I haven't been touching base very well this month, have I?
My sleep doctor gave me permission to take breaks from my CPAP when allergies make my face puffy.
I've joined the millions in athletic shoe fail who suffer muscle rupture. Mine was tiny and under the inner ankle. Being careful now.
No more awesome one week shags just before a whole summer of ponytail fail. Really feeling that one.
My time orientation kinda feels worse this year. Had the date wrong on the eclipse, despite reminders up in my face at every turn. Threw a bag of chips away that expired Nov. 2017 and later realized it's not 2018 yet. Have reworked all kinds of scheduling multiple times. August is suddenly gone, too.
I think part of the morefail around me is because I'm a little deeper in the writing again. That and being on a much stricter Bunny schedule now. After school we start Papa's supper. Last night was hamburger helper. She's four, she can learn how food happens. I was cooking from scratch by seven. Today we will construct a pie with those refrigerator rolled up crusts and a bag of apples. Easy peasy.
Still doing the atlas therapy thing. Not getting worse, but the challenge of real life on top of it has been... challenging. There has been no stopping and resting, no real recovery time, no coddling of the nerve reverb. And I don't have time to stop and think about it.
Had a flashback this week. I really do miss this era of my life sometimes.
Popping awake at 3 a.m. the morning of the clock change, like you do...
clicks to official anti-clock changing site
So I finally reverted back to my minecraft realm worlds, which got me out of a few people's hair and off my twitter election depression musing (which got me over 1100 impressions, while other tweets before and after stayed pretty flat, so a handful of people actually read those), and played with new things. Here is what I have learned.
Just because a person knows how to use a fill command doesn't mean they won't waste an inordinate amount of time trying to blow up a field of TNT under ocean water. Intelligence, meet stupidity. However, I did get even more ideas for other things while I was at it.
I made my first portal, set up a base in the nether, and then went about learning about enchanting my armor and weapons. Yes, I actually avoided doing all these things for 9 months. Why? Because aspie ruts are pleasurable. Time to break out and learn to truly conquer.
Digging a depression to plant a bunch of oak trees is definitely worth a little time. I'm spoiled to the moc tree feller power chop, and I don't wanna have to load a mod just to chop trees faster when they grow 3-4 stories tall.
Now I need to learn potions and mining in the nether. I also need to learn how to plan how to build out a real establishment. I'm one of those on the fly people, and while some of my stuff turns out kinda cool, it's still very basic.
One idea I had for new moc once I get land is a pair of giant portal-looking Lady Gaga sunglasses with the weird TV screen stuff in them instead of portal mist. I have loads of ideas, and I'll need a LOT of land. If I disappear off the medias a lot, I'll be tunneling my way to wealth on the upgrade. I'm brushing up on golden shovel grief prevention so I'll know what I'm doing when the time comes.
Meanwhile, I'm ignoring @bonenado's advice on week 9 of #SnarkFF and keeping my lineup the way it is. It's killing him that I won't change my defense out. Since I get more joy out of his angsty fantasy writhings than I do actually winning, yeah. That. Sometimes I get lucky and it backfires into me getting super points on the thing he's angsty about. It could happen.
Ok, slaves, heads up. Very particular posts have been getting hit harder from other countries than from the U.S. of A., and it's not because they're bots. It's not always easy to see, but the patterns help, and then catching an hour here or there of singular hit repetition helps. I'm being passed around in facebook messaging by people who aren't even friended to me, and these people are VERY interested in the election. But you're (meaning Pinky) not even talking about the election, you say. And you are a silly brain trained sheep, I say. If you have been missing what I've been saying on Pinky blog, and particularly a particular image I shared particularly, you are so deep in the blue pill that you'll never be free. You cannot think for yourself, you already do what you're told even when you think you're making your own decisions, and you respond on cue to media triggers without even realizing it. Congratulations, rugged individualist. Your freedom rings. Hollow.
I know. I can plead 'crazy' any time I want, and you guys can blow me off for that.
We accept lies about lies because we don't love the truth, and we're even against the truth because we have been so trained to repel the truth that we can't even see other people fighting and hoping for us outside our country. We hate people who are on our side because we can't even see what side we're really on. We're so deep that, even drowning, we choose to stay in our places and fall for the last big lie- that our vote gives us power. And I say, Not if both sides are on the same side.
There is so much more than choosing a side. (Is Seagal a plant? A stoolie? A handler? My only interest is watching a chess board.) (Who is the real 'bad guy' here? *Is* there a bad guy? And if you found out what you think of as a bad guy is really a good guy, would you freeze in a logic loop?) (For those not watching, Putin purportedly loved Obama for awhile, Seagal has purportedly been against him, but that's super simplistic. The twisted path to this granted citizenship is really fun to follow, if you've been keeping track of these things over a long time.) (Jason Bourne is just a character, we watch too much TV, we let news reporting slide right by us with a little bit of snarking because we are so deep in entertainment.)
And I completely accept that this is where we are and where we've been going for decades. The dire warnings from popular prognosticators are late distractions, after the fact, part of the brain training into doublethink. It's all part of the show. Worry about something we didn't notice already happened. One of them even openly mapped out this whole path, warning to stay off the path while actually leading the sheep on it.
We are already here. The stage is set. The script is ready. At least for us in the U.S. Some parts of the world still resist. They will be summarily dealt with. No one else is our boss. Winning hand takes all. One hand to rule them all, which has already been cleverly planted into your heads.
One day this will all just be part of our entertainment culture and no one will believe it really happened like that.
OH, I finally saw Star Trek Beyond last night. The biggest thing I came away with was how close to original series Star Trek this movie felt. For those of you who never saw original series ST when it first aired, when the Beatles and Rolling Stones were still just pups and scifi on TV was brand new stuff and not the edgy huge screen monster it's grown into, it was actually pretty magical to have to use your own brain to fill in the gaps. Storytelling has evolved into spoon feeding and scientifically timed attention-getting effects, so even though this 3rd new Trek felt toned down from 2nd new Trek, it was still very watchable. There were many fails I could pick on, but the longer I watched, the more I laughed and thought Yes, this is like Original Trek. I thought This is the way I felt the first time I saw Star Trek.
You guys know Star Trek has always been leading edge for newthink, right? *wink* Go rewatch it and see what you think of the nebula, the bubble, and all those little drills eating everything. We've already seen these things happen in Stargate and Lexx. This image isn't new.
Day 12 on neurontin. Please to notice I'm not on minecraft as much. Maybe. You might wish I'd go back to the tunnels and trees.
clicks to bacon soda convo
This is how scattered I am. I called up to move an eye appointment from the end of this month to the first Friday in September. As I was changing the date on all my calendars and pocket planner, I noticed I had the orginal time different on every one- 9:30, 10:00, 10:30... That's me moving from room to room writing stuff on calendars. I have to have info in my hand and look at it every time from moment to moment. I live like this. No one questions it. Not one of the professionals on my care team has ever expressed any concern over this.
That is why I journal. I try to get the dates right when I blog, but once in awhile I run into a post where I've written the wrong year down for something happening.
The irony? The year I finally got away from my ex, the only way I could finally force him to leave me alone was by telling him he could see the kid if he agreed to go to an appointment at a psychological assessment center and sign a paper saying I could talk to whoever evaluated him. We are talking top of the line behavioral health, this building is famous around here. He passed with flying colors until I asked the assessor point blank if my ex had given dates for when we got married and when our kiddo was born, and watched the assessor turn really white when I pulled out the documents and showed him the real dates, and he actually asked, "Can you get him back here?" I simply said "Sorry, this is all I needed", got up and walked out. Basically, if he couldn't get the facts straight and really believed whatever popped out of his mouth (making our toddler two years older than she really was, stuff like that), that pretty much validated that other things he'd said about horrible injuries and surgeries in his life being a lie, and I was able to point to documentation with a neurologist disproving that, as well.
Him being a pathological liar wasn't the problem. One of my scariest days with my ex was the day a neurologist showed him on x-rays that he was fine. The drive home was not fine, and the stories didn't change. It was the neurologist who was wrong, and that really fueled a temper that translated to abuse later as a form of stress relief. What prompted this final break was a concerned social worker at a local welfare office sending him to job counseling, and one thing led to another until someone upped the ante and filled out forms for the state to pay for proof of hardship. It was a miserable year dragging from one office to another and another, but vital to an end game I didn't know at the time would save me later.
I can remember those basic kinds of dates, like when my child was born and when my wedding anniversary is, but I have what I feel is an uncomfortably laughable time orientation problem. But yeah, it's still really ironic, I think. You could say my own going time wonky thing is karmic justice for 'doing him dirty', but back then, time orientation really was a vital part of an elaborate escape plan because child safety stuffs. Note of interest- If you are reading this and have been considering seeking legal help leaving an abusive spouse, keeping a date and time noted journal of when whatever happens is significant to your case.
People take a lot for granted. I've had to remind Scott that if it weren't for him, I'd be in poor housing and have a court appointed guardian, and likely be living so broke that I wouldn't have tech at all. It doesn't matter that I got over 30 on an ACT or was in grad school or even held steady jobs for 8 years while the kids were in junior and high school. All that matters is that I live with a calendar and clocks in every room of my house and still can't get the day right, much less the time.
You wouldn't believe how many people I've run into that say they have problems, too, but they never tell anyone. Whole lotta brain blips out there. Illness, injury, trauma, lots of people living with time jags or deja vu or even moment to moment from meal to meal, but otherwise come across pretty normal. I think time orientation is taken for granted because so many of us are on schedules for school and work and stuff, but when the schedules are taken away during vacations or job loss or in beween semesters, we feel lost. Time passes weird.
One easy fix- use the TV for a time schedule, right? Fave show, this night of the week. Nope, doesn't work for me. I float week to week having to check my DVR timer for what day it is, and several times a week point blank ask @bonenado what day it is, sometimes several times in one day. I can be all over knowing something is two days away, and without warning think it's tomorrow, or even that I missed it somehow.
Feeling this disoriented can be unnerving. At first I couldn't put a finger on what was causing some of my anxiety, and then when I'd bring it up, someone else would counter with my anxiety was causing the time disorientation, but I've lived with this so long now that I think the two are separate. I exist, time is now, and having to attach it to what's going on around me with other people is where the anxiety comes from. The pressure to be synchronized and know what to do when, like meet for a special day, is where that comes from.
I used to think this was a really big deal, but I'm finding out as I share more and more of my own stuff that other people are like this, too, and there's not always a specific start date or cause. It's just something we all go through. I'm not sure if human brains were made to be tethered to time like this, to be so aware nearly every moment of where we are in a vast ocean of spacetime, to know what our planet tilt is and where we are in our orbit. We used to watch the stars, and that would be enough.
Time sync is upon us. Our entire planet is on the brink of super sync. This reminds me of two things- the Hopi time prophecies, and the Wrinkle in Time quintet. I think what transpired on Camazotz was about the scariest thing I ever read. I don't know if L'Engle ever read Lewis' Space Trilogy, but her CENTRAL Central Intelligence (1963) isn't far from his N.I.C.E. (1945), and then Spock's Brain airing in 1968. All three of these stories use a disembodied human brain to sync control over a population.
Is it any wonder I like Lexx... (Awesome brain removal screen shots.)
If there was a point to this, it's probably subconscious. I just think humans being synced into schedules, while efficient and profitable, is much akin to being kept in boxes, if you can twist the picture around enough to see it like that.
It might not be long until the entire world is finally synced up and all of us are in perfect rhythm, like on Camazotz.
The Hopi spirit is how we'll survive the time sync. This planet-wide sync has been coming all along, and maybe the only way humanity survives the machinery of it is to hang onto what really makes us human. It may not be in our natures to handle time pressures, but it is in our natures to forgive each other for feeling stressed out. We might feel a little disoriented, but as long as we don't take our stress out on each other, I think we're going to be ok.
Also, this is Wednesday and a new Mr. Robot is on tonight. I checked.
So I had one of those long, rambly dreams that wound up with me in the back seat with a blanket and ice cream while I drove myself home, only we seemed to be taking the long way because we kept thinking of places we wanted to go and either do things or see someone, and it got dark on us so driving me decided to cut through behind 'town' and we wound up going down a very long steep bumpy dirt road through some dark woods. I wasn't worried at first, but after a few bumps and it being so steep, I grew a little alarmed as I realized that I couldn't see where we were going, even though technically I was driving, because I was in the back seat with a blanket eating ice cream. I decided everything would be ok since I would be seeing what driving me was seeing at some point since it was me, but after a little more thought realized that no, that wouldn't be happening at all, because I had chosen to be in the back seat, and driving me and back seat me were experiencing now at the same time, and I can't and never will see both nows because I won't actually loop around, because driving me isn't from the future and came back or anything, no, driving me is NOW and I chose to be in the back seat instead of driving. There really were two mes.
I got so absorbed in thinking all this out that I didn't realize we'd arrived at the end of the dirt road, which came out behind a convenience store and around into a parking lot by a park, where other people were hanging out, including a fox hunting club on horses (not the foxtrotters, which is in my neck of the States), and one of the young ladies on a horse, all dressed like a rich English rider, had a pet squirrel, which I thought would be awesome to get a pic of for my squirrel gang on twitter while driver me had already gotten out and left the door open and the car kept rolling, and then I was all busy trying to get my phone and unbuckle my seat belt and find the door handle and cranky that I had left the car to roll away like that and now I was going to have to get out because I couldn't just get the pic through the window.
The young lady in real life is someone I've never met but whose name I've heard in passing in recent convo, and I'm pretty sure this whole part of the dream was about my real life somehow because before all that happened, I was musing over a list of names I keep in my head of a string of people who've called me friend over a number of years that I repeat to myself once in awhile, kind of like Arya Stark, but I don't want to kill anyone. Why this particular young lady showed up is beyond me, well it's really not, she's part of the bigger puzzle we all live, and I suspect her place in the puzzle is a conundrum somehow, like a distraction that pops up now on the side of the list of names because she affects that list, but not me personally, unless you count a sort of ripple effect.
I'm not crazy about people I know of in real life showing up in my dreams (really rare) because things that happen in certain types of dreams wind up being true later somehow. It gets a bit eerie, and I'm not the only one in my family that does it, and none of us really talk about it, but it creeps us out. I'm not sure how a young lady in English riding clothes on a horse with a squirrel on her shoulder is going to pan out in real life, but the result in my dream was being frustrated that I jumped out of my vehicle and left me to keep rolling away and then felt tangled up enough to fight to get out of the vehicle. If this is all metaphorical, I'm not looking forward to what the real stuff is when it comes. Whatever the blanket and ice cream and trying to get to my phone were all about pales to me not being in control of another part of myself that doesn't properly operate heavy machinery, but the whole thing looks more like me just going along with something until it goes out of control and then I'm upset with myself.
I've been watching a LOT of 12 Monkeys lately. Coolest thing ever on the webs are time maps, which come in handy for stuff like Doctor Who, but lately I'm trying to wrap my brain around 12 Monkeys. I saw the original movie at least 25 times, and I can see all the ways they're tying subtle details over from the movie into the series. I'm finding it very compatible, and the characters all make sense in the series reboot, applause to excellent skillz by writers who obviously care about homage to original content. In the meantime, here is the 12 Monkeys time map site. It lets you follow every jump in the order they did them in the series, but plots out where all the jumps land on a handy timeline so we can see how the bad craziness of jumbling things out of order affects them all. There's a little button on the bottom right that you have to turn on to activate it, and then you click across from the bottom left starting with episode one to see all the jumps display onto the map. Each jump line has its own notation you can click for more info and will load the jump scene if you want to view it again. Unfortunately, this map covers only the first 13 episodes.
And then I dove into wikis. If you want to see the series timeline listed out, here is a good page. I kept digging and wound up at Temporal Anomalies in Time Travel Movies unravels 12 Monkeys, which covers the movie but not the series. I think there are a few more glitchy areas than this last reviewer noticed, but maybe he didn't watch it 25 times like I did. I wouldn't bring it up except some of you guys know I went a tad crazy over the Continuum time jumping in my Jason Sadler crush, and while some of you are either relieved or frustrated that I don't obsess a whole lot more about time problems, none of you know what I'm actually working on in private, and it's a whopper. I've been obsessed with time all my life, as we can imagine since I wrote time as a self correcting system.
We're watching the characters in 12 Monkeys handle time shifting, time smashing, time looping, time whatever stuff, with the hint that being 'crazy' is what happens when you experience too much time all at once or out of order or whatever. All the characters wind up questioning their level of 'craziness' at some point, how far they'd go with the motivations that haunt them, etc. It's fun to think about, and scary, too. If our real lives could get that tangled up, how crazy would we feel? The Unstuck Pinky
I'm still thinking about going over that list of names in my dream. The list changed. The order changed. I didn't foresee Pinky being my own self-fulfilling prophecy.
Oh, well. Need to get on the ball. Physical therapy in about 3 hours, and I need a shower and breakfast and all that stuff.
There are many things I don't openly write about or elaborate on because I tell myself I'm saving them for books, but after I went to bed early this evening and then popped awake in mid-dream, I feel compelled to share that I've seen in my head how time breaks apart. I've thought this for a very long time, way before CERN, but what prompted sharing tonight was dreaming about some of the images I've seen showing particles break down during collisions at CERN. This pic collection clicks out to way more if you'd like to get lost in it yourself.
I, of all people, know I have no guarantee I'll be able to keep writing (between previous brain fail and all my diagnoses so far), so I'm going to tell you that one of the stories I'm working on is about time (yes, and it's about time I wrote that and ever so many more puns, as I am wont in time as a self correcting system, but I digress.) The story is loosely modeled on books called Flatland and Flatterland, the idea comes from the time storm in the Planet of the Apes movie remake, and the experience behind the idea comes from the intense change in my time perception while I was being thrown out of a violently flipping vehicle. This idea has been in my head for many, many years and keeps evolving with me as my thinking evolves through more sweeping insights across several sciences that evolve the ways we see the world around us.
Today. Remember I said about a year and a half ago I had a dream where I lost my right hand? And then I brought it up again last month. I've been through so much already against so many odds that I'm having a hard time believing this, but I guess it's true. My doctor very strongly confirmed today that I'm skating around the edge of losing and never regaining certain limb functions if I don't get into 3 surgeries sooner rather than later. My first reaction is a disinclination is to believe it, since I'm obviously still using my hands, out of sheer will and force much of the time, yes, but still going. After damage confirmation from a neurologist earlier last year, and more extensive damage confirmation from physical therapy through the fall, I was told today during follow up that from here there is generally no more improvement, and I could, in fact, see a sharp decline in function if I don't do something more drastic to halt the nerve death I've been hastening with my insistence on so much hard work, which in turn will cause muscle wasting beyond any amount of force of will I'm able to wreak upon my poor hands. Once the nerves themselves give out, I simply lose muscle control, point blank. In case you're new to me and thinking I'm making a big deal out of carpal tunnel, this is both carpal and ulnar and involves my arms clear back to my spine. Yeah, whee.
The idea of getting my writing done through dictation nearly has me undone because, even though I've worked so hard for so many years to communicate better verbally, there is no way I can ever get to come out of my mouth what comes through my fingers and a keyboard onto a screen and directly into another person's brain via their eyes. I cannot always hold a thought through my own speaking, but in print I can drop thoughts and pick them back up at my convenience. I know there is software for this, but the idea of grinding through more tutorials has me facepalming.
I was sincerely hoping this would be my biggest writing year ever, and I still hope that. But today I learned that, as everything else in my life, I may be asked by the cosmos to enjoy one more good challenge thrown on top and in the middle of all the others I have learned to joyfully navigate while I purge my soul of all those whiny demons that whisper "I can't." I will to do what I want for as long as I can and so much more.
That, and I got up after my late evening nap for a cookie. I had made chocolate cookies yesterday because one of the RP writers I got into this week kept bringing up cookies, and of course I had to have the chewy chocolate kind, and now I'm sorry I ate one because I don't usually eat carbs this late and I feel a little sick, even though it was just one cookie. But I think most of what's making me feel sick is the ten long hours I spent in town and the idea that this keyboard that I so dearly love is part of what I'm using to finish off my hands after years of hard labor. I've joked about a blogging addiction (as I like to call my writing discipline) being better than med addictions, but I fear the joke is turning back on me, even though I do get up and move around a lot.
No one looking at me right now would ever be able to tell how upset I feel, or that I'm upset at all. I've barely said a word aloud about it all day. I didn't say one word coming back in my door about how almost paralyzed my hands felt from driving so much today (Scott's eyes were dilated, plus he got a pneumonia shot and ran a bit of fever all day, got all weird and scattered on me, was actually pretty funny, but then I'm kinda mean and tortured the poor guy), and then, again as always, preparing all the food with the hands I could barely use and still never saying a word.
And then I dreamed again. I have really good dreams, I can't let them all die with me. If I never see a penny back, I need to share what's in my head. I've never in my life ever run into anyone else's stories that are like my dreams and the stories I make from them.
Yes, the obvious question- who else started wondering about nervous system fail in general? I'm even more sorry now I ate that cookie, although I know that's not really why I feel sick.
So many long, dark nights I have thought "I'm not done yet" and kept shoving on. Tonight is one of those. This year is one of those.
I'MNOTDONEYET.
Cheese is awesome. I think I've mentioned my latest cheese love somewhere. Black Diamond Premium Reserve (aged 2 years) is fixing everything so I can go back to bed in a little bit.
The movie is Jewel of the Nile and this song was a top ten music video when my life was first starting to really explode apart. Three years later I was diagnosed. I was told I'd be both blind and permanently crippled by 40. This hand thingy ain't my first rodeo. I will always find a way, and no one can stop me. Lemme show you guys how to whine about stuff...
