NaBloPoMo No. 7

It's my birthday and Beloved got me an awesome gift. It is one of the Queer Seer pins. I had to get a pic with it on. I'm probably going to add it to my pins on my soft sided and very beat up green canvas briefcase/satchel that I've had since high school.

It's a great pin because it lets me show off my pride in my being bisexual and my pride in my hobby of tarot reading (and other forms of divination). I'm sorry for the poor picture quality, I didn't have the best lighting conditions.

NaBloPoMo No. 6

I have hit 50k on my project for NaNoWriMo and I think I am about half finished with the story. I still have no idea what the hell I am doing. It's a fantasy novel based off of some fanfiction I've been writing. Now I have this debate, do I try to finish this novel or do I pick up another project and work on it. I am leaning towards finishing this novel. Because these characters are stuck in my head. Excerpt of what I'm working on beneath the jump.

NaBloPoMo no. 5

Red Heart has a brand of yarn that is supposed to color pool in a way that it works up with an argyle pattern. I bought a ball of it a little while back in neon colors. Because argyle in neon would be pretty cool. They lied. It looked like neon clown barf. I'm still giving it to charity, but I am annoyed. I wanted to make a neon argyle scarf with out having to buy six balls of yarn and knit the thing. I am not good at intarsia knitting. The fact that I could have gotten argyle pattern with super simple crochet had me all excited. Signs are pointing towards I may need to start learning more advanced knitting techniques if I want to make interesting things.

NaBloPoMo No. 4

I'm trying to get started a trend on Twitter. I have two things. One is my bad pitches thread "Hey Agent!" The other is to get the others who are of the Filianic faith more active on Twitter and spread some sunshine around. There's a lot about Twitter that can be described as a dumpster fire. But the Filianic community, at large, is a kind and compassionate group. I'm trying to coax them back to Twitter to push back against the dumpster fire element with random acts of kindness, sharing favorite quotes from the holy texts, and be their lovely selves just as they are over on Tumblr. And Tumblr has the dumpster fire element in equal parts to the element that can be found on Twitter.

I was just hoping to see a little bit more kindness going forward on there. Maybe some cute cat pics but mostly inspiration and hope. Now I'm not so sure if this was such a good idea because I seem to be the only person doing it.

NaBloPoMo #3 I hate legos.

I hate walking them. I hate the gods awful mess they make. Most of all, I hate the noise of my son digging through the bin full of them to find parts to create something. That sound is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. At the same time, Snuggle Bug could play legos for hours and not cause any mischief.

I still kinda hate them, though.

NaBloPoMo #2

I'm actually attempting NaNoWriMo this year despite being depressed. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I took a partial manuscript from earlier in the year that I was just messing around with and put it in as what I'm working on now. My characters are that meme. I'm beginning to think that the meme is my stories in a nutshell.

NaBloPoMo #1 - Fuck Depression

So, I'm going to attempt National Blog Posting Month (that bit of alphabet soup in the title) this year. I was looking forward to doing National Novel Writing Month but I'm super anxious about it. I have no plan. I have no outline. Nothing. And I'm afraid that I would continue to write word vomit about my trauma as I did last NaNoWriMo and Camp NaNoWriMo. Beloved tells me that I shouldn't hang everything upon writing a novel this month. He's correct in saying that I work on such things on a regular basis year round.

But I was looking forward to the project all year. But depression ate my brain so I have no plans of any sort for writing this. Which makes my anxiety go off the rails. I am just going to open a word document and put down 1.7k words today. We'll see if it turns into anything, I guess. I just feel like this is a hopeless effort and that my writing career is a joke because I don't know how to manipulate social media enough to get anyone to buy books.

Samhain eve.

I am not a good witch. I am not a great mother.

There's no plans for Samhain. The weather's going to be rotten again this year so I'm not taking the children out to gather candy.

I haven't slept well in several days. When I do sleep, my dreams are stalked by the restless dead screaming for justice, clutching to me in desperation for help. The plant I had on my altar that was all lush and pretty died in the last two days covered in mold of some sort. It was only luck that I didn't have an allergic reaction to the thing when I disposed of it.

My mood is bad and I'm finding myself worrying about random things. The clamor of the dead is louder when I go out of the house because I go past my wards and there's more waiting out there. When you're sensitive to the dead, they tend to flock to you. Imagine you've been trying to get somebody to listen to you and you found someone who actually can hear you and communicate with the other people you were trying to talk to.

I am feeling pressure from various ways in my life and I am not handling it so well. I doubt that there will be any mischief tonight. Devil's night isn't much of a thing in my neighborhood.

Monday menu

Date	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Sun	Donuts	sandwiches / leftovers	Pizza
Mon	kids: Donuts me: english muffin egg, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: ramen & ham salad sandwich Me: pizza	hamburgers carrot salad & cheeseburger salad
Tues	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: chili & chips Me: salad	tacos & taco salad
Wed	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: burrito bowl Me: leftovers	Pork chops mashed potatoes green salad
Thurs	kids: school me: coffee oatmeal & egg	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	crock pot pot roast beef w/ potatoes
Fri	kids: school me: veggie omelet & toast & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	Pork tenderloin mash potatoes peas
Sat	eggs, bacon & fruit	leftovers / sandwiches	chili

The Umbrel Chronicles of Evandar is officially a series now!

I just put book four out for sale today. Here's the link to the page on my other blog where you can get copies of the entire series. I'm working on merchandise to go with the books. I have blank bookmarks that I'm going to decorate. I have a basket of jewelry that I can slap up for sale. I'm giving myself until midsummer 2020 to get that all sorted out. This way I can have random things like a small cookbook pdf and crochet or knitting patterns based off of characters and such. I figure if the guy I knew from the Facebook writer's group I was in could rope possible sales with merchandise, maybe I can too.

Mr. Naalson and the Keeper

Naalson walked through the gateway of the prison. A shiver passed over him as the anguish of the imprisoned washed over him. In his own way, they were his brothers and he grieved their imprisonment, however necessary for the greater good. Naalson hated that expression 'the greater good'. It was one that was introduced by the Christians, if he recalled it correctly. That 'greater good' being the good for their distant god. Naalson flicked an invisible bit of lint off of his suit and waited as the guard waved a metal detector wand over him. It chirped as it passed over his wrists. Naalson pulled back his shirt sleeves to reveal the dead watch on his left wrist and the medical id bracelet on his right.

“Sign in at the right,” the guard instructed in a bored tone. Naalson leaned over to peer at the names of the guards assigned at the door but they turned away before he could catch their names. The yellow painted brick had all the charm of a deeply infected wound's purulent drainage. Naalson half expected the smell underneath the scent of the industrial cleaner that had been used earlier in the day. He picked up a black pen with his left hand and signed his name; Naalson, Loptr. The guard looked up at him suspiciously. “What kind of name is Loptr?”

“It's an old family name from my mother's side. We're Norwegian originating from the Jotunheimen region,” Naalson explained with an air of someone who had to explain his name far too many times. The guard nodded and said something about people always getting his name wrong too. “I'm here to see the warden,” Naalson said, shrugging up his sleeve a bit to glance at the watch face, “He is expecting me.” The guard gestured another one over to him.

“Please see Mister.. uh.. Na.. Nel ..” The guard looked awkardly at Naalson.

“It's pronounced Naal-son,” he said.

“Oh, yes. Right. Got it. Please see Mister Naalson to Warden Schmitt's office,” the guard instructed his companion. The uniforms and the semi-military haircuts gave them an almost nondescript quality. Naalson noted, however, the one who let him in the door had black hair and a moustache with grey hairs beginning to show. He noted that the one lazing behind the desk was a red head like himself, just a lighter color and with less freckles. The guard walking infront of him had blond hair and ice blue eyes. He vaguely reminded Naalson of someone he knew once that died by misadventure with a sprig of mistletoe.

As they moved through the administrative offices portion of the prison, Naalson could practically hear the walls groan with despair. This, he concluded, was a cursed place. He rubbed his right wrist absentmindedly and wondered if he was going to find himself face to face with a snake. The warden's secretary looked up from a sheaf of reports and blinked in surprise. Naalson was quite possibly the tallest man he had seen. Naalson towered over the guard but was surprisingly lean. His carefully groomed beard hid his scars and a few of his freckles. His hair was cut in a manner that was virtually identical to the one worn by the majority of the corrections officers. When the sunlight fell on it through the chickenwire impregnated windows, it seemed to have the color of a spark against the dreary grey of the office.

“Warden Schmitt is expecting me,” Naalson said, “I'm actually a few minutes late.” The secretary looked down at the paperwork and then shuffled around more papers. “The warden is in, isn't he? I was told today and this time, tuesday at nine o'clock.”

“Yes, here you are,” said the secretary, holding up a neon pink sticky note, “To discuss the matter of your nephew. One moment.” Naalson folded his hands behind his back in a position similar to military at ease. Then an uncomfortable feeling crawled up his spine, a bodily memory of sorts. Naalson brought his hands back down to his sides as the door to the warden's office opened.

Warden Schmitt was not an impressive looking man. He was perhaps the most boring looking person that Naalson had ever laid eyes on during his travels. Naalson was mildly impressed with this unconscious feat. Schmitt was reviewing some manner of paperwork, peering over wire rimmed glasses. His mouse brown hair was thinning but carefully groomed. His face was clean shaven where a beard or moustache might have lent him some visual sense of personality. A small man, Schmitt didn't strike fear into people with his stature. Quiet spoken, it wasn't his voice that many feared, at first.

“Elliot, put that on the pile,” Schmitt said, waving a hand at the towering stack of papers on the corner of his desk.

“Warden Schmitt, your nine o'clock appointment is here,” the secretary coughed, embarrassed by his superior's behavior. Schmitt looked over and then up at Naalson.

“I see, very well. Bring me the report when this meeting is over, then,” Schmitt said. He stood up and gestured towards the second chair in the room. It was a small chair for Naalson to sit down in comfortably but somehow he managed to make it look so. “What can I do for you, sir?” Schmitt said, attempting to sound ingratiating in his bland voice. Naalson couldn't help the vulpine smile that came when Schmitt asked his question.

“There is an inquiry going on, Mister Schmitt,” Naalson said, “I believe word of it has reached your office.” Schmitt looked confused. “Clearly the memo was misplaced. Your secretary's desk is almost as bad as mine,” Naalson said with that same smile, his tone sounding genuinely warm and friendly. “An inmate recently was reported to have become deceased under your watch under suspicious circumstances.” Schmitt's attempt to be pleasant dropped away and the tepid looking man scowled as much as such a man could manage. “The report,” Naalson continued, sounding bored with the entire affair, “Said that you were the last man to see him alive.”

“Are you accusing me of something?” demanded Schmitt, his voice turning hard. It was a tone that the inmates were troubled by. Because when Schmitt was angry, bad things tended to happen.

“Oh, I'm not accusing you of anything,” Naalson said mildly, “Merely stating the facts of the report that I received. And this inmate, I believe his number was ... No, that doesn't matter. “ Naalson leaned forward, steepling his fingers before his face as he rested his elbows on the warden's desk. “Erick Ericksonne was his name,” Naalson said, “the report reads that he committed suicide. However, it also reads that all suicide watch protocol was followed. No belt, no shoelaces, no sheet on the cot. Hell, no cot even, just a mattress in a bare cell. We all know how those parts of the facility look. With the dehumanizing mint green and pink colors that make you think of those damned after dinner mints that taste like chalk, am I right?”

Schmitt blinked quickly. He had the feeling that he was in the presence of someone quite dangerous though he couldn't parse the reason why. “I have one question for you, John,” Naalson said, gesturing with his right hand towards the warden. “Why did you strangle him? Wasn't it enough that you had him in solitary on suicide watch for refusing to say the pledge first thing in the morning? Wasn't it enough that you had his food rations cut in half? Are you really so patriotic as to murder a man for 'disrespecting the flag'?”

Schmitt hit the panic button under his desk. Nothing happened. He pressed it again. “Oh, tech gets gitchy around me,” Naalson said, smiling, “You should see my watch. Something about my ... energy.” Schmitt felt sweat beading up along the back of his neck. “Or, really,” Naalson said suddenly as he leaned back and raised his right index finger as though he had an exciting revelation, “Is the problem that Erick was a pacifist? Well, we should say, was in this case. Proper context is important as is clauses. You hate pacifists. You've hated them since the war. Can't say I'd blame you much except for there's one small problem. This isn't the war. You can't kill a man with impunity, no matter how well you cover it up.”

“Turning off the camera on the room, clever man,” Naalson said, “But, you forgot about the one in the hallway. It caught you 'adjusting' your belt. The very same belt you used to strangle your prisoner.”

“That's a lie,” Schmitt said in an icey tone. The vulpine smile returned. Schmitt wondered how this man knew. He wondered if he hadn't paid the guard on duty enough money to keep his yap shut. He wondered if the camera actually was on. “You're trying to blackmail me,” Schmitt said.

“Oh no, blackmail is beneath me,” Naalson said, “I'm here to give you a choice. Confess your crime or suffer Erick's fate.”

“What are you going to do? Kill me?” Schmitt couldn't keep the note of panic out of his voice at the last part of his statement.

Naalson scoffed, “I wouldn't dirty my hands. Your hands, however...”

Schmitt's hands shook and began to move of their own accord. Naalson watched as he took of his belt and stood up. “Stop this,” Schmitt said.

“You are doing this to yourself,” Naalson answered as Schmitt looped one end of the belt over the pendant lamp hanging from the ceiling. He watched with emotionless eyes as Schmitt's filled with panic and he struggled. As he teetered on the rolling chair with his makeshift noose around his neck, Schmitt's face turned red. Naalson stood up and walked around the table. He gripped hold of the back of the chair. For a moment Schmitt's stance stabilized and the awful pressure around his throat eased up for a moment. “Off to Niflhel with you, snake,” Naalson said in Schmitt's ear before kicking the chair out from under him.

Schmitt's secretary opened the door. “Sir, your nine o'clock appointment is here,” he said, looking down at the report in his hand. The secretary looked up and screamed at the sight of his superior dangling from a light that could barely hold him. “Oh god, somebody... somebody do something!” the secretary screamed as others around him scrambled into action. In the chaos, no one noticed a mouse scuttling out of the room and evading their stomping feet.

Chronic illness = bullshit

Yesterday's lesson in anxiety sucked. Fortunately, my blood sugar levels are much better today. I forgot to log what I've been eating over the last several days. As such, I don't know what caused yesterday to be such a pain in the ass. I'm still running a blood sugar level higher than I want it to be (170s instead of 150s) but I've been awake and getting things done today.

I was tired and I tried to take a nap this morning when there were people outside working. That went about as well as can be expected. I suppose I managed about a half hour before I just couldn't stand it anymore and I got up. I didn't sleep the best last night. I kept having really vivid dreams. One was my being at a pizza party at the bowling alley (which I think has been closed) where my mother humiliated me in front of my class. It was supposed to be a birthday party, but she turned it into something about her by announcing to everyone at full volume that she was, as per my description, a bitch and everyone should remember it. Mind you, I didn't talk about my family at school at all. But, in this dream, it was not a repeat of the memory.

The bowling alley was completely empty and there was this massive sheet pizza with ALL the toppings you could think of. I stood there looking at it and then around the bowling alley. I then said, "Well, this was the only good thing that came out of that day anyways." Then I woke up for a few minutes. When I fell back to sleep, I had a little bit more detailed of a dream.

I dreamed that Beloved, I, and a group of old friends/acquaintances from high school were opening up a bar/restaurant where a dive bar is located currently in our hometown. The kids ran around playing and helping with small chores as we did things like move furniture and hang curtains. It was a pleasant dream. Partly because in the dream I was healthy and able to help do stuff like move furniture.

If I were to sit here and interpret theses dreams, I would say that I should let go of the past moments where I was humiliated and reach out to old friends to make my dreams happen. I'm not quite sure how to approach the second part. I'm not very good at being social. I also feel a fair amount of guilt over the fact that I'd be asking people to do things for me just on the basis of our friendship.

Growing up, I learned that friendship was something you gave and didn't expect anything back from it. And that it was rare. I went to school with some real assholes who regularly did shit that humiliated me. Now, I find myself considering (idly) things like getting a hold of the people who made my life miserable in high school and pushing my books in their direction, in the hope that theoretical guilt over their treatment of me equates to purchasing a book. I realize, however, that is an improbability on the scale of my accomplishing teleportation by pure force of will.

Old friends, however, may be a helpful network. It'd be good to see how their lives are turning out and if they have achieved those dreams we all talked about when we were kids. I may not have the spoons to market to the entire world, but maybe I can to some old friends and let them know that I appreciate their continued support and friendship. I don't know.

Diabetes can die in a fire.

All damn day today, my blood sugar has been high. I have been unconscious most of the day because of the fact that my blood sugar has been over 250. I don't know why this is happening. I know that my sinus infection is making my blood sugar run a little high but this increase makes no sense to me. I'm so frustrated. I had stuff I wanted to get done today. I had things I needed to get done before the kids got home from school. None of it happened.

I don't know if today is an outlier or a sign that something is going wrong. I'm kinda scared. I'm eating within my limits for carbs. I'm making sure that I have protein with my carbs. I'd be exercising except I was unconscious most of the day. I feel helpless and frustrated.

I was going to walk down to the corner store for a jug of milk because we're just about out. Didn't happen. I was going to fold up more of my laundry and get it done before the kids got home because of how much laundry I have piled up waiting to be put away (and sorted out for storage for winter). I had plans to get writing done today. Again, didn't happen until now because I was asleep pretty much all day.

I'm nervous about dinner. I'm concerned that I shouldn't  eat dinner incase it makes my blood sugar spike and I have difficulty waking up in the morning again. At the same time, I know that I should eat dinner because having my blood sugar really low is a bad thing. I skipped my morning snack because I slept through it. I skipped my afternoon snack. It is my guess that if I don't have it, maybe my blood sugar will be lower. I don't know.

ETA:

Not eating snack brought my blood sugar levels before dinner to 135, which is what I was hoping for. I did eat dinner. A modest bowl of oatmeal and a cup of coffee doesn't sound like much, but that and a bit of cheese and lunch meat made up my dinner. I think between the cheese and the lunch meat I had enough protein, but I'm not sure.

I'm so tired of this bullshit.

To Hel with this sinus infection.

To speed along this infection's trip down Hel's Road, I'm taking horse-pill sized antibiotics for the next week (twice a day). I've been exhausted and it's only now at three in the afternoon that I feel somewhat awake. At least I will be conscious when the kids are off the bus and demanding attention. I am so irritated with this whole business. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that I have had some level of a bloody nose all week. According to the family doctor, that will go away as the infection does.

Jill H. is a good friend of mine from when I was in school. It was a pleasant surprise to learn that she lives just up the road. We've renewed our friendship like no time passed. One of her hobbies is shopping thrift stores and garage sales. She found some great clothes for the kids at just the right time. Cuddle Bear is growing out of his jeans. When he wears his old ones, he looks about ready to go fishing. So, we're shuffling clothes around and giving the stuff that the boys have outgrown to her to ferry off to the thrift store for another soul to use.

I am so thankful for Jill. I wish I could be a better friend to her and my other friends. Fortunately, the anti-anxiety medication change is helping me get out of the house and be more social. Apparently a big part of my problem getting stuff done and being social is my social phobia. Who'd've thunk it, right? I'm still easing my way into the medication change. So far, however, it's made socializing easier. It's made doing the weekly grocery shopping a lot easier again. No more panic if I'm choosing the wrong food for me to eat or if people are giving me odd looks and following me.

Now I'm just waiting on my proofs to arrive in the mail. I want to get book 4 out for everybody to enjoy as soon as possible. I think I'm going to release the e-book ahead of the paperback. That one looks fine. KDP dropped my stuff in the mail later than they had said they were going to, hence a delay of at least a week, I think. I was supposed to have it by now. If I am exceedingly lucky, I'll have it Monday.

TL:DR - Things are improving despite my being sick with a sinus infection.

Monday Menu: Fuck It.

I'm sick. I still have that stupid cold from last week. It now includes sinus pain and bleeding. I have a doctor's appointment Wednesday. My nice and tidy organized everything is a mess because I haven't been staying on top of my organizing things. Fortunately, it is not so big of a mess that I missed that my Cuddle Bug has a dentist appointment on Thursday.

I don't have much of a menu this week. I just wrote down dinners in my planner on Thursday. Monday through Wednesday are the usual things. Thursday I am going to attempt to make breaded pork chops in the oven. Instead of bread crumbs, I'm going to be using almond flour. We'll see how well the kids take to it. Friday is going to be chicken curry, or chicken something. I can't remember exactly what I wrote down and my planner is in the other room. Saturday, Beloved is going to make chili. This is a big deal because he makes awesome chili.

I'm behind on my writing in a bunch of areas because I've been sick. I'm trying to get caught up but it's not working so great. Stupid cold and stuff.

Vanilla Infused Stevia (and some rambling)

This is a damn simple recipe. It's so simple, I don't think it counts as one.

Take a vanilla pod. Put it into a pint sized mason jar. Cover with finely ground stevia (like the sort used to replace sugar in baking). Let it sit in a dark cupboard for a few months. In the end, you have stevia that is flavored with vanilla. It's a subtle flavor that goes well with oolong tea. Just top it off with more stevia as you use it up. Keep in that cupboard when you're not using it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I feel like it isn't safe for me to express myself fully. It's why I have been wearing bandannas more of late instead of my pretty scarves. The increasingly 'conservative' attitudes of the community we live in distresses me. The march towards oligarchy or fascism, I honestly can't tell the difference anymore right now, terrifies me. The people who go on screeds about how the mentally ill are dangerous and exhort that we should be locked away (at best) frighten me. The way that people act how autism is a fate worse than death and that there should be a purge of all autistic people (yes, I have seen people saying these things) is deeply distressing.

I want to say that these things are outliers. But they are what I hear coming out of the mouths of people in my neighborhood when I am out and about. When I am dressed in a more conventional fashion, they assume that I am just like them and will go on and on about their things, expecting me to nod and agree. Racism is becoming more open and if you're suspected to be a 'sympathizer' you get an earful.

One day, while I was out, I heard people commenting on 'rag heads' as they were walking right behind me. I was wearing one of my scarves. It has me feeling like I can't wear my scarves out in public anymore. I know some of it is my social phobia, but you know, social phobia is pretty hard to discourage when people around you are actively stating things like how all the 'rag heads' in the country should get killed. They shut right up when I turned around and looked at them. Apparently they didn't feel comfortable making those comments about a person as lily white as myself.

Today: N.O.P.E. Orbital Cannon status - Activate

Today was a long day. I was doing ok up until about lunch time, that's when the crushing anxiety set in. I've been wandering in circles and not getting much done because I'm terrified that if I don't do it perfectly I'll be punished.

Time to NOPE today from orbit.

Mondays are a lot of work.

I have spent my morning working on my planner and my bullet journal. I gave up on updating my food log because it's been at least two weeks since I wrote in there. (I was still calculating carbs and eating within my limits, I just wasn't writing anything down.) I am tired after washing a fuck ton of dishes. There's still a good number left but I have run out of counter space. I was debating if I was going to cook dinner tonight (hamburgers) in the stove but I think I'm going to fry them in a pan. It will take a little longer but I don't have room to put the big broiler pan in the sink to wash it.

I got some blogging done on one of my witchy blogs. I took care of some papers. I got the mail. I did some spinning stuff. So, I am getting things done and slowly getting caught up on things. I tell myself every day that today is going to be a productive day. Of late, that's been hard. Because of the depression and ptsd working together to kick my ass, I haven't been sleeping well and that makes me exhausted through the day.

Today, I haven't had any flashbacks. This is a good thing. I did have a memory come up but I wasn't left shaking and upset with it. I was darkly amused by it. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not. I mean, being beaten with a car antenna (even when you're wearing denim and snow gear) is pretty horrible. But I was amused by the fact that the beating was so much less effective because of the layers we were wearing when it happened. I've been writing about trauma stuff in my morning blogging on my writing blog (which is an extension of the morning pages that I am doing as part of the Artist's Way). It's made the blog a bit darker in content.

I still have not found a therapist to work with. Doing this free writing where stuff that is trauma related gets vomited out may be as close to actual therapy work as I get. I have three college ruled notebooks full of the stuff. I'm probably going to be filling up a fourth. I have no idea what I'm going to do with these notebooks. At the same time, I still am dealing with some weirdness inside my head that I don't know how to handle.

As I was writing, I had a different part of myself sort of riding shotgun and telling the story as I typed it down. It was weird. I didn't lose time. But this part of myself that I don't have much to do with just popped up and told me the story of the time my mother and grandmother were canning tomatoes and other stuff. I was in my single digits. I was playing in the far corner of the room and my mother scolded me to get out of the kitchen, despite the fact that I was safely out of the way. Her real problem was the fact that I wasn't supervising my brothers. I knew it, she knew it. I suspect my grandmother knew it too. After all, I was the eldest child.

It was weird to be in two headspaces at the same time. On the other hand, it was also familiar. I don't know if this means I am making progress on getting to know my interior selves or not. I found myself jumping from headspace to headspace today. It's part of the reason why I am tired right now. At the same time, I got a lot of stuff done. I don't know if that means I am a person with multiple personalities or not. I know that when I was in each different headspace, I remember different things.

I have a journal that I was writing in with these different parts of myself. I watched my handwriting change. I watched my tone of writing change. It wasn't a big deal but it was weird. I had people comment on my handwriting changing with my mental state. One person said that my signature looked like that of an entirely different person according to my mood. I don't know if that's normal.

I just know that it is noisy in my head. It's not hallucinations. Thank gods for that. It's more like I'm listening to other people's thoughts running through my head some times. Or, perhaps more accurately, it's like listening to a group of people in another room having a conversation that I can hear pieces of it. I can't see them. I can't tell how many people are there. But I can hear snippets of the conversation.

Today, the self-destructive one was quiet. There were no comments along the lines that I was a burden to my entire family. No comments that I should pull the pin on my marriage to spare my husband the misery of caring for me. And no comments that I should do everyone a favor and just walk away / die. I think that was because I actually got a full night of sleep last night.

Instead there was the List-maker who was busy helping me organize everything for this week and next. There was the Care-taker who helped me wash a ton of dishes with out getting caught up in panic over the idea that I'm going to do it wrong and either have to wash everything over again or be beaten in punishment. There are others in my head just doing their own thing. If I concentrate, I can tell what's going on. But I don't know how much of this is an over active imagination.

How can you tell when you have more than one personality?

Fucking memories, what the hell?

You may be looking at the post immediately before this one and going 'wtf?' As I was washing dishes, the memory of A- cornering me hit me like a freight train. It's been a while since I have had a flashback like that. Most of them lately have been emotional. But not that one, nope. It was a full on, for a few seconds I wasn't here/now, I was back in that moment and I could see the tiled wall and the sink in front of me. For that moment, I could feel him looming at my back and hear him breathing. Then, it was just gone and I was standing there disoriented at the kitchen sink.

That's what a flashback is like. Usually, they're a lot uglier than that one. I had a therapist tell me that flashbacks happen when we're at a place that we're safe enough to process the experience. There's something profoundly ironic about this one. The incident that I was having a flashback to occurred during a time where I was in therapy and trying to resolve the problems I was having at the time with flashbacks and night terrors to an abusive relationship I was in. I don't know if this means I am going to start having flashbacks of N- now. I really fucking hope not. Because N- and my relationship was profoundly traumatic and I still am stumbling onto triggers of panic attacks today and it's been 26 years since that happened.

I don't know why I am listening to a playlist of music made up of singers and songwriters from the 70s. For my earlier years, I listened to that and those years were pretty horrific in turn due to things with my parents. My subconscious is up to something. I have spent the last several years intermittently writing about those years. It seems to be the only thing that I am not hitting a creative block on. I don't know what to do about that. I have lived through some horrible shit and I don't know why it is the only thing I can write coherently about right now (well for the last 2 years).

On the 11th, I was full of sadness and I thought it was just my bipolar and seasonal affective disorder acting up. Then, as I thought about it, I realized it was an emotional flashback to watching the towers fall and hearing the city scream in terror. It was an emotional flashback to watching friends deal with the fact that they had no idea if their loved ones were alive and if we were in danger.

I'm not sure what to do with these things. I don't know if writing them down is going to a damn bit of good. I don't know if it will make things harder. The walls of the dam are beginning to crumble again. I don't know what is going to come with the fall.

I'm racist but working on fixing that.

*Content Warning: Sexual Harassment*

I posted a thread about this on twitter. I'm going to post a blog post about it too because it is important and writing about this kind of shit helps me process it. I could just copy and paste my twitter thread but that requires effort.

I was 20-something and working in the campus cafe at college. It was a typical Friday evening. At the end of the shift, the other gals had left to go do stuff and I got the short straw (aka the dishes to wash). As I was standing at the sink, I had my back to the rest of the kitchen. Aside from myself the only other person there was the supervisor from the campus food services, who ran the cafe and such). A- was a big, latino guy. He was known around campus for his genial attitude and big smile. Among the staff of the cafe, he was known for trying to get 'friendly' with us girls.

So, I was standing at the sink, boxed in to a corner by the virtue of how the cafe was built. (I sincerely hope that feature was fixed.) A- walked up behind me and started 'talking sexy' at me. I am a survivor of sexual assault. I panicked. I reached into the sink and grabbed the first handle I touched. I thought it was a ladle given the size of it. I picked it up and turned around. As A-'s face went white, I realized I was holding a butcher's knife in my hand. I told A- to back off and leave me and my friends alone. I then dropped the knife into the sink and walked out of the cafe. I made a point of watching my back as I crossed the campus, pausing for a moment to pick up a hefty stick that had fallen from a tree just in case A- followed me. When I got to my dorm room, my roommate was surprised I was back early. She saw I was upset but I didn't talk about it. I was pretty sure if I did, I was going to lose my job with the cafe, which I needed to afford textbooks next semester.

Ever since that incident, I get scared around latino men. I had a therapist soothingly tell me that I was just experiencing anxiety. I had the same therapist tell me that all I had to do to get over it was to breathe deeply. (She tried, but she wasn't a good therapist.) It took a lot of soul searching and careful thought to realize that this was more than being triggered by a person having a physical resemblance to A-. It was all latino men that I had this response to. I felt terrible when I realized that my fear had turned me into a racist.

That was when I made the conscious decision to rewire my brain. I'm working very hard not letting that fear lead me forward. I'm working very hard to see each latino man that I meet as an individual person. I'm working very hard to learn about the rich culture of the latinx community. The latter is a bit challenging because I live in lily white rural WNY where there's a lot of racism on the sly. I can't blame my PTSD for my racism. It may have contributed to the development of it, but it stayed around because I didn't challenge the assumptions that all latino men were a threat to me.

It it hard. It takes a lot of conscious effort and working to remember that A- was an individual asshole. One asshole does not an entire community make. So, I admit I am a racist, but I'm working to fix that and to teach my children not to be ones. The latter is a little easier, to be honest.

Cisgender but not Femme enough.

I've been sitting on this topic for years struggling with the question if I should even write this. I've written about it in my journals. It's been a struggle for me since I was in elementary school. Socially, I didn't fit the roles expected of me as a girl.I was branded a tomboy with the expectation that I'd grow out of it. I tried to fit in with my peers but severe bullying made it difficult. It didn't help that there was a lot of blatant misogyny in my parents' household that just got worse over the years.

As I came of the age of menarche, the bullying became far worse. With the onset of my period being terribly unpredictable due to my having polycycstic ovarian syndrome, I had several instances where my period began with out warning at school. Pretty much immediately after that I was shunned and treated as though I was the most disgusting and reviled of creatures by my peers. They threw ketchup on me, laughing. They spat on me and told me that I was little better than a dog because I couldn't control my period. At the same time, my mother was harassing me over the fact that she felt that I was being lazy about tracking my period and being excessive in my use of menstrual products. At one point, she and I had a 'discussion' about how if I was going to continue to be 'irresponsible' about keeping track of my menstrual cycle, I was going to have to pay for my own menstrual products. I was nine, living functionally in the middle of no where and I didn't even get allowance or some pittance for performing chores around the house so I could theoretically have money to pay for my menstrual products.

At the same time as all of this was going on, my body began to develop body hair and other secondary feminine sex characteristics. I was harassed about my breasts being small by other girls who were developing at a different rate. I was harassed mercilessly about my facial hair. The fact that my voice actually dropped in pitch netted me harassment as well. So, the message from my peers was that I wasn't as femme as they and I had no hope of ever 'catching up'. It was brutal. Because it wasn't just quirks of anatomy that didn't make me fit in well either. As I mentioned at the beginning, I wasn't good at performing the typical 'girl' behaviors. I was socially awkward and sensitive, perhaps a bit more than others. I didn't know how to shave my legs, so changing in the locker room for gym got me more harassment. (One person called me a hairy ape because I had not shave my legs, armpits, or my face before that day's swimming lesson. They went on a long tirade about how I was disgusting and an 'evolutionary throwback' because of my body hair) I didn't really know about how to apply make up.

One would theorize that my mother would have been willing to somehow assist in this. She consistently mocked my efforts to learn on my own. She declared me to look like a cheap harlot, a circus clown, and a bad mockery of a drag queen at various times. When I attempted to develop my own sense of clothing style, I leaned towards femme looks and my mother berated me for it. The conservative looks got the accusation of being a prude. The more modern looks got me the accusation of looking like a cheap whore or an attention seeking slut. (Just a few more lines and you'll see the bitter, bitter irony of these accusations.) The times where I ignored convention and attempted to come up with my completely own style of dress netted demands that I change into more 'normal' clothes because I looked like an embarrassment to the family.

My parents made it very clear that they were disappointed that I was born female. They weren't quite as beligerant about it until I hit that magical age of puberty. Then my father became distant. Then my mother all but accused me of trying to sleep with every boy in town, except for the fact that I didn't do anything other than go to school and come home. That didn't stop her from calling me things like a 'prick tease' and telling me that I was acting like a tramp. So, I defaulted to jeans and a t-shirt, the most gender neutral clothing I owned, for a long time. It still got me comments but it wasn't as frequent as when I decided to dress up for school.

When I got my first boyfriend, my mother basically treated me like a living doll. I was getting ready for my first date and she told me I was doing everything wrong. At which point she painted my face with vivid makeup and had me change my outfit to something more revealing. I was extremely uncomfortable with this, but it was the first semi-normal 'mother-daughter' interaction we had in a very long time. As that relationship persisted, my mother was invested in my appearance. She bought me clothes that were revealing. She bought me my first pair of high heels and taught me to walk in them (which was a highly unpleasant experience because she made me balance a book on my head as I did so and swatted me with a fly swatter when my posture wasn't proper). It's funny, in a dark way, that my mother's overboard jump into 'we're going to make you a proper femme' pushed so hard into the territory where I looked like I was older and made me a target for more sexual harassment.

At the same time as this push to make me more femme in the way that my mother felt I should look femme, I developed a mild eating disorder. Mom praised me for being so thin. She made noises about how if I could just get myself to 'look and behave properly' I could have a career in modeling. I knew that she was trying to live vicariously through me. I also knew that she was trying to make me into wife material at fourteen. I think she knew that N- was older than what he told me his age was. My parents had the infamous 'What are your intentions regarding my daughter?' conversation with him shortly after our first date. N- must have fed them a line that they approved of because my mother's initial rejection of the concept of my having a boyfriend turned into her trying to mold me into the perfect girlfriend material.

I also knew that I wasn't good enough in her eyes no matter how much I played along with her efforts to make me more femme. I knew that the lifetime of being told I had to be more masc to be approved of by my parents undercut the 'be more femme' and lead to Mom making sharp commentary about how I was terrible at being femme and that I really needed to care more about my appearances. In the midst of all this, I was enduring an abusive relationship where my boyfriend regularly sexually assaulted me and hurt me in other ways. But, I had the pressure to fit in as femme take off my shoulders briefly because I had a boyfriend, which didn't make me a complete freak in the eyes of my peers who were cycling through boyfriends like nobody's business. Instead, I had the pressure to maintain this relationship that made me automatically fit into the femme category.

It was one of the worst periods of my life. I lead this life where I hid so much of myself because I knew that it wasn't going to be approved or accepted. Additionally, I struggled because I realized I was bisexual and the entire situation was hostile against that. My boyfriend of the time at one point made a comment about how 'gays' should be beaten for existing. He looked to me for some kind of fawning agreement with his comment.What he got was horror and silence. He punished me for that later, declaring that it was my job to laugh when he was 'funny' and to agree with him when he was 'right'. 

When I broke up with N-, he was stationed overseas. N- had gone into the Navy upon graduating high school with the promise that he was going to marry me when he finished his first tour of duty. When I broke up with N-, the harassment got going again. I was despondent over so many things. I felt like I was a failure because the relationship between N- and I was so horrible. I blamed myself for the fact that he raped me. I blamed myself for the fact that he battered me and emotionally abused me. I said to myself that if I were more of a 'normal' girl then those things wouldn't have happened.

So, I gave up on trying to be a 'proper' girl. I did my make up in the minimalist way that I could figure out on my own. I wore clothes that tended towards gender neutral most of the time. Being hurt from presenting as more femme made me gun shy of the concept though I dearly wanted to do it. I went off to a women's college concerned that I wasn't going to fit in. Fortunately, the anonymity of being one person on a large campus and the fact that most of the other people were too busy with their own shit to give a damn about me helped me adjust to being in that environment. My anxiety about not being femme enough was put on hold except for when some kind of event requiring fancy dress came up. Then my friends came to the rescue to help me figure out how to do up my hair and such. It felt like wearing a mask but I could do that all day long thanks to my experiences.

It was in my mid to late 20s that the anxiety hit me again full force. I had graduated the safe haven of college and found myself interacting again with a mixed population of genders on a regular basis. At one point, I found myself seriously questioning my gender. All of the pressure that my parents had put on me to perform as masc left me ill quipped to deal with the social pressures of being femme. It was an agonizing half year. I feared that my Beloved would leave me if I weren't femme enough. He told me something that blew my mind. He would have loved me the same if I were a man, transgender, or agender. When I revealed that I was bisexual, he laughed and said that he was as well and clearly that was the reason why we got along together so well.

I don't know where I fall on the gender spectrum. It causes me some anxiety. I am a woman but with strong masc traits. I struggle with the typical femme behaviors, even now. My education in womanly behavior is based in a weird place that is almost cultish in its nature. I struggle with a good deal of internalized misogyny. I've gotten better about it, but it is still a struggle due to how long I had to live with it. I still worry that I'm not femme enough despite the fact that I have birthed children and I dress more femme than I did in the past.

I see my transgender friends and I see their struggle. I open my heart in solidarity. As someone who was raised with the expectation that they were supposed to be male up until puberty hit and then they were denigrated for being female, I can see some parallels between our journeys. I see you. I acknowledge you and respect you. You are enough just as you are. My mistake is sometimes I let other people's definition of being femme override what I have known about myself for my whole life. Don't let other people define you. Only you know yourself well enough to define and apply labels. ♥

Fuck C-PTSD with a chainsaw.

I am not happy right now. I've been having emotional flashbacks over the last little while. I have had a great deal of anxiety. It's been crap-tacular. I'm still trying to nail down what has been triggering the flashbacks. I figured out one trigger and it really sucks. It is the sound of really small children. It is not one that I get to hear all the time. But, when we're at the park it happens. Also, my dear boys have decided that playing pretend is more effective with sound effects off of Amazon. Snuggle Bug has been on a kick to pretend that he is a father and he found a play list of baby babbling and crying. The net result is I come away from it all feeling afraid and profoundly grief stricken. I have to leave the room or I risk bursting into tears for no apparent reason.

Now, one may ask, why would such a sound evoke this response. Well, when Snuggle Bug was still an infant, my life was put into tumult by mental illness and the ... official response to my cry for help. It traumatized me deeply. I'm realizing that there are other triggers that I'm still trying to uncover that provoke the terror that I'm going to be locked away from my family never to return home. It's been a really rough couple of months as my c-ptsd has been acting up.

My psychiatrist is of the opinion that one of my anti-anxiety medications isn't working properly. Rather than trying a random medication, he's ordered a genetic test that tests a battery of psychiatric medications against my genes to figure out what processes correctly and what doesn't work worth a damn. I'm anxious about this test. I am struggling with the feeling that I have some how failed because my medication isn't working right.

It's all just pretty shitty, to be honest.

Ramblings

I posted it on my other blog. I may have said a bit about it on Facebook or Twitter. I'm pretty sure I mentioned it on Tumblr. I've been depressed over the last month. As a result of that, I have been sorely tempted to give up writing. I feel as though I'm just no good and that I'm not a 'real' author because I don't have a book contract or an agent. I've been forcing myself to write in my therapy journals and I've been trying to keep up with my daily journal. It's been hard. Even the short form entry in my daily planner where I summarize my day in a few lines have been difficult to write.

I sat down and looked at things seriously today. I realized that I needed to be more realistic in my writing expectations. I can't expect myself to be at production levels all the time. No one is a writing machine. I can't expect myself to be at the same level as authors like Neil Gaiman, who is well established in the industry and still has a hard time pitching novels. I also need to stop trying to expect myself to write in every genre to find my audience. Some genres I'm just not that strong in and I have to accept that. I am, for example, not an author of children's books.

I suppose I'm having something of a midlife crisis. I've been struggling to write the blurb for book four of the Umbrel Chronicles of Evandar for the last three months. I've been struggling to finish book seven of the same series for the last year. It has me questioning if I still have the energy to write this series. It has me questioning everything about my writing. I haven't given up but I have been very tempted to do it.

I realize the reason why these self-defeating and self-denying thoughts have been coming up are because scumbag brain is the repository of all the lies that were told to me as I was growing up. And in those lies, I was told that I couldn't do this. I was told that there was no way I'd be successful. And that success meant a big fat paycheck and lots of book sales. That success was supposed to be their retirement because once they figured out that I actually could write a novel at seventeen, they suddenly were onboard and trying to control what I was doing.

Lots of old programming has been hitting me hard over the last month. I didn't really comprehend it until last night when I wrote an 'eviction notice' to the haters living rent free in my head. Writing that flipped some kind of switch. Now, the words are flowing. I have no idea what direction they're going in. I don't know if this means that the Umbrel Chronicles of Evandar is going to be on hold for a while. I hope not. I have six and a half books that I want to release into the wild. But, right now, I'm going to do my best to just write what I have and let the gods sort it out.

Monday Menu Week of July 22, 2019

This menu is a bit of a cheat. We had this same menu last week. It worked out fairly well, despite the heat, so we're doing it again. On Friday, Snuggle Bug doesn't have summer school but Cuddle Bear does. So, Snuggle Bug is getting his favorite flavor of poptarts (strawberry) for breakfast and we're both having sandwiches. Did I mention that diet bread tastes of stale cardboard, expired air, and sadness? At least it's low carb and I can pretend I'm having a 'normal' sandwich.

Date	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Sun	Donuts	sandwiches / leftovers	Pizza
Mon	kids: Donuts me: english muffin egg, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: pork chop sandwich & chips Me: pizza & chicken	hamburgers carrot salad & cheeseburger salad
Tues	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: turkey sandwiches & eggs Me: salad	tacos & taco salad
Wed	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: burrito bowl Me: leftovers	Pork chops pad thai
Thurs	kids: school me: coffee oatmeal & berries	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	Pepper steak Lo mein
Fri	kids: school me: veggie omelet & toast & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	Pork tenderloin mash cauliflower pasta salad
Sat	eggs, bacon & fruit	leftovers / sandwiches	crock pot meatloaf w/ bread sticks

New Haircut and blabberings

I got my hair done last weekend. It's a cross between mad scientist and 'I'd like to talk to the manager.' looks and I think I kinda like it. It's been hot and humid over the last several days, which does not lend it self well to spinning. I'm frustrated with my health situation because the heat is making my blood sugar do stupid things. I did not anticipate this. In trying to compensate for things like random blood sugar drops for no apparent reason, I have had my blood sugar running a bit high today. As a result, I feel like I'm starving all day. I've been eating low carb snacks like cheese and chicken. It's still a miserable feeling.

I'm exasperated with how the heat makes my face go red. I'm exasperated with how if I get even slightly dehydrated, due to one of my psych meds, my face goes red. And I am exasperated with the fact that it seems like I can drink nothing but water right now with out this being aggrivated. I'd like to have something with flavor in it but that has carbs.

I could be drinking diet soda but I've been working on cutting back if not eliminating soda from my diet. Mainly because my dentist says I have weak teeth. I know that the diet soda doesn't have the sugar in it but the carbonic acid that makes the soda bubbly isn't helping my teeth either. So, I can drink water, tea, or coffee. It's been a frustrating day. I've been craving a glass of apple juice for the last two days and we have none in the apartment (nor will I be getting any because of all the carbs in a single serving equals a full meal's worth of carbs, it sucks).

So far this year, I have donated around 25 preemie hats. I have also donated 6 scarves. You can guess which work up faster. I'm currently working on a scarf that's done up with a ball of white acrylic and a ball of 'my favorite stripe' acrylic yarn from Red Heart. The pattern is super simple. Holding both yarns together, cast on 16. Knit until 55 inches long (approximately). Drop every third stitch. Cast off knit-wise. I call it PennyCandy because it looks a lot like the old time striped candy you can pick up at the pharmacy up the road (that would have cost a penny in the old days). I'll post a picture of the work in progress tomorrow. So far, I have 12 inches knit, which isn't too bad for starting it yesterday.

Monday Menu, week of June 17, 2019

My life has been topsy turvy over the last few weeks. This has made me forget things like posting my weekly menu and such. Here's this week's menu. I'm going to post a few recipes later this week that are used in the menu. The school year is almost done. I'm trying to get ready for summer break and failing because I'm still trying to catch up on things from the last few months that I didn't get done due to the last depressive episode. I'm honestly feeling frustrated with it all.

At least I'm beginning to see progress again on getting my blood sugar numbers back under control. A little more discipline in how I am eating and a change in how I take my medication has made an immediate improvement. Now I just need to get used to this change.

Date	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Sun	Donuts	sandwiches / leftovers	Pizza
Mon	kids: Donuts me: english muffin egg, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: ham salad sandwich & chips Me: pizza & chicken	hamburgers carrot salad & cheeseburger salad
Tues	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: ham salad sandwiches & eggs Me: salad	tacos & taco salad
Wed	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: burrito bowl Me: leftovers	chef salad / sandwiches
Thurs	kids: school me: coffee oatmeal & berries	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	slow cooker pork roast
Fri	kids: school me: veggie omelet & toast & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	slow cooker orange chicken with rice
Sat	eggs, bacon & fruit	leftovers / sandwiches	meatball sandwiches

Fiber fluff: Cold processing fleece

Dear friends,

I am way behind on the spinning guild's sheep study program. I have a laundry basket full of sample fleeces waiting to be washed. Today, I just tossed two samples of fiber (that just happened to be unlabeled) into buckets of water. Now I'm going to let them sit in a place that's a bit sheltered on the back deck (under a table) for a little while to see if this suint fermentation method actually works to clean it.

I have two samples I need to prep for spinning. One is Dorset and one is Finn. The Dorset is a white fiber and the Finn is a rich brown color. I'm going to spin them on my Ashford student spindle, as I did the other samples. When I'm done spinning them, I'm going to ply them with white size 10 crochet cotton. This way I have a standard to gauge how the ply for each sample is different.  I'm going to try to make some time to borrow the drum carder that my mother-in-law has to get this stuff prepped.

I'm tempted to try spinning one of the other fleece samples in the grease. Before I do that, however, I have a ball of Icelandic roving to finish spinning. I need to ply the remaining yardage of the 4 oz of merino/bamboo/silk top that I finished spinning earlier this week. Approximately 2 oz of this has been spun and plyed together. It has to be wetted and hung to dry to set the twist in it. When I do this, I will measure how much I have. The second 2 oz is going to be plyed with silver sewing thread. The stuff that I just finished spinning singles of is in a dark grey, black, white color way. I think that the silver thread is going to look really cool with it.

I have a finished yarn where I first attempted the plying with the thread. It worked up pretty cool. I wasn't in love with the colorway of the fiber. The fiber was some random dyed fleece in a colorway that I wasn't thrilled with. I gave most of it away. The small bit I had left I spun up to relive stress at some point last summer. Plyed with the thread, the colorway is much improved. The murky grey came out looking like steel and the rest of it has a sparkly shine that pops up and makes the colors look less haphazard and muddled.

Total yardage spun/plied: 119 yds
Goal for the year: 1 mile / 1760 yds

First sampler of the year: All you need is love.

The lettering is simple back stitching. The big heart is needle weaving. The little hearts are each padded satin stitch. The tulip is outlined in stem stitch for each part and filled with long and short stitch. The lower half of each leaf is satin stitch. The upper half of each leaf is tied satin stitch.

This was something that I drew up free hand. Hence things being a little off center and such. Still, first one of the year is finished.

I've picked up a cross stitch pillow cover that my grandmother Barb was going to make before she passed away. It's going to be my next needle point project for a little while. I also am going to finish the cushion she started. It's just missing the final set of french knots. The problem is I have to figure out what color it is supposed to be because the paperwork for these pattern sets was missing. The tulip pillow case appears to be in pinks. But the cushion cover I can only guess what the final set of stitching was supposed to be.

I'll post pictures of this as I get going and make some progress on it. Fortunately, it isn't counted cross stitch, because I find that maddening. The printed is a bit easier, and this is fairly large so I don't need my glasses to do it.

1112

Some how, I hit 1111 posts and didn't realize it until today. I would have made my most more meaningful if I had realized it was a nifty number like that. I am eyeballs deep in line edits on book four of the fantasy series that I've been working on. I am thankful that I have caught spelling errors and such. At the same time, this is a lot of work and I kinda wish I had the budget to do something like hire and editor and a marketing team.

My mother in law suggested I find a literary agent. I am thinking about it. I don't know where to begin or how to go about it. I find myself anxious about the idea of having an agent walk off with a manuscript. At one point, I entered into a competition that was supposed to have the winner getting a book contract. I had to fight with them and threaten legal measures to get my manuscript back. Since then, I am uneasy with the prospect of a third party handling my work.

I'm also highly annoyed that one of my digital works has been ripped off and is floating around as a pirated pdf. I'm angry but I don't know if there is anything I can do about it.

Oh, hello there cold, long time no see.

So, we get past the 'fun' of the norovirus. Everybody's finally healthy for a few days. And then I come down with a cold. I was wondering why my blood sugar was running high. Our stress levels in the household at large have been coming down as some very important things are settling out. I was finding my fasting numbers coming back into range. Then they started running high over the last few days.

Apparently having a cold makes my numbers go up. I am not thrilled with this fact. I'm kinda glad that I've got an answer. But I hate the fact that my sinuses feel awful. And I'm exhausted. I haven't been sleeping well over the last several days. I've been having surreal nightmares that make no sense when I wake up.

Like the nightmare that I was in a warehouse with mislabeled packages and I had to correct the labels with out getting caught. Or the one that all of my son's teeth fell out and were replaced with shark teeth. I'd understand that one if I was still nursing or something, but that was just weird because we're long past that stage of development. I've just been having surreal dreams that are terrifying in the dream world and when I wake up just confusing as hell.

I don't think my subconscious mind is trying to tell me something but who knows. Maybe it is and it is that I should be afraid of mislabled food packages or something.

Not enough coffee in the world

The past few weeks have been less than stellar. We've been passing this norovirus back and forth. I don't think the in-laws caught it when we visited. But for the last few weeks somebody in this household has had some stomach complaints. It's lead to the kids taking turns having a bucket as a bedside companion. I am glad that I'm on medication to control the random vomiting symptoms that come with one of my other medications, because I didn't need that bucket when I had it.

Along with the stomach issues, I haven't been sleeping well. I've been having nightmares. This is not a new development because I have chronic trauma related nightmares. I'm not sure exactly why I am having nightmares about losing the children. It has been exceedingly unpleasant. I woke up in the wee hours of the morning on the verge of a panic attack because of my nightmares. It sucked.

Because of life being a pain in the ass, I have had to push back the release of book four of the fantasy series I've written. There's some stuff that I just haven't had time or the spoons to do that absolutely needs to happen before it is ready to be released.

Deb's KAL & CAL for Charity

I'm making scarves for the homeless as one of my charity projects this year. I have two patterns I am working from right now. The first one is knitting with funfur yarn held with same colored sport weight yarn. The second one is crochet with sport weight yarn in two colors.

For the knitted scarf:
Cast on 20 stitches.
Row 1: Knit 4, purl 4, K4, P4, K4, P4, K4, P4, K4, P4
Row 2: P4, K4, P4,K4, P4,K4, P4,K4, P4,K4
Row 3: repeat R1
Row 4: Repeat R2

Row 5: Repeat R2
Row 6: Repeat R1
Row 7: Repeat R2
Row 8: Repeat R1

Continue the pattern until your scarf is of desired length. (I'm aiming for around 55 inches.)


For the crochet scarf:
With color one, chain 30 + 2

Moss stitch

Moss stitch for three inches with color one. Moss stitch for three inches with color two. Repeat the alternating color pattern until this scarf is long as you desire. (Again, I'm aiming for around 55 inches.)

ETA: I forgot to mention, I'm also making a few scarves for needy students at my kids's school. The school colors are blue and orange so that is what I'm using.

I'm half way to zombie. Brainz?

This has been one hell of a week. It started out with food poisoning. It was a mild enough case that I was able to power through and get Cuddle Bear to his orthodontist appointment where he got his braces off. The boy has been sixteen different kinds of excited because now he can eat his favorite candy again.

The weather's been flipping back and forth between wet and miserable and tolerable. As such my mood has been flipping back and forth between depressed and ok. I did not realize that rainy days were a depression trigger. A theory that Beloved and I have is that there is some kind of trauma memory attached to this kind of weather. Gods only knows what that is, but I'm sure it will reveal itself eventually. They always do.

Had a migraine start the day before yesterday and go until almost halfway through yesterday. That sucked royally. Fortunately, the migraine didn't start until after Snuggle Bug's doctor's appointment. The boy's got some miserable allergies and our family doctor was awesome enough to put him on something that actually helps. First dose and the kid wasn't having sinus problems or itchy eyes all day.

I have a new book out. I have no idea how to make it sell, but I'm going to try. I would prefer to just sit here and crank out books but I don't have a marketing team to sell them for me. I feel like I have zero clue what I am doing here. It's a bit demoralizing to look and see that I've made no sales.

I'm going to try to follow the example set out by some other indie authors and just plug my book as often as I can until I get some reviews and then plug the book with the reviews. I'm not sure how to go about getting reviews, but I'll figure it out somehow.

In other news, I am working on the Kindle version of this book which is going to require entirely different format stuff and new exercises. This thing was originally designed as a workbook. But I recognize that there are people who are going to want this information and not be able to get their hands on the workbook.

I wish that Lulu and KDP played nicely together. Then I could have put this thing together on Lulu and not have Amazon throw a fit over it. They still haven't ironed out what ever technical issue is there which is why I have been doing more on KDP because that goes out to a larger audience than Lulu right now. It is frustrating.

Fiber fluff: Preemie hats!

The spinning guild has found a hospital in Elmira, NY that is in need of preemie hats. So, I have been making those instead of washcloths. I have a half duffel bag full of washcloths that I'm trying to get rid of. I keep bringing it with me to spinning guild telling people they can take one if they want one. I'm debating putting them up on Etsy and selling them. I have a lot of them and I don't know if selling them at $2.00 is worth the cost of shipping.

I'm making preemie hats. I have been using my doll Annie as a guide. Annie is the name I gave the doll that my parents bought to get me clothes to wear when I was born, as I was a preemie. I am also using a darning egg as a guide for the micro preemie sized hats.  Pictured to the right is the pile that I donated at the last guild meeting.

Also pictured are the three scarves I made for the homeless. I have started working my way through my yarn stash between these hats and the scarves. My goal is that by the end of the year, I will be down to one laundry basket worth of yarn.

Only part of my efforts is going to include making stuff for charity. I have a shawl project that I have been meaning to make for ages. I'm finally going to work on it as soon as I get this green one that I'm designing as I go along done. I'm a quarter of the way through that.

Spinning goals are stalled because I have been doing more knitting and crochet of late. Next month, however, I'm going to start spinning in earnest. Got to get ready for Tour de Fleece.

Menu for the Week of 4/29/19

So, in my quest to get my fasting blood sugar numbers not to look high, I'm trying to negotiate changes to my diet and getting in more exercise in the day. I don't know what I can do to lower my stress levels, because that is the primary reason why my numbers are high. But I have been trying things like eating my bed time snack earlier and having a smaller snack. It hasn't been working that great. So I don't know what to do. I'm half tempted to go the keto route but I have been warned by my doctor that it is a terrible idea, so I'm not going to. I'm just not sure how to fix this.

Date	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Sun	Donuts	sandwiches / leftovers	Pizza
Mon	kids: school me: english muffin ham, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: pizza & chips Me: pizza & chicken	steak, salad mashed potatoes
Tues	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: ham salad sandwiches & eggs Me: salad	tacos & taco salad
Wed	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: burrito bowl Me: leftovers	pizza meat pie salad bread sticks
Thurs	kids: school me: coffee oatmeal & berries	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	pasta & meatballs w/ salad
Fri	kids: school me: veggie omelet & toast & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	cashew chicken & 'rice'
Sat	eggs, bacon & fruit	leftovers / sandwiches	sandwiches

Menu for the week of 4/22/19

I'm finally getting organized enough to start posting menus again. Yay!

Date	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Sun	Donuts	sandwiches / leftovers	Pizza
Mon	kids: Donuts me: english muffin ham, coffee	Kids: mac & cheese Hubby: pizza & chips Me: pizza & chicken	hamburgers & cheese burger salad
Tues	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: ham salad sandwiches & eggs Me: salad	tacos & taco salad
Wed	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: burrito bowl Me: leftovers	pizza meat pie salad bread sticks
Thurs	kids: school me: coffee oatmeal & berries	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	pulled pork coleslaw
Fri	kids: school me: veggie omelet & toast & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	breakfast for dinner
Sat	eggs, bacon & fruit	leftovers / sandwiches	steak, mixed veggies & mashed potatoes

Wait, wut?

I must be going places because someone ripped off a copy of an earlier version of Rose Petals that I put up in PDF format and has it posted on a book piracy site. I am annoyed with this development. At first I was amused, but now I am irritated. I've been telling my readers that they don't want to go with the pirated copy because it may be missing things and have malware attached to it. Because some piracy sites do shady shit.

It's been a hell of a week. The kids have been on spring break and bouncing around like chipmunks on crack. When ever the weather was decent enough for them to be outside, they were and they ran around a lot. I took them to the park twice. It's been busy. I haven't had much time for my stuff like blogging. Camp NaNoWriMo is stalled because I haven't had time to write. I'm at 25k on a project that I have come to detest but I am going to continue to work on until it is finished this way I have the satisfaction of burning the damn thing when it is completed. (Ok, maybe I won't burn it. But I'm not happy with it right now which is making working on it harder.)

The local-ish pagan group that I associate with are holding an Ostara celebration. I wish I could go but it is Sunday night and I'd have to be driving after dark to get home so that Beloved could have the car to get to work Monday. Never mind the fact that the kids are still on break from school Monday and will probably be up at the crack of dawn despite the blackout curtains on their window.

I wanted to do something special for Ostara but things keep falling through. I wanted to do a little ritual with the kids for the full moon tonight and that didn't happen because tonight was just a wee bit chaotic. I feel like things are just stacked against me on trying to educate my kids in the pagan ways. We've got people at school talking about Jesus and such. I can't make out if it is kids or teachers. It's just frustrating because I don't want them to be ignorant about the over culture but I want them to have a broader base to grow from in a spiritual sense.

I don't know what the hell I'm doing and I haven't much local support for it because I live two hours away from my pagan friends with families. The nearest Unitarian Universalist Church is twenty minutes away in a town that I am not familiar with or an hour away in the heart of the city. Either way puts me into a bit of anxiety because I'm getting worse about going to unfamiliar places alone. And even though they're UU churches, that doesn't mean they're necessarily going to be pagan friendly. Especially the weird brand of paganism that I've got going on.

Diabetic friendly pizza meatloaf (gluten free)

I admit, this was inspired by the South Beach Diet's 'Pizza meat pie' recipe. It had elements to it that were just not going to work in my household. Stuff like mushrooms that I can't get my kids to eat at all, because they're a vegetable.

Ingredients:

1 lb ground beef
2 eggs
1 c almond flour
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp italian seasoning
1/4 c pizza sauce divided in half
1/2 c shredded mozzarella

Step one, mix together beef, eggs, almond flour, garlic, and italian seasoning until uniform. Add 1/2 of the pizza sauce and continue to mix until uniform. Pat into a loaf shape and place on a jelly roll pan. Carefully coat the top with the other half of the pizza sauce. Then top with the shredded mozzarella. Bake at 350 deg F for 45 minutes or until it reads as well done for beef with a meat thermometer.

Serves 4. Goes well with a nice green salad. The carb load in the original recipe that used breadcrumbs was 18 carbs per slice. I think this comes out closer to fifteen.

How do I 'girl' properly?

My face was really itchy. So, I decided I was going to scrub it and make it really clean, followed by moisturizing everything. Now my face is bright red and even more itchy. I don't think I had a reaction to anything. But maybe I am wrong. The soap I used was a gentle soap for babies. The scrub I used is one that I've never had a reaction to before. And the lotion is one that I have never had a reaction to.

I don't know if this is just my skin is mad at me for the fact that I scrubbed it or if I'm having a reaction to something. I don't know much about skincare. Honestly, I'm really ignorant about it. I'm even more ignorant about makeup. Because my skin reacts to just about everything, I can't use most products. So, I never really learned how to do this stuff.

Here I am trying to figure it out on my own and I think I just made a mess of it all. At least I am not breaking out into hives or anything. Maybe the itchy feeling is the same one that I get when my skin is really dry and I put moisturizer on it. I'm going to go with that thought for now. Because anything else is just going to be upsetting on some level because I feel like I failed at basic 'girl' behavior.

Insert title here.

I am moderately depressed. This is an improvement over where I was at a few weeks ago. I am displeased with the fact that my doctor confirmed that my symptoms are perimenopause. I just turned 40 in November. I am early for this to be happening. I thought I had a little more time before it happened. I have somewhere around seven years of this crap to look forward to. I feel generally miserable and moody. Because hormones.

I am hoping that this will improve. According to my doctor, these things go in something of a cycle. Because I don't have enough shit with cycles going on in my life. I've been told to track my symptoms. I'm just tired of logging everything. I do a lot of mood tracking because of my bipolar. I log my food and my blood sugar levels because of the diabetes. I log my exercise habits because of the diabetes. I keep a daily journal of things to do and things that need to be done because I have kids with stuff going on in their lives.

I'm exhausted from this. And now I have something new to log and track. I'm so tired of this. But I can't stop because if I do, bad things will happen. I'll forget something important and things will go sideways. I'll have no idea why my blood sugar is high or forget to monitor it. So, I have to keep logging every damn thing.

I'd prefer to be filling up notebooks with stories and poems. It's been hard to write because I feel so down about it all. And I feel like I'm a fraud when it comes to writing. Because I haven't had the spoons to push marketing my work. Because I have been struggling to have the spoons to blog about anything at all. Because all it seems to be is my doing therapy oriented writing all the time.

I know someone somewhere will read this and feel a burst of triumphant whatever. They'll be happy that I'm miserable right now. To that person, go fuck yourself with a chainsaw.

Fiber ramblings: Fire Colored Hats.

The spinning guild has found another hospital looking for preemie hats. I am excited. I have made a little over a half dozen already. Beloved saw the fire colored wool roving that I picked up at the last guild session and asked me if I was going to be using it to make hats. If I could, I would, but they want acrylic yarn to make it as hypoallergenic as possible. This sent me on a quest to pick out yarn with the same colorway in it.

Lo and behold, I found it at a craft store up in the city. The teeny-tiny hats for babies with heads approximately the size of lemons worked up to look like they had flames on them. The hats for babies with heads approximately the size of large apples worked up with a weird stripe to them. I have a pound of this yarn to use up. I believe that I am going to play around with some patterns to hopefully find something else that lets the color way play out for a more of a flame effect.

My spinning has been stalled of late. I just haven't been inspired to work on the fiber that I have going right now. I want to finish it before I move on to something else. I am bored, unfortunately. So, it just sits there in its plastic bucket giving me a guilty feeling every time I look at it.