*Head spins looking at the weekly/monthly charts I made at the beginning of the year. What was I thinking?* Woke up to thunderstorms, so that nixed downloading the server updates. I have less than 6 hours till I pick Bunny up for an appointment, plus stuff I need to do in town when we go in. I had a rock solid plan to sling rugs and curtains into the wash this morning while I sparkle the kitchen floor back to unicorn status, and nothing in brain or body this morning is remembering that was a plan. The gung ho is gone. >=l After a weekend blitzing puke bedding (thank you, Bunny) and nearly everything else washable in this house at the tail end of 2 very long weeks of back to back viruses heavily laced with Hulked up seasonal allergies (yes, allergies in the winter, who's with me on evergreen trees pollinating?), I just don't feel like caring. Because the fail is happening this morning, I have peeled all the rest down in my brain to nothing else gets done till THAT gets done, and we all know how I dread things piling up, which is why I'm a washaholic, so I'm focusing on imaging how delighted I'll be when the floor really is done vs wandering off to do something else. Like blog...
At least I'm documenting whining about it.
Still coughing. Still surfing on antihistamines around the clock. Came this close to hitting my prednisone backstock yesterday but finally kicked the cough for a bit with extra benadryl. I feel like a dried out pickle. What's grosser than a limp dried out pickle.
Meanwhile. Ok, there is no meanwhile. There is nothing but a downpour outside and my body actually protesting coffee this morning because coffee makes the dried up pickle feeling grosser.
Now it's 5 hours. I was updating new link html elsewhere, not associated with Pinky. Guys, I have met my match. I have found people who literally live in the matrix and work nearly nonstop because they're addicted to it. If I manage to keep up with them, I'll be uber conquering if I can also manage to keep my fleet going.
Oh, yeah, THAT is what the weekly/monthly lists were for. Gotcha.
Doesn't make me want to do the floor, though. I may hafta pounce and wrangle myself into force mopping. It's not pretty, but it works. Ah, just scared the minions, now they're begging for chocolate to make up for it. I know what they're doing, they think that will soothe big bad me back down into distraction, so NO WAY! Ha.
Yes, I am that cruel, I torture my own self.
*getting the chocolate chips*
Meh.
I might've misread that. As soon as I got up to get those, I felt like doing stuff. Nothing like a double agent slick move there. I can't keep up with all that stuff in my head. Whatever.
I've got a floor to clean. A friend of mine in Brazil just charted in English book sales after translation from Portuguese and I'm still sitting here fighting with myself...
Back to the ordinary. Kiddo is back in routine. @bonenado is on antibiotic getting better. The nastiest part of the intense cold is slightly warming up. We may get above freezing for a few days.
Started my new year off right with neurologist, rest of the month will be MRIs on 2 spine areas and a follow up EMG to check for nerve dysfunction. I haven't been able get back into my walking routine without acutely intensifying my foot pain for months, and if it's coming from spinal stenosis, I need to know before I possibly increase meds again trying to get back into that game. Continuing to ignore it and not exercise only lets it get worse, but I need to make sure I'm not making it worse myself. Closer to end game steps are steroid shots and surgeries (worse case scenario is crippling and paralysis), but I don't show obvious damage (leg weakness, foot drop, etc) during office assessment, which is really good. I'm still doing really well for all the work I've had to put into regaining my mobility the last 6 years. I started mobility and strength work 6 years ago. 6 years ago I was barely able to walk around a store and often used motor carts (for much more than this one problem), and I barely did the shopping. Now I do most of the shopping on a regular basis and never use a motor cart. I'd like to keep it that way for awhile, but this foot pain is becoming a real bear again over the last year.
Jan. 6, Saturday
Routine is such a funny word around here. 😂 The roller coaster is still there, just more predictable.
I've got my part of it broken down into a 3X3 format of things I need to keep getting done or work on this winter and spring. In one format it's personal, home, internet, in another format it's daily, weekly, monthly. The time jags I went through in December necessitate an urgent need to get myself back on track asap. I was able to fake my way through most of it, probably even surprisingly well, but underneath I was barely containing a mess way out of control.
When you throw depression, finances, daily chores, holiday expectations (that's it's own horrible list right there), forgetfulness, and the inevitable emotional fallout all into a dogpile together (I basically just described Christmas for at least 50% of everyone I know), it's a mess. And then January is about crawling out from that mess and starting the cleanup. A lot of people usually give up by March if not sooner, and I think that's because the mess never gets properly defined. Exercising our way to health without dealing with our healthy in any form in the first place (physical, mental, spiritual) is like putting a bandaid on a 6 inch gash. Going to a gym doesn't fix anything. It can help, yes. But without some kind of guidelines, it can actually make the mess harder to deal with.
So, the whole frickin' mess. I have to stay on top of money and calendar sync weekly. I have to stay on top of certain household chores daily. I have to stay on top of internet goals weekly/monthly.
Example- Personal includes hair and nail maintenance, right. Once a month. I actually have it written down because I'm so bad to neglect myself. I'm not the sort of person who even looks in a mirror. I'm not ashamed to admit it. Some people freak out about how they present round the clock, and I'll admit I've had years where I slacked around like The Dude. I try not to do that any more. Personal also includes calling my dad. I am super fail to check in with him, and I need to at least call him once a week. He's old and alone much of the time, and we can always talk about the impending apocalypse and the lastest homeopathic fad in the spam catalogs coming in his mail. Other personal things include medical. I found out last month that my disability papers aren't on file with my doctor, super fail since I got that years ago. I need to make a phone call and find out how to go about getting a copy into their software system. There's more, but you can see how organizing a time table for some things slightly improves my existence.
Example- Home includes the regular laundry and dishes, of course, but I've been extra fail this year with floors and rugs. I used to be pretty OCD about my floors. I have more difficulty nowadays, @bonenado is way overworked, Bunny is tearing around the house, and the floors have been pretty neglected. Well, plus my surgery. I've managed to pull off deep cleaning my floors about every 6 weeks this year. That is unacceptable, even without pets, if for nothing else than my allergies to Mirkwood. If I want to feel better, I need to hold the micro crap down, and don't for one second misunderstand that micro couldn't mean billions and billions of leaf mold spores. I want to breathe easily, so I need to clean my floors. I'm tightening the deep cleaning up to monthly, with weekly touchups when I do my regular weekly cleaning on certain chores. Years ago during my worst horrible year of being nonstop sick, I made a list and we executed it. We threw out our fabric covered couch and replaced it with leather. We shampooed the carpets. We set up hepa filters around the house. Within 3 months I went from monthly antibiotics for continual acute upper respiratory to not sick at all in sinus, glands, throat, or ears. So now I pull down curtains and wash those and rugs religiously. I change the bedding religiously. I rotate all the linens religiously. Been slipping up a bit this year, and it's showing, and that alone is dragging all the rest down.
Example- Internet includes pulling focus back onto the little daily chores I used to do to stay focused on bigger picture. I nearly threw all that out the door the last 6 months. I don't mean Pinky blog, I mean the entire structure I've spent 5 years building. I'm so close to being there. It would be a real shame to let all this slip away. I know the rest is already long, so I won't keep boring you. I'll just say that every little bit adds up, and it's all transient. It's my job to create and maintain my own presence.
I can do amazing things sometimes a micrometer at a time, as long as I keep tacking on those micrometers. They add up. Again, thank you Chris Hardwick. By the way, all the pics in this post click out to funny sources, check those out.
Stuff is hard. Life can suck. Sometimes perspective is all that stands between us and doom. I can do this.
Watch me fly, 2018. Yes, you can laugh when I faceplant, but I'm still going to make it a few feet through some real air before that happens. Watch me.
The facepalms this morning aren't stopping me. DO YOU HEAR ME, COSMOS??? *shakes fist* Just pleeeeeese stop throwing spiders at me while we're at it...
Somebody remind me to have @bonenado move my whole king sized bed after he gets home from work so I can get something that slid down the wall when I flipped a pillow out of my way. That's what I get for setting up mobile office in bed. I'm trying to feel lazy in between jumping up getting tons of stuff done. By 9:30 I had a sack filling up for a charity donation drop off, all our coats in the wash, a pie in the oven, an actual for real phone call about medical billing done, the coin bowl all sorted, couple xmas thingies taken care of, another quarter of my mountainside stripped down in game, and had started a couple of lists.
Just a sec, got all settled and all my little cells are going ~nope~, go eat some lunch first.
comes back with nachos
Ok, now I get to sort through my mangled screenshots folder for the #latenightmove grabs. I attempted to downsize and dumped about half the folder contents last week, and apparently the new incoming fills up the empty slots instead of lumping together at the end, yay, so "Screenshot(10)" isn't really "Screenshot(256)" like it's supposed to be, and the movie grabs are like scattered autumn leaves. Not sure, but I think this makes my third viewing now. Could tell a big difference between this year and years past. If you don't know about my brain crash-fog-glitch probs, 2017 has been my best memory and function year since 2004.
Before Tim Allen ever threw Santa off a roof, long before Elf helped Santa rig a jet engine back onto a sleigh, Santa apparently went to Mars. Pretty sure Elon Musk's parents were inspired by this movie as children, pushing him to be just like little Billy and go to Mars, too.
North Pole HQ looks different in every single Santa movie. This one looks ominously like the one in the Scrooged promos showing Lee Majors saving Santa years later during a missile attack.
We never did find out what that Martian headgear was about. That still bugs me, along with a very confusing plotline based on an even more confusing motivation. I think that's because I'm used to space shows being a bit more logicky nowadays. I want to slam this one by its lapels against a wall and ask how in the world they figured out their children were lacking happiness?
We are ALL still children on the inside. You know it's true, syfy400. I won't reveal your secret identity. 😂
I'm not good at Martian linguistics and proper naming.
You know how Daryl had to listen to Easy Street over and over? I think Kim Jong needs to see this movie a few times.
There's like a plot and a subplot behind the entire Santa abduction. Nowadays we'd get up to the minute tweets about staff changes during production, which everyone knows alters the whole atmosphere of a movie, so I can't help wondering if the start and the end are cobbled together in the middle after a long horrible night full of cigarettes and coffee around a writers' table.
The Martians didn't seem to know how to properly abduct (oddly grazing taboo all around, as it were), and probably only succeeded because children were so terribly polite back then. The only thing missing was candy and 'wanna see my puppies?' The brief gun pointing didn't frighten them at all. Were they brave? Bad actors? Cognizant of the script saying something about a gun? Did anyone know what was going on???
It's up to Billy and Betty to carry the story now!
I know right, how many of these did I get this time. Wow, really went to town on that screenshot button. By the way, in case you haven't been paying attention on the medias, Sophia has been granted full citizenship in Saudi Arabia. Inside the mechanical brain of the world’s first robot citizen
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.
I heard that phrase I don't know how many times from a boss on one of my jobs. "Organization is the key." I love organizing. My house doesn't know it, but I really do.
click for more awesome SW memes
My lists flew out the window through October. I feel woefully unorganized, despite October being a very successful #allthethings month. I'm coming into November with most of the running out my door behind me for awhile, thank goodness, so maybe I can get my head back on lists and showing my house that I love organizing.
Had a fantastically perfect day yesterday. Everything fell into place like magic the entire day. Was thinking driving in that I need to check and see if anyone cancelled with my psychologist, bing, my phone rang about a cancellation and I could get in that day after my other appointments around town. *Perfect*. My brain was jello but everything fell into place without me missing anything- post office, Walgreens, library, Good Will drop off, bank. Got my flu shot, doesn't even hurt. Some years I get a little fever and my arm hurts like crap, this year, nada. Assessed back into physical therapy after that, scheduling once a week up through the end of the year magically fell on the same day and time every single week. Stayed on track with my lunchbox and noon meds, started reading my library book. Psychologist, thank goodness. I feel soooooooooooooo much better now. I'll be touching base again in 2 weeks, then in 3 weeks, so I'm covered through holidays. I've been alienating people again since another big breakthrough last week, and I can't talk about it with anyone except psychologist, Scott, and Kai (Kai saved me that day, super thank goodness on that). So my next objective is to look at me alienating people again and figure out how I'm going to handle holidays being a Sith Lord.
To people dealing with other people having meltdowns through holidays- I am sincerely sorry I suck. Please hear that coming from other people who've not yet reached the point where they can say that. I know a lot of people put up with me, I know I make things difficult and awkward, and I know I utterly fail sometimes when other people need my support. I know you know I'm a mess and I wish I wasn't and I feel really bad that it gets in the way, because I really do love people. Please hear this from the people you love when they can't say it through this holiday season. What comes after meltdown that a lot of people don't see is a deep self loathing and #epicfail feels, and then the awkwardness, and that is why we don't know how to talk to people sometimes about real stuff. You know, like we see on TV.
Anyway, making huge headway with my emotional processing again, and yes, it will upset people, so I'm working on how to write it without upsetting people. I'm writing to heal, not to be mean.
In the meantime, today is all about pot roast in the crockpot, constructing apple pie, organizing a work list for little writing projects through holidays, organizing another work list for my house, reading my library book, and minecraft. My head is still weird from unremmitting sensation overload and continued aspie shutdown mode, so just staying busy and distracted is top priority, keep emotions low key, do the usual stuff taking care of myself with good nutrition and hydration, quality rest and a little exercise, and staying focused on being in the moment. I'm doing great, it just doesn't feel like it. It's hard to tell in a wonky nervous system that everything is on point.
Ug, already tired of myself. Let's look for something fun.
Back to basics. It all started with picking up a few spirals, some fun stickers, and a package of colored pens. And sox. I very slowly turned my life around and turned it inside out into something different.
And now it's really different, because not only was I successful, but the whole Bunny bomb came along a few months later, and the entire Plan turned into mobile office, yet still progressively growing.
It has grown into more than 40 spirals, at least 10 mini spirals, a solid preference for Pilot G-2 05 or 07 pens, and a wicked knowledge of novelty socks, which actually started years before during my retail phase.
I told psyche guy that I normally use the chaos and even enjoy the chaos, but lately I've been feeling like I'm drowning in it, more like losing control of the Plan and not really progressing (although the internet begs to differ in a few ways). Basically, I feel *stuck*. It has nothing to to with writer's block or not being able to keep up with the house (the chores have become very easy over the years), or even a lack of motivation (I'm still very strongly motivated). After a great big think over the last couple of months, it hit me that the problem is I dropped the Lists.
Lists are fine for the daily things, like shopping or getting a few things done around the house, maybe extracurricular like getting phone calls made and forms filled out, but one thing I learned from The Nerdist Way was to keep track of #allthethings, and I used to do it in a special spiral that finally couldn't handle all the spread, so I chucked it aside and kept moving.
There's no excuse, guys, this is getting dirt cheap. Not being compensated, just I love him.
So I thought back about how I used to keep track of what I did because back then I was so brain glitchy I actually had to. I'm not so glitchy now, but you know what? Maybe that's exactly what I need again, only on a much bigger scale this time.
So I picked up a 5 subject spiral from Walgreens with a few of my vast hoard of points, plus it was on sale, so sweet deal, and then I got a 3 subject spiral at Walmart later for el cheapo because back to school is close to finishing off, so I've got 8 sections I can use for logging, like a daily journal library.
In the olden days, I would make lists of things I wanted to do, like this or that for SyfyDesigns, or an idea I had for a certain blog, something techy I needed to go fix, and back then, having a few things like that written down gave me some direction to focus on, and when I needed the distraction, I'd go get something done. Usually each thing would take only a few minutes or maybe even an hour, and once it was done, I could write down that I'd done it in my 'done' spiral, which over time gave me loads of assurance that I really was getting a lot of stuff done, even though it felt like I was crawling along barely doing anything. And over time, all that showed up on the webs as 'presence', and I kept stumbling into ways to see what my 'net' worth is, if I may be so punny.
I need that back. In triplicate and quadruplicate. I need more than a puny spiral now. I'm running a ship with lots of different departments that need supervising, and I am the Overlord of my multiple domains. I can't smash all the things together any more, it's too chaotic.
Yep, you're guessing it. One section in the 8 subject sections will be SyfyDesigns, another section will be tech fix stuff, etc. First page of each section will be all the things that pop into my mind to maybe do in future, and pages after that will be logging when I've gotten it done, so I can look back through like a work log. It's more than a matter of ticking off a list now, it's keeping a sense of time flow and progress without losing sight of #allthethings.
He restarted his life with this, and look at him owning the world now. #NewtoWho (jumped the pond, guys) #TalkingDead (THE show to watch after the hottest zombie show ever) #Midnight (owns twitter), and that's barely even touching all the stuff he's done and still doing.
btw, caution on this vid, it's really gross.
So if anyone has a plan to get out of an anxiety-filled slump funk, it's this guy. And if anyone is a #spoonie #autismspectrum #depression survivor, it's me. I'm clawing my way out of my hellhole, albeit slowly, but ENOUGH OF THIS, WHERE IS SHERLOCK. I'VE GOT A TUNNEL SYSTEM TO FINISH ON MO CREATURES and other subtext ye know not of.
Good morning, nice to see you all again on another Monday. I was going to skip this today but I'm apparently free associating so badly that I'm already doing the gerbil thing, and when I look back at the end of this day I'll be ticking boxes like "ran on wheel 1,846 times", "chewed through another bar", and "fluffed up another rag into a ball of fuzz". Basically, nonaccomplishment. Thank goodness I'm in a really good habit of hitting a blog early in the morning to focus all that extraneous activity chatter into a direction.
I was brilliant yesterday. I made the godmother of all lists, zipzipzip jotjotjot spellspellspell while Scott was watching the Packers pre-lose. I used a BIG spiral this time, dividing the page into lengths of thirds and titling month in each column. Everything I want done by the end of this month is in the first column, a sprinkling of things to keep in mind for next month is in the next column, and the third column is still blank but very important.
This is the time of year that I'm usually spinning out in complete brain fail, and I don't come back 'on' until about April, which means I monumentally screw up stacks of bills and taxes (I have stories, it's that bad), not to mention miss a couple of holidays and birthdays without even realizing the earth is still turning. I'm sure several enthused readers will think things like "Yep, she's gluten free now, about time" or "I told her about the magnesium thing two years ago" or "Cool, I'm getting a birthday present this year". Whatever. The brain is WORKING, yay!
Aaaaand, my brain is feeling a little calmer now. No more odd job code fixing or hunting high and low for a picture I thought I had or counting my yogurts (poor twitter). Time to spring forth and pounce all over my Monday. Hope you guys win your own wrestling matches out there. Oh, and for all the Yodas that keep swarming me out of the blue on twitter-
Today is a multiple lists kind of day. I'm running to town nearly every day this week for stuffs, so I've got a list of errands all over creation, plus a list of internet chores to do in between all the running. Yes, on top of the blog transfers. Also have a list of food I need to cook this week because I'm already getting so scattered that I'll wind up throwing food out if I forget to make something with it or make too much all at once.
I'm a big believer in lists. Sometimes I even make a list for the lists. I used to think this was ridiculous, but learning how to meticulously organize and then choreograph all these things has pretty much saved my home life from falling to pieces. I still thank Chris Hardwick for that. He says I can still rule the universe with epic brain fail and that it's crucial I spend real money on cute spirals to make this happen. In 3 days it'll be 2 years since I blogged about how he changed my life. I never dreamed I'd become so capable on the webs again. Lotta small steps got me here, can't wait to see where another two years gets me.
In the meantime, my Let's Get Spocked survey rocked right up to the top of my Surveypalooza posts yesterday. I think a lot of us are just looking for distraction while we get through our days. I love it when I find other people creating cool distraction on the webs.
This happened yesterday, bit of discussion going on facebook about ghosts in my house.
Grinding through physical therapy a little differently this time, alternating therapists with very different methods with instructions from the therapist who first assessed me this go-round. I feel like I'm working harder and recovering faster than the last couple of years of physical therapy, but I can also tell my pain tolerance is slipping. Is that a good thing? I used to be able to tolerate continual soul draining pain, and now I get crabby over little pain spikes. I'm hoping that means I'm getting used to feeling better and that my body finds it unacceptable to allow backsliding. Like doing computer work, sitting here sucketh mightily on my neck and the back of my skull after holding burrito so much a few days ago. I mean, it has always hurt to sit and I have to keep getting up and moving around, but I almost feel like I'm being punished now trying to work, which means I'm taking it personally. That leads to bitterness and anger and the dark side, so I need to get my head straightened back out. This one clicks to pinterest if you want to grab it.
Amusingly, I should probably confess that as my capabilities have increased, so has my demand on my output, and I'm probably so intensely focused that I'm not realizing I'm hurting myself locking into position like this. I'm probably lucky I have a body that screams at me. I know people who eat what they want and do what they want and never really notice discomfort beyond a little heartburn, but it's getting a little scary how many people we know who are suddenly dropping dead in their 50's now. Maybe it's a good thing to feel DISCOMFORT. Unless you medicate in order to ignore it so you can keep on doing what you're doing.
Ok, going off on a bleak tangent was not my intention. I can tell this is going to be a rough day, so I need to stay busy. Back to the lists!!!
