super jetsetter brain melt

Busy week!

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

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

Nixarctica

Hopefully from here there's nowhere to go but up. Crack of dawn is always the coldest. Check this windchill. We are officially colder than Antarctica. Saw that roll through on my local weather on facebook.

Really thought my stats would calm down after I privatized my facebook feed 9 days ago, since facebook was my strongest traffic driver, but apparently that didn't deter anyone. And doing that definitely nailed down a solid steady number of notification hits, because I thought maybe those were extra pings from facebook redundancy 'safety' settings, but apparently not. Whoever you are, I'm holding up my coffee cup to you. I am now able to look at a naked core readership before I even link outside of the bloggersphere.

Okie doke, where were we. I happily jogged down a weird path this week while I let my head settle around real life, and I kinda need to bullet point and catch up.

• MRI came back, confirmed the usual aging spine thing with a new twist, cervial hemangioma shows up in report now. No idea if it's just better reporting for something there all along or if it's new, but it is 'unremarkable'. Probably something they'll just keep an eye on...
• Laying super still on a hard, flat MRI bed for 40 straight minutes was stupid hard on me over the weekend, between bodywide fibro flare and nerve compression was almost unable to walk for a few hours on Saturday, but thankfully coming back out of that.
• Everyone around me keeps getting sick the last 2 months. I haven't yet been really sick like that. Hope I didn't just jinx myself. But if this is real, I've been sticking to raw cruciferous in salads, buncha cooked cruciferous like caramelized brussels sprouts with aged balsamic and parm, yogurt, and chicken. Little bit of cheese and occasional microwaved nachos in small portions. Lotta water. I don't drink anything else but coffee in the morning and a cup of tea in the evening. If diet has an effect on positive immune health, that's what's doing it for me. Stop eating your candy and ice cream and get off the cigs and booze, guys. I'm the puny one and here I am not sick.
• My new 3x3 daily/weekly/monthly personal/home/internet chart is working really well. Syllabus doesn't seem to be doing it for me this winter, so I'm doing chart, ticcing off as I go. Tic chart, guys. In the 3rd grade I got gold, silver, blue, or red stars on a weekly chart for how fast I timed on a multiplication test. (A 'times' test.) In 5th grade I got a circle for every book I read to add to a bookworm. I had the second longest bookworm in the class, went around 3 walls. Charts are fun, but a lot of work to make. I use one sheet in a notebook. Upper third is a list for monthly, just need to see one tic beside each item. Middle third is a list for weekly and I divided into five sections across for all the weeks in the month, each section needs to have one tic in it for each item. Lower third is a list of daily stuff I do, and I don't bother ticcing it. I mostly do it anyway. It's there to remind me to stay on track. Concise, contained, at a glance. Each month I'll make a new page, and I can compare how I do to the months before.
• I've been allowed to take over twitter duties for my fave minecraft server, now that I'm part of staff. I think it's a great way to divert off the twitter mess and pull a tight focus on something I love.
• I need more squirrels in here.

I created a new playlist for positive vibes, to borrow a word from a friend. Music and visuals that calm the mind, as it were. I do this a lot and you guys never see it because I don't share that part of me that goes really deep into the quiet so I can float out of myself. I had a hard time sifting through and sorting out all my Pinky junk the last few years, and I feel like the best direction to go this year is just ignore the F* out of everybody, you know? Be me. Float away in bliss and enjoy my moments. I seem to have arrived to a new place, and I'm ready to take better baggage with me going forward. It's really hard to brain train into calm with chaos and challenge all around, but it's totally worth it. Let's see what I can find this year. :edit: Sorry, didn't realize I had this playlist on private, lol.

the nuts before Christmas- part 4

This is a continuation from the nuts before Christmas- part 1, part 2, and part 3. I ran my data plan out and couldn't get this really long HD vid loaded until it rolled over again, router refused to handle it.

If this is your first jump in, my family is ASD, and @bonenado's family is ADHD, so it was really interesting getting Bunny and Batman together in one house for the first time. Parts 1 and 2 were watching the kids acclimate by running around, part 3 was watching Bunny experiment on my dad (super young ADHD + super old ASD). Part 4 here is Batman retreating into the laundry room, which makes a really good cave for kids and pets who come into our house, and Bunny adjusting back down from the wild activity when he disappeared.

I've noticed with Bunny being super social (I'm not, I've had to adapt) that keeping a running dialogue with her works really well, and apparently Batman picked up on that and even adapted to it himself. Bunny has a much bigger vocabulary and was speaking in complete sentences by the time she turned 2 like her mama did (they're both 2 1/2 here), but Batman is more inward like his mama was at that age, and I don't remember her talking a lot with me until 3-4 years old, and anyone could tell when she didn't pay attention on purpose because she preferred being in her own little bubble. Bunny kind of walked in all over Batman's bubble because she wanted him to come back out and run with her again, and I got a kick out of how their communication signals crossed and then started smoothing out. I think this would be a great intro vid for child social psyche students. I felt kind of like a brain interface for awhile, but it's something I've become used to. I'm saying that last bit because the simplistic narration I use in the beginning actually annoys me silly (ASD), but it really does work when one can be patient enough to handle 20 minutes of interface adjustment, like I was doing here. My opinion is that neither barking orders nor interfering work well with neuro collisions, and that patience and narrative are key to same-paging, essentially lining up our brains. I can imagine teachers and daycare workers not having the time to apply this on more personal level, so I applaud programs that help begin integrating neuro atypicals together before they slam through the culture shock of suddenly going to school. I'm pro neurodiversity, and I believe all of us have talents and skills that we can find niches for.


I'm not sure yet if there will be a part 5.

THE ROOF

Got the call last night, said they'd be out there 'bright and early'. Scott is off on Fridays unless overtime, so I'm going into town with him this morning, avoid a few hours of noise and disturbance.

Scott got his fasting glucose checkup couple days ago and utterly failed this time, finally shot way over the 126 cut off into the 130s. He doesn't allow me in the doctor with him, but I'll be able to freely mock before and after.

I've had to put up with his holier-than-thou my DNA trumps yours for years, so now I get to rub it in his face if he winds up on metformin and has to deal with *cough* side effects *cough*. (In 2011 I was pulled back off over severe side effects in which I nearly dehydrated over just a few days, so I just count carbs and test a lot.)

So if you don't see me on the twitters or facebook, I'm either not home or I can't get online.

I missed the Heroes Reborn premiere last night because resolving a couple of tech issues about something else, but ran into tidbits of live tweet and can't wait to see it later today. I know Zach won't be back, but you know I'm a Sylar fan. This is the roof irl. Yeah, Sylar is the roof. We've been with this roof a long time. Definitely breaking up this time.

throwing my friends under buses

I know, I keep double blogging lately, what's up with that.

It's no fun watching TV or getting into a book because I'm nearly in sunglasses again. I had to put them on working out because the super bright sunlight bouncing off the nearly white walls had my eye watering, which I thought was allergies for a bit because I also kept feeling like I was on a boat while I walked until I went Oh and remembered the nerve thing. It's been so long since I've had to wear sunglasses in the house that I forgot, but that stopped it, so I'm guessing trigeminal/optic sensory overload crisscrossing the fluid filled ears report in the ol' brain. It's not human error because it's on an inside my brain level, so I guess call it some of the workers in there putting part of a nerve pathway on diagnostics and then going off to lunch without checking with the other departments, maybe? And of course I'm a mess anyway because my little dot went below the line and now it feels like I'm trying to asplode a cyst and about to that point where I just say heck with this and stomp off growling about telling @bonenado to take the brownies to work so I wouldn't eat any. Yes, I made the brownies. I caved after I said at least I didn't cave. And now when I need to cave, I can't.

It hit me the other day this is me.


I don't do this to test anyone, it's just been happening for a really long time (I blurt something difficult, a lurker privately jumps out of the shadows to save me), so this scene cracks me up. Dragging poor John (my friend du jour, as it were) along without any warning or heads up whatsoever is so my style, and I'm sure I've spectacularly embarrassed the living daylights out of a bunch of you at one time or another, so when I see a couple of hop ons over at LinkedIn I think, "Oh, you brave souls."

I'm not polite. I leap in front of buses. I leap completely trusting that at least one or two people are watching (to the horror of the friend being dragged into the headlights, I imagine). That I have titled my work Existential Aspie is no small fluke. My whole life has been a glorious series of magnificent leaps into the unknown, and even when I've been alone in the dark, I know I've never been truly alone. Someone somewhere has always been thinking about me, praying I make it home safe or wishing I would burn in hell.

So you guys being dragged out in front of existential buses- we'll be ok. I know I'm a scary person sometimes, and even cruel (I'm trying to stop that), but we will be ok. Those buses are all in our heads. Sometimes leaping in front of our imaginary buses gets us out of our ruts so we can think differently.

But I will try to stop that. Except with @bonenado. He doesn't blink and thinks it's all funny, then wanders off to check his fantasy stats.

Ok, whoever said "Why don't you just go make some more brownies", just stop right there. "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City to take back the child that you have stolen, for my will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom as great." So there. nyahnyah

I got this. I'm good at this.

May the Fourth Be With You

I only put that there to be annoying, lol. Happy Monday. You're welcome.

Yesterday was super crash day and I still got laundry done and 800 words written and my table of contents revision started in between tipping back over all day long. I think the longest I actually sat up all day was watching Backstrom, otherwise about 30 minutes was my limit. Since we are now in Lupus Awareness month, here's why stuff like that happens. The 5 Types of Lupus Fatigue Don't worry, it's short and sweet.

Click these for more awesome motivational posters.

I haven't been this bad for tipping over in quite awhile, but it was all familiar so I didn't worry about it. I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner and last a lot longer after all that April energy, so maybe I'm still doing a few things really right nowadays. Made the executive decision to stop some of the antihistamines yesterday, probably in severe overload on top of a manic crash. I'm not anywhere as bad off as the person writing that post I just linked, thank goodness.

I think it's vital to realize that H1 meds cross the blood brain barrier and me being on heavier than usual doses of both zyrtec and benadryl over the last couple of weeks along with a week of zippy prednisone hot on the heels of a 12 day hypomanic episode are probably more responsible for the overwhelming fatigue buildup hitting me than anything, but my body response was still very like autoimmune fatigue. In the olden days I'd have been at a loss why any of this happened, but now that we've untangled my brain chemistry and how meds affect it all, it's easier to see how it also affects me systemically, whether or not I'm in actual flare up.

That is way too much verbage (lol, word garbage?). It's time for a ridiculously hilarious fan video that I ran into last night and cracked up to no end. I can't even believe this is a real song. Now you can go back to Star Wars Day with a spring in your step and a smile on your face and leave a wake of people wondering what your awesome day is all about. The vid is safe for work on mute, but if you turn it up, you're on your own.

call me crazy, but I miss my insomnia

My life used to be more like this.

Every weekday morning I wake up and get a cup of coffee. I don't speak to anyone unless I catch Scott leaving for work in the wee hours long before dawn. I watch the sun rise by myself five days a week. I make my list and pull my head together and start working. I spend hours working without a word out loud to anyone, because no one else is here. I get my lunch and estimate how much time I have left before I crash for the day, estimating when I need to get started on pulling together a nice supper for Scott, and then we watch an hour or two of TV together. From about 5:30 p.m. on I'm not alone any more. I can talk to a real person. And for the last couple of months I've been falling asleep way sooner than I used to, which has been cutting our time together down to a couple of hours.

This last week I've also been sleeping nearly around the clock, something I don't think I've ever done in my life. I've been mystified for decades how people can sleep ten hours at a time or sleep past the sun rising, and here I am, going 11-12 hours and waking up after dawn has started lighting up the world. My psychiatrist warned me about sleeping too much. If I'm still doing this by the time I see him in April, he'll probably try to push me onto meds again. Extra coffee isn't making a dent in me sleeping like a log for the first time in over forty years. They say you can't really catch up on lost sleep, but whatever created my severe insomnia must be all gone now. Finally. I may have to change the theme song at my funeral, I've had this one picked out for years and now it's no good.


Meanwhile. a blanket of snow isn't stopping the juniper and cedar pollen clouding around my house, and I'm as oozy as if I had pink eye. Snow doesn't stop crocuses, and it doesn't stop a forest heavily peppered with evergreens, which researchers claim have a similar allergenicity to ragweed. I wonder what I'd be allergic to by a beach. Probably everything.

Ok, I forgot about this idiot in my stash, thank god something made me crack up. I live for moments like these. You people out there are so awesome, you know that, right?

So a txt file just microflashed & embedded itself into my hard drive. I copied the code and saved it, then trashed it and did a reboot, but it's still in my download history any time I want to get to it. As far as I can tell, it's a 'window raid' that goes to hottubmovie on tumblr, which is probably an illegal form of advertising but someone thinks they're being cute. I doubt most people would even have a clue it even downloaded onto their hard drives, my Kaspersky certainly didn't blink an eye. Here's what it looks like.

Ok, where was I? I dreamed last night I was in a huge awesome house with a gigantic pool and needed to go buy a new phone, so I grabbed my stuff and made it to a mall just before closing. All I wanted was a working phone, was about to buy the cheapest thing they had, but they saw that I had a handful of cards and a wad of cash, so they kept trying to push their coolest phone on me. I'm not a materialistic person, just give me the cute little brightly colored kid phone and I don't care that it can't make my breakfast and send FedEx to Mars. How hard is it to let me buy what I want? I didn't wake up feeling refreshed, even after 11 hours of sleep. I woke up frustrated and feeling like I just left the mall.

Ok, the flash download just happened again, and NOW I can tell it's from the ad for Hot Tub Time Machine 2 that precedes this video. Smooth move, guys. You can see the download file in the lower left of this snip. It happens so fast you barely see a thing going on. I wonder if you see it happen at all if you're not on Chrome. Or maybe it's a google maneuver and Chrome users are being tagged or something. Maybe we'll get popups triggering later that take us to more movie advertising. Or maybe they're just sloppy. Or maybe they're really illegally invading my hard drive. Whatever. No, I'm not going to link to the video. It speaks trewth but it shut my brain back down *omg*. If you guys want to further experiment with download intrusion, it's up to you to go find this video right now. You have your mission. Haha, get it? You have your *mission* (statement). Too early for that? You're right, all this snow is frying my brain. #letitgo

I need a handler. I need a team. I need actual real 3D friends. If there weren't snow and Scott didn't have my car I would pack my work and go to the library and sit at one of their big lemon polished tables (and take extra benadryl because that makes me wheezy), surrounded by people quietly doing work, enjoying the coffee shop smell coming from across the big room, laughing inside at the occasional kid screaming. Wondering what it's like to actually talk to someone without it winding up sucking. #aspienado

DUCK!

From a private post written on November 5, 2008.
If there is chaos and destruction coming, I believe most of the problem will be various media inciting 8 billion people to panic.

Here we go, have finally unlocked brain fail. Usually starts before the holidays, so since I made it through January without even a hint of it, thought I was home free. I'm as scattered now as a squirrel running out into heavy traffic dodging buckshot and three dogs.

Behold, my bwainz. The guy at the end looks stupider than the squirrel, cracks me up. I don't feel this cute though.
I think it's a matter of readjusting all my brain chemicals again. Heavy duty benzo loads last week really screwed the ol' protracted withdrawal aspect of being a chronic low dose user for twenty years, which in Better Call Saul speak is like a cleaned up meth user shooting up out of the blue a couple of times for pain/anxiety management, as if that could work. Took me two years to clear off my own stuff, so imagine the rebound I'm going through. And before the inexperienced say anything, I have a cousin who made it off meth (only 3% successfully do that, and I bet there are a lot of you out there starting up for relief from stuff like spinal injuries, like he did) and he confirmed that benzos are basically the same thing. Going cold turkey off benzo meds is so dangerous that it requires medical supervision and oftentimes a 'rescue'. I went through a rescue after a cold turkey in 2009.

Med addiction is really common, and many people have no idea it's a real problem complicating other problems in their lives that get covered up with even more meds. My doctors initially shrugged me off and even laughed when I first brought up the possibility of med addiction because my doses had always been so low, but it turned out to be no joke getting off these meds. Fixing brain chemicals is a good thing when people need it, but keeping chronic patients on low dose chemicals for years as part of a pain management program without reviewing the possibility that they're covering up daily low dose withdrawal symptoms with other meds can become a nightmare. I wrote in 2009 that even though I had the medical history giving me a right to legalized med addiction that had me more screwed up than a Hollywood star scamming for vicodin and not showing up for work (I never missed a day of work in years until I just couldn't work, period), I wanted OFF.

I did it all wrong at first, it got scary, went through rescue, did my research, made a PLAN, and over two years I got off the remaining tail end of handfuls of meds. I should have taken pictures, my daily regimen was impressive. I drove 'drunk' to and from work for years, sometimes got pulled over, once was driven home by highway patrol at 10 a.m. Try explaining ~that~ to your boss. I got so good at being covert and timing my meds that coworkers came to me all the time asking how and when to mix this and that. I got to know the deeper culture of legal addiction and 'carried' all the time, making me everyone's friend behind closed doors and the wizard of medical jargon.

The links below were my journey to independence from big pharma and government/insurance controlled dosaging. They are lengthy and technical, so I don't expect anyone to actually read them, but that is how desperate I got trying to find my way out of that terrible maze (and look at me NOW, I'm HEALTHY). You guys need to question why govt is part of legalizing drugs and alcohol and how it's part of the whole big picture of proletariat control. Ask yourself why it's ok now for 'nice' people to be avid fans of a TV show about a meth dealer and support that show by buying toys for your kids (but you'd probably freak if there were a meth house on your street). I won't go so far as to say the government or anyone else wants you all accepting ideas of self medicating and surviving alien invasions and threat of worldwide death via virus, but I think it's pretty weird that show after show after show is profiting from slowly turning many of us into organized live response knots of shellshock before bedtime every night. How many of you can go to sleep and wake up rested without some kind of adult beverage or scripted sleep aid?

Taking vitamins won't save you guys. I'm not FDA approved regulating health care Librax withdrawal, are we having fun yet? (this was my most popular post EVER on any blog I ever created until I made it private) surviving health care (I'm not afraid to say this) IF you actually read through all that, please to note that even on full disability now, my monthly out of pocket insurance costs come up to about $300 a month. There is no such thing as 'free' health care. If I weren't married I'd be extremely destitute. Since I know someone my age in exactly that position, I know what I'm saying.

From 6-9-11. Have been dinking on facebook this month, mostly just filling in the profile stuff.  My religious preference is the cult of cthulhu.  That one has really struck me funny ever since it was on South Park and the Goth kids were so disappointed in his return because nothing really changed for them.  I keep trying to think of oddball people who have inspired me, today I put in Snake Plissken.  Already getting really bored with facebook again.

Ok, down to business. Things I have learned in the last week, thanks to benzo loading so I could be still in MRI tubes without exploding back out like a space alien-possessed astronaut in a syfy original movie. 1- Got the serious talk this time about pain clinic and surgery. It's there whenever I need them. Personally, I'm holding out for an opium patch first, but I have a feeling I won't be as lucky as a couple other people I've met on opium patches. One chick actually rides a motorcycle around town wearing an opium patch. Dang, I want an opium patch. I have really missed vicodin ever since the big acetaminophen reaction thing blowing up on me. Anyway, I'm going to try something else first before I let it all go invasive, because there's no going back once the shots and surgeries start up. I know too many spinal surgery fail stories to think that's my answer. 2- Unofficial cancer watch still goes on. I may as well accept this is how the rest of getting older goes. I've been cleared for defcon (again, how many times now in the last two years, geez), but told to keep an appointment in March with another doctor, so vagueness continues to rule my starz. 3- I will probably be a protracted addict the rest of my life. Going through withdrawal symptoms all over again sucketh mightily and right now the only thing stopping me from throwing a chair through a window is the thought of Scott having to replace it and then me feeling bad about it later because it's a really nice window. Oh, and maybe also that it's only twelve degrees outside and I'd freeze, but that was only an afterthought. The thought of Scott coming home every night keeps me sane. Scott is my rock, and aside from nearly pitching him through the window a few times (I'm so lucky he doesn't spontaneously reciprocate, given his ADHD nature), he's been extremely tolerant of me going Sarah Connor on his butt every little bit.

If you think you or someone you care about might have a medication addiction problem, click this.

Always remember. Anyone, any time, any place. It's real. last time survey

Sorry about all this. Sometimes I just gotta dump the crap out and yell DUCK!!!!


Time to lighten up again. 

twitter gangs

No idea what's up with Snarkalec Radio, big show coming tomorrow before a big break over the holidays or something, rumors flying and stuff about the piranhaconda egg hatching and devouring the hosts. Two years of pulling what amounts to a second job that's really more like an unpaid full time hobby probably turned them into the zombies they've discussed with so much vigor, so maybe they melted partway into the floors and are vainly flapping around growling at passersby. I may have to go back to reruns, because I liked running the shows in the morning while I get my chores started. I got a little silly this last year making these.



 
I also know several people with family in hospitals, job problems, financial challenges, and other whatnot, and for me, twitter has been the best way I've gotten through my own stuff last couple of years. Got my gangs going so I can keep touching base to keep my balance when holiday pressure feels like too much. I've lately been inducted into #teamspooge. Not sure I could explain it, but I have truly found my people. These all click to source convos.

It's not for the faint of heart.

This must be clicked to understand. Remember, not for the faint of heart...

I also seem to be part of an underground squirrel mob now. If people only really knew... 

A sampling from my photobucket. Had a really bad winter awhile back, everything turned into squirrels.

I usually avoid religion and politics, especially around the holidays, but I may have finally found my particular stance on #gamergate. 

I dunno, I just really like these guys, you know?

And while I'm free associating all over the map, this is happening.

All this before 7 a.m., so you know the holiday nerves are throwing me against the walls already. I've got a big ol' chore list to cover today, and I'm starting it off with my fave Christmas song EVER.