I was looking around in photobucket and discovered that I have to check a thingy now allowing them to link out from private albums so that what I link on blogs can still be public. I'm going to guess that this is one of those surging into international https compliance things I'm going to have to keep an eye on, one more little box to tic on a very long list of my own maintenance chores I seem to be letting slide a lot more these days. Anyway, if some of you are running into missing images, that's probably it, at least I hope so. If not, several thousand images going back to 2004 might be turning into little empty boxes for some other unfathomable reason, but the Lexx stuff seems to be intact, and I'm assuming that's because most of that stuff is housed in a public folder.
This last week was my first full week in 2017 without a major pain or med challenge and it was pretty wonderful (especially considering how well I'm doing on one of my worst allergy months). I did what most people do given a chance to actually enjoy time passing- chillaxed. It's not often I can just hang around doing nothing, so I relished it a bit. Well, actually, I got busy on a long neglected project I started 2 months ago in Mo Creatures, a very dangerous 3D sculpt that requires my full attention because it's so easy to fall and die and then have to run around looking for all my stuff while I fight critters below... Anyway, my sculpt seems to be attracting the pertinent critter to spontaneously spawn really high up, so now it's even more dangerous. Cool, huh? This will eventually become a giant spider web. I'm tickled that it might have real spiders on it. No idea if the sticky webs I placed encouraged this one to show up. I reap those with a shearing scissor from mineshafts deep underground because they're cool and fun to play with.
You noticed, right? A giant spider web where the brain would be behind the glasses... Because I'm on the webs, and other deep stuff. I have way too much fun being literal with my creative side, I think. Most people stop at words like 'bizarre' before they run along.
I also spent a little time doing more exploring. One of my fave things to do is just run and see. No map mods, no waypoints. Just run. Players on the server have no idea I'm probably the only person there who's taken a real cartography class and had to make a real map. I love maps. But real freedom is tossing the map and just running. Or swimming. Lotta swimming.
I know, I'm still using super default. I'm mod-free except for the server load. If you guys could see what I see in my head both on and off the server, you'd never look at mod packs the same way again. If the question ever comes up what alien or synthetic life form I find myself most attracted to and feel akin to, it's always been V'Ger, kinda lost inside and needing to find a way to reach out and communicate. I'm simple on the outside. Inside are wonders only I ever get to see. I can definitively say we are not our brains. It's like we're seatbelted into automated super computers and don't have a clue. I've actually been able to watch mine work, and I'm pretty sure some kind of self awareness goes down to the cellular level, but very unlike our kind of self awareness. Being human, a conscious entity governing a whole self-correcting universe of cohesive units acting in tandem for our every whim in order for us to emotionally and spiritually learn things without having to be too distracted by overlording the physical, is something my actual brain can't even conceive, yet makes possible for me to think about. If we could turn ourselves inside out and really see who we are, we are like V'Ger, clouds of being around tiny organisms that we feel trapped in sometimes. And we use layers upon layers of thoughts and simulations and presentations and art and stories to fathom what being is. The bonds we form in life are so different from chemical bonds in our bodies, and feel so much more important.
And it's funny how we need to invent things like V'Ger and minecraft to keep perpetuating the depth of simulations running in our minds, and nearly every bit of it is how it relates to our own being. Once in awhile I step out past that part (did it way more as a kid), really let go of the human connection and let the simulations about how everything works just run on and on, watch the mysteries unfold, go so deep I forget I'm even human in a body on a world and eventually come back very surprised, going oh yeah. As far as I can tell, the only way I can know for sure this particular experience world is 'real' is because pain is nearly the only thing that keeps pulling me back to it before it pushes me back out again, and I always come back to this body, this life, no matter how many thousands of other places and life simulations I get lost in. This one is important. This is the one where the people I love can actually love me back. I'm not making it up in my head.
#transparency I've really lived like this my whole life. I've briefly touched this level in The Unstuck Pinky.
I did the #fav7films hashtag last night and just realized this morning that Throw Momma from the Train should have been on that list. After a very long Bunny day yesterday, I'm brain crashing hard and have a knee going all strike on me, and my only hope, besides getting the laundry caught up and some real food cooked, is to settle and watch a show, because multiplayer isn't loading for me today. Since I've been watching Soap, all things Billy Crystal keep popping up in my mind, and today, as I reflect on how I'd like to start off a story on a private blog I've set up until I'm ready to share to print, "The night was..." keeps elbowing past all the rest and hogging the front row of my thoughts, so what else can I do but dig out the old VHS and watch that movie again.
I love playing around with writing prompts, and I've been doing "The night was..." for years on private blogs. I never run out of stuff to put with it. These popped into mind today.
The night was a complete waste of time...
The night was rowdy, the streets were nuts, but the people were happy for once...
I could almost make a book of story starters. I can do opening paragraphs and even opening chapters almost in an eyeblink sometimes. It's the finishing that doesn't happen.
Ok, this is why I'm on break today. The high activity level was nonstop for 6+ hours and I've got the group text timestamps to prove it.
Her mama had asked me stuff about if the fever was down.
The puppy show is the original 101 Dalmations, which everyone knows will soon break me.
And this next one doesn't pop out for you guys, but you can see the toe prints in my last post.
Felt like I nearly lost an eyelid here...
My dad used to have me sit and 'do coins' with him between 8-14 years old, and then later again in my 20s. It was my job to sort the dates and mintmarks, and then to sort them into conditions. Several years ago I tried to talk him out of selling some dimes and pennies to someone passing through, and sure enough, he got scalped, but in the past, he actually saved a 200 acre farm one year with an enviable silver dollar collection. Too bad that didn't ultimately save it when the cattle market abruptly plunged another year, and my dad had already prearranged to ship cattle to market the day after that happened. Lost everything. Like Owen's coin collection in Throw Momma from the Train, I have loads of memories of coins and my dad.
The blisters on her pinky toes from the hand-foot-mouth were hurting.
It didn't last, but I was getting too worn out to keep taking pictures. Bunny wasn't the only one glad to see Papa pull in the driveway, lol.
Now it is Wednesday the 17th.
I laid down a lot through the day Tuesday, but my head gradually came back on and I wound up on Mo' Creatures, of course. Accidentally ran into someone's lost pet during a mining/tunneling expedition, and I couldn't believe how deep in the dark it had gotten. I run into lost and abandoned pets all the time and just ignore them, because they are AI blocks that 'never die' unless an aggressive mob or another player kills them, and killing someone else's pet is instant banishment forever, even if the owner stopped playing and never came back. An owner can usually simply tp a pet to them using its pet ID, but if there is no one to teleport it out, then that's just bad luck. As far as I know this only applies to named MoC pets and not just regular tamed minecraft pets that can't be named.
This video is long and very dull, but as I was watching it again today before deleting, it hit me what a good search and rescue training method minecraft could be, complete with problem solving tasks. It took forever to coax that AI into a direction by repeatedly blocking it off, but once I got it to my ladder and saw it trying to climb, I realized I could step it up gradually block by block, and it worked. I'm saying that because that part isn't on the video. If you watch the vid and wonder why I'm so slow, I had someone on speaker on my phone while I played, so I look like a noob. But seriously, level 15, up at least 50 levels, took about 45 minutes, and then I just flopped back off the laptop for awhile.
This morning was very different. I had been making tunnels and getting distracted running into previously mined tunnels until I was quite lost and had to use the F3 coordinates to find my way back, and I had finally just popped back out into the open. I like this vid because so many accidental things happened, including getting to see a giant golem build itself and then pop back apart. The golem was close enough to my marker that I had to check and see if it got messed up, and then thought Hey, I can show you guys what I did. And from there it's running around dying and stuff. 4 min is another much smaller abandoned castle that looks like the same guy's handiwork from the castle I'm currently occupying until we can claim one of the houses in the courtyard. I like lighting up abandoned buildings. 6:04- No idea how he made those flags and I'd love to see how he did that. 6:34- That picturesque small castle is actually claimed, so I have to be careful not to mess anything up there. 6:47- I'd only flown over this place previously, so I'm trying to get my bearings, not sure which direction 'my' castle is. 10:30- A creeper blew me up, but on Mo Creatures, the damage repairs itself, keep watching. 10:50- I knew I had to get my stuff out of that hole FAST because I got glitch-trapped in a hole once while it was repairing. (I just noticed during playback that "Microsoft Game DVR" keeps flashing at the top, I think it's because I have an XBox account. I'm not sure if people get to see my videos live as I'm playing or not, I haven't checked, but if I wanted to, I'm all set up for it because Windows 10 is letting me do beta XBox minecraft, except I always use the launcher. I'm still trying to figure out how this all works.) 12:58- Using glitchy loading to locate mineshafts and ores and stuff is illegal, and I don't use video for that. X-ray of any kind is banned from Mo Creatures. You can tell when I see a glitch I kind of turn or stop or slow down till the game loads more. This is why I don't get more flying vids on slow load days. 13:29- I finally spy my humongous unclaimed castle in the distance. 13:40- Switching to silver sword to kill a werewolf. Forgetting I did that will be my doom in a minute. 15:40- I've been lighting this place up for days and I'm still running into whole sections without any lights. I have so much respect for the dedicated obsession that went into this project.
Now this is Thursday the 18th.
I assessed back into physical therapy yesterday, and pretty much started off with a hardcore definition of where I'm at legally on the 'chronic' scale now. Most chronics are labeled after 3 months of unremitting pain, and there is another level of chronic with remission that flares up and remits throughout life (so a person can regain and feel better and live normally and then suddenly slide). And then there are people like me, intractable chronic without relief just doing everything we can to stay functional. (Studies are coming out about intractable pain alone taking 8-10 years off simply because quality of life is so disrupted, so surviving pain is a big deal, regardless of cause.) We discussed psychoneuroimmunology and positive imaging, which my psychologist introduced me to years ago, whether any of my doctors have ever talked about me recovering health or living a better life (big ~no~ on that one, although this last doctor has pushed pretty hard for lifestyle changes that are working but only in the sense of regaining self care and some functionality), and the fact that my disability panel established that this is a permanent situation. It's not easy to get disability for vague pain issues, so I periodically go through written documentation during assessment spelling out where I'm at now and what the goals are. Decades of tests and monitoring have never produced a conclusive cause for how severe this has been, but I think we're all finally (insert accidental mouse bump and part of this disappearing and me escaping the page super fast and blogger still having that saved before I could stop it... really ready for blogger to catch up with the rest of the blogging world retaining previous draft copies that a person can go back to).
The short version- *OW*
K, we're all finally agreeing this is a lifelong nervous system disorder, and medicare requires 'proof' that what we're doing in physical therapy isn't just me frittering away govt dollars, because I've never gotten a hard label beyond 'fibromyalgia' even though doctors have looked extensively for MS, AS, RA, and confirmed positive for Lyme and antibodies to several other viruses and bacteria that affect nervous system long term.
SO. Got started yesterday with about 10 minutes of deep tissue, and I could tell the gabapentin has really changed the way I feel all this pain now. Went straight to the area where the pain shocks had been going off every 30 seconds before I started the med (6th week into it now, I think), and whereas I had been able to take some pretty rough stuff in the past, I actually couldn't help cringing like a big wimp. It took everything I had not to wince during certain spots around left shoulder, but it was quick and I thought no big deal, right? 4 years of stuff, I can do this. (Very few people last 4 years in physical therapy.)
Apparently the game is changing on gabapentin. I used to wobble out high as a kite because pain bursts dump mega brain chemicals and I get buzzed on pain. Not yesterday. I was almost incapable of driving and had to pull into a Walgreens (and get back into the car to repark because I straddled the yellow line) and walk around trying not to think about throwing up (that's a big ol' pain level 10, people), and my head finally cleared enough to get back on a plan and drive again. Got some food shopping done at Sam's, then came straight home. Got the car unloaded and pretty much spent the rest of the day incoherent. When Scott got home from work I was barely able to speak, stumbling words around like crazy, and then just burst into tears. When pain is so bad that I go full aspienado shutdown even in my own home, it's bad.
Pain. Is. Exhausting. This is going to be a long month. But I can do this, because I want to be able to keep using my arms and driving my car and taking care of Bunny and writing stories. I haven't come this far to quit. The pain is going to be there anyway, and it's never not going to be in my way, so if I want to do stuff, I gotta want to do stuff bad enough to do it.
While I'm at this point, I want to sincerely thank Lexx fans for the nearly 29,000 hits on my migrated fan blog over the last 2 years, which isn't bad for a 20 year old cult show that rarely shows up any more. I know I super suck for not getting more done, but I really do have several posts in queue that need finishing, and I intend to do it.
I'd also like to say THANK YOU to Pinky blog followers for spiking views here up roughly 70% over the year before. This whole aspienado going public experiment has been uber challenging in so many ways, but I think the coolest part was this becoming so much more than I expected, especially from myself. My own emotional growth has been surprising to a lot of people, not least my psychologist. Pinky blog on blogger will be 2 years old in 5 days. I wish I could do something fun to celebrate, but you guys know that anything interactive would backfire horribly with screams and flames, so let's just not go there. I really don't want that to be a thing again this year.
Back to real life. Batman starts pre-pre-K next week. The #autie is strong in our family, and I'm loving the social intro and integration programs in place that neither I nor his mama had as children. I think technology is a fantastic part of integration, and I'm so glad it's available now.
Mirkwood. I was driving by a neighbor's place and caught this on the way out to town. I zoomed so size context is difficult, but the top of the round part of the web is about 5 feet off the ground, and there were several of these along the street showing up really well in the fog over short lawns. Imagine walking through the woods. Most of them are nearly invisible till you're practically plunging through them, and smart people look like idiots holding long sticks up in front of their faces. You don't even see the spiders till the webs ping and suddenly they're either scuttling out of the way or ON YOU, some of them nearly as big as my hand. I feel like I live over a mineshaft with a spider spawner, and there's no way to torch it off.
The politixical rants are ramping up, if that's even possible after the venom and vitriol we've already seen over the last 6 months.
My thoughts on Hilary- Gosh darn it, what about spent lifetime focused on becoming world leader at any price do you guys not understand? Think #bucketlist.
My thoughts on Trump- I cannot believe y'all fell for any of that bazillionaire reality show puppetry, the whole point was ratings and keeping you guys distracted. Think #suckers.
My thoughts about 'Murica- It's almost over, but we're all going to be fine, just keep up the bipolar booze ranting and that bandaid will be all ripped off before you even know it.
My thoughts about how this affects me personally- You saw what happened to Vulcan. Raise your hand if you really believe an actual Romulan did that with the actual help of an actual interplanetary diplomat who was stupid enough to create an actual vat of 'red matter' big enough to turn the entire galaxy into a super duper black hole. Thank goodness the droplets were so dispersed first before it all blew. Bad writing will save us. I firmly believe this.
My thoughts on people who keep dragging the rest of us down with bitterness, anger, fretting, mocking, judging, belaboring, obsessing, belittling, blaming, and general lameness (whether or not it is politically related, because this could partly be subtext for someone's whining about relationships this week really pissing me off)- Sorry, can't see you any more through this thick fuzz of mute.
The autumn spiders are extra early this year. First of the orb webs on the deck, spans about 3 1/2 feet and waist high, only way I could get it to show up on my phone was angled from above. This pic clicks out to a little bigger.
This has been the pain spikiest week. >=l Have been in fibro/neuro defcon flare, pain levels hitting 8/9/10s all week (10 being blackout/puke/weepuncontrollably), my usual July summerheat / humidityandairpressurechanges / hayfeverseason response. I think I've been thorough enough about my medical history elsewhere to avoid reiterating why I can't conventionally aggressively treat a pain crisis. But that's ok, because I can see lappy better now. #newglasses
I've been surprised to see me handling a lot more activity through it this summer than I used to be able to. I think having a Bunny around has challenged me to increase endurance, and working through nasty high pain hasn't been nearly the psychological challenge it use to be. I still miss narcotics once in awhile, but definitely don't need the crutch any more. Anyway, had a fun day out with Bunny and mama yesterday after a particularly nasty rough day before, and I haven't croaked off yet, although I'm getting close now and will probably spend the rest of today being lazy.
I will be fine. Pain spikes sometimes mean I get lots more work done because I learned a long time ago to super focus through it. Being aspie means I go all super villain and pour my destructive negativity into WORK, so if you see me writing more and talking less, like I've been doing this week, it's all good.
Basic reminder to newer friends that high pain levels put me in kill mode, and that's why I'm not out there tweeting. I'll feel like mutilating anyone who blithely suggests tossing back an advil, and responses like awww and a pat on the head will have me visualizing spiking sticks through eyeballs, ~*so don't do it*~. (Lurkers who survived the year I razed comments to eternal damnation are nodding vigorously. Noobs who have known me only 2-3 years, this isn't a drill.)
Those of you who've lurked for a long time know I loathe the overuse of the word poignant and therefore don't use it myself, except on extremely rare occasion. I've lived long enough now through enough stuff that I can say this fanvid is exquisitely poignant.
Now go do something wonderful for yourself or someone else, and if anyone has a problem, just tell them Pinky said so.
Woke up from a dream where I'd found a gif page that would write your name in a spider web. Looked around, don't see that, sadly, but I did run into some amazing makeup and costume spider webs. This clicks to a whole buncha pix that in turn click to more pages.
This is going on in my bedroom. Might start thinking about updating the quilt next and send that one upstairs.
