ten years later

I didn't make this, but google clicks it to the generator and not the finish.

You know how I used to make lists? And then I'd check in on how the lists were going. I'm noticing all that kind of buzzes on automatic now in the background, and nothing is truly being screwed up much any more even though sometimes it feels like it. I started the actual Plan in 2008. I'm just now feeling like I have my whole brain synced up. That's how long health fail and nerve damage can take, but it's so much better than being stuck like that, or worse, gone by now.

I'm still here!!!!!!!!

Ok, where am I now and what am I doing? I'm liking the auto posts that roll out. I'm liking that they tag-thread into a story. I'm liking that I can walk off and not think about that while I work on other things.

One of the more recent things coming up is getting into the old fandom forum for salvage work. Tech support is in now, and the next few steps will involve making decisions here and there about where to house and maintain. I'm cool with whatever we need, the salvage itself is the goal.

Server staff meeting happened this weekend, and my two major assignments are to get back on platforms and research a new End spawn area. That's my homework the rest of this week in between real life.

Google super changed analytics, and all my properties unhooked. I have to go hook all those back up by the 25th.

I still haven't deleted Kaspersky and I really need to shut that auto pay off. Any time now, I think. Facepalm if I missed that. My email has been so screwed on my phone, finally got an app on, now my phone is so bossed around that I just don't even check it because I'm ignoring it so hard. *sigh* I know, not good business practices.

I have been using a Janika Banks address for Klout, and I'm thinking about making it my official contact address for property ownerships. I have to put something down, so that might be a thing.

Real life mode, have made it through this far into tree allergy season without resorting to using a steroid. This is typically one of my big airway rescue times of year, and I'm very pleased that I'm living more normally than ever through it happening all around me. Really cranking the antihistamines, still using hepa all over the house, still running my washer like a crazed maniac, still stopping most of it at the entry room doorway.

Tomorrow is a huge day, two appointments back to back, and Friday, depending on how I assess, I might be done with another round of therapy. No idea yet, but kinda looks like I'll be released. I can always go back later in the year if my shoulder flares up again. This area has turned out to be a crucial key to major pain referral and the reason I finally caved and got on gabapentin in the first place. I don't see me getting off the gabapentin, in fact have increased the dose this spring, but since I'm in Plan C now, I'm not going to waste time frustrating myself. The goal is to work within the parameters for best function as long as possible. That means continuing to control my blood sugar, don't get dehydrated, get plenty of real rest and good sleep, and eat as nutritiously as possible. Medications cannot save anything. They are bandaids, and they bring in setbacks of their own, so I have to be smart about this.

I don't talk about my real actual life a lot, but here is the thing. I don't run around doing much. I don't go to the mall or theme parks (I'm in a tourist area), I don't go to theaters or restaurants, I don't go out in the sun for outdoor events even though I very much wish I could, I don't over plan and over do, and because of all that, I don't wind up laid out on a couch for 3 days recovering. I'm a super spoonie, I know my limits. However, because I am diligent, I am able to drive my own car, do my own shopping, and be there for others as needed (within reasonable limits) because I haven't worn myself out doing all the other things. I am able to self care, self motivate, and self monitor because I try to stay in a good place for depression swings. The worst thing anyone can do for depression is spike their blood sugar and live with high blood pressure, and drag in the door laden with pollen and pet allergies to the point where the house falls into disarray and there's no energy left to clean anything up. I've been there. I've been so down physically and emotionally that I hid in bed for weeks at a time. I had to consciously decide to rearrange my priorities, my needs, and my wants so that I could find my way out of continual super fail on all sides.

I don't sit around, either. I cannot sit and watch TV very long without creating new joint pain and headaches. I can't sit at a computer for a long time doing whatever I want without seriously crashing my day, because I'm so useless when I stand up and I can't think any more. I take lots of breaks moving around and getting chores done. I do touch bases with several groups or family, I do my nerve glosses and stretches, I line up what else I need to be doing through the week/month, and I feel good about being able to do these things.

I don't dwell. I don't dare. The minute I go into 'poor me' mode, I lose. Profoundly. I sink into a bog and ruin the rest of my day with sadness. There is no one I know anywhere who can pull me out of that, and they shouldn't have to, in my opinion. If my mood is entirely dependent on another person boosting me back up, and they don't do it continually, then we both lose. I wear someone out, the relationship fails, and I'm alone. It's up to me to want to live badly enough to stand up myself. I want to live in a clean home. I want to eat good food. I want to look a little better than just rolled out of bed. When left on my own and no real humans, I'm the worst bachelor in the world. I'll wear the same clothes for a week, won't comb my hair, forget whether I've eaten, and utterly fail to meet anyone halfway by making it to an appointment. Because other people are in my life, I rise to better, and I'm glad I have those challenges. Without them I would be a blob of gross wasting away, curled up in a dark room with headphones on and medicated out of my mind.

I had a good mother's day this year. It's one of the first ones I've made it through without a big depression dive. Between that and still floating above the tree allergies, I'm pretty much having a phenomenal spring.

And since I have memory fail, I'm putting it all here so I can come back and see that I had a good day/week/month. 😊

super jetsetter brain melt

Busy week!

• Ripped down curtains and threw them in the wash with rugs, stripped bedding and bathrooms, the usual deeper spring cleaning kind of stuff.
• Confirmed no incision hernia from all that flu coughing, yay! Always hard to tell what's going on with fibro flare and pain referral stuffs.
• Also confirmed healthy bones, soft tissues, and no arthritis in feet even though they hurt like hell nonstop and make life difficult, but now have hardcore dx of diabetic neuropathy, even as stringent as I am about keeping my blood sugar down with diet. The only thing I can do going forward is increase gabapentin in order to keep moving to stay healthy, and tighten up my diet as much as possible in case my A1C is slipping, which can happen when one indulges in even small amounts of carbs regularly. Just because my blood sugar is controlled doesn't mean it's not sticky and literally shredding nerve sheaths. If I want to keep being able to walk, I have to get smarter again. Kinda slid into a bit of leniency this last year with the kiddos around me.
• Spent more time being staff on game server during winter hammering other staff with power outages, but learning faster that way and handling more stuff now, including helping with the launch of official social medias. The luck perms tutorial is going over my head atm, but I'm sure I'll pick it up.
• Our money is a mess this year and we're hanging in there until tax refunds and hoping that covers what we need. @bonenado doesn't get overtime since the company sold around Christmas, and Twink's work might outsource, which, if it does, means she'll have changed jobs twice in less than 5 years over budget cuts. I'm still paying cash on the genetic cancer testing, so no play money until that's done around Christmas-ish. I still have tech, a house, and a car, so I'm grateful.
• Made it through about a week-long euphoric episode, crashed a little, and bounced back without missing meals or losing that much sleep, so that was nicely controlled. I'm getting better at this!
• I'm otherwise time jagging a lot again and barely staying in the right day/week/month, but I think I'm making good progress with my psychologist about what's behind that. Still able to deal in real time with real life even when I don't know where on a clock or calendar I happen to be.
• I'm also managing somehow to keep up with a number of people all over the webs, which cheers me up. Starting to get my regular touch bases back on. Actually making it to movie gang weekly and have regained a little control over juggling my medias.

I don't even know how all that is happening. I feel like I'm barely aware, not because of the meds but because living on the edge of full aspienado shutdown through all of this. I may need to take a day off and not interact with anyone till my brain sops up this drippy gooey mess I feel like I'm sludging through. I mean, who is this person doing all this stuff, lol. Whatever is going on, apparently I've still got some brain healing going on.

chickens fix everything

I dragged back out of bed because I freaked out, so I read the internet and went Oh, everyone else does this too and calmed down, and now I'm reading the #AddChickensToAnything hashtag feeding and smiling. Thanks, internet.

#addchickenstoanything Tweets


If you can't see that embed, it might be your browser blocking it. I can't see it in 'compose' but I can see it in 'preview', so it's going to be iffy.

And now I'm going back to bed.

I'm actually boring myself

About a week or so ago, Google changed the way you can access images in search. For years I've been able to get to cached image storage after websites went private or even deleted. That button is gone now. Sourcing images back to original original source technically no longer exists. This might seem irrelevant to some, but it's actually huge in a world of restricting access. It's not that big of a deal for me, since I mostly play with memes (and I try to give credit with link backs whenever possible), but for some people this means no longer being able to source original news photos that have gone viral. Something to think about.

Youtube opinion accounts are being shut down this last week, whether they are monetized or not, and at least one person has been interviewed by a major television news network citing the algorithm fallout already affecting his real life business so badly that he lost it. That was fast. Was I the only one to notice how fast that was? Anyway, the U.S. is being virtually cut off from search fields across medias, not out of malice, but out of opportunity. Hands are being tied as the FCC and internet regulations are allowing much bigger hands to insist on removing what gets in their ways. Facebook has been restricting feeds and posting capabilities for a couple of months, judging by the complaints I've seen, twitter went on a bot purge cleaning house (I wonder why they only picked Russian bots, because I'm really tired of purging the spam and porn and automated vitriol from the rest of the world, as well), and as accounts shift to new hosts hoping to survive, the web is shifting like a ship on a scary ocean. Well, at least for Americans. Funny thing is, I don't think most people are noticing. Unless you are following live news broadcasts and live feeds and noticing some things are literally being scrubbed back off the internet within the hour, you really have no idea. I've been on the webs since 1994 and have never seen anything like it.

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

That was last night. This is today.


I think I'm getting my life back. I coughed myself into a what feels like a neck sprain through all that flu and cold virus stuff back to back, and I made an appointment for next week to talk to someone about checking on possible herniated incision since it's still so soon after gallbladder removal (a little over 3 months, but 18-24 months for complete healing and incisions always remain weak spots), but that's what coughing does, right, it wrecks you up and makes you miserable and then it's such a relief when it's over. Hopefully it's just an acute fibro of the abdomen flare, and that's actually a real thing and sucks a bit.

• From Fibromyalgia and You- "It is a systemic disease that mainly affects the muscles, their attachments (tendons, ligaments) and coverings (fascia). Fibromyalgia may be considered as soft tissue rheumatism. Fibromyalgia may also affect many other parts of the body, including the stomach, bowels and female organs."

I am noticing, though, that even having only 2 contacts with anyone for any kind of hands on physical therapy since before Christmas, my pain levels are significantly lower and much more tolerable (a really nice side effect is my general anxiety being at an all time low), and I really think that's because removing the diseased/infected gallbladder was such a relief to my entire body that many systems are going back to a normal I wasn't aware could exist. Just living with that amount of localized inflammation must've taxed my poor body 24 hours a day for months and months, and now just having that gone is making a whole lot of difference how the rest of my challenges are able to be internally addressed. Even when I should probably think I'm feeling kind of miserable, I feel so much better than I used to. I still can't believe I breezed through the actual influenza B. Really hope the A misses me. There are people around the area who've tested positive for both at the same time, plus we had at least 2 separate cold/crud viruses circulating, as well. Got pretty crazy.

I feel like this is my most boring post ever, so I may as well share that my house is a wreck and I don't care because I finally got to sit and watch TV, and it felt gooooood. I almost never see much TV any more. I thought they did a nice episode with Carl, although it felt like Negan should've been interrupting them any second, so I was way more jumpy and anxious than I usually am watching Walking Dead. And then tonight I sat through Revenge of the Sith on TV even though I own it, and used the commercial breaks to get supper put away and coffee ready for tomorrow and my pajamas on and stuff like that. Bunny and her mama have been feeling so much better enough to run around with friends again, so it's been a bit blissful just being able to sit around and let my mind go blank.

Ok, now I'm super blank, so I'm going to bed.

sapios

So I'm juggling all this stuff last couple weeks, like 8 days out from surgery was actually babysitting a 4 year old all by myself, so you know I'm pulling a pretty good fake with this. We've had this crazy holiday week supporting her mama pulling extra shifts as a sitter in ER, which is really what it's all about in lots of families having problems coping, and on top of everything out of the blue last night Scott asked when I'm going to get that Mantrid post done, because it's been two years.

😑 Right.

Tomorrow will be 13 days since surgery, and I am crazy bizzy. Bunny says that when she twirls, she gets bizzy. Granted, today was my first big ohHELLno guts waking up and realizing something is really amiss, and it was a fun watch me sprint day (and a really fun race fail), and those of you who've had gallbladder surgery probably know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm finally able to eat again, but for about 3 hours everything was all-stop and red alert low grade pulled me over and asked me if I knew how fast I was going, and I said Hold my apple juice and watch *this*.  Dishes done, laundry done, executive decisions made about remodeling my player shop, Walking Dead watched. #Crushinit. I'm just thrilled my stomach is allowing a handful of mozzarella cheese shred before I go to bed.

I wish we'd had the term sapiosexual about 20 years ago. I've tried to put a finger on why Scott and I work so well, and basically it's exactly that. Funny this got a reject on it 5 years ago and now it's everywhere. Clicks to source.

Six Signs That Prove You're Secretly A Sapiosexual That article is seriously one-sided but spot on. Scott wanted a 'college girl', well, he got one that won't shut up and he's still here. Early on I was intrigued how differently he uses his own brain, actually kind of brilliant about a few things once I got past the dyslexia (I'm merciless, but dang it, he's so cute saying and spelling stuff wrong).

And thanks to Ken Jeong retweeting during the live tweet, that one really took off.

~wild subject change~

Lemme 'splain. My dad was born in the wrong century and refuses to keep up with anything remotely techy, so he's kind of like a cross between an alchemist and a scientist about how the world works, and of course disaster looms because prophecy. He actually literally measures the yearly winter solstice with a pin in a wall that the sun setting through a window casts a moving shadow on, and he marks where the last of the light is with the date. And this year is a month ahead of last year. You know, because like orbit problems maybe. I immediately wondered if the land under his home must have settled or something, this entire area is karst with loads of sinkholes and you can see the big fields drooping away from one particular highway that I drove for years, and they were definitely not doing that when we first moved here. Anyway, naturally I can't help diving into the search bar and reading what I find back over the phone, since NASA obviously won't tell us the truth about what's really going on (you have know idea how thankful I am that he's not a flat earther), so in case you're curious yourself, the winter solstice doesn't necessarily fall on the exact same day every year, and the way it's measured isn't about where the sun falls on a spot on the wall.

December solstice 2017 is the 21st
"Why doesn’t the earliest sunset come on the shortest day? The December solstice marks the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and longest day in the Southern Hemisphere. But the earliest sunset – or earliest sunrise if you’re south of the equator – happens before the December solstice. Many people notice this, and ask about it... By the way, the latest sunrise doesn’t come on the solstice either. From mid-northern latitudes, the latest sunrise comes in early January."

It's a bit confusing because it's not about the light we see at what time, but about the length of the day that we have light. I don't know if my dad measures the sunrise as well, but he's adamant that the yearly solstice must be exactly like the year before.

10 Things About the December Solstice
"Most people count the whole day as the December Solstice. However, the Solstice is actually at a specific moment - when the Sun is exactly overhead the Tropic of Capricorn."

Probably lost a few wanderers during that, but basically it demos my sapio thing. A LOT of people love knowledge. They love it so much they'll spend lifetimes pursuing it. If you are one of those people and wanting to find a good match for a lifelong relationship, make sure that person is cool about the obsessions you love. If you're going to have to BE HOME at the exact same time and date every single year to make a mark on a wall, make sure they know that.

Oh thank goodness, I finally just yawned. OH, almost forgot. I dropped outa #latenightmovie last night because I was so fried, but at least I can now say Yes, I have seen the Star Wars Holiday Special. I made it up to the cartoon, at least. "The special is notorious for its extremely negative reception and has never been rebroadcast or officially released on home video."  Like one of the gang said, it was more like a Pink Floyd experience than anything.

K, I'm about to fall over now, thank goodness. I need sleep so bad.

just enjoy the game

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

click for diamond memes

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

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

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

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

day 4

Crazy weekend smashing junk around but I think we're making it. I seem to be past the worst of pain med withdrawal, got a little unreal for awhile earlier today. I can't express enough how serious a problem that is for people like me who spend like 2 chronic spoonie decades surviving med addictions and withdrawals, especially after meds have impacted organs. My liver has been the star of my medical history for about 15 years, more notations have been made on it than anything else in my body, and I'm not even a drinker.

I planned the tree getting set up this weekend way ahead of time, so I got that on track this morning when I was able and Papa was awesome with Bunny getting it up. It's the old easy tree, prelit and only 3 pieces to put together, and Bunny is big enough to do the decorating herself now. We can keep adding colorful candy canes and tinsel as we get closer to Santa. We've come a long way from the winter an undecorated tree sat there for several weeks through the entire holiday while Bunny's mama was in another hospital across the state for complications, same surgery I just had. That was 11 years ago.

I think Bunny just had her 3rd basketball game this weekend. Heard she tackled a little boy to keep him from getting the ball, lol. 😁 Has made a few baskets here and there, so she's getting the hang of it.

I'm barely aware of time flow, being so medicated, but ran across a couple of difficulties others are having. Brianne's family lost their home and everything they had this week to a fire while they were out of town. If readers know her from the #Snarkalecs or other groups on twitter and facebook and are wondering what to do for a holiday charity, there you go right there. I don't know if she'll be available for DMs like where to send gift cards, and I'm still waiting on a link for a fund page, but don't let me being goofy on meds after surgery stop you from being awesome, ok? And if I get more info I'll come back and link it here. Ok, here is the fund page. I've known Brianne for several years, huge Stargate fan, loves teaching, had the coolest Stargate wedding on live facebook and her kids were part of it, thought it was pretty special that she included her media friends in that. She's a bright light in this world, so like I said, if you're looking for a charity, she's needing our help right now. 💕

I'm still floaty but I think I can hang in there for #latenightmovie tonight in the chat room at SyfyDesigns with @LNMGang around 11ish pm eastern time. 🍿

checking in, day 3 after

I'm about 1/3 of the way through the book I'm reading for review, third day out from surgery. Keep conking over today, lotta sleep going on. Feels really good. And so far so good on healing. No fever, no problems with incisions, little bit of pain from the hole punches but not enough to keep taking the pain pills on a tight schedule. Was able to start light chores, dishes and laundry getting back on track already.

All week has been a little bit gray out, nice autumn look out the window, but stepping out feels a little warm and muggy.

Got pathology back today- "Upon opening the gallbladder was found to contain greater than 30 yellow green multifaceted calculi measuring up to 0.5 cm in greatest dimension. The gallbladder wall measures 0.2 cm in thickness. The lining of the gallbladder shows intact mucosa. Numerous calculi are present within the cystic duct." Other liver condition and history is noted elsewhere, but this should definitely help.

And here I go again, about to tip over and conk out for another hour. But everything's still good. 💟

gotta see your face some more

*floating*

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.

tentatively tentativating bcuz tentative

Making myself sit down and take a break. The surgeon pushed a magic button yesterday when I went in for consult and musta gooshed a little stone loose or something, because the pain level is dissipating and my energy level is coming back up. I'm cured! 😂 lol Seriously, though, I'm a long way from cured, so I need to not be stupid. Caught myself zipping around and up and down the stairs doing #allthethings, and @bonenado commanded me to SHTAP. He knows me well.

So this month has been rearranged, got the Bunny stuff onto a better track so I can stop, drop, and roll with whatever comes next. Mostly waiting on phone calls arranging new meetups right now. So far I will be scheduling two different procedures, the second is an actual surgery, the first could turn into a separate one if they find anything, and there is mention of something else completely unrelated down the road. When I hold back the dam, I HOLD BACK THE DAM. Well, the dam is busting, and now we're slamming through finding all the holes because I'm such a stubborn idjit that I'm sorely tempting a Darwin Award. I'm the one always saying we live in the golden age of information, and here I am leading the way off a cliff, wheeee. #goodone

Pagan's latest video release, per Michael Bilinski on facebook. I love this so much. You know I'm really into them, right?


That other thing still not yet in the queue doesn't necessarily cause any pain and can be very sneaky, so maybe I'm fortunate other stuff is blowing up so we're accidentally seeing that, too.
Managing Incidental Findings on Abdominal and Pelvic CT and MRI
Whole list of articles there. This is probably a common thing because people are so bad to put off actually getting real tests done.

Anyway, I'm actually feeling a little better today, which is sweet since the last couple of weeks have been pretty miserable, so I'm organizing some thoughts for a very laid back holiday season this year. Turkey Day will be simple on my end. I love Macy's parade, I'll probably be logged into Mo Creatures minecraft server hanging out, and I'll have a few nibblies around because that is just second nature. I've been cooking since I was 7 and I've cooked professionally, so as long as other people do the heavy lifting and follow instructions, it'll be delicious. (Barring complications complicating things up, of course.) And after that, I'm usually the one at home texting with Black Friday shoppers, so I'll be chill anyway. I've done the frenzy, it's fun to a point (especially on the retail and service industry side, I've worked through at least 8 Black Fridays or more in some capacity, 5 years of it retail), but it's also cool being the chill one sitting back laughing, so all good here.


And then after that, with December always being the crazy part of the year when schools and work places are doing parades and games and parties and stuff, I will still be chill and keep the ball rolling smoothly in the background. I'm really good at that, it's my comfort zone, and hopefully I will continue to heal and get even healthier while festivities roll around me. I'm already enjoying all the pretty colors coming out everywhere.

But yeah, @bonenado was right, sitting here I'm starting to feel it again, so I was pushing it. Bad me! I'm not good for anyone if I'm stupid. Stop that! Time to chill. I've had this list for awhile, but I just added it to my playlist page.


That reminds me, I'm so far behind in real life, I'm making a nonlisted playlist to catch up on the latest SNews, sticking it here so I'll see it and come back to it when I have free moments.


And if I get some rest today, I might be able to stay up for #latenightmovie with @LNMGang again tonight. 🍿

getting my pre-crash on for the holiday slide

click pic for more
I'm actually trying to get the lame diamond hoe advancement on mo creatures
"Serious dedication- Completely use up a diamond hoe, and then reevaluate your life choices"

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
You can read the entire poem at
The Walrus and The Carpenter, which is by Lewis Carroll, from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872.

There are a number of literary interpretations, which I don't really care about and have nothing to do with today, but that quote popped into my head after a long night of forever-going-nowhere dreams about stacking black and white terracotta blocks in my stomach and going in never ending circles trying to find my car on a huge college campus and deciding I needed to let a class go before I failed another.

One of the biggest walls my medical team has run into with me is I genuinely don't know how to rest. I've been commanded a number of times to stop doing things, stop powering through, stop everything and just rest. And I'm supposed to do this on a regular basis anyway since I'm super spoonie, and I'm so used to feeling awful that I just keep going in my own very restricted way.

I grew up working pretty hard. I still got in some play time and grew into a prolific reader, but I wasn't the kind of kid who could lay around for it's own sake unless I was reading or guarding the livingroom stereo so no one would change the record. I'm compulsive even on my worst days, and it's all I can do to be 'lazy'. That was a big word growing up, and a nasty word as an adult, especially coming at me sideways during a couple of really bad spoonie years. I try to rest my body by keeping my mind busy on other things, and I've developed quite an obsession with powering through minecraft server salvage and remarket, despite having pretty cool plans for a few builds. Even in my sleep, now that I'm finally actually sleeping, I'm extremely busy in all my dreams.

Part of not resting properly is the underlying prompt to pass for normal. I want to be useful and available, and that means pretending to be able to keep up. Pretending means I hide how miserable I might really be feeling or how hard getting through the day and keeping up might be for me. Pretending means blowing off red flags popping up left and right and dancing around the distractions like minor bothers are bothersome and I don't want to be bothered kind of thing.

I had gotten to a place where I was doing pretty good. Last year was actually pretty good. I was exercising regularly, getting function back along damaged nerve pathways, controlling pain levels with good sleep, nutrition, and real rest. Because I thought I was doing so well, I jumped a little more into holidays, and by January 2017 I was hitching an ambulance ride one day over a pain in my abdomen. My main concern was that I could feel my heartbeat in a very precise spot deep inside my belly, and every time it started thumping hard and fast in there I would get breathless and super fatigued. Naturally, they immediately jumped on ruling out cardiac and a variety of abdominal emergencies, including aneurysm. I've been bad to blow off abdominal pain since I've lived with it my entire life (my childhood was miserable, part of my adulthood was worse), so once I saw I was cleared of anything immediately life threatening, especially aneurysm, I blew the rest off. Yes, I saw a notation on the CT about something I didn't understand, and yes, I blew off follow up with my doctor.

So for the last 9 months I've been blowing off worsening pain coming and going. I'm already very familiar with a number of abdominal issues and had already learned to control a lot of it, and I kept thinking, Ok, this is all familiar, it's nothing, just keep going. And I got through some pretty rough nights without telling anyone and pulled through some really hard days not telling anyone because I want to be available and useful and I'm in a position to be very helpful every single day. After years of full disability, do you know how good that feels?

October went over the top, and I still kept hiding it. I kept telling myself that awful throbbing pulse inside my belly wasn't an aneurysm, and that the hard pain moving around was probably just some kind of flare up, disregarding the fact that autoimmune flares in organs are extremely serious. I toyed around with not eating and taking breaks and other little things that didn't seem to make any difference but helped me just enough to keep faking it. I was able to fake it right up to my girls leaving for a visit with relatives, and within hours I was back in the ER because the weird rose up and spooked me and I was free to collapse into that state of uselessness for a few days if I needed to.

I know nothing yet, except that the tests and consultations are coming like rapid fire after nearly being admitted. All the years I've had so many problems and even a heart surgery, I've never been admitted. So I'm at home dealing with some quite remarkable pain and fatigue and hoping this doesn't escalate into emergency surgeries during test events or biopsies coming back with really bad news.

A lot of people have told me over the years that I'm strong and I'm brave. I keep replying back that I'm stubborn and brazenly stupid. I'm very lucky is what I am. I have the kind of mental and cognitive problems that enable me to survive hard stuff without crumbling into self destruction (a plus for neurodiversity and mental illness, guys), and the kind of personal physical and emotional history that has blunted me to pain and self recrimination, so of course I 'look' strong and brave. I'm surviving. Survivors do what they have to do to keep surviving.

It's very possible that I may not have any time for wallowing or guilt over this next month, and it's possible the only way to survive what's coming is to let a lot of stuff go and focus harder than I've ever focused. I accepted long ago that any day could be my last and I've felt lucky for decades that I'm still here. I have my mood swings, of course, but underneath it all, I know I've been very fortunate to still be HERE, saying things and loving people.

When I was on Xanga, I used to answer the featured question once in awhile. On September 23, 2008 I answered If you got a terminal disease what would you do? That might not be viewable on mobile, so I'll copy it here.

We're *all* terminal in the end. I'm a 'slow' terminal. I've already lost a niece who was born terminal but lived to 20, in spite of all medical odds. So define terminal here. I was diagnosed 20 years ago, I'm lucky I'm still alive, and I get up and face every day with progressing neurological deficit and severe pain througout my body.

So someone is asking, what would I do if I found out I'm terminal. Well, if a doctor told YOU that you would be completely crippled and blind in less than 20 years if you were *lucky* and didn't go into organ failure first, what would YOU do? I went to college and got my degree. I went on to grad school. I raised a child as a single parent and then remarried and helped raise another child. Every day I prayed that I would live long enough to see my children grown up. Every day I did laundry, made meals, and somehow made it through my day. Recently, just this last winter, I faced that I might die from liver involvement. But here I am, I'm still doing laundry and making meals. Slowly, with lots of rest.

What did I do? I faced it and kept LIVING. I didn't ask 'why me?', because statistically, why not me? Everybody's got something, right? I didn't blame God, I didn't hate my body, I didn't go on big campaigns to fundraise for a cure for my disease.

What did Stephen Hawking do? He helped flip the world of physics upside down. And dang, he's still alive, too. Some of us just won't die.

Being diagnosed with a terminal disease isn't a license to feel sorry for yourself. It's not a 'get out of responsibility' card that says you are now free to smoke and drink and do whatever you want to your poor body. It's not a sign over your head that says you get to go to the front of the line or a free meal. In fact, being diagnosed with a terminal disease is a sure bet that all your friends will fade away because they don't know how to deal with it, and that you won't be able to keep up with the fun stuff any more. So you take a good long look at your life, you learn everything you can about medications and nutrition and how your body works, you have a long talk with God, and you get real with the people around you.

If anyone out there has recently been diagnosed with something scary, bless your heart, but take a deep breath and face it. Have a good cry, have another good cry, and keep moving ahead. Say the things you need to say to your friends and family, on a blog, whatever, and get that safety net around you. Communicate with your medical team, talk to a counselor, and don't be afraid to ask friends and family for favors, and tell them thank you.

Oddly, for those on the brink and about to step over (I've seen this a few times), some feel the need to reassure the ones they leave behind it's ok, even though inside they are scared out of their wits. They can walk up to the bridge with you, but you step out alone. I think that's what we fear most, unless we're so sick that we're glad it's finally over.

Live your lives. 'Terminal' doesn't mean you're done yet.

Everyone who has known me online in some way has met this person inside of me, whether you knew it or not. I don't always talk about my stuff. I might bring it up a lot if I'm processing through something, but I don't let it eat me up. Life is way too short to sink into the quagmire of everything sux. Yes, stuff sux, but I don't want people to say *I* suck. I know I suck sometimes, I'm human, but honestly, I don't like myself when I suck, and I try not to be like that, even if my day, my week, my month, and even my year has super sucked.

I don't have to pretend for anyone. There is no 'have to'. I chose to pretend for a little while because I so loved having a useful place with people I love. But I'm stepping back now, and telling them to go on without me, like I have been doing my whole life in this house. I am part of the background, and I choose to let go of being in the foreground so that I can stay here and keep watching my people. I'm still here, still lurking, even in my own house I am the lurker. I see the stuff other people get to do, I live vicariously, and I feel very grateful I got to be here this long to see it.

Yes, I have regrets, but they're the kind that involve not having enough money to see other people and do things I want, and going there turns my soul black and makes me forget the lucky parts, so I refuse to dwell. Yeah, I feel sorry for myself for a few minutes and get a tear here or there, but I've learned from hard experience not to follow that trail through my mind because once I wind up in the Swamp of Sadness, I drag other people into the sticky mire with me and we all get stuck in yuck. There's no sense in that, it goes nowhere and solves nothing.

So I smash my brain into this kind of stuff. 54 days till Christmas, guys.


I'll share more when I know more. In the meantime, pure distraction. I gotta love all the things and all my people while I still can. 💝

I can tell this is important because I'm crabby

I got up and wrote this at 1:32 a.m.

• Waking up disappointed that a memory of a game I played once wasn't real, and waking up from THAT going aw, man because it meant the game I was still playing wasn't real, either.

And now it's after coffee and I'm quietly thinking.

I need to assess before I go down in flames.

• Neglecting my foot injury is stupid and I need to get to my podiatrist, like I've been saying since last summer. I'm now using a cane part-time after I'm especially stupid doing too much.
• Moving appointments over and over and over has got to stop. I have a broken tooth and since I pay cash it makes more sense to fix it NOW while it still hasn't got a cavity than do a root canal later and pay ten times more.
• Living without any kind of anti-inflammatory whatsoever (med intolerance) and continuing to carry on through outrageous amounts of pain above and beyond what I agreed to has got to stop. I'm the one with the disability papers. Me doing all the laundry and dishes is a courtesy that I'm not being compensated for, and it's costing me health points. I don't mind doing what I volunteer to do, what I do mind is not being compensated in any form for doubling the child care hours over what I agreed to. We're not saving money if I wind up in surgery, point blank.

I'm not 30 years old any more. I remember being 30, raising 2 children on top of chronic illness and college and later on jobs, and the cost/benefit wound up being me sacrificing everything I am so other people could keep doing what they want. I've worked very hard on not feeling bitter about that. Also, cost/benefit nowadays has a little more death at my door kind of slant to it, and I'm not comfortable thinking about going early like my mom.

I understand loss and pain and finding new paths. I am happy to support new paths. I wouldn't mind a little support back, and I don't mean telling a 4 year old to pick up after herself when someone else clearly doesn't model that behavior.

Oh, and on our 4 day break we are going on a big, bad spider hunt. Apparently the warm moist towels and dirty clothes on the floors is really drawing in the brown recluse population, and food all over the house will soon be supporting thriving cave cricket and ant colony surges. I really don't like bugs in my house.

lyrics Inochi wa utsukushii – Nogizaka46

going full blown terraKhan

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.

• Nicholas Meyer’s Secret ‘Star Trek’ Series May Be a ‘Wrath of Khan’ Reboot
• 'Wrath of Khan' Director Says Says 'Star Trek: Discovery' Comeback Is Personal

And you guys know I love Khan.

• the wrath of the search for spirk
• Things to Do on Your Phone When You Can't Sleep
• Neo/Khan and why our Matrix is screwed

And a whole bunch more posts that 'Khan' shows up in when you put that into the search in Pinky blog.

that cheerful Howdy! hasta stop

I forgot to get the good pic again, but remembered to grab one coming back thru on my way home this time. The other side says Partridge Family. Also noticed this time it's for sale. Don't know if you can read that, maybe next week I'll get a better pic.

And I felt bad for not doing the neighbor's squash blossoms justice last week, so here's a better shot.

I have done my planning, my shopping, and yesterday initiated my original paleo / South Beach / Rosedale health plan combo diet. The only thing I purchased with Rosedale was the book (used, spent under $2), didn't buy anything else or take any supplements, and the rest I just studied online and did on my own.

Back around 2009 I had become desperate and bent my mind around putting together my own health care team. By 2011 I was cleaning off years of medications and lost 50 pounds in 4 months, but it took a lot of research on how diabetes actually works, how 'nutrition' is skewed into the wrong foods by big companies, how to survive without medications by actually paying attention to what I put into my own mouth. It's work paying attention and keeping track, but it's very easy with all the mandatory food labeling we have nowadays.

This is my public trail through healing.

pill phobia at its finest - coming out of the stupor of medication addictions, poor medication management, over prescribing

my problem with healthy food - challenging the healthy grains concept

Holidays With Diabetes- Easier than you think - An easy way to understand what the holidays do to diabetics

Diabetes and Steroid Meds - Surviving steroid treatment for other chronic illnesses and allergic reactions while maintaining control with diabetes

I've come a very long way since I wrote those articles. I've slipped off my own path a bit, regained a little weight, backslid into pain complications and medication problems, and now I'm very tired of 2017 dragging on like this. Time to get my control back.

Because I keep after continual physical therapies throughout the year, I am still not only maintaining function around my home, but keeping up with far more activity than I ever dreamed I could do. I still can't get on my knees at all without destroying them and have almost continual pain somewhere in my body during everything I do, including reclining and sitting, but it's manageable. However, I've lost my grip on that manageable part a few times this year, and I want it back. Part of losing that grip is because I'm slipping on my nutrition planning, and it doesn't take much for the diabetic headaches and slower healing and stomach problems and nerve pain to pop back in my door with a cheerful Howdy!

It's too easy to grab quick and starchy bites on the run because I have high energy young people in my house now. I must menu plan for MYSELF and stick to it. I work around food allergies, so I heavily depend on dairy for proteins, but some dairy has lactose and lately my glucose spiking is worse on lactose because of my new blood pressure pill. So, I bought an extra dozen eggs this week and boiled them up. One boiled egg a day will replace my second cup of coffee with creamer (canned milk).

I also bought bacon. Bacon gets a really bad rap when it's actually much better for you than cookies and cake and pie and spaghetti, especially when you're diabetic. It's easy to cook up a package of bacon and then keep it on hand in the fridge. When others grab a cupcake, I can grab a piece or two of bacon, and later I can use the bacon drippings to cook up a big load of pan roasted brussels sprouts, which are even more awesome with aged balsamic and grated parm.

Guys, I lost 50 pounds in 4 months one year without even trying just doing THAT and stopping when I reached 1500 calories. I could nibble all day and still dropped 5 bowling balls off. It never really hits home how much we carry around until you pick up a bowling ball and go wow, that was IN ME.

Anyway, I reached a point in 2011 where I felt like a skinny fat person, which was really fun for new clothes (got down to an 18), and I would really like to go past that now. I've been in size 20 jeans for awhile and if I'm going to be having difficulty with pain and possible falling (the klutz is becoming strong again), I'd like to be easier for others to help getting back up, knowhutImean? So I bought butter and bacon and eggs and cheese and brussels sprouts and broccoli and lettuce (I love lettuce wraps around chicken tenders!) and stuff like that, and let's see how the rest of the year goes.

I've been hovering just above 200 pounds for months, I wanna break through that. Can I do it? I've never lost weight on gabapentin before, plus I'm back on low dose xanax and still on daily zyrtec. In 2011 I was NOT on meds bossing my weight/water retention around, because I had spent 3 years cleaning off most of my meds and got into physical therapy. We'll see what happens. I do know that I gained weight this year on baclofen and higher doses of gabapentin, so the baclofen is gone and the gabapentin is back on very minimal pain control.

I. Want. This.

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I'm going back to bed

click for good wake up quotes

I used to do little ad promos on Xanga before the big server move. I finally caved to Facebook shoving ad boost thingies in my face and tried it out. Was very surprised the Janika promo far outstripped the Lexxperience promo. I won't be doing it again any time soon, really don't need to be throwing my $$ around like that, but it was a fun experiment.

I've been getting 80-90-100 percents on my CPAP readouts, but last night was a bust, don't think I made it even 3 hours. Therapy on Friday musta caught up with me, kinda feel like I took a tumble down a big hill. Since I got chores caught up yesterday, I'm going back to bed for awhile. If I can't sleep, I'll be rewatching a bunch of old Strong Bad emails that are being loaded this last week.

I could blame all of 2017 on Jeff, actually

"I cannot heal heart, soul, mind, and body while I'm focusing on orchestrating a cheering section for execution festivals." -me

I think that is worth restating once in awhile. No reason.

I've received notice from Google that my "Dare" Lexx Sex Survey can no longer be supported on tumblr. There were 3 specific notations, but each of them clicked to details that were extremely vague and nonspecific. I can't tell if my content material has been hacked and redirects outside of my own web empire, but I'm not at all surprised photobucket might be at the heart of it. This wouldn't be the first time that linking from photobucket caused problems. I can't tell if the post was reported or not, and I wasn't asked to remove the content, but the ultimatum is that particular post will no longer be eligible for AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)-related features in Google Search. I got ticced 'critical' for invalid stylesheet, invalid layout property found in AMP tag, and prohibited or invalid use of HTML tag. Since I pasted that html directly over from blogger, which is a Google supported format, I'm not understanding what they're pointing out, but from the laborious difficulties I've had with tumblr since I made one, I can only assume that tumblr is the real problem here. And if it was someone reporting content, then I'm really surprised it took so long.

So Bunny is 4 now and there is joy throughout the land. We work on 'homework' sometimes, and she's getting pretty good at doing those cute workbooks you can pick up for pre-K. I've started letting her press the arrow keys to make me move directions in Mo Creatures while I do the steering, but she bumps the 1 a lot when she gets excited and we nearly chopped her bunny in half with my enchanted sword (because it's in first position, if she had pressed 2 it would have been my silver sword for werewolves, 3 my pickaxe, 4 my tree axe, 5 my shovel, 6 my bow and arrows, 7 a block of cobble, 8 a mutton steak, and 9 a torch, but 1 is right by the forward arrow button, egads). I told her be careful so we don't kill the pets, and instantly she was like KILL ALL THE PETS, and I'm all NOOOOOOoooooo... I may have to get her onto singleplayer on a tablet we have around the house. Anyone else know a 4 year old playing minecraft?

I really screwed up my CPAP last night ripping it off in my sleep, so I'm intermittently trying to make up time wearing the mask while I play this morning to make up the 4 hour minimum requirement for insurance. I've got 30 more minutes to go. Night before last, no problem, 6 1/2 hours, so whatever happened last night, no idea. I'm going with 'abducted by Jeff' (People of Earth).

Tomorrow is @bonenado's birthday. I made a birthday pie. I think that's the first time I've ever made an apple pie with confetti sprinkles. Bunny is really big on sprinkles.

I'm in dual mode lately, super bumbly and disconnected on the outside, super focused and humming along quietly on the inside. Still having problems with my feet, and the only way I can handle walking at all is in athletic shoes. The second they're off it's like I have different feet. I discovered yesterday that this complaint goes clear back to March, so that's pre-baclofen and I can't keep blaming the med for me noticing it more, another plus for somewhat daily blogging or journaling, guys. All I know for real is that after Christmas I started asking for med help and it's backfired twice, but underneath it all the nerve problems continue no matter what I do or try. So I'm kinda relaxing and going with ok, we're either in a setback year or defaulting into a new progression, but the important thing is that I'm still functioning on my own and still mostly keeping up with the basics around the house. I even cleaned floors this last weekend and recovered more quickly than expected, so something is still going right. I'm eating salads several times a week, getting more raw veg in my diet kind of thing (I love cauliflower and radishes) and I super avoided all the bad birthday carbs, so I haven't done any crashing through all this stuff. We're all noticing that using my laptop in bed is helping my stress levels a LOT. It keeps my legs up, keeps me resting, and keeps me out of the way while other people do the fretting, lol. I'm able to hopefully keep being a nicer person like this. I'd almost feel weird about all this 'bed rest' except that I've stopped taking naps now with the CPAP, so if I'm not laying down during the days like I used to, what's the difference if I'm sitting in bed working or at least accomplishing tasks on a game server, right?

That is the hayfield across the street from my house. Those weeds along the street are as tall as my head. My allergies this year are horrible. I wonder why... lol. The guy that originally owned that used to keep it all mowed down and it was really beautiful. He got old and finally died, last we heard the lot had sold, and since that lot is empty we assumed a house would be going up. Well, that was a couple years ago and we haven't seen anything since, and the field is neglected. The deer love it. So do the other critters. Big snake year, must be a boom in mice.

So I'm working on the whole big picture now with my psychologist, why Pinky showed up, how 'we' all tied together after blowing apart for so long, pretty much the story of psychological scarring and healing as a person on autism spectrum. It's complicated and full of sad-scary-funny and very soon now I hope it's a real thing on shelves. I've been 'out' as autistic for over ten years now, and out since about 2014 or so about all my internet history.

I had a weird mental picture yesterday of running into a particular person (not from around my area or family) again if I wind up traveling for marketing or something and how that could conceivably blow up into a big deal, and then I started wondering if that guy is still even alive since he was taking over another drug lord's territory in a huge city when he was still only 17 years old, already on the run from another state. I mean, would it be awkward? I used to hang out with him and his girlfriend and watch TV in their apartment. I have a long list of people I wonder about, many of them either off the grid or living double lives or simply just cut off from former families and friends because huge life changes over orientations and stuff. Other people I simply just haven't kept up with but still find on the webs apparently living pretty normal lives. People are people are people.