or all of us or something, but 2 very definite things I have prayed for myself.
Years ago during my worst illness and growing ugliness (hair loss, weight gain, attitude affected by meds and pain), I cried and told God if I must lose everything else, at least let Scott come home happy to see my face. I looked pretty rough for a few years, and I had to stop fixing my hair and wearing makeup. I couldn't afford nice clothes with all the money going out for medical, and we went bankrupt before I wound up with full disability. I was so depressed. God, please let Scott be happy to see my face, because I don't know how he can stand to even look at me. Well, my hair still hasn't gone gray and I barely have a wrinkle on my whole face and I'm 56. I've been told that being on estrogen therapy for 20 years can do that, but was also told I'd start aging very quickly after getting off those in 2012. Not really holding my breath resisting, still can't wear makeup, but I've been able to grow my hair back out and Scott and I laugh together about something every day. I'm glad to see his face because he's my best friend, and I guess and hope he's still glad to see mine, even when I still have bad days and get very cranky with him, and he doesn't deserve it. My brain is my enemy on those days, not him.
I also reached a point where I prayed for healing. I was raised stoicly believing that to pray for one's own anything was vain, so I've never really prayed for my own well being. We are all here to learn through our suffering, right? Well, after some deep thought just before I met my latest doctor in 2011, just before Christmas of 2010, I prayed for healing. I had come through some very hard years of months and months of back to back viral illnesses on top of severe nearly unlivable nerve disorder pain, and I was reaching a point where I wasn't sure I could keep hanging on out of spiritual duty. I was breaking inside and could no longer hide it. I reasoned for a few days that if I really do pray for healing, I mustn't be stupid about it. God doesn't work miracles for us to toss it back. If I commit to that prayer, then I commit to true healing with everything possible I can do to help take care of myself. I wouldn't get better to be stupid about it and ruin my health again. One day I was ready and I prayed. The next day the holes in my pierced ears had both closed up. They had never done that in 20 years. I immediately decided it would be blasphemous to get them repierced and gave all my earrings away. From then on has all been positive progress. It has been long and hard, but I wound up with the best possible primary care doctor, got diagnosed immediately and fast tracked so the right specialists and physical therapy. Years of doctors before him were just struggles with very addicting medications and the long slow descent into the hell of premature aging, without hope.
So laying there in pre-op, I knew I am ready now. I've done what I've apparently set out to do in this life coming to this earth, and I felt at peace. I've learned how to heal relationships, how to take much better care of myself, how to network with other real people with success and hope in mind for all of us. And I want to continue that. I know I'll have brain crash days and be very mixed up and brain chemical spills splashing on others, and I hope they can keep forgiving me. I'm facing a future of dementia as I age, and since brain problems run in my family, I've accepted the idea that I need to keep brain training now while I can to be good for people before I lose more control of this wonderful machine I live in.
This is very long and right now my brain is tired. I've made it through nearly 24 hours of fairly high dose opioids and enjoyed it immensely, but soon I let it go again. Addiction is a bitch, protracted withdrawal will make me mean again, and I wanted to write these feelings out before I forget I had them.
Part of the big lead up to surgery is covering all the bases so there won't be any medical mistakes or accidents. I'd love to go into it blissfully ignorant and trust that things will all work out fine, but of course I have just enough experience to know how those stats really work and not quite enough access to my own records (notes of interest) and medical knowledge (search engines and acing medical terminology and nursing school go only so far) to wring any confidence into my head. I'm extremely grateful I got such a good critical care nurse calling me for preregistration or I'd probably have backed out by now. I could tell that person had seen it all and knew every detail mattered for every possible fail rescue.
The propofol from a test last week screwed my brain rhythm, so I've been shunting through extreme depression and worse mood swings. Can't wait for general anesthesia to add to that. Plus the preregistration questions about chest pain and family history of everything cardiac and brain fail prompted responses as me being already there with the pain/fail stuff since spoonie nerve probs, pretty much whatever statistical outcome for more serious chest pain and brain fail during recovery might not even be noticed. I live with fibro of the chest wall and on meds to help control Lhermitte's sign level pain, so just saying 'chest pain' is pretty complicated. I won't even go into the brain part again.
And of course I'll be asking a nurse tomorrow to get a note to the surgeon to please consider a different pain med than he's used to scripting and then having to deal with protracted withdrawal all over again on top of recovery. While my support system at home keeps zooming around full blast over-planning, the main question is how quickly will I be able to be left alone again. Um... I just asked my husband to make sure I don't do anything stupid and not to assume I'm ok. I'm pretty sure my depression will be more severe for a few days with my brain coils all tangled up again.
I'm very much looking forward to this particular pain being over after surgery/recovery. I'm also very much looking forward to holidays. But I've already been through the kind of fail that kept me from driving for 4 months or being able to read or watch TV for a couple of years. I sincerely hope I'll be touching base as usual as soon as possible, but it may or may not be a few days. I don't know yet.
I don't have any contingency plans in place, so if I'm one of those weird statistical fails, oh well. The only things I've done for real are getting laundry and dishes caught up and the bathrooms cleaned, and untrusting everyone on my game server claims. Don't want to come back to my stuff pillaged if I can't log on for a week or something. j/k #clanfam Hopefully, though, I can log on and play through recovery for distraction.
Apologies for my rough week. A few people got caught in a bit of brain flux.
Out of currently 1087 published posts, I have 150 with the word 'alone' in them. I tried to search for 'alone in the house', 'alone all day', and other alone phrases, but that's a lot of grind work for a blog this big. In case you want to search for anything in this blog, there is a "Search This Blog" bar in the right side column just beneath the featured post.
I used to love being alone. Many days I have craved alone time when I'm with other people. I didn't tell anyone for a long time, though, that sometimes I have days where I'm afraid to be alone. With myself. With Myself.
When I was still a young kid, I felt Me. It felt weird to feel Me. Sometimes on those days I would be very aware that I was a walking skeleton, or would sometimes feel like a doll I was moving around. I know nowadays that is called dissociation. To some degree it's very normal to click into an objective perspective and 'see' things from a different point of view. To do it constantly and feel stuck that way, like you can't get back 'in', isn't normal. I did that a lot as a kid.
When I dissociate on a bad day because extreme fatigue or pain spike or sometimes other things causing brain chemical changes (I'm hyper reactive to meds, for example), I lose being able to control how I present. I do and say things that seem confusing. For about an hour yesterday I felt like a box full of fireworks that started going off all at once, and I was experiencing all the emotions almost simultaneously or back to back without any coherent thread of why. There was no logical cause. I couldn't tell what was happening until I started writing, and pretty quickly, I think in about 10-15 minutes, I realized I had spiked into the nether regions of depression. My psychiatrist would like a harder diagnosis that I suspect would result in manic depression and possibly more, but since my psychologist monitors me and I don't seem to consistently go into the more hardcore 'manic' list of symptoms, the debate is left hanging without further testing. Yesterday, though, I definitely dissociated and once I realized it was happening, I was able to pull myself into focusing moment to moment. I did ok, made it through the rest of the day without incident, handled everything ok, made it to bedtime without any problems, at least on the outside.
I've mentioned my mom forcing me to learn to self monitor as a child through sometimes severe corporal punishment, which is now proven to be psychologically scarring and emotionally stunting. Because of that experience, though, I am much more objectively aware of myself than some people. (Not to be confused with the self UNaware state of autism spectrum, which is a social deficit/interaction problem.) I've met people who don't have a clue how to even see another point of view objectively at all, but mostly the people who can seem to be afraid of it. I ventured into objectivity at a young age and played with taboo in my head for many years, mostly as thought experiments that included every conceivable debate about God(s), right vs wrong, reality and realism, and much more. I can emotionally derail and catch myself fairly quickly with diversion, basically cutting the emotion part off. The part in between the derailing and the catching is spooky. People say I'm scary, and it's not because I'm violent so much as unpredictable, I think. I'd say the same thing about my dad because I got to see more of him growing up than my sibs, and I know his cognitive rigidity is his way of not derailing.
Personally, I know I can rely on myself to never cross certain lines, but dissociating is one of those things where you can't always see where the lines are. It's important to reach out and start dealing with real as soon as it starts happening. It's important to be honest and let people know I'm dealing. Trying to hide it never turns out well in the long run. For some people, it's a very short run because they commit suicide or start killing people, and I can tell you from the inside of that state of mind that there is no logic, no red flags, nothing stopping a dissociated person from living out a nightmare and never realizing what they're doing.
People don't like talking about this stuff. It's pretty common, because it's a reflexive survival tool the brain uses to get through something difficult, and some of us do it all the time without even realizing it. Some people cover it up with med, drug, or alcohol use, some people simply have a line of 'reasons' ready, some people just pretend it never happens, like don't talk about it and don't rock boats kind of thing, and then bringing it up is super awkward and makes things worse.
I am #aspienado and I don't want things to get worse. I am using #transparency and #honesty to talk about my stuff, and I keep using public social medias and a game server to keep my balance because it's hard for me to talk on phones and I don't have real life friends or family close by while @bonenado is at work.
I talk about being broken, and I say that we're all broken to some extent in some way or another, and I think 'kindness is logical' is a good belief to hang onto when all else fails me. I can stop immediately and ask myself- What am I doing right now? What do I want? How do I get what I want? Is what I'm doing to get what I want breaking anybody?
Breaking each other is a way of life in many religious and political systems. It's very effective. The better option, though, in my opinion, is kindess. It lasts longer. No matter how I am feeling in any moment, even when everything is black and stupid, I believe Kindness Is Logical.
Aaaaand someone beat me to that hashtag by just under 2 months, lol. That person is promoting 'love is hate' and sexism. Let's see if I can change that. I'm really tired of doublespeak.
Making lists isn't helping. We're down to WYSIWYG menu planning. Thank goodness for frozen prepackaged meals. Pop them in and *bam*. Supper. And I can still say cool words like chicken cordon bleu.
I've decided to negotiate with terrorists (per last post) to partially clear my financial planning path for wild success through pre-trimming potential backlash. Since I'm still making substantial payments on other health care (medicare plans are like playing poker, you gotta keep putting chips in the pot), I'm trying to find enough scraping togethering to make a first payment over the phone and then establish monthly auto pays. I hope they're small enough not to need to borrow $$ from @bonenado. I have juggled a lotta stuff this year and dropped a few Xanga eggs. Hoping I can pick those back up eventually.
I knew it was Wednesday because I asked if I needed to get Bunny ready for church tonight. An hour later I was excited about Monday night football coming on. 15 minutes later I was all silly me, it's Thursday night football, ohcrapbettersetmylineup! Did that and then asked @bonenado if this is Wednesday because something didn't feel right.
In the meantime, I'm making an eyeball slam list for a marathon external hard drive clearing outing so I can keep moving emergency short notice tiny child programming off the DVR before our incoming Gotham/Flash/everythingelseunderthesun piles bump themselves right off the timers. (I can't believe I'm 2 years behind in Ancient Aliens, Curse of Oak Island, AND Doctor Who. I know, right?) OH, and another author has sent me preview copies of a book I've been waiting at least 15 years to read. The files piling up on flash drives from actors and authors letting me see stuff is becoming embarrassing, since I can't even keep up with my own reading list, much less get my own hard copy out there. I'm trying to think of a great dedication on at least one of the books in my lineup that profusely thanks a tiny child for existing in my life and blowing me light years off my course. Because that's what human history is all about, isn't it?
No idea what those extra graphics say. I wanted the music.
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.
An example of proper emergency awareness spelling- The residents at that residence are under a tropical storm warning. Just pointing out that that an emergency preparedness post alerting residence to storm vigilance might want to make sure the residents know it's about their persons, not their properties. No biggie, just flipping through the medias keeping an eye on county and metro alerts going over my Batman. Might be having a storm watch party, I seem to know a number of people scattered between me and all along the Gulf Coast.
So I started another singleplayer while I wait for a couple of the moc server worlds to go through pregen, and so far I've made it clear to the nether with moc mobs in survival only and not once have I died or tp'd, although I finally got tired of the creepers and turned mob griefing off. I've logged over 900 hours on that multiplayer server since the update in January, and I've done so much hands on build from scratch under duress that I don't even think about mode switching any more even on my own private worlds. It's been about a year and a half since I leapt off the twitter train compulsion into the brain glitchy madness of living in a server (you know it's bad when you actually think "I'm hungry" and then grab a 'snack' out of your inventory and keep playing...), and I know some of you are yawning and some of you are going oh thank god she's off her Sherlock kick now (I'm not) and some of you are just done with me because I left the twitters, but I am sooooo not gone.
#transparency Real life stuff, yo. Tropical Storm Cindy has officially set off Houston Metro warning bells, so meemaw nerves. Also, many big feels hither and yon as one family extension is feeling the loss of a loved one, another is pending with complications rippling around family members helping (I saw a pic of that knee gash, yowza, how do you even still have a kneecap, man O_O), and the other family stuffs sprinkled around the facebooks, and is June just a hard month, or what? Seems like it always is for me, and naturally I'm getting my days all wrong for weeks now because I always do that this time of year between Mother's Day and my mom's birthday. Just today I had a sudden jolt at an expiration date on a package of baby back ribs in the fridge, omg how did I let them sit that long, oh yeah we wound up switching up the Father's Day thing with another family thing, so our BBQ got moved, but if I don't wanna chuck that entire package I'd better cook those up TODAY, because the 7th was ages ago, surely they're still ok sealed like that, and yes, they cooked up beautifully and none of us are sick at all. But it wasn't until after we'd eaten that the date on the package finally got through to the other side of my brain and I realized that 7-7 isn't 6-7, because this is June, not July. *burp* Oh, well, it was delicious.
It's funny, I'm to the point of having some difficulty even speaking sentences out loud this evening (autie brain), but I can casually fling off a witch and her pet spiders while I dismember a zombie while I outrun a silver skelly while I flay a werewolf on my way back to the chest I dumped all my lapis in while I'm hauling my whole stash of diamonds and obsidian around because I'm an idiot determined to get that enchanting table made. Things were a bit slow until I realized the only way I was going to get a bow was to stay off the bed and get some spider string, got the bears and big cats cleared out, or none of that dodging around in the dark would've worked at all. I think the flame wraiths and manticores are a bit slower in singleplayer, but I probably just jinxed myself and watch me die 40 times tomorrow. At any rate, I seem more capable of the logistics of hauling buckets of lava around danger zones than I am of keeping track of my personal planner, so here we are 2/3 the way through June and last week I thought it was still May and today I mistook it for July, so I guess I'm in my usual zone.
It took that long to get an upvote...
That clicks to source, btw.
And don't start asking me questions on Quora, I won't answer them.
In case you don't get it, a Perdue chicken isn't a chicken breed. Perdue chicken is a product.
I know, "in" makes you think recipe or something.
A contracted Perdue chicken farmer later shared his story.
So the whole original question wasn't about actual feathers at all,
and I'm amazed no one jumped on my answer before now.
But we still don't know who is conning whom...
I mean, I get Tyson cornish hens with feathers left on all the time...
I complained to Tyson about it and they sent me a wad of coupons,
so I got a whole bunch of free cornish hens...
Finally just had to pull my 'control' post back that I made back in November to draft mode. 244 hits on that one, never linked, never shared anywhere by me, and every single day it got pounded by one particular country. So I guess I have my answer. Since that was posted over 2 months ago, mathier stalkers could probably figure that into a percentage of the total views I've gotten since then. Yeah, I know, I could've left it out there to keep adding to my view count.
I've been debating whether to leap to a new Pinky blog (this one is the second) and keep watching the numbers here. The first Pinky blog went super dead once I left it. This blog has lots more material that pulls in specific searches, but aside from that, it's also a little compromised to bot activity, which I still blame on lingering post paper.li code embed, a Ukraine app, and occasional Semalt blitzes. (The Brazil thing is nothing compared to these other bots.) The rest seem to be fairly random, but all that still accounts for less than 10% of total traffic I've gotten here. Still, 10% of 70K is 7K, which is a pretty hefty number. Actual real people pageloads from link shares and continued reading are probably more like 50-60K, which is respectable. I'm leaving some leeway for random incoming, like the whole Rick Lagina crowd surfing around and bumping into Pinky being silly.
But not right now. Counting drafts, I currently have 888 posts here now. And yes, people do settle into them once in awhile and go through about 20 before they get tired and go make some food or something.
I'm teetering on a brink of wallow vs get super pissy. Generally, turning to the pissy side usually saves me and I get lots of stuff done. Either way, I'm a real drag to be around irl when I'm like this, so thank God for internet, right? I used to try to power through, and I do have good content out there from that, but I can also tell you behind some of my best public content are some of my worst days.
Today is the kind of day where I'm telling myself to get some real clothes on, put some shoes on, walk around a bit. So hang on...
Here we go. Double dose of bacon today.
I see people blog about depression all the time, but don't really see much about the nitty gritty about how a person really feels inside after destroying a weekend for someone else and then everything is awkward and no one feels like talking and the depression level spikes all to hell but you know you have to really super pretend now that everything's ok because you can't lose the last friend you've got, blahblahblah. Yeah, one of *those* mornings. One of those glitchy spoonie aspienado mornings where I know I can change the world but I wanna sink into comfort food and a pillow and forget the world for awhile. Except minecraft. I had an ***awesome*** idea in my sleep last night, so I might be trying that out sometime. In the meantime, between banging my head over what really aren't lost causes (or wouldn't be if I'd get the lead out) and actually having laundry going already before 6 a.m., here I still am, getting a Plan on for Today.
OH. Almost forgot! @bonenado was gerbil cleaning in our closet again and ran into some really old paperwork. At one point in my life, 1999, I had an actual merchant's license and tax identification number for Janika Banks. Proof of ownership! *evil laughter* I've been toying with reestablishing my property name, even if I never sell anything. Back in the day I was beading and other things and thought about selling online, but it never went anywhere because I wound up in retail. And besides that, I have a paid contract with a publisher now for pen name, so I need to get my butt going on something real.
Real is an interesting word. I'm making this all up as I go, my own reality. I'm creating a reality, creating myself, making myself REAL. So much of the time none of this feels real. But I really am here, I really am someone, I really am scribbling I WAS HERE on a wall and strangely feeling not real at all. You wanna know what mental illness feels like? Wanna understand depression? Start with It's a Wonderful Life. I know, I dis that movie like crazy in this house. I don't suppose anyone remembers when The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley cartoon (1988) did their parody version of that movie. Wo, just found the series on Amazon, sweet.
See, all this stuff I'm feeling that grabs me and holds me back or pulls me down when I'm doing my best to do something cool- I'M NOT ALONE. A whole buncha people out there feel just like that, too, and I get warm fuzzies just knowing some of you are still in your pajamas reading this (or wishing you were back home in your pajamas), and I'm dressed and ready to GO because Pinky blog is a life saver.
When I remember I love you guys, I feel better and then I GET TO WORK!
One of the things I haven't been talking about is what it feels like.
You know that springy sparkle all through your spine and out your nerves that you get when all your hairs go up? Like when something is really creepy, spooky, weird...
Over the last week I have felt that probably 60 times, and it's getting really old. Oh, nothing, just sitting around watching tv or playing minecraft and there we go, over and over like someone's flipping on a light switch to the Griswold house. How's it now? Switch flipped back off. Oops, back on again. Anything? Back off again.
I've been through this before, just not on such a large scale. Nerve healing feels like an electrical crew working on lines and fuses, testing links and current flow, shutting off to work some more, flipping it all on to testtesttest running diagnostics, ok off again... And lately it's my entire body doing that spooky hair thing, starting at the base of my neck and traveling down my spine, arms, and legs to every inch of skin on my body. It doesn't hurt at all at first, but after several of those full blown on-off diagnostics back to back in a row, it actually does start hurting and really wears me out. Then it all stops for awhile until the crew is ready to test the lines again, and then I get a few minutes of that all over again. Several days of that now.
Part of the physical therapy is on my main nerve trunk from base of skull to about mid back. Starting out before these last couple of rounds, I was not aware that parts of the right side of my back are numb, and that the maddening itchy parts in the middle and left side of my back were from nerves sputtering from the agony of years of being pinched off. As we've very slowly been working up and down my spine in between processes, trading back and forth between parasympathetic pressure point and ASTYM week by week, some of the pressure is being relieved and whole nerve branches are lighting back up like strings of Christmas tree lights. I can feel my fingertips now. I can feel the ulnar nerve from my neck down my entire left arm now. I can feel all kinds of muscles around my ribs now. The maddening nonstop itching is letting up and moving further down as the nerve trunk works on healing.
I've about reached my tolerance limit, though. It's time to stop and rest again. Today was my last big parasympathetic therapy. I can tell it's working. Over several weeks I've been able to reduce my pain med from every other day to every third day, and I'm able to use my arms more again. I'm also sleeping better than ever when I do actually sleep, which is more often than not now.
Not sure how, but I seem to be ahead on my $$ sync this month by about $2. Between possible math errors, a new autopay and billing recode, another autopay I forgot about, closing another autopay out, and shutting my eyes to run a debit charge, for awhile it kinda looked like I'd be about $100 in the hole. Something inside my brain still knows how to do math. It's just not sharing it consciously with me.
The sweet roller coaster ride that is the glitchy brain life. It's reminding me of Imaginearum. <<-- post I wrote about watching the movie. "A dark dream. A dying memory. A hidden regret. One last ride."
I am inside a semi-broken brain. Every day I get around obstacles and figure out mazes. I know I'm not alone because I've been contacted so many times through the years by others living with some kind of glitch, be it from schizophrenia, PTSD, concussion injury, MS, strokes, a range of depressions and spectrums. Watching our families around us through the fissures and cracks and glitches...
We know it's hard for you guys. We're frustrated that we make it hard for you, whether we can see it or not, understand it or not.
Say stuff while you can. Write while you can still spell, talk while you can speak, love while you can still remember. Never put off for later what you might lose any moment in an accident or medical injury.
Holidays are hard. Not all of us can pick up phones and call hotlines, but some of us can still reach out and hold a hand, maybe nod. The more lost you get in the glitch, the more meaningful every word and movement becomes reaching through.
Keep reaching through. Reach out, reach in, reach toward.
Was looking through wallpapers for snow, pink snow, pink rose snow, blue pink rose snow, and suddenly this pops up. It's no longer available, but since it's cached in a search engine, I've linked it to the nonexistent original page so you can see the artist/vendor name in the URL.
I was deep in a beautiful snow to rose evolution thing, so of course that caught me by surprise, but I love the gothic sugar skull pink and blue smashup, so that threw me into a whole different trajectory. Click this next one to see more really beautiful artwork, and some even glows in the dark.
Crazy change of subject. I'm always stuck with the Andy Griffith show when I go to a certain doctor's office with a tv on in the waiting room, and I've wondered for a long time why in the world Aunt Bee wore her hair in a bun on top of her head, because it looks so dumb. (omg, you guys, she was so amazingly beautiful, her other pix in there are stunning) Well, as I've ungracefully aged and become so terribly intolerant of product, I'm rather prehistoric nowadays, and the only way I can live with all the winter STATIC without shaving my head is to very firmly just keep it all tied down on top of my head, even when I'm sleeping, so now I get the whole weird hair thing from the old days. I'm kinda glad the man bun came along, though, because I look pretty dorky walking around like this. At least I'm not alone now.
Another screeching subject change.
I don't venture into my own insecurities very often (lolz), but this comment I left on a really good autie blog discussing IQ feelings kinda screams I grew up feeling unforgiven. I think this comment condenses all the sadness I felt growing up 'inadequate' into the emotional coping mechanisms I developed as an adult. IQ is important for those of us who never measured up in other ways, and even though this intimidates the hell out of some people (mine is pretty high) and others aren't at all hesitant to mock or knock me back down over anything intellectual (or simply flat ignore me, quite used to the silent treatment), it's still a solid form of validation. My brain reflection in the form of an IQ number isn't any different from someone looking into the mirror and rating appearance. It's just something to hang onto that's meaningful in my personal existence.
In all other ways and respects, I faceplant a bit more often than 'normals', which totes makes the IQ thing look cheesy, so whatevs, right? We all need to feel like we own a special quality, even if it doesn't always look special. But sometimes my special thing gets in the way...
I'm starting to get angry again. It's creeping back up on me, and I'm thinking about getting a grip on it and using it to self motivate. I'm actually quite pissed, but I keep kicking that beast out a side door and slamming it shut. Well, that can go on only so long. It seems to have evolved and found other ways in. I can let it consume me and go through a beautiful monochromatic rainbow hue of emotional blacks and grays, or I can own it, twist it back under my thumb, and ride that pony into a really cool sunset.
If you're new to Pinky blog, I've been making super slo-mo progress back from major brain glitch, biggest challenges being time and place orientation, math function fail, and some dyslexia. Over this last year I've managed to train myself to weekly calendar sync all my appointments and bills across 3 calendars around my house and a pocket planner in my purse. The sheer redundancy has not only kept me on track, but actually saved me from wrong or missed appointments and the occasional missed payment, a big improvement over years past. In fact, I've become so reliable with this habit that I'll be trimming back this next year to one calendar and one pocket planner, yay.
So, when I bring up a problem here and there about filling out forms, yes, I have committed some extreme errors not properly following instructions over something so simple as filling out my name, address, and a few medical appointment dates or the amount of money I have in a bank account, which I know seems ludicrous since I'm obviously capable of blogging (I detail how difficult even this has been in I like it dark and blinking in the light- I've come a long way). Since these are govt audit forms that my payee has legal responsibility over, I've facepalmed a few times. You can see why the whole IQ thing kinda looks like a joke in this light. But I am still recovering and seeing progress, so more yay. I'm still angry, though, that something as simplistic as forms seems to be what is holding up the publishing I want to get done when I was the one acing college exams. Brain fail sucketh, yo.
2017 is the year I tackle form filling outing. Oh, and WINNING. I really need to win so I won't slide into a pool of despair and bubble away from sight. At the moment I have no idea how, but dang it #IWILLFINDOUTHOW. I will slam this IQ at forms until the rest of my autie brain legit backs down and calls me the boss of my own destiny.
Or I will facepalm myself into oblivion and become a nonentity. It's that simple.
Whadaya do when you find out a multiplayer server is about to be wiped for an upgrade? You put all your luxury blocks on display! I know, it's dorky and not the bigger deal it would have eventually been- a demonic temple of doom sitting on the platform over hell, under which the most terrifying of mobs howl around. Yes, emerald, diamond, lapis, iron, and gold blocks. Obsidian. All that redstone... Imagine it much taller with horns of fire spouting from pillars on the rooftop corners. This looks really bland compared to what I see in my head, more like the Golden Dragon restaurant in a town by me.
I've still got stacks of obsidian left. It's the black stuff, nearly unbreakable. I've also got enough redstone left to keep going way higher into a pointy tower if I want. I was originally picturing a sort of Eye of Sauron kind of thing. Maybe on the upgrade...
Plans going into the new server are to pummel a bunch of trees down as fast as I can before I go under, and then diagonally mine super way out under all the biomes until I get to some good ones without a bunch of building already going on. I can pop back out for food and more trees, but goal is to hoard materials in a stash bunker until I can claim my own land. One of the super mods that beta tested said the map is 90,000 square blocks, so plenty of room, and includes all the latest biome tweaks and new mobs and blocks and stuff.
Here is my last flyover vid.
I've got lots more, and I'm sad about losing my evil lair with my spider spawner conference room and movie theater and that cool mausoleum style house with the giant chessboard floor and the koch curve style chandelier that looks kind of hyperpolychoron-y when you walk under it, but those things can be recreated. I think my friend's tower is the awesomest, and I've got walk through vids and stills so it's not all lost. My pride and joy was networking an 8000+ block tunnel system connecting our far flung outposts and getting into village and temple restoration and preservation. If I had been on there for 4 years like a few other people, at least one of my villages would have developed into a fantastical spaceport complete with Jetsons and other futuristic stuffs. Really looking forward to growing rich and prolific on the upgrade.
Meanwhile, back to physical therapy. I missed one last week because stuff, kiddo got the all clear yesterday, so big reliefs and moving on, and me doing recovery and housekeeping for another big weekend. Might be Bunny's last swim weekend with Papa before the community pool gets drained for the winter, don't know yet if we'll cook out, but maybe I'll pick up some ribs and stuff just in case.
Been counting dimes making sure I can keep all my things going, and this year I put Lexx ahead of my own stuff financially, been a little tight. I've decided I need at least one more 5 subject spiral, need to line up my ducks and get super on top of my nickels the rest of the year if I want to keep my stuff floating. Theholiday slideis upon us. If you're new to me, it's a Chutes and Ladders kind of lifestyle, where the entire autumn and winter season is like the depression roller coaster turning into a wild plunge ride down a crazy water slide or something, and you just hang on for dear life while all the pretty dazzle flies by and hope you don't drown at the end when you launch off New Year's and taxes are due. I was telling someone lately that a couple of years ago the govt tried to sue me for student loan default (after years of attempted compliance for loan forgiveness for complete disability- see Dear Gregory), and now we have to file injured spouse every year so that can't happen again, because our entire federal tax return was illegally garnished and we've never been able to get it back. THAT was going to pay our propane for the year. Really scraped pulling that money up, thanx govt.
Anyway, offence is the best defence, right? I try to prepare as much as I can way ahead of time, because I'm usually stressed out enough by mid October to start slipping, and by Thanksgiving I'm usually in full brain glitch. Last year was interesting because it didn't happen for the first time in more than a decade, but I launched back into glitchy mode when it all caught up with me around last Feb, and I've been hovering on a brink ever since, sometimes super with it and on top of all the things, sometimes batty as a fruitcake and people having to correct me. Just yesterday I mentioned the yogurt thing...
Conking out for 10 hours after one meets for consultation in a sleep study clinic isn't just irony, it's sorcery. >=l Pretty sure they sprinkled some kind of essence or dust on me when my back was turned. I think 10 hours is like a once in 5 years phenomenon for me.
That being said, I can barely move or think. Sorcery. It's like witch potion in minecraft.
I asked about and was told there are 2 main kinds of apnea, one does affect REM (vivid dream recall) and starts in the brain, so you can imagine I'm extremely curious to see whether they can catch that happening since I've been doing this since I was a small child with the dream recall, and going through entire years being terrified of sleeping, so I pushed my insomnia to the limits by remaining awake and alert at all costs even to the point of drinking other people under the table or being medicated out my eyeballs. This last couple of years are the first I've SLEPT consistently and fairly well in nearly my whole life.
That being said-
Last night I was an aging kitchen and laundry (it felt like) overseer in a large gentleman's Chinese brothel, and I'm not talking like in the movies. This was real grunge behind the scenes stuff, very realistic. I knew the entire building inside and out, I knew all the people who worked there, and even though I wasn't a boss, I was respected because I kept order.
But this evening there wasn't order. A recently gone famous pop artist had just walked into the restaurant area with his new very young model bride, and one of the slightly aging performers (background dancer/singer type) in really pretty costuming suddenly threw an absolute fit, screaming how could he, how could he turn to someone else after all the nasty kinds of sex he had made her do with him (during which she evidently must've fallen in love with him), and since I was walking through checking table setting perfection and closest to her, I walked up to where she was nearly now screaming in the pop star's face (everyone's eyes were really big, bad public behavior, bad taste, bad luck all around, no one had ever gunned the place up but didn't mean it wouldn't happen) and put my arm around her waist and then walked between them turning her around. I didn't even look at anyone else, just her like she was the only one in the world and guided her away sobbing, sweetly reminding her that we don't break the rules here, and it's ok if clients do what they want, got her escorted into another area and handed her off, all the while she's having this emotional breakdown and I knew she was ruined now, and they'd either kill her or finish breaking her for some other kind of work. The best I could do was remove her from my floor before I would get in trouble, too, just being in her vicinity.
And then I woke up.
My psychologist is concerned that I might have some kind of REM apnea. I'm concerned about a side article called Is Brain Injury in Obstructive Sleep Apnea Reversible? My worst brain fail came during 6 horrible weeks of NOT sleeping during the worst headache I ever had in my life (nothing shows up on CT or MRI), and then 'all' that happened was bell's palsy and all that got blown off. I've been recovering from particular function glitches ever since, like being able to do simple math. Incidentally, several brain scans over time have only ever showed natural aging. Absolutely nothing else. (:edit: Forgot about empty sella, but that was present at birth.) Since my mom had hundreds of TIAs before she started having the really big strokes (she was an insomniac, too), you can imagine my interest in all this.
Back to the dream! Srsly, another seemingly 'not me' experience out of the blue, like I was somewhere else being someone else with no other connection that I can see to real life, TV, minecraft, reading something, overhearing convos, nothing. I guess the experiment will be to 1- confirm REM disruption, 2- attempt to treat, 3- see if I stop remembering dreams. My sleep study is set up for October. Sadly, no one cares about studying whether I'm actually experiencing someone else in another time and place. We're supposed to stay in our own quantum localities, after all, right? It's not unusual for us to fuzz out and be somewhere else, apparently. The problem is tuning our brains back to ourselves. We need to be here and now. We need to learn to be holistically healthy individuals while we are here on this earth in these lives because we have things to do here and now that only we can do.
I've been able to go through deeper sleeping more in the last 2 years than in many years before, cumulatively speaking. I know it's possible for humans to survive severe sleep deprivation, because I've done it, but I'm a mess. However it started and whatever the underlying cause (brain wave disruption is the likeliest for long term, plus now probably aging into regular apnea), I have never been able to sleep normally like I'm supposed to, and because of that I've successfully learned other coping mechanisms, like positive imaging, self hypnotic meditation, free associating (very necessary to 'let go' so the brain can mimic the dream cycle while awake), lucid dreaming (different from free associating), stuff like that. But as I'm getting older, it's getting harder to control this so that I don't wind up 'spacing out' so hard like when I'm driving, because that's way too dangerous. I arrive places and have no memory of how I even got there, sometimes no clue what day it is or why I'm even there in the first place.
I have a feeling I'm not at all alone, and stuff like this could probably explain numerous traffic accidents that people have. Since I've already rolled a car and experienced the brutal pain and have spent my life recovering and in pain, I'm probably more aggressively alert than a lot of drivers out there, and I very seriously do NOT ever want to feel that kind of experience again, so I think my brain gets stuck in the hyper vigilant part of fight or flight, and that's probably where my anxiety attacks in traffic come from, major PTSD stuff.
Anyway, they splashed some kind of potion on me or something yesterday, and now it's taking me 2 hours already to deal with getting my brain on and my body flexible enough to do a few things. I really don't like sleeping hard...
Music like this helps. Sometimes it's about the only way to calm my mind down. I might play this on my phone at the sleep clinic while I'm going to sleep.
I started this post yesterday. If you have depression and are easily triggered, please exercise truckloads of caution if you try sticking through this post, ok? I really went there.
From a post I made 4 years ago at janikabanks.xanga.com. The html is abysmally screwed, but I fixed what I could. Only one person has ever been told what I intend to do with this, so the private title is in the queue and one of the projects I'm working on.
My fave thing ever is pirates. I read everything I could get my hands on about pirates when I was a kid. Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini captivated me at a pretty young age, and I absorbed the The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas (j'adore Dumas!) almost through the pores in my skin. My fave ever Pirate movies are Blackbeard's Ghost, Yellowbeard, The Pirate Movie, Cutthroat Island, and the Pirates of the Caribbean series. My other fave 'ship' movie is the Horatio Hornblower series. I didn't grow up anywhere near an ocean or even a lake, but I have this kinda private thing about ships. I'm working on my own thing now, but a few years ago, this is the kind of stuff I liked doing.
Ok, hopefully that doesn't kill the wrap on the rest of the post. I had to go after those words heading clear out to my livingroom and wrestle them back into the corral. *preview* Ah, yes, working just fine now.
This week is already weird, and I desperately need to pull back into a touch base here, so let's just start off with my face feeling prickly and itchy. Nothing puffing up, yay! Just the nerves. The first time it ever happened I was in my late 20s and my doctor tried me on several different meds until we finally just gave up. The phantom itching is maddening, and after a few years of absentmindedly scratching around an eyebrow or beneath my lip or by my nose, a doctor commanded me to STOP before I wind up with cellulitis. Thank goodness it never got to that point! SHOULD YOU SCRATCH THAT ITCH? MAYBE NOT
So I switched back to beta blocker, histamine level spiked (yay, allergy season!), and now my face is all itchy and prickly for 'no reason', but it's all the same trigeminal spots I've always had to deal with, so apparently neurontin and cartia together impact my nervous system differently than neurontin and my original beta blocker dose together. Incidentally, I can't prove anything because my weight stayed steady this whole month, but I've worked really hard on the 1500 calorie thing, and I seems like whatever I lost got replaced by fluid retention. I swear I'm more jiggly now. Not cool.
Med changes, yo. At least I'm not craving brownies like last month. But srsly, where's the tranq gun for the maddening bursts of itchies sparkling up behind my eyeballs. Ok, enough of that. I'm very seriously thrilled it's not doing this down my throat. Those kinds of days are terrifying.
K, got on here to FOCUS. I need a super power point, hang on. (Coming back to this sentence during proofread and just shaking my head.)
Ok, Autisable went live today. I'm not staff, but I was one of the early contributors. Not paid. This is not for profit, I think. Anyway, Joel started this community of networked writers on Xanga before the big server move, and I've watched him survive and rebuild pretty much from scratch, and that inspired me more than just about anything to hang on, keep working on my own stuff. Again, for those of you who've never lost everything you've built in a server move, including specialized coding and a really excellent cutting edge mobile platform, the stress is unbelievable. I would compare it to an internet earthquake or hurricane or something, just everything wiped out and gone and having to pick up shreds and pieces and literally start over with a new foundation.
MY POINT. See what I mean, I'm super scattered because this itching is so distracting. Anyway, I've created a special Aspienado facebook account to share my Autisable submissions. Autisable is what inspired Aspienado to come out in public and start working on Existential Aspie. My tagline will hopefully be the preface to my book.
If you could go back in time and do one thing, what would it be? I would go back and give my mom a big hug and tell her everything is going to be ok. –Existential Aspie
I need to review a few other things going on. Organization!!! Thank goodness for back to school. Ok, went to my phone to find a pic and played on FB for 15 minutes. Here we go. This is my back to school purchase, along with a CD holder not pictured (because I have CDs scattered all over the house and the cases are getting destroyed and I keep losing CDs the way people lose their keys). I've pulled together a reading list for the year (sploit, I'll send you the books as I finish them, so don't buy them), and I've decided I need to get back to watching a show during the day while Scott's gone to keep me off minecraft when I go ditzy, because I've lost swaths of time 2 days in a row switching back to the beta blocker. I need to focus back on time awareness through the day, so I'm creating a new syllabus for myself, hopefully it'll get me through the holiday slide intact. (omg, I forgot about the time I discovered a search for 'holiday slide' landed me back on this post.) But yes, I do need to share actual real brain stimulation going in for all the people (including my psychologist) who wonder if I'm taking the broadcasting out part of my life too seriously. You people really have no idea what I actually do most of the time, so guess what, I'm giving myself book report assignments through the fall.
I think I shared my new backpack on twitter last month, hang on. Yes, here it is. Aspienado is really bad to get into ruts and use things till they're so messed up or messy that I'm a walking disaster, so freshening up the ol' bugout bag was a must. I treated myself since my last backpack was a $3 leftover after Walmart had been savaged and left nearly bare, and it was initially targeted for ten year old boys and really didn't hold that much. This one holds my whole house.
I've also liberated my new umbrella of its tag. I've been using really old and almost broken umbrellas since college (I cannot believe I've had that blue umbrella since the late 80s, THAT tells you a lot about my ruts right there, and the green one has to be nearly 10 years old itself), so when I saw this one in a pharmacy, of all places, on a rough day, I pointed to it and @bonenado totally got it for me. I'll have to take care of it because the entire handle is wooden and has an auto button to pop it out, very James Bond kind of thing. I know, some of you are questioning the whole going more feminine thing when I've been neutral for so long, but butterflies and roses have special significance in my family, and I really did have to have this. Plus there are pocket watches (me and time problems) and keys (key to the Lexx), so yeah. hello goodbye
Grasping that becoming Pinky to the world is how I am emotionally surviving isn't necessary to understand, but Bluejacky coming back out to play now is extremely significant. It means I'm healing.
At least in my heart and soul and mind. My body...? This is a hard summer guys. All I can do is just keep writing until I literally can't any more. It's too hard to tell if I can still hope for progress, because I'm sliding down so hard I'm not sure I can finish what I started. I keep telling myself hang in there 5 more years. I can make it 5 more years. I mean, it worked when my kids were in grade school and middle school, kept shooting for target dates and actually kept making them, and even though I honestly never dreamed I'd make it this long, I know the only road forward is harder than ever now. blinking in the light (the original reveal)
If you've never read Hinds' Feet on High Places, THAT. @bonenado and I had a really good talk over this last weekend. If I'm in final sprint (and it could be another ten years, I can't see the future), it will take everything I've got.
I'm just glad I'm getting all my head stuff worked out. I feel like I'm getting all my homework done on time. Assignment: Earth- You will occupy a body and learn to use this body to play well with others, share your toys, and learn wisdom. This will count toward your dissertation on Why We Are Not Mean To Each Other. Once you've satisfactorily completed this assignment, you will level up and move on to other things. Some call this the Hard Class, the pass or fail class, but think of it as extra credit and you'll be fine. You'll each be given Time and Space allotments to complete this assignment, and the only thing you'll be graded on is whether you manage to pick up on what becoming an autonomous being is all about. The only way to learn this is through experience, and you won't be able to take your notes with you. Good luck.
I need to be sweet and remind a few people that I'm not critical, ok? I'm just facing that I'm heading there. We don't know when or how soon, watch me make it to 80 now, right? But for those who are still pretty new to the real me, yes, this is actually how I have lived raising my kids, day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year. I haven't taken a single thing for granted since the car accident.
But the race is on. And I wanna win.
All this writing encourages me, so if this is bothering you, you need to go do something else, ok? I'm *focusing*. Writing is just as athletic as any other sport. You plan, you practice, you assess, you practice some more, and you keep doing it and doing it until you're good enough to play hard enough to win. Sorry so long, but it's just that kind of day. Minecraft isn't helping right now. And I don't wanna talk about this on twitter and facebook. I only link it so it's easier for people to check on me if they want to. BACK TO SCHOOL. The syllabus construction. So among the reading challenges and rearranging my days so I'll be more aware of time and consequently more productive, I have several projects I want to finalize this year. One of my biggest challenges is this mobile office and the sudden interruptions. I've been working on organization for years, and it's amusingly hitting me that it's been so long that most of what I need to organize is truly useless now, and I can start throwing a lot of it away. When we were going through bankruptcy, we had to compile and keep tons of information, same thing again with my disability case, and between insurance changes and EOBs and all the junk mail on top of it, plus bank account stuff and keeping bills straight and forms filled out in timely manners, and then taxes and renewing car plates, and all of this being regularly poofed like leaf piles through birthdays and holidays and sick days/weeks and all kinds of other stuff, and then tech fail, omg you guys, I have lost my book contract in the shuffle so many times... Yes, both digital and hard copy.
But I have to keep my head on straight enough to remember to write groceries down on a list and then actually follow that list, and I'm failing simple list goals just running to Walmart, so of course I feel overwhelmed. But look at all the stuff I keep getting done. Look what I did this morning. I grabbed content I already had and used it to help promote a site announcement. I feel good about it, I feel like it helps point me back in the right direction, and I feel like the rest of my day is ok now because I spent a few minutes doing something useful. It doesn't take much, just a little bit every day. Five minutes. It really does add up over time.
So, August. My anniversary is tomorrow. I'm glad I wrote that, I got @bonenado a card and hid it, so now I'm going to go find it. I'm usually too scattered to even get a card, but I actually have one this year, and now it's out in time, instead of laying in a drawer, yay! Ha, it might be the last one he ever gets if I keep staying this scattered, though. You wouldn't believe how utterly ditzy I have felt the last 6 months.
*screaming gear change because that made me think of brain fog*
I was in my 20s when I was diagnosed, and I got that diagnosis within a month of seeing a doctor who fast tracked me to rheumatology because I'm such a severe case. They knew next to nothing back then, even though they already had criteria established on how to diagnose. I know from experience that getting back to a normal life might never be an option for me, because nothing we've ever tried has worked very long helping me pretend normal is even an option. Fibromyalgia Has Central Nervous System Origins
I got disability on the first try. What Does It Take For Fibromyalgia to Qualify As an Impairment Under the New Ruling
What I'm saying is that I'm one of the first patients in the medical field to be diagnosed so early and live this long with it, and they don't yet have a 'lifelong' definition for this kind of thing. They're talking about cases that last at least 3 months and still insisting there's a way to live a normal life, and I'm not seeing anything legally or medically definitive on someone who is 25 years in on something like this. There is no research on how people age through this. It's still only conjecture, and they're still studying it. Fibromyalgia linked to decreased brain connectivity
We've ruled out MS, AS, RA, and Lyme is still being considered a nonplayer even with antibodies. This article is only a year old. Fibromyalgia now considered as a lifelong central nervous system disorder
It's about defining what living a normal life actually means. I'm fighting to stay functional in my own home. I think for me, it's more about living a useful life. What can I still do when it seems like I can't do much at all? I can type words.
I have made it through at least 2 1/2 hours of what I call a really rough morning. I was kind of laughing with another snarkalec one day about how those of us in the most pain have such blow off phrases for how we feel, yet those of us who live like this totally get the code. I have a pain rating system that most people don't have a clue exists. The doctors use a 1-10 scale, and I insist I'm using the Princess Bride scale (not to 50!) in a 1-10 world, and on 'really nasty' days, that line runs right off the scale and keeps going around every wall in the room. If I'm 3 walls over, it's a shitty bad I'm in hell kind of pain day, and there's no way I'm going to talk about it beyond calling it a nasty pain day. There is just no way to convey context in a world where simply having a migraine and an emotional meltdown rates a 10 (and I do apologize, I don't mean to trivialize that at all, it's just I'm so experienced at that being a side order on a main dish of fibro). If I say in a doctor's office I'm at a 10, I'm either violently throwing up, unconscious, or spasmodically weeping with no way to console or comfort me, and believe me, I have scared ER doctors even after pain shots.
Pain scales are extremely relative and subjective, so I've had difficulty trying to convey meaning to what I'm attempting to communicate to a doctor who hears '10' from people calmly sitting in their chairs without even a facial flush going on. That has actually happened right beside me in a triage room. The woman saying it looked bored. My blood pressure was 193/110 and pain was nearly blinding me, and it just sounded so stupid for me to also say '10' right after her when I was obviously feeling so much worse. I once told a triage nurse 12 1/2 and she thought I was joking. You've no idea how badly I hate that 1-10 pain scale. That's why I invented the Princess Bride pain scale. If a doctor or nurse has seen the movie, they have more context, and then we can talk about me being in the 30-40 range on a decent day. Just because I'm able to function and smile doesn't mean my pain level is a 5. Actually crying driving in to appointments rates a solid 8, and from there it's minutiae to me. You know how on the earth timeline of 4 billion years humans have only existed in the last seconds before midnight? That kind of minutiae. So much pain context is crammed into those last 2 digits. I'm like if there can be 50 words for snow, I've got a hundred different phrases for particular pain levels if they're looking for context.
I can handle big loads of pain. Some days you feel like body slamming walls and trees trying to make it all shut up, other days you curl up in the dark and just keep everything really quiet. Those are rough days. Really rough days are me not caring if I break something and it's all I can do not to break windows out of sheer need to smash stuff just for distraction. I can totally see how people just lose it. Nasty days are just past that, where you if touch me, you die, and one look will wither your soul and you'll think I never loved you at all because it will be so awful. Really nasty days are hanging on in hurricane days, the kind of days where it's so bad that even breaking your legs or slicing yourself up barely ripples your attention, when even the words 'self harm' bring out maniacal laughter because it seems so tiny compared to what you're already going through. If I weren't in this amount of pain, I would totally be a self harmer. And I know several self harmers, so I'm serious saying this.
But the really worst days are the ones where it's not even that bad and your brain suddenly goes through a chemical dump, and there's not one thing on the planet you can distract yourself with that could keep you from doing something really stupid, so you reach out to hang on to other people and hope to God someone's available, because you cross that blurry line into unreal numbers territory, and you can't be sure what you're doing is really what is happening because your brain is so tired and so fried from all that overwhelming screaming you went through for days on end that nothing seems real any more when it finally quiets down a little bit.
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I stopped there for awhile to get a lettuce and turkey wrap and some cheese. The prickles and itching are finally calming down. Really thought this post was going a different direction when I started it. Oh, well. I could delete all that or just let it stand. I'm sure I spoke for a lot of other people feeling frustrated with spoonie stuff, too.
I'm going to make it. I can do this. But I need a nap first. I feel like I just swept out my soul, and those crazy stacks of old EOBs will be next.
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Sometimes naps don't work at all. Since I'm breaking so far out of my ruts lately, I decided back to school means I'm getting new stuff in my house, too, so I laid there in the dark scrolling around my phone. I never do that. I so rarely shop at all, this really is breaking out big time for me. I burned out really bad after doing retail for 5 years, so I just never browse unless I really need something, like replacing a crockpot. I decided today I need new sheets. @bonenado bought the last set at least 2-3 years ago and I've never liked them. So now it's my turn to torture him, lol.
And I've been wanting one of these for years. I bet Bunny will think it's awesome.
Also looked up the tracking number yesterday on the sunglasses I ordered last month (I tweeted about them), yes, they're really coming from China. They're super cool if you want to check them out. I'm surprised how little I paid for such nice glasses, plus free shipping, so no idea how they're even making money. Well, I'm assuming they're as quality as they look on the site...
Oh, now I'm yawning. Going to go try this again.
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Nope, just not one of those days. And then the second I get on moc, someone is getting banned for using xray, so it's a day for everybody, I guess.
Got a call to make an appointment for next week, totally forgot I was submitted last May to be a genetic candidate. I'm old enough now with enough family history to get a consult to see if I'm likely to get breast cancer. I go in next week, guess we'll see how that goes. I've been on and off alerts all over my body since my 20s, nothing ever shows up. Really don't know if I'd survive treatment very well, @bonenado already decided a few years ago if I ever test positive he's just going to take me to mayo or something. ~~~~~~~~~~~~
TODAY.
click for fun glitter graphics
Nothing special planned. Maybe I'll go pick up a couple of filet mignons and seasoned veggie grill mix and a tiny cheesecake for supper.
Got a little glum there yesterday, didn't we?
If you haven't figured out by now why I'm already a Doctor Strange fan, then you don't know me at all. It has nothing to do with Benny C because he's made tons of movies I've never seen and I don't go around watching all that just because he's in it. It also has nothing to do with Sherlock. Just for a second, imagine Stephen Hawking watching Doctor Strange. Yeah, that. Lotta people in this world gonna be latching onto this one. Continuing to use our brains to keep surviving when all else fails is what it's all about, kids, and you know I'm sharing the brain glitching part so some of you know we can still do this.
Aspienado in lifelong nerve fail. Wow, just summed my entire adult life up in 5 words.
Trip to town this morning for my annual date with another man on my anniversary. This is follow up with primary, thankfully early because they'll undoubtedly issue heat index warnings again. My head is way better now than Tuesday, so I'm adapting back to beta blocker just fine. He's not going to be happy about my blood pressure going back up a bit, but I think the thrill of me feeling like getting athletic shoes back on for some real exercise will outweigh the compulsion to hit a target number. I think once I get moving around more again I'll feel better about moving forward.
