I forewent buying my usual bag of chocolate chips this last week and everything has gone all to hell. Well, I'm doing great managing and juggling and accomplishing, even organizing, but I'm mentally smh (any interpretation on that works just fine) and accidentally doubling or skipping coffee, and once that slippery slope sends me slithering sideways surreptitiously (I have honestly never used that word before, I hate that word because it's used far too much in all things print- seriously, do you ever hear anybody actually use that word in real life?), nevermind, went off course and I no longer care if I properly finish that thought or sentence.
~ the next day ~
I could go on about how cool it was getting my own radishes out nearly all by myself in a number of years and everything hurts because physical therapy but look at me go, or I could just drop it and move on.
Not sure how I'm doing it because super fail on several fronts, but actually remembered to get my own daughter's Mother's Day fleurs ordered before the blackout dates (nothing like having a child right on top of Mother's Day and not one florist would get flowers to her after a really rough delivery 5 years ago and I have somehow mixed up my days ever since), and I can't even with the rest after so much dealing last month. I'm closed for the rest of this month.
Ok, not shut down entirely, just not dealing with any more gooey sappy reminders of sad for awhile. Done with sad. The hangover after finally processing a big sad leaves me nothing for anything else, so this month I am hiding from the world party in a metaphorical bathroom.
Another hour till movie gang time and I know I'm super fail blogging lately, so quickie power point.
I love burnt raisins. Overcooked the last batch of oatmeal cookies and am now delightfully hooked on that bittersweet of the tortured grape.
My cynicism is kicking into high gear as I become more seasoned moderating on a game server. Srsly gonna start supplementing my twitter with the warn, mute, ban thing. Apparently foot fetish is ok to slide into DMs and I instantly hated, you know? Like *ew* thanx for spoiling a long twitter friendship.
K, Holly's calling so the hour is slipping by, lol.
I am absolutely killing Pinky blog. 😆 It's been hilarious watching all that drop off. Au revoir.
I started a different kind of project, which will be explained later. In the meantime, I'm fine. 😊 Super busy, as always. Maybe I'll bullet point before I go.
Approved for physical therapy on left shoulder for impingement, which, if I'd known was taken so seriously, I'd have gotten on top of years ago. I've lived with crazy amounts of pain, this is hopefully the last big hurdle.
The difference between parm cheese and candy is mega amounts of salt. Don't parm yourself like it's candy. Heart got a little thumpy this week.
I can't believe how much TV we've managed to get caught up on again this last week, even came in late to a live tweet. Felt so goooood.
The back to back euphorias finally wore off and I'm sleeping through the nights again, yay! That was pretty wild.
Plan this month is stay on top of tree allergies. This is historically one of my really bad months, so I'm mostly hiding in my house. Might be pouring liquid zyrtec in my eyes. (Don't really do that, ok?)
I'm also craving spring veggies, so I'm all over salads this week. Can't seem to get enough radishes. Check it, they're full of vitamin C and other good stuffs. Radishes
So I've got evidence that Pinky blog is being mirror accounted in at least one other country, lol. 😂😁 Whatever floats your goat guys. I know curating isn't enough, right. Just slap copies up and go to town with it and stuff. Right now it's more important that some of my words just get spread anyway, so I'm not too bothered. It could all end with dirty nukes and grids going down and who knows, some of my Pinky wisdom might live on somewhere.
Meanwhile, two of us came home with broccoli this week and now I'm working on gastric stack overflow. Today's menu includes a cheesy rice pilaf full of mashed up broccoli, with a slight hint of onion. I use several kinds of cheese so it's super yum. If I had leftover bacon I'd throw that in, too. One time I did that and stirred bits of cream cheese in, that was heavenly.
I just did a thorough research on Edward Lear because The Owl and the Pussycat crossed my mind awhile ago. Of course, that'll never show up on a social media scoring system. Klout keeps insisting that I'm a Stephen King expert for some reason. Confession- I'm well read and I've never opened a single Stephen King book in my life and rarely watch related movies or television show episodes that he's somehow involved with. I've watched Under the Dome, but other than that, I very rarely stop to check out anything his name is on. A few friends of mine are die hard Stephen King fans, so I'm very well aware of his remarkable history. I did see Lawnmower Man but apparently all he gets credit for is the title, lol. And I guess this is odd because anyone who gets to know me eventually compares me to Stephen King for some reason. I'd like to turn that back to Edward Lear, but since I don't often share my prolific penchant for limerick (the majority wind up incredibly yet tastefully naughty for some reason, and I'd rather not become known for that), no one ever says I'm the next Edward Lear. That sort of makes me sad.
From Runcible-Wikipedia- "In Neal Stephenson's 1995 novel The Diamond Age, Runcible is a code name for the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, an educational computer."
From The Diamond Age-Wikipedia- "Society in The Diamond Age is dominated by a number of phyles, also sometimes called tribes. Phyles are groups of people often distinguished by shared values, similar ethnic heritage, a common religion, or other cultural similarities. In the extremely globalized future depicted in the novel, these cultural divisions have largely supplanted the system of nation-states that divides the world today. Cities in The Diamond Age appear divided into sovereign enclaves affiliated or belonging to different phyles within a single metropolis. Most phyles depicted in the novel have a global scope of sovereignty, and maintain segregated enclaves in or near many cities throughout the world."
You might call that prophetic, since that is a bit depictive of what the U.N. has drawn up in their Agenda 21, but perhaps it's merely an idea that has been intended for a much longer amount of time than we think, since Agenda 21 was heavily discussed and officially drafted several years previously. It would appear a work of fiction materialized after an agenda arose, so one could suppose this particular fiction might be a function of intention. I often look up whether an author's idea came before some kind of official documentation of something. It's interesting how often fiction actually comes after fact and barely anyone notices. Another book by the same author titled Cryptonomicon carries in its description "With this extraordinary first volume in what promises to be an epoch-making masterpiece, Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped this century." Really? He published after Agenda 21 was drawn up. It's not that big a leap to carry that into fiction. Actually, he seems a bit obsessed with the same kind of conspiracy around Nazi code that many still do nowadays, but now we know more and it's not that cryptic once you stick a toe into the weird stuff. It's been all around us this whole time, but as long as our minds are trained onto fictionalized television, we continue to believe our lives and even the world are spectacularly mundane.
Interestingly, diamonds are the top commodity in Minecraft, one of the most popular digital games in the world where players learn to co-op and create sustainable lifestyles against a number of challenges. I hint of the cultural crossing over in my article Atlantis.
Anyway, my point comes back around to Stephen King possibly already writing what was put into his mind by others in the first place. The monarch cinched it for me. Whether King wrote the actual predictive programming or not is irreparably smeared for me now. He may not be a genius so much as just another person fast tracked into success by a group using him as a tool. He is well known for being a self confessed blackout writer, which some blame on trauma or alchohol, but is also explainable with programmed alters, like pop stars today are unabashedly revealing. Basically, he was the Lady Gaga of the book world long before 'dark' became mainstream.
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.
My klout score literally nosedived on the 22nd and is now the lowest it's been in ages. I know exactly why, too. I say that like it was huge, basically went from 60 to 58 after months of coasting. It was almost like I found my true negative factor, plugged it in and repelled people, and it all pointed to youtube. My Webmii score reflected that, too, although it's really interesting that the score goes up if my web presence search parameters are international, and then it has nothing to do with klout's final say. But basically, I diverted from my usual entertainment distractions, and I'll be honest, I didn't like myself doing that, either.
I hadn't checked impressions from keywords in awhile. I've been wondering what is the weirdest search parameters my blog has been lumped into, so I'm throwing darts at 141 pages of keyword searches and stopped in my tracks at something in Russian that translates to "riyet duck buy in kiev". Really, guys? Oh, yeah, my about page has a Darkwing Duck motif. But then another Russian search phrase translated to "amazing lightness", so I guess I have seriously breached Google around the globe. I seem to get a lot of Korean search referrals outside of my GWT list, and at least 7 different languages are represented in my top ten all time visitors. Top referring site is google.com, top referring URL is facebook.com. Basically, google pushes me out there, and facebook pulls people inward. I get instant hits from at least 4 different countries within seconds of sharing links to facebook, and another 2-3 countries within 5 minutes of sharing to twitter, depending on how I set up the tweet with hashtags and graphics cards. Internal tags and keywords do that rest. Statcounter says Pinky blog has been visited by 91 countries. I never dreamed this one would pull in traffic at all. I mean, it's not crazy or anything, but it's interesting watching where those hits come from around the world, because it's a difficult and therefore meaningful search.
But apparently more importantly, I come up on Google's 4th page for "allergic to ragweed", which is pretty outstanding, given how vague that is, 5th page for "desperate popstars", which is actually a little scary, and page ONE for "flowers for algernon book", like literally no one else talks about it or something, I dunno. Actually, I come up on page one for nearly 2 1/2 statcounter pages of google search phrases. "blue halloween" is my golden ticket with the most impressions (hundreds), "dr. evil leo" a close second, then "spock handshake", "rick lagina images", and "bird splat". Sorry, Benedict. *crickets* (Bird splat???) (I'm on a top ten google search for BIRD SPLAT.) (Sorry, that's just not sinking in.)
Sometimes I get these weird thoughts, like how I'm trying to fit in a causative universe, and then I wonder how in the world I even got that idea, like what does that even mean when I can't even imagine a noncausative universe. Rhyme and reason, me pushing google around and it pushing back. It wants to rate content, I litter content for it to rate. My existence is measured and found wanting during a fail week, and being human is rewarded with being quickly forgotten in a machinistic inclined society. To step beyond a tree falling in the woods, this brownie literally doesn't exist unless I talk about it somewhere. I'm eating a brownie. Now it can exist.
Probably the singlemost influencing fanvid of my entire blogging life.
Snip clicks to tweet so you can go follow Pagan and Nurture and Support on twitter.
and click this amazon link
(not paid to link any of that on Pinky blog)
My youtube viewer history went off the rails this week, so I'm slapping myself silly again. I think my very favorite thing in this highly promiscuous and NSFW 'pink slap meme' search are those really long toes with the pink toenails.
And I just realized that by word association half of you probably thought that my youtube viewer history going off the rails meant in a promiscuous way, so let me make you sick and really sick. Not promoting, just sharing the nauseated feeling. I tend to rocket off into the abyss like I'm skipping down a carnival strip when life plunges into dark and sucky, and I cannot say anything right now that doesn't sound smutty, so consider it another innocent jaunt into closeyoureyes land.
It's ok, though, I found pink spiderpig.
And of course that roofied me right out of Sadland into crazy and I'm good now.
Apologies, I'm getting questions. Yes, my household has type B flu, but we caught it very quickly, thanks to Bunny. Poor kiddo is getting hit the hardest, but so far so good, past the worst and now just stuck with that lingering mucousy cough. The rest of us had flu shots last fall (kiddo had croup and strep and other things and kept missing getting the shot), and coupled with the tamiflu prescribed for the entire household after Bunny tested positive, we've been skating through it mostly just wiped out with cold symptoms and maybe a bit crabbier than usual. Oh, and our brains fell out. We got stupid. That part was kind of weird.
I never did develop fever or cough, and the worst of mine was like a light cold with earaches and sinus. The others got hit a little harder with really sore throats and super wiped out. I've never taken tamiflu before, and I kept hearing that the shot was ineffective, but I'm doing very well with that double protection. I'm usually the one who goes down the hardest and longest with anything because immunocompromised for years, so I'm especially enjoying being the least hit. I know a number of other people being hit really hard with influenza this winter, and I feel for you guys.
No vid trail, sorry. I'm on triple duty since I'm in the best shape. You can have this, though. If you don't have a clue, maybe surf the alliance vs the cabal, and this is actually old stuff, it's all over the place like here. I don't care who thinks what is crazy or wrong or stupid, the important thing is to WAKE UP. If the political world is taking this seriously, then maybe we should, too. #kindnessislogical
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 more I think about my resolutions for this next new year, the sillier they get, so you know what, I'm going with it.
Meme it up. Meandering miscreant mindfully making messes more meaningful. (btw, I didn't make any of the memes in this post, they all click to source.)
Step off the cliff. Minecraft filling in all the little holes needs to start joyfully filling in all the big holes, too. Creativity and expression are good for the soul.
Put my shoes on. Make up for this last year's routine exercise fail. At least put the shoes ON every morning, which will naturally make it more likely to follow up.
Own my own junk. I'm hauling out a metaphorical flamethrower and going to town on this decade of pile up in my room. I'm done with holding onto the past for reasons we can't even remember now.
Follow the carrot. Every month I am pulling a little money back for Christmas next year, organizing my snail mail hobby back into folders like the old days, and putting my Houston kiddos at the top of all the lists. What my heart most desires must be what leads me through this next year. I believe this will keep me more focused and in better spirits.
So. Another year of horrors, regrets, fears, rages... I can't help noticing that Pinky blog spotlights that rollercoaster we all go on even when I try to distract myself away from it, and if we're stuck on that ride, dang if I actually care any more that it's a thing. It's a thing. So are cookies, people. When life sucks so bad, it's time to make cookies and memes. You can do the healthy cookie thing, too, it's not a fail to do a cookie.
The article that pic clicks to might seem unnerving, but at least it's not Skynet.
Whiny robots are unacceptable. Whiny robots irritate people. #transparency is one thing, #uglytrewth is another. I will quickly power point the current root causes for whine and move on.
Post acute withdrawal syndrome. I'm only 2 weeks out from surgery, and less than that back off opioids.
Nasty headache.
Lost more weight than I went in with because virus on top of recovery and couldn't eat much between the two, imagine how hungry I am.
And now I will entertain myself, like I've been doing for years when I actually had no one to talk to.
Or how about an HTML5 version of the original Lemmings game, including the original sound?
But you don't have to load the game to listen to the music!
So when you have arthritis in your cervical spine and a history of trigeminal pain and they do airway for surgery, then have you lay in one position for extended time, the resulting fibro flare is off the wall once the drugs all wear off. Not whining or anything. Just saying. The Lemmings music in my headphones is helping. It's like a brain stim to distract me from paying attention to my nerves pinging over and over like BBs pelting the side of my head.
What was I posting in the old super pain days? Lemme jump back a few years and grab something.
Oh, here you go, my old Sikes and the Alien Nation (all the youtube vid codes got wiped in the Xanga server move). You might not be able to see that on mobile. And that post led to Gary sharing something I put into another post at EMP threat- imminent? Interestingly, just yesterday North Korea demo'd they can reach anywhere they want now with a missile, and next comes a nuclear warhead 'test'. You guys know that 'testing' a nuclear warhead in the atmosphere above the U.S. would knock our power grids offline, right, not to mention the fallout. So I was saying that back in April 2009.
Well, full circle I guess. I ran into Treat Me Like An Athlete, and I'll pull part here and leave it at that. This is an excerpt, because I was still voraciously super wordy back then and this is only a part of that. Bluejacky wasn't a top blog or anything, but got really good traffic on some things, and it was the first blog I tried being both public and myself on, although back then I never shared who I was anywhere else.
Ok, guys, I felt mean the other day, so I'm gonna partially retract and make an apology, but not because anyone got hold of me and demanded one. And I'm not doing this to get attention from anybody, because I've got recs and comments turned off anyway. I made a post called'puny' blogs, which I still stand by because I'm aspie and that's the way my head works, but I can look back and see that it was still a punch below the belt, and I feel like that's not who I am and how I operate. I'm not trying to do ~this~.
And here I put South Park's infamous cripple fight, which is now blocked for content rights stuff, but here's a snip.
I'm a big believer in the whiny crabby people being the ones who survive. I have watched others 'wisp away' under the burdens of their illnesses, and even though med info pages on the internet insist that things like lupus and fibromyalgia are NOT terminal, those others I knew have passed on already. I'm still here, and my whiny crabby butt says hell yeah it's killing me, and dang if I'm gonna lay down and let it. I'm not against anyone talking about their stuff on their blogs, that was NOT what the 'puny' blogs post was about. I've got a private blog popping with my crap, and the reason it's private is because the things I say there are things that help me survive, and that includes my black side, my bad attitude, and all the mean feelings that come out on my really bad days. I don't want to share that with the public. To me it looks like a big tangled mess of ugly confusion, probably because I see it all the time. To the few allowed to sub there, it probably looks more like endlessly long boring posts about being sick all the time and every little thing that bugs me, which is probably a real drag to read. Aspies can be notoriously wordy.
This next part is a big deal. Very few people dare to stick out there and really be REAL without apologizing or masking or faking or fighting. Just being real.
So it's only fair that I bring out where I'm at *right now*. I created this blog to share information, to 'be real' about stuff like Asperger's, but as I've pointed out in a couple of posts, I feel the Asperger's is what's giving me the edge on surviving the illnesses I live with because I notice patterns and obsess over details and collect information to the point of being irritating. So this week I'm going to assess what my situation is as of August '08, and then map out my plan of action for dealing with my stuff for the rest of the year. If you have chronic illness and feel like you are spinning your wheels in the mud, this is how I have survived 20 years of lupus, severe fibromyalgia, and a variety of complications that include things like Lyme disease, heart surgery, and a really wacky immune system.
Kinda what's been happening this week. I'm talking to myself because no one else wants to talk to me like this.
The cold hard truth about illness is that it sux. Just like with my Asperger's, I pretend to be 'ok' or 'normal' with my illnesses, too, because I learned real fast no one likes a whiny butt with a bad attitude. That's the real me, but I can't be the real me without people walking away in disgust, and I have learned to hide the howling blackness so I don't scare the straights. But the real me is the survivor. I don't whitewash the crap I go through to myself. I punch the virtual walls and grab myself by the collar and shake me. There is a piece of brain that refuses to go down with the ship, and thank God I go through the really crabby stuff, because I think it has helped save my life more than once.
I actually do this to people that I love-
Because, damn it, it takes a mean person to survive a mean disease or illness. And my gut reaction is that any time I see someone else whimpering with their pain, I want to kick *them* into full blown whiny shit kicking mode, too, so *they* can survive. This isn't about life sux so someone owes me something. This is about Indiana Jones hanging off a cliff and climbing back up. It's about Jack Bauer breaking people's necks after he's been tortured nearly to death. It's about Cat Woman getting fed up and raking her claws around rich bastards. It's about ~*~surviving~*~. I personally know a woman who wisped away to her death, refusing to make the necessary changes in her life that would have made all the difference and possibly given her 20 more less miserable years, in spite of surgeries and medications galore. There are a number of corporate conglomerates, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical CEOs who aren't going to like what I have to say in this post.
True story.
Yes, the imagery helps. If your senses are too delicate for this post, go away, and don't pretend to feel sorry for people you don't understand. True story. Years ago I was working in a hospital. I was preparing to put my things away and step onto an elevator to move on to another floor when a couple of older ladies stepped onto the elevator with me. They were dressed in nice clothing, had nice hair, nice jewelry, but they were not being very nice. The lady they had come to see was on the cancer floor, and since I'd cleaned her room earlier and spoken to her, I knew she was terminal any time, and that she was distraught with a number of issues about being afraid, stuff about her family, feeling all alone since her husband died, etc. So the ladies on the elevator (probably from this woman's church) were disgusted that they had taken a really expensive beautiful flower arrangement to this sick woman, and she hadn't even said thank you. She had gone on and on about something going on in her family, and she didn't even acknowledge that they came out to visit her and bring her flowers. And I'm standing there thinking- You expected her to be a gracious *hostess* on her death bed???? My God, people, the woman is ~dying~, and you're griping about her failure to say thank you for the flowers. And that leaves so much wide open to wonder about, like how those nice ladies could judge someone in need like that and think they were better than her because they played a *social game* correctly. They weren't really there to comfort a dying woman. There were there for brownie points. And I can't help but also wonder if the church paid for the flowers, in which case the nice ladies were even that much more ugly about getting that thank you.
Srsly how I feel about comments. I don't need pats on the back cheering me on. If you can't get out there and plow walls with me, just stand back before the bricks fly with me tearing that wall down.
So if you've never known anyone personally or yourself lived with chronic or terminal illness, your advice is not welcome here. (My mom used to be very eager to give others advice on vitamin E and herbs and stuff without any experience or medical knowledge whatsoever, so I'm a bit sensitized to that kind of zeal.) This is partly why I turned comments off. I don't waste my time with ignorance and pretense. It's my 'aspie way'. I am who I am and I don't care if someone gets upset about it. The rest of you who agree with me, thank you, but I don't feel the need to show that off to anyone by hosting it in visible comments.
I go on, but that's the gist of it. THAT is where it originally all started. Pinky blog is a continuation of Bluejacky. Bluejacky is too gut punchy. Pinky said tone it down a bit.
click pic for more memes
Now where were we? I started out looking for fun, wound up with nukes and a crabby rant. I need to get back on track. I was thinking that maybe in December (tomorrow) I need to go in a different direction than last year. Last December I did a countdown thingy and facepalmed midway over the archive stacking up with identical title beginnings, and by January I was just weird. I floated into dissociation land and wound up on handfuls of meds and then spent nearly the entire year dealing with ignoring a real problem (surgery this month could have been done 9 months ago) and winding up with multiple problems swamping me because I was over medicated.
pic clicks to interesting demotivational collection
And I'm still talking too much, but surely I'll be cured by the time someone is free to hang out on game later, if all works out. My internet was pretty sketchy today. Thankfully, a fiber optic crew has been out this week getting the entire subdivision prepped for a massive fiber optic installation, and their equipment is all parked up and down the street in front of my house. They made it to my house just as it was time to stop and go home, so first thing in the morning it's going to be noisy. Can't complain though if I wind up with fiber for Christmas.
I am admittedly worn out from this post. I just want to lay down for a bit before I get on game. Hopefully I don't fall asleep and miss anyone. I'll pass along what got shared to me today, it's really cute.
There's a room I keep in my head where it's always this. No matter what else is going on in real life, this is tucked away from the first time I heard it many years ago, and every time I play it back in my head I think about all the people I've met (both online and real life) and how glad I am I got to know them.
I'm the sort of person who took a very long time to figure out I actually had friends whether I realized it or not, and I usually didn't because I'm such an aspienado pinhead. I spent years autopsying every relationship I went through until I finally started noticing that I'm the dork who takes dolls apart and sets them on fire. If you translate this to people, I do it while they're still alive and trying to be friends with me. I'm sure it's been a little odd at times.
The comments on that vid are delightful, btw.
I'm pretty sure this is how they greet you in Hell.
This is the one song that will be burned into my mind until the day I die.
I love this, subtly alluding to the children being lured to their planned deaths.
I remember the first time I saw this movie I laughed like a madman at this part and my mom was so concerned
1:03 a reference to laughing in ''I am the walrus''
Is it me or do the instrumentals for this song sound similar to the Silver Shamrock song from Halloween 3? They're by no means identical but for some reason that's where my mind went during this scene.-Me too.
Anyway, I'm coming off a week of coasting through brain fragments on happy pills, and I can't help noticing how much I deeply care about all my people lately. I struggled for years, some of you saw that happening on twitter and this blog, and it's like this year my junk finally settled into place and now I kinda get it all now. I get me. I get that I'm a roller coaster slinging around other people's heads and I'm the one who looks blurry, not you guys.
Context relies on experience over time. I have 5 years under my belt now, my glitchy head is getting more reliable, I'm remembering better who everyone is and where they're from and what their situations are, and most of all, I'm managing to organize this info into my memory closet in real time nowadays. I have these friends here, those friends there, we like to do this and that, and it makes a nice little spreadsheet of activities I can look forward to each week. So much of that was a mixed up blur for so long, even at the beginning of this very year I could still barely keep names and locations straight, much less other kinds of stuff that makes hanging out better. I remember when I thought Penny was another child, kind of a private joke going back a bit. But yeah, it's like years ago asking people in real life at work or down the street about something they said and they look at me weird because they didn't realize they left me dangling assuming I understood, when my brain was naturally concocting more interesting stories about their lives behind their backs just to fill in missing info. One person was shocked when I asked whether her daughter was her husband's daughter too, or someone else's. I get very hung up on pronouns and names not being used interchangeably to denote shared relationships because hey, autism, so little things kinda made me the weird friend people wound up tiptoeing away from eventually. I have no problem accepting that everyone's got some level of hash slinging slasher in their past, so it's up to you guys to make sure I'm not running off perpetuating myths of some kind.
Well, ok, except for Mike Bilinski. He might really be some kind of *cough*interesting*cough*or something, so always keep your spatula handy.
Now that I've explained myself, I feel more comfortable asking these questions about some of my sketchier friends-
Does Kurt keep *ahem* guests tied to, wait, I mean locked in, no wait, I mean on an extended visit plan, yeah that's it.
Is Phil one of those retired dudes who runs a barside pool party? Because I wanna be where he is.
I'm kinda getting the feeling Jinni knows where all the good dumpsters are for body emergencies, and always packing cute little cookies and a thermos in case the nights get long.
I find it comforting that Lisa could be part of the mass brain training entertainment wave before aliens really do take over and recreate our society without a Vermont. Except I'll miss Cabot seriously sharp cheddar cheese. I wonder if she knows Benedict Cumberbatch. Pretty sure he's one of them.
Are Chris and Tammy siblings? Cousins? Secret agents spying on us?
Is Cindy in league with the Martians??? 😲
So in a few days it's a huge holiday in the U.S. and nearly everyone will be busy or comatose on the feasting, so before y'all hit the highways, I just wanna say be safe. This has been a challenging and sad year for a few of us already, so pleasepleaseplease stay safe. 💟💖💗 Especially you fun grillmeisters trying out turkey frying equipment for the first time. Show me some purty turkeys on facebook, not big lumpy bandages or something. Get those turkeys thawing! Do NOT toss a frozen bird into a deep fryer!!!! Yes, I feel like I have to say that. This year has been a little too ripe for facepalm. 🦃
Part of the big lead up to surgery is covering all the bases so there won't be any medical mistakes or accidents. I'd love to go into it blissfully ignorant and trust that things will all work out fine, but of course I have just enough experience to know how those stats really work and not quite enough access to my own records (notes of interest) and medical knowledge (search engines and acing medical terminology and nursing school go only so far) to wring any confidence into my head. I'm extremely grateful I got such a good critical care nurse calling me for preregistration or I'd probably have backed out by now. I could tell that person had seen it all and knew every detail mattered for every possible fail rescue.
The propofol from a test last week screwed my brain rhythm, so I've been shunting through extreme depression and worse mood swings. Can't wait for general anesthesia to add to that. Plus the preregistration questions about chest pain and family history of everything cardiac and brain fail prompted responses as me being already there with the pain/fail stuff since spoonie nerve probs, pretty much whatever statistical outcome for more serious chest pain and brain fail during recovery might not even be noticed. I live with fibro of the chest wall and on meds to help control Lhermitte's sign level pain, so just saying 'chest pain' is pretty complicated. I won't even go into the brain part again.
And of course I'll be asking a nurse tomorrow to get a note to the surgeon to please consider a different pain med than he's used to scripting and then having to deal with protracted withdrawal all over again on top of recovery. While my support system at home keeps zooming around full blast over-planning, the main question is how quickly will I be able to be left alone again. Um... I just asked my husband to make sure I don't do anything stupid and not to assume I'm ok. I'm pretty sure my depression will be more severe for a few days with my brain coils all tangled up again.
I'm very much looking forward to this particular pain being over after surgery/recovery. I'm also very much looking forward to holidays. But I've already been through the kind of fail that kept me from driving for 4 months or being able to read or watch TV for a couple of years. I sincerely hope I'll be touching base as usual as soon as possible, but it may or may not be a few days. I don't know yet.
I don't have any contingency plans in place, so if I'm one of those weird statistical fails, oh well. The only things I've done for real are getting laundry and dishes caught up and the bathrooms cleaned, and untrusting everyone on my game server claims. Don't want to come back to my stuff pillaged if I can't log on for a week or something. j/k #clanfam Hopefully, though, I can log on and play through recovery for distraction.
Apologies for my rough week. A few people got caught in a bit of brain flux.
