Monday Menu

 We're in the home stretch of summer break. Breakfasts have been pretty regularly things like mini-muffins, fruit, and donuts. Lunches have been their favorite sandwiches and chips. As such the menu just features dinner items this week. My breakfasts remain the boring low carb yogurt with low carb granola. Lunch is either a salad or a peanut butter wrap on a diet flat bread with a bit of fruit to round out my carb load. 

At some point, I'll get the schedule tweaked so that I actually can get back into batch making food that is more diabetic friendly. It's been hard to do that with everything that goes on over the weekend. Fridays don't seem to work for that, which has me leaning towards doing it Monday mornings after I send the kids off to school. I can't believe that school is a little over a week away. We're pretty much all looking forward to it.

Here's the menu for this week.

Day	Menu Item
Sun	hot dogs & salad
Mon	Hamburgers
Tues	chicken fajitas
Wed	meatloaf
Thurs	meatball subs
Fri	pork chops w/ salad
Sat	take out

Social phobia sucks.

 I've gotten quiet again. I have stopped talking about things like my spirituality even with Beloved. I'm terrified of being judged. I know that he won't judge me. I know I can talk to him about anything. At the same time, this creeping terror gnaws at me and tells me that no one wants to hear what I have to say, not even the man I love the most.

Since the beginning of the pandemic in our region, I've functionally been housebound. I haven't gone grocery shopping in over a year. After I got the vaccine, I bought some clothes and struggled with this mishmash of feelings. I felt guilt over buying new clothes. I felt excitement about buying them and transitioning my wardrobe to something more authentically me. I felt gratitude that I was out of the house doing something 'normal' for the first time in a long time. And I felt creeping terror that the vaccine wasn't enough and I was still going to catch Covid-19 and die.

My anxiety keeps ramping up and when it does that it gets harder to be social. I find myself reliving the emotional trauma of the bullying I endured in school as a kid. (Including and not limited to people trying to light me on fire and spreading rumors that I was a whore so extensively that I had students from the local college ask me at 16 what the cost of a blow job was in public. It was awful.) I find myself reliving the emotional trauma of how my parents raised me and the scorn that they heaped upon me when I was in a depressive episode. I find myself reliving the mockery they made of my desire to become a professional author.

All of that together, I find I just scroll through social media platforms and struggle to reach out and even post stupid memes. I just lurk and feel left out. I know that no one is excluding me. I just have to post something, even if it's a few words. At the same time, I can't bear the thought of being utterly ridiculed and harassed. I've carefully curated my social media accounts to keep people who are kind in them and yet I am terrified that they'll prove as bad as the harpies that I had to deal with as a kid.

I don't know what to say. I feel lost and afraid. And I hurt very deeply. I should probably be working on this stuff with a therapist but none of the therapists in my area take my health insurance. And I'll be damned if I go back to the county mental health clinic for any reason. They made my life a thousand times worse with their bungling, ham handed, ill spirited bullshit. I'll not go back there even if I was paid to do it. So, I just write in my notebooks and feel awful. I'm going to try to be social, but it is very hard. And I feel like I am somehow defective because I can't bring myself to do it when it comes so easily to virtually everyone else.

Monday Menu

 The kids are officially on break until the 7th of September, when school starts again. Breakfasts have been things like muffins, french toast sticks, and fruit this past week. I presume the same for this week. Lunches have been their favorite sandwiches and chips. I've been having bagged salads and peanut butter wraps for lunches because I haven't had time to do batch cooking of better meals for myself. Breakfast has been yogurt with granola and an occasional bit of fruit when my blood sugar isn't too high in the morning. So, the menu is just dinners right now.

Day	Menu Item
Sun	pizza
Mon	Hamburgers
Tues	Tacos
Wed	raspberry chicken w/ quinoa
Thurs	pork chops w/ salad
Fri	chicken stir-fry w/ 'rice'
Sat	pasta w/ meatballs

Not really sure how to title this.

 There's a lot going on right now. I'm not sure if I have enough spoons to do everything. As a result, I'm not blogging across any of my platforms right now. I'm barely keeping up with my daily journal work. Actually, I'm not doing too great at that, to be honest.

My brother-in-law is in the hospital. He had a kidney transplant recently. He started out looking ok and then everything went sideways. My sister-in-law is just this side of having kittens because she doesn't know what to do. Beloved is doing his best to be supportive and the voice of reason. Things were looking really grim for a little while. Now, my brother-in-law is doing a bit better but his cognitive state isn't the best. The going theory is his problem is sleep deprivation. He's at the best hospital in the area and getting the best care that can be given. It's still a very stressful thing for the family.

The kids are not aware of the ongoing matter. They've been a handful all on their own since summer school ended two weeks ago. That ended on a contentious note due to a massive communication failure, which got resolved (?) the day before school finished. The kids got their first shot for the Covid-19 vaccine at the beginning of the month. Next week is when they get their next shot. Amazingly, my needle phobic boys didn't freak out. One of them actually high-fived the pharmacist who gave him the shot. I'm hoping that the second round goes just as well.

Cuddle Bear is currently doing talk therapy once a week to develop some behavior interventions for his tendency to perseverate on his imaginary world to the exclusion of things he needs to do. We got started on this path because of a teacher thinking he was suffering from psychosis. This lead to a full psychological evaluation back in April (I think, time's a blur). The result was the psychologist said that he is showing classic autistic behaviors and that he is perseverating on his imagination. The experts have consistently said this through out the entire business. We've made a point of keeping all of his care team in the loop and making sure that the school shares information with them. 

But, at the time of the teacher's panic, I called the autism center and got set up with their behavioral intervention program. I then forgot all about that until the behavior intervention program people called me to apologize for the wait and schedule his assessment. That was at the beginning of the month. We've hit the point now that the child psychologist that we're working with has developed a treatment plan and we're getting ready to implement it.

Less damn fights about what's real and what's not would be fantastic. Less fantastic stories about how his imaginary friends are causing trouble would be helpful too when the situation is that he is actually the one up to mischief. I don't want to snuff out his imagination and I don't have a problem with imaginary friends. But he has to learn when and where to let his imagination to run wild. I am hoping that the treatment plan is going to work and he learns what we've been desperately trying to teach him on our own - discretion in his imaginary play and better focus on reality.

If we're lucky, some of the skills and interventions that we learn from this process will be helpful with Snuggle Bug, who is beginning to demonstrate some of the same perseveration behaviors (obviously on different topics). I just want my kids to be able to navigate the world with some measure of success, I don't really care about their approach because everyone does it differently regardless of how neurotypical they are. The perseveration, unfortunately, is turning into a hinderance and I don't want them to struggle because of it.

I'm just still kinda burned on how we got started on this path. The teacher who thought that Cuddle Bear was psychotic is going to be Snuggle Bug's teacher next year. I'm rather dreading it. Because I have a bad feeling that she's going to find something else to complain/fuss over. Beloved and I are fairly sure her education in Autism is lacking. But, I know what I'm going to do if we go down that road again because of Snuggle Bug's fascination with robots and his occasional insistence that he is one. 

It's been a rough couple of months.

Monday Menu

 This is the kids' last week of summer school. As such, this is going to be the last week of the summer where the menu is only dinners. The boys have taken to refusing what the school's offered for lunches over the course of the last week and been eating their favorite sandwiches for lunch at home. I don't know if the trend is going to continue this week or not. But I'm going to be prepared and make sure I have plenty of bologna, raspberry jelly, and bread on hand. We have enough peanut butter on hand to kill a horse, and that's before you count the dried stuff I picked up to try doing some recipes with.

My breakfasts are still just yogurt and granola. I'm getting bored of it, but I haven't had the time or energy to batch cook on the weekends right now. I'm sure I'll figure something out that's different. Probably refrigerator overnight oats if Beloved can find me some relatively low carb fruit to put in it. But, it's all a juggling game because we've had fruit go bad before we can use it when it's been picked up recently. I'm seriously considering going with frozen fruit, even though the sugar content for a number of the selection is higher. The menu is below.

Day	Menu Item
Sun	hot dogs & salad
Mon	Hamburgers
Tues	Tacos
Wed	grilled cheese & gazpacho
Thurs	pulled pork & broccoli slaw
Fri	raspberry chicken w/ quinoa
Sat	Take Out

See, I haven't completely forsaken colors!

 I stole Beloved's old t-shirt from college and I've been wearing it off and on for years. It's the one I've got on today. It's a black and denim day because laundry day is tomorrow and what I have left that is straight up black isn't fitting for the weather. I'm happier than I have been in a while since I've changed my clothing style to a more goth themed one. I'm still figuring out how to make it work.

I have a love of wearing collars. Partly because of kink and partly because I really like how it looks. I am still throwing in pops of color to break up the black on black look. I'm doing the goth thing on my terms. It's made for some interesting reactions from people around town.

The ladies at the post office think it's fantastic that I am going with a clothing style I've always wanted to do since I was a teen. They've given me some suggestions and have asked me about what accessories I am going to pick up next. It's been fun stopping over there.

The rando sales person who stopped at the door got uncomfortable. Part of it, I know, was the collar and the fact that I'm not some 20 year old thing bebopping around trying to impress people with how edgy I am. Part of it was the fact that I made very clear that I wasn't a push over, which some people would think because of the collar. I got a subtle 'y'all need Jesus' out of one of the guys and they haven't been back since, despite my making an appointment to discuss what they were offering. If they can't handle the fact that I'm 42 and wearing whatever the hell I want in my own home, they need to get a life.

I haven't worn the bdsm collars out to doctor appointments because the established relationship there would be a bit upended by the stylistic change. I see that they're getting used to the all black garment and the ribbon choker with the big glass heart on it. I figure give it a year and they'll be ok with it. Easing people into the concept that you're not as 'normal' as they assumed you were seems to be the process of getting them to accept that you're not going through a midlife crisis.

I've been contemplating picking up a third style of collar. I adore the two I have. I finally figured out how to clean the tarnish off of the steel on the one I'm wearing (cleaning vinegar and a soft cloth). The pink and black one is super comfy. I'm hoping to possibly locate one similar to something I saw on Etsy that had flowers on it. There was an absolutely gorgeous painted leather one with a bright pink wild briar rose design on it. It was also super expensive compared to some of the others I've been looking at. But, it has stainless steel hardware (which I need so I don't react to the metal) and it was really lovely.

I find myself thinking about using some of the money from Keen to buy it for myself. I know that is set aside for book promotion, but it's been at the back of my mind since I saw that thing a few months back when Beloved and I started looking into getting me a new collar because I was reacting to the one I'm wearing now. It was pure luck that I learned about the vinegar to clean up steel. 

I was super happy yesterday when I realized that those knee high sneakers that I had from when I was LARPing still fit. I had to adjust the lacing a bit, but I can wear them with my dresses and look nifty. I also found the fingerless gloves and with a bit of adjustment, I think I can make them work. So, the question now is what style of goth am I going for. I do kinda want a spikey collar for fun but I think my kids would put out an eye when they came running at me for a hug. That was the whole reason why we didn't get one. Because there were some really cool looking ones.

I'm also thinking about dying my hair. Well, to be more precise, I'm thinking about bleaching my hair out and then dying it some unnatural color. It's not very long yet. I haven't decided how long I want to get my hair. I already of white streaks showing up. I thought it was grey and my hair was thinning until I got a close look in the mirror and realized that it was white. Stress, it's a hell of a drug. But, if my hair is going white, I might just bleach it out to white and dye it some neon color and go with some interesting partial coverings. Or, I might go with an ombre color so that my dark roots just need a touch up as my hair gets longer. I haven't decided yet. 

The hair business is going to have to wait for when the kids are in school and I have more than a few hours free to sit and do so anyways. I last tried royal blue. It didn't take very well because of how dark my hair was a few years ago. I might try a royal blue ombre starting at the top of my head and going to the tips with a cotton candy blue. Then again, I may go with red fading down to neon pink. It's hard to decide.

Building planners for the boys for school

 The kids are starting to think about when the school year begins. So have I. As the modified bullet journal system has been working really well to help me manage my executive dysfunction due to my disability, I thought that it would help the kids. I let them decorate the covers with all the stickers they wanted. Snuggle Bug went with almost a full page of Transformers stickers.

I set it up so that the 'calendar' has their week at a glance. The first day of the first week is highlighted because it is a day off from school. It's part of the same way that I code days off from school on the wall calendar and in my own planner. I used the bullet journal notation for an event 'O' to mark that it was Labor day. The second day of the week also has that 'O' mark with a note stating it is the first day of school.

On the extreme right hand side of the daily section, I note the calendar date and the letter for the school day. I've decided that I'm going to do something a little fun for the kids and put stickers in on the days they have off. I included at the beginning of each binder a copy of the bullet journal key.  On the first page of each section, I put a short note on a brightly colored post-it sticky note explaining how to use the section.  This is partly for the kids to use and partly to inform the teachers how it's set up.

And, if we go back to distance learning because of Covid-19, I've got that beginning of structure in place that meshes with what I've got going on so I can do a better job of supporting them and their academic needs.

There is one section that is not assigned yet. But this gives the teachers flexibility to assign something to that section. It it my hope that this will work better than the last planners that the school gave out which were much smaller and poorly organized. We're going to practice using the bullet journal system with notecards over the next few weeks where they have their tasks for the day written down and they mark them off according to the system. I bought some extra large notecards to make this a little easier.

Monday Menu

 I found the table generator webpage again. It made this a breeze. As the kids are still doing breakfast and lunch courtesy of summer school, the menu only features dinners right now. My lunches have predominantly been peanut butter wraps or salads. Breakfast has been yogurt with low carb granola. It's boring but easy and not too hot with the weather we've been having.

Day	Menu Item
Sun	hot dogs & salad
Mon	Hamburgers
Tues	Tacos
Wed	steak & peanut noodles
Thurs	meatball subs
Fri	raspberry chicken w/ quinoa
Sat	Take Out

I'm tempted to become a misanthrope.

 For the third time since we've lived here, some asshole stole my gardening stuff. It wasn't something small like the first two times. It was a large planter and a strawberry pot (with its terracotta saucer). I've called the landlord who is checking the camera history. I've gone through the cycle of fury, grief, and resignation in record speed. These neighbors who are doing this shit we leave alone. And yet, they've done it.

I am resigning myself to house plants. I can't apparently have nice things outside. I tried to make things a little nicer around here by putting plants at the end of the walk and people rip them up and steal the pots. They rip up the flowers that come up in the beds by the house. I just can't have flowers apparently unless I buy them from the store.

I don't think the landlord is going to do anything about it. I just have a pessimistic feeling that nothing is going to come of the complaint despite the fact that there are cameras out front. As it stands, the state's moratorium on evictions goes until the end of August. So, even if he catches them in the act on his camera system, he can't necessarily boot them out.

I am hurt, angry, and disgusted. I also am deeply saddened because I was planning on planting flowers in those pots this weekend. The first weekend in a while that we were actually going to have time that I could possibly get to that. And now I can't. Fuck people.

Bees in bonnets.

 So, that little book that I worked on revising and updating the Filianic scriptures pissed off a bunch of people. Now, a video that I've made has pissed off a bunch more. And the video was my discussing my experience and what's going on with me. Like cowards, people are going "a certain someone" is saying bad things about us and proceeding to the no true Scotsman argument about the grief that I've been getting about that book.

I have decided I'm not going to read the comments on my videos anymore. I am probably not going to read the comments on my blogs anymore. And I'm just going to focus on my writing and stop giving a shit about my audience. Because, apparently, there's a pack of cowards out there deciding that it's better to get their asses up in the air and be snide rather than face a problem that I pointed out in their ranks.

I have a problem with people who can't be reasonable when giving criticism. I have a problem with people who decide that passive-aggressive crap is the way to solve a problem. And I have a real big problem with people who are going around rumor mongering. I just don't get why this high school level crap is happening. The only logical answer I can think of is I have pointed out that they are not nice people and they're offended by that. This is what I get for telling the truth, people being snippy and telling me that I am wrong because they're not experiencing what I am.

I fucking hate gaslighting. I fucking hate the no true Scotsman argument. I'm so tempted to say to them, "Well, Cinderella, if the shoe fits, wear it." But, I'm not going to. And I highly doubt that any of them are going to find this particular blog because they're more interested in my more public ones. All seven of you who follow this and read it, thank you for your readership. And if one of the randos who reads this post happens to be Cinderella, wear the damn shoe with pride. Because, if you think I was calling you out then you need to examine your position on a number of things. /rant

Fiber Fluff: I like this ring distaff.

 I don't fully have the hang of using it, but I like this ring distaff. It's a little awkward to use but my fiber doesn't get clumped up or anything when I'm spinning as it has when I'm just holding it in my hand. 10/10 would recommend.

I'm stalled on the NICU hats right now because I've been so busy with other stuff. I'm trying to get more done this week. I'm not particularly thrilled with the yarn that I'm currently using but I anticipated longer color runs in that variegated yarn. As it is, each stitch is a different color and there's zero color pooling. It makes keeping track of stitches difficult because I get visually confused by it all. Thank goodness for stitch markers.

I have some sewing to do. I bought myself a pair of shorts and realized after I had gotten home with them that they were 'fashionably' torn. This wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that the hole has no stabilization for the fabric around it. It's just torn. So, I'm going to darn the holes in it with some bright color that'll be easy to see and stitch on the black fabric. This is the second time that I've bought something that was 'in fashion' and it needed to be resolved. The last time, I bought a pair of boot cut jeans with no hem. It was super annoying.

Monday Menu (finally!)

 I found the html table generator page again. So here's the menu of dinners for the week. The kids are eating breakfast at school and getting packed lunches from the school through Monday thru Friday. Beloved skips breakfast and I make him sandwiches and chips for lunch now that it's summer. My breakfast is low fat, low carb yogurt with a relatively low carb granola plus copious amounts of coffee.

Here's the dinner menu.

Day	Menu Item
Sun	Pizza
Mon	Hamburgers
Tues	Tacos
Wed	Pork roast
Thurs	Mongolian Beef
Fri	Cashew Chicken
Sat	Take Out

Rambling thoughts.

 It occurred to me the other day that dressing as I am now and wearing a mask, my parents wouldn't recognize me from anybody else on the street. There's be some muttering about 'face diaper' or something, and possibly some scorn about my being a 'freak' but that'd be all directed under their breath with no idea that it was me. Going goth, I realized, is more than a 180 in my clothing style. It completely changes how I look to the point that people who knew me 20 years ago are not going to recognize me, unless they've been following this blog or the other places on the internet where I've been active.

This feeling that comes with this realization is dizzying and wonderful. I feel like I'm free. Some would comment that my wearing a BDSM collar doesn't exactly go with that concept, but they don't know a damn thing about the dynamic between Beloved and I so their opinion doesn't really matter. My new collar hasn't arrived yet but should be soon. It's a combination of pink and black. It is actually rather understated and elegant. I plan on posting pics when it comes in and I get to wear it.

I worry a little bit that the dye is going to transfer. I also worry about the vanilla people in my life getting into an uproar equivalent to the one that my father did when he saw the bondage bear keychain. As such, I'm thinking about getting a second collar or choker made from stainless steel that I can wear. It'll have the weight similar to the leather one and look like a funky necklace. A part of me wants to say 'fuck it, they just have to deal with it.' But, I can see that there is some mild discomfort on the fact that I've gone all black in my clothing styles. 

I haven't really gotten anything fancy yet. I plan on someday having a fancy black dress for special occasions. Right now, the black dresses that I own are really simple. I am waiting and saving money for that special occasion dress. If I'm lucky, I'll find something black with bright pink accents. I've seen some Lolita style stuff that was cute but the Lolita concept kinda doesn't work when you're a bit over weight because most of the people making that stuff are focused on the 20 year olds who haven't had two kids. I have been thinking about the style icons of Morticia Addams (as played by Angelica Huston) and Elvira. The problem there is I'm not as busty as they are. I know I'll figure something out, I'm just having fun window shopping right now. Next year, I'll buy myself something fancy. 

Right now, I'm focused on practical and comfortable. I hit that goal. Now I just have to figure out how to make my accent colors work and have fun with it. Also, I need to mend my shorts because I hate the distressed jeans style and hem my jeans because they're about two and a half inches too long. If I were just a little bit taller, they'd fit me perfectly. Or I have to go out and get combat boots. If I am getting boots, I'm going to find glittery ones because they have to exist. Then I can have my stompy boots for looking cool.

As it stands, my kids right now think I look cool. So I must be doing something right.

Fuck social phobia.

 No flash fiction today. Just a rant about social phobia. This whole business of the ultra-conservative orthodox Filianic community coming out of the woodwork to take shots at the edition of the Clear Recital that I worked on is making my social phobia kick into overdrive. I'm hurt and upset because its coming from people who had previously been relatively pleasant and professional in their demeanor towards me. Now they're implying that I don't know a thing about the English language and basically saying the whole thing is a vanity attempt to garner more money. Never mind that every single dime that's come out of the book's purchase had gone directly into charity work and I am posting updates about that work. (My box for the preemie hats is about half full and I'm still working my way through the funky colored yarn. I've just slowed down because I'm trying to write a book at the same time.)

I know that I shouldn't read the comments, but I did and it felt like high school all over again. Fake friends and all that rot. It makes me reluctant to engage readers who have emailed me because I feel like it's a trap. Still, I have those emails sitting in my box waiting to be read and replied to. I am afraid that the book I'm working on now is going to get even more flack because it's for the Lokean community who tend to be part of the cult of personality surrounding Galina Krasskrova. I have issues with Krasskrova, big ones. She's a white supremacist and aspiring cult leader trying to get as many people to go along with her warped ideas as possible. When I encountered her at first about five years ago, I thought she was ok. She was putting on company manners. Then she started talking about shit like racial purity in Heathenry and stuff like that. She stopped short of spouting Nazi dog whistles. I've watched Krasskrova's followers destroy someone's career because they spoke up against her. Now I'm concerned that they're going to come after me.

I'm debating getting ahold of some old Disco contacts and seeing if they'd consider a raiding party. It's like MysticWicks all over again, but on Facebook. I'm just not sure if they'd consider the idea because I dropped off their radar a while back due to some political infighting that basically got ugly and I was in the crossfire. I don't know what the best thing to do here is. Aside from finish the damn book.

Fiber Fluff: I have a new toy!

 My mother-in-law gave me a present for the 4th of July: a ring distaff! The vast majority of my spinning is done by hand. It's going to be exciting and fun to learn how to use this thing. 

My spite shawl is almost complete. I started knitting it when I was angry and have been working on it when frustrated or angry with some situation. It helps with the anger and I'm making something useful in the process. I plan on grounding the energies that are in the shawl/scarf (it's not quite long enough to be a shawl and I'm near the end of the ball of yarn). After that, I honestly don't know what I'm going to do with it. I will, obviously, post pics of it.

I'm still working on preemie hats. Last weekend, Cuddle Bear asked me to teach him how to crochet and he made a tiny washcloth for his firetruck collection. Next we're going to make a simple crochet bell. He's super excited. I don't have a pic of it, but I sewed a pride flag onto a pink hat for Beloved and J.R. Bob Dobbs patch on the back of the hat. He's thrilled with the results. I'm just glad that he finally was able to find a baseball style cap that fits him properly. It's been a long time since he had a hat that fit him right. I'll try to con him into letting me take a pic of him in the hat in the near future.

As he said, "There is no Pride month, it goes all year, baby!"

Monday menu? LOLWUT?

 I was going to be so organized as to post up my weekly menu but yesterday was chaotic. I didn't get even half of the writing I had scheduled done. The kids were behaving relatively well except they needed me every five minutes it seemed. It made getting anything done hard.

I think I'm going to change out some of my topics and try to post in here a bit more. Monday menus are going to resume next week (provided that I'm organized enough this week to get one done, last week was iffy on that front). I'm also going to be posting a bit about stuff that's going on here and around town as I resume my walks. It's not as lively here as it was in the town that we were living in a few years back, but that's not entirely a bad thing.

Except on the 3rd of July. That's when the town has their annual fireworks display at the lake. Residents at the lake light up bonfires and road flares to create the 'ring of fire' and there's kind of a dueling fireworks display between the pros and the amateurs. This year, the guy who owns the field out behind the property we live on decided to have a mortar and was firing it off every five minutes. Thank gods we are not so dry as to have burn bans in place right now. But, it was loud and obnoxious. 

I feel bad for the veterans and others who have ptsd that gets triggered by loud explosives going off. The 4th of July and associated celebrations are pretty hard. When my anxiety was not under control, I had a hard time with it. I just couldn't feel safe with all those explosions going off towards the end of the evening. And of course the time that they're doing their grand finale is the time that I am trying to sleep. It was rough last year. This year, thanks to the hefty med cocktail that I'm not at bed time, I fell asleep with annoyance instead of anxiety over the fireworks. 

I'm still irritated with that guy with the mortar in the field out back because he was firing it in the direction of the building that we live in, which is towards the back of the property. Granted, the angle was high, but still. This moron was firing explosives towards where I live for the fuck of it. I was not impressed. 

Never enough time.

 I have a ton of writing I am trying to get done. I have a kitchen to clean. I have laundry to fold. And then there's the fact that the kids are on break right now and need some supervision. Did I mention that I also am attempting to do some gardening on the sly as well?

I sit down in the morning with my cup of coffee and tell myself that I can get through my to-do list. I don't and I feel like a failure because I didn't hit everything on my list. It's awful. I feel like I used to be able to do that just a little while back. I wasn't posting here daily because I was posting daily on three other blogs. I also wrote a bunch of books (some of which are actually selling right now). But, now? 

I just can't seem to focus to get everything done. I am blocked on blogging and on my book work. I do my daily journaling and it seems to just take longer every day. I fall behind on housework more often than I am caught up on it. I am just really frustrated with it all.

I don't know where the problem is in my process. I have a schedule that I do my best to stick to. It doesn't work great because there are interruptions. I basically have to hit the ground running in the morning and that's gotten harder. I'm sleeping ok. My morning routine hasn't changed that much. I just find it harder to get moving in the morning.

Because I am not fully awake by 0630, I'm not working on things by 0700. This means that I am playing catch up for the rest of the day. And that's not taking into account my attempting to get back to doing stuff on Keen. I basically have to be idle/available from 1300 to 1630. I've tried working on other stuff while I am on call. It goes really poorly because the calls come in at random and break my focus. I would be on Keen today but some stuff came up and I couldn't do it. 

I am running all day long from errand to errand. When my day gets interrupted, I struggle to maintain momentum to get things done. And then there are the days where I am just out of spoons from when I wake up and practically nothing gets done. So, work piles up. It's awful. I'm so tired. I want a day off, but I don't get one because there's so many things that need done. Beloved's in the same position. 

We need a vacation or a weekend off but I don't see that happening anytime in the near future. There's just too much that we are juggling. Sometimes, being an adult sucks.

Charity project underway.

 I don't have pictures of the pile of hats right now. But, over the last week, I made 10 preemie hats for the local NICU. My goal is to make 100 this year. Last year, the donation program was suspended due to COVID-19. This year, it's up in the air as to what is going on with it. Still, the year before I made approximately 50 hats. I'm making 100 to make up for the fact that I didn't get any done last year. I have been using the proceeds from a book designated for charity to buy yarn for these hats. If I still have money coming in from that book after I have hit 100 preemie hats, I am going to start working on stuff for the other charity that I make things for as part of the spinning guild.

They're called Warm Extremities. They take hats, mittens, gloves, and scarves to distribute to the needy. Again, the last time the spinning guild met, I had a box of good for them. I think the total I donated to Warm Extremities was something around 25 scarves and 10 hats. I will figure out the number I am going to donate to Warm Extremities after I hit 100 preemie hats.

I figured out why that luxury yarn I spun is so itchy. The skin on my neck is more sensitive than the skin on my wrist (where I wore a strand to see if I was going to have an allergic reaction to it). The guard hairs in the baby alpaca yarn is very soft but not quite soft enough for my skin there. It's frustrating because I made 3 different style of chokers to wear out of that yarn. So, I am probably going to stick them up on Etsy for sale. The luxury yarn is 30% Merino, 30% Tussah silk, 20% baby Camel, and 10% royal baby Alpaca fiber. It spun up really nicely but the Alpaca just doesn't agree with me.

I forgot about that fact because I gave away the Alpaca scarf that I had made (due to the fact that it made my neck itch like mad) about a year ago. The person who received it was thrilled to get something completely handmade and wears it whenever the weather gets cold. So, it went to a good home. I still have Alpaca fiber to spin up. I have a good amount of it. It is pencil roving that I am debating putting on my distaff so that I can just spin it with my drops spindle. Going around dressed in all black is cool, but I don't want grey Alpaca fiber all over my clothes, hence the distaff.

She's at it again, and I don't know if she's lying or not.

 The day before Father's Day, my mother called at about 8:30pm. I didn't answer the phone. My gut said it was a bad idea. Deciding I was going to leave the call to go to voice mail and resume treating Snuggle Bug's plantar wart, I didn't think anything more of it. Then Beloved's phone started to ring. He answered it and stepped out into another room for some privacy.

My mother apparently was calling to let me know that my father had a TIA and collapsed in Walmart a week ago, but he was fully recovered. Honestly, I was expecting her to call and tell me that he was dead. His health has been degrading and he's too damn stubborn to take proper care of himself. We've had literally no contact over the last several years since my paternal grandparents died. I'm happier and healthier for it.

My mother is a master manipulator and chronic liar. I honestly don't know if I believe her about my father having a mini-stroke. At the same time, I'm not surprised if he did because my grandfather wasn't too much older than my father is now when he had a mini-stroke in his right hand. I know if I call my father, he's going to down play his health situation. So, I really have no reliable source of information about his condition because the relative that I do talk to, they're not talking to very much at all.

My mother tried calling my maternal grandmother and because I stopped writing her and I never really called her, she didn't have the means to get her hooks into me to try to guilt me into 'making peace' with my family. She was pulling that crap a while back to the point that I just stopped writing her. She kept saying that it was going to magically resolve the problems between my parents and I if I just talked to them. She kept saying that my parents didn't know how to get ahold of me or where I lived now. (My parents helped us move into this place just about twelve years ago.)

Mom lied to grandma to try and get grandma to shake me into talking to my parents. Grandma turned into a persistent passive aggressive pain in the ass. So I cut her off too. I didn't need the implied "you're a bad daughter for having boundaries" argument in every letter. Apparently, my parents do have our number and know how to get ahold of us. It's a miracle, I'm sure. The only reason why I have their number in my phone is so that I don't accidentally answer it, I'll see it and let it go to voicemail. If it's "important" they'll leave a message (theoretically). 

I'm seriously considering calling my parents and telling them to delete my number and my husband's number from their phones. I am furious with mom for her passive aggressive manipulative crap. I'm furious that when dad had his stent put in, I didn't find out until a month later (when they came by sniffing for money). I'm angry that they waited a week to tell me that my father almost died. I'm angry that over the course of a pandemic, they never reached out to check if we were ok, knowing that I have some serious health complications.

I'm angry for a number of reasons. All of them boil down to my mother is back on her bullshit and trying to suck me in to coming to the farm to help take care of my father and work for free. I've got my own family to take care of. I've got my own work to do, that I get a little bit of money for. They can both drop fucking dead for all I care. There's no way that they're going to own the damage they caused or the harm they did. There's no way that I am going to get a genuine apology out of them, because they think they did nothing wrong. Apparently beating your children and threatening them with weapons is appropriate parenting. Apparently attempting to psychologically break your children is appropriate parenting. Apparently threatening people's lives to force compliance is appropriate behavior when a parent wants their adult child to do what they want.

Hell will freeze over before I go talk to them. They're toxic as fuck. They've just gotten worse as time has gone on. And I'm not going to allow them any space in my life because even a five minute phone call would psychologically injure me and put me in a position where it'd take days to recover. If they show up on my doorstep, I'm going to shut the door and lock it. If they persist in trying to get in, I'll call the police and inform them that I'm being harassed. I know how to handle this kind of shit. And that's part of the reason why they haven't tried this shit really until now. I put them on notice when mom threatened my sister-in-law and her daughter's lives if I didn't do what she wanted. I told them that I wasn't going to talk to them until they treated me with respect. I told them that if anything happened to any of my nieces and I had reason to suspect they were the cause of it, a copy of the original email and my reply was going to the police.

So, they sat at the farm and bad mouthed my sister-in-law and myself. Because they're a pack of cowards. I used to worry about losing the respect of my family. Now, I don't care. Because the family members whose respect I worried about losing are either dead or away from the farm and my parents' bullshit.

Family politics suck.

 My immediate family (husband and children) are alright. We're getting by more or less ok with out calling on the extended family. It's been crunchy at times, but we're making it happen. Back when the shit hit the fan ten years ago, his parents were right there (as were his siblings) to help us. It was a dark time and things were really hard. They have my undying gratitude for what they had done for us, which basically allowed our family to stay together.

Then there's the extended family going out away from his immediate siblings and parents. They're ok people, I guess. They've pretty much forgotten that we exist except for when they want to get the 'whole family' together for a photo op and their own warm fuzzies. Let us forget the fact that one of his uncles deeply despises me (it's mutual now for various reasons). Let us forget the fact that his cousins can't stand the concept of being around children (as happened at his sister's wedding). Let's put all of that aside, we have nothing but blood ties in common with them. It's the reason why out of all of his cousins having major life events, we've been invited to a total of three. We stopped going to the big family holiday shindig because of my social phobia and that one uncle's behavior. Once we did that, they just forgot we existed. Mind you, before we did it, they were not very family like towards us because we were on the fringes of the social circle that was going on between the cousins and other relatives. (It happens when there's 50+ people at a party and you've got nothing in common with 90% of them.)

My side of the family is fucked six ways from Sunday with respect to their relationship with me. I've an uncle who is a religious bigot and told me that my not being a Christian and raising my children in my faith made me as bad as a pedophile/child abuser. (Same uncle accused me of being an alcoholic with out any grounds for his claim. I'm still pissed about that.) I have another uncle who molested me when I was small and tried to 'charm' me into giving him details about my sex life the last time I was alone with him (at 16). This uncle lamented that I wasn't bringing home my friends from college so he could find a new girlfriend. Creepy doesn't begin to describe the guy, he's got more than issues, he's got catalogues. Then there's my parents. If you've read my past entries revolving around family stuff, you pretty much know the dirt on that one. I can't ever have a relationship with them again because they're so toxic and bad for me. The same is true for my brothers. It's painful because I used to be really close to my brothers when we were small. It wasn't a case of we 'grew apart' as much as my mother did everything she could to sabotage the relationship between the three of us.

As a result of that fuckery, my relationship with my brothers' children is strained. (And there's a mess there between those girls and their fathers. It's not my place to talk about it, but I have to acknowledge it because it is part of the reason why that's strained.) But, none of this was what I wanted.

I wanted a healthy, large family. I wanted my relationship with my parents to be based in mutual respect and love. I wanted my relationship with my brothers to be the same. I wanted to be someone that they wanted around because they valued me as a person instead of someone they wanted around because they wanted free labor. But, that's not how they view me. So, I have kept them away from my family.

Now, one of my nieces is graduating high school. I wish I could go and give her a big hug. I wish I could say "I'm proud of you and how far you have come." But, there's too many complicated factors that makes it not possible. So, I have to do it from afar and mail a nice card and graduation gift. It pains me. I didn't want this. I didn't want any of this but the actions of others around me created this situation. Fuck family politics.

Being Fully Myself (pt. 2)

I have figured out a way to do my fancy scarves with out putting too much stress on my hair (which was making it begin to thin in places). I have a snood underneath the scarf instead of tying my hair up into a ponytail or attempting a bun. Theoretically, that'll reduce the stress on my hair. So far, this is comfortable and not really moving much. I like the crown style because it feels like my head is getting a hug. It helps ground me and it looks good on me. I had to fold my black and brown pashmina down by 1/3 because my head is small but it worked out alright in the end. You can see my ribbon choker in better detail in this pic. That big, faceted glass heart is a real statement piece on this ribbon. 

I'm going to be wearing my fancy scarves again, because I like how they feel and how they look. I'm going to see how I can mix colors with the black look. I think it would be cool to accomplish getting that shiny magenta scarf to work with my jet black pashmina. It'll be tricky though. But, as I said in my last post, the opinions of others doesn't count unless they're important in my life. 

I am working on not censoring myself in speech as much as I am working on allowing myself to dress in what makes me comfortable and feel happy. Obviously, I have to limit vulgarity because I have two kids who are trying to figure out how to get away with it at school. It's not school appropriate language, so I am being creative in my work arounds. Or I am just refraining all together. I have been putting off doing my therapy journal work where this new effort to stop censoring myself is vital. I've been anxious about what my brain is trying to get out. I've been feeling like there's some kind of trauma memory coming to the surface and it is making me uneasy. Trauma memories are not easy to deal with or to work through.

I have decided that I am going to start writing in my off-line journals about my sexuality and trying to make sense of what it is that I truly desire. I have this problem that arousal makes my ability to speak go tilt and language just doesn't work right for me. Beloved finds some entertainment in this, so it's not all bad. It is, however, a real difficult thing to communicate what I want when I get like that. So, I am going to take the journal/scrapbook that I started about five years ago (and then abandoned) and I'm going to start writing about things that I enjoy and such. I may start posting erotica again on my erotica blog. It was a project that I started for a potential poly-partner that got weird about the time that potential partner move out west and deities started making their presence known in my life.

I'm a sexually submissive person that really enjoys objectification. I didn't realize how much I enjoyed it until the last few years. It confuses me that people think I'm switch. Beloved explained that people can be dominant in one setting and submissive in another setting. When he phrased it that way, it made a bit more sense. I mean, if you're looking for someone to drop kick you into doing what's healthy for you, I can do that. If you're looking for someone to take control in the bedroom, I really am bad at that. We've attempted that a few time and the failures were hilarious. We still chuckle over how I just can't top. He's made jokes about it. It's still funny.

I have come to realize that vanilla sex is excessively triggering for me, aside from being pretty much the polar opposite of what gets me off. I was feeling badly about this and like there was something wrong with me. Then, I thought about it, every time I was sexually assaulted, it was more or less vanilla sex that my assailant was after. Kink is my refuge and safe place from those memories. It is where I can put aside the stress of the day from being in charge of a household and just let Beloved take control of the situation. It's a relief for me to do that (aside from really exciting) because it makes for one less thing to worry about. When we were attempting to be more vanilla in our approach to sex, it was a disaster. I wasn't having flashbacks  left and right because Beloved knows what my triggers are in physical contact, but arousal was a problem for me. I found myself having emotional flashbacks later and feeling depressed. It was just awful. For a little bit, it was looking like we were damned to sexual frustration and something akin to celibacy.

Then we decided to go back to what worked for us in the past. While we couldn't play as hard as we did in the past, sex improved in direct proportion the more we moved away from what resembled vanilla sex. We're still figuring out how to make things work with the fact that the kids can sorta hear what's going on because that wall between their room and ours is the one thin one in this stupid building. It feels like we're relearning how to approach kink. As Beloved said, "We're going to do science." It is challenging because our sexual appetites are not completely in synch and I still have problems with masturbation (it triggers my ptsd for a few reasons that are a bit too gross to get into here). I think, however, that we're going to figure this out and make a way to have a more active and healthier sex life. I know that some people would be horrified by what we're into (which isn't why I'm going into more detail) and that is part of the reason why I can't wear the collar all the time. 

Still, we're finding ways to make this work and we're working together to do that. That's reassuring for me because I have a lot of emotional issues surrounding sex, still. I'm angry and sad that I still get triggered because of the sexual assaults that happened to me. There are things that I want to do that I struggle with or just can't do because of what was done to me. It's not fair and I hate that I'm like this. It makes me feel like I'm broken. Beloved pointedly reminds me that I am not broken, I am injured and healing from a grievous one at that. He regularly says that I need to stop trying to run on a broken leg when I get frustrated and try to force myself to do things that are hard for me. It's a gentle reproach, but it makes it real clear that he's not going to tolerate my putting myself into a position where I can injure myself more.

The D/s side of our relationship is a bit more complex and complicated than it used to be. At the same time, I am finding it immensely comforting and helpful when he just cuts through the chaos I have surrounded myself with it tells me what needs to happen next. I tend to get sensory overload and then have executive functioning issues (like I get a little panicky about ordering from an unfamiliar menu because choice overload and I have to ask him for help on it). We both know it's a direct result of trauma that I'm still working on processing. Growing up in a household where every choice you made was deemed the wrong choice tends to make choices of just about any sort scary. Having someone I can turn to and ask for help making them is a big deal. And that just kinda naturally had worked its way into our kink. He doesn't order me around and micromanage my day, but he does push me in the directions that I need to go to be healthy. And he makes a point of praising me when I do accomplish things that make me healthier on my own and in response to his pressure.

I don't know if you could call it a 24/7 D/s thing. I don't know how to describe it. I just know that when my executive functioning goes to shit and my anxiety spikes, he firmly puts me back into my place and keeps me there until I have calmed down. It's like we're living the joke of the submissive saying to their dominant person, "I'll do anything for you." and the dominant person starts listing off things like 'drink more water, eat healthier, get some exercise, brush your teeth' and the submissive person goes 'wait, not like that!'

Being fully myself. (pt 1)

 I recognize that people are works in progress. We're always growing. I have hit a point where I realized that I don't have to be "normal" to be loved and accepted. I have come to see that I can embrace the goth style at 42 and it's ok. I realized that I was tired of trying to fit into that little tiny box of "normal". It was contributing to poor mental health, poor self image, and heaps of anxiety. So, my first step in being yet more authentic was to throw away "normal" (as I was raised to know it) and ask myself what would make me happy. 

I realized that I felt happy and more secure in myself dressing in all black. I got rid of the clothes that didn't fit me right. I got rid of the clothes that every time I looked at them, they reminded me of my mother. And I went out and bought myself three pairs of black jeans that fit me well. I bought myself three black t-shirts and a black t-shirt dress (which turned out to be a few inches shorter than I was comfortable with). This is the first step.

I'm still going to wear colors other than black. Obviously, if I happen to be going to a wedding, I will not show up in black because that's expressing disapproval of the union. But, I am going to invest in my wardrobe in a manner that I haven't done in about 20 years when I first had the freedom to do so. I am going to try to find some goth style dresses that fit me well, just because my sewing machine is still screwed up. (I still can't figure out how to get the tension right so that the thread from the needle picks up the thread from the bobbin.) I was a happy person when I discovered that the concept of 'rainbow goth' exists. That means I can express my love of colors and still wear goth styles.

I have decided that being happy is more important than what the opinions of what Beloved has taken to calling NPCs matter. (Non-player characters is a great way to describe all the random people out there who've just given me funny looks for walking around town with my red parasol. The encounter has no substance or relevance to my life. Hence NPCs.) Part of that being happy business is wearing accoutrements that make me feel secure and happy. That means taking some of the kink out of the bedroom. Because I accidentally discovered in on a bad day that wearing my collar makes me feel grounded in the present and gives me an emotional boost that lasts through the day. It's a comfort object as much as the teddy bear that I sleep with is. But, this is a portable comfort object that I can wear and it makes me feel good to wear it.

Sure, there's a little bit of 'hey, I feel pretty sexy' going on when I wear the collar. But the biggest thing is, I feel safe, loved, and happy when I wear it. Hell, it even helps me feel confident. Beloved is encouraging me to do this. He's all about what makes me feel safe, loved, and happy. The only question is what to wear around the 'normals'/NPCs who can be a problem. In this pic, I'm wearing the ribbon collar necklace that I made after reading Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Dart. It was inspired by a scene featuring the heroine of the story wearing a similar collar necklace with a large diamond on it. I found the concept of it so enchanting that I had to create something in homage to it. So far, the 'normals'/NPCs haven't batted an eye at it. So, that may be the thing I wear out of the house on days where I have to do official business and my collar would be a bit too much for the people I'm dealing with to handle.

Hell, I may wear the collar anyways. It depends on how I'm feeling. But, I'm going to stop this business of repressing myself because my parents taught me that goths and other 'freaks' are bad. I'm 42 not 12. I haven't spoken to my parents in almost ten years. The judgment of my parents and the rest of my family doesn't matter because we're estranged. If they passed me on the street, I don't think they'd recognize me anymore. I know that as I make my way through transforming my wardrobe in to something I am more comfortable with, they won't recognize me at all.

Bees in bonnets, royalty checks, and paper packages tied up with string ...

 So, after a few weeks of contemplating and mulling over what response should be given to the attempted shredding of that religious text I spearheaded work on and carefully edited, I typed something up yesterday and posted it on my other blog. People are coming out of the woodwork on Twitter to voice their objections, which really is only proving my point. I'm not planning on responding to comments on the post or the Twitter link to the post. I did my best not to let on that I was offended by the implication that I was a simpleton who couldn't understand English. I did my best to make clear that the changes were to move the text so that it was easier to read and open it up to a larger audience. And I did my best to explain that the changes were made because I wanted it to be more accessible. 

I also explained that the gap between the Independent Filianic community and the Orthodox Filianic community is wide enough that there are things happening in each community that the other isn't aware of, and it's on them to go figure out what's happening in the Independent Filianic community because I'm not their spokesperson, leader, or figurehead. I also made clear that I took on the role of publishing and copywriting the text to preserve the anonymity of the others who were instrumental in this new version of the holy texts because I knew that it was going to piss off the whole Orthodox community. I explained that I was putting my proverbial shield between the people who helped create this new version and the haters because I had seen how ugly the internet could get. Unlike some of these gentle souls, I give zero fucks about what the Orthodox community thinks of me.

At first, I was upset. I confess, at first I did give a fuck about that. The person who tried to completely shred the work that took about half a year to clean up and fix (and implied that I didn't understand English) was someone I had some respect for and a semi-cordial working relationship with. I now realize that they were treating me with 'company manners' instead of being genuine. That kind of duplicity is shit I don't have time for. I'm not going to bother to respond to the comments. If they go so far as to directly contacting me, I may respond. Otherwise, I don't have time to deal with every person who is going to nitpick each word choice and such.

If they hate it so much, call it fanfiction and move on. I explained the role of copyright (which is a thing that people got highly offended by) and said if they didn't like what I and the team had done with the text, maybe they should have copywritten their work. They're pissed off because they don't have free immediate access to it via .pdf or something similar. And I don't care. If you want access, buy a copy. Then the book is yours to burn as you see fit. I've had work stolen and republished by book piracy sites via .pdf on self-publishing sites. I'm leery about slapping up a .pdf to go around the world. 

I've made good on my oath to take all proceeds from the work and put it towards charity. I'm not profiting at all off of this book. I'm taking the amount that I have raised with it out of the royalty check that came in the mail and using it to buy yarn for the preemie hats I've started making again. My goal is to make 100 preemie hats this year. The year before Covid-19 arrived on the scene, I had made 50. I didn't make any during 2020 because I was so busy with so much other stuff. So, to make up for the fact that I didn't make any last year, I set the goal of 100 hats. I have 3 done so far. I picked up the yarn last week.

I have decided that the Orthodox community being pissy is free advertising. I think it is part of the reason why all of my other books are selling. (Which is where the majority of the royalty check lies.) Maybe some of them will come around to see that what I've overseen is a good thing. Maybe they won't and they'll go back to lurking in their dark corners of the internet as the Independent community grows and gets more active. I was careful in my research to back up what others were presenting in sources tied to the Orthodox community. It's been entertaining to find links back to documents that would have supported things that we said leading to 404 errors. I suspect intellectual dishonesty and cowardice out of the parties responsible for removing those documents. I'm going to let all of this be judged by our actions.

For my part, I've presented two reasoned arguments for changes and refrained from name calling. I did put forth some questions like "If the Orthodox community is going to enforce an orthodox perspective, who determines what that perspective is? What about the plurality of perspectives within your own community? Who has the authority to dictate what is correct and where does that authority derive from?" I advised they should form their own version of the Council of Nicaea and hash it out before they start declaring us Independents to be mangling the holy texts and heretical.

I still feel the pull to be involved here. I still know that the goddess I oathed my service to decades ago is this goddess. I am still going to be writing texts and doing my best to give assistance to others who are struggling along their faith path (regardless of the fact they may not share mine). I know that I am doing the work that I have been called to. I have decided to let the politics happen on its own. That's Déa's business to worry about. I'll step into the mess when I see something obviously wrong (like the tolerance and encouragement of TERFs in the community). Otherwise, I'm just going to keep working like I did in the beginning, in relative silence and with my focus on the gods. My readers will find me as they did in the beginning and will spread the word to others, as they did in the beginning.

I'm not going to worry about community. I'm just going to write and do my thing. Writing to my audience was how I wound up in this block. I got tired and frustrated trying to predict what they were looking for. So, I'm going to stop doing that across all my blogs. I'm just going to write what seems logical, feels right, and/or is relevant to the topic of the day. I am not writing these books with the hope of making money. It was very nice to get a royalty check. It would be nice to get another one soon, but I'm not going to worry about it. I'm just going to produce the work and let the gods sort it out.

It is both liberating and disappointing to return to this position. I enjoyed the interplay between myself and others. It was a euphoric feeling to see my Twitter posts getting shared. I felt like I was making a difference and bringing some measure of light to the world through them. I know, now, that I am making a difference and bringing some measure of light to this world through my posts. But I don't need the feedback and popularity to do it. I can do it by just being myself and writing what I write. I had a brief moment of being one of the 'cool kids' and mistook it for acceptance. I realized, however, that it wasn't acceptance but my being used after they were so quick to turn on me the moment I stepped outside of their defined box.

I never said that I was an Orthodox Filianist. I have always said that I am an Independent one and one of the weirdest ones they're going to encounter. Apparently, they forgot that. So, all of their upset is really their own fault. I warned them at the beginning and reiterated it as I have gone along. So, I'm just going to keep doing my thing and trust that my audience will find me, like it did in the beginning.

Gardening makes my legs hurt.

 I don't have any pics to post yet because the gardens in the front of the building are very much a work in progress and they look quite bedraggled. I got out my pruning shears and lopped off some dead wood from the bush out front and the dead canes off of the rose bush in the bucket at the end of the walk. Alas, my second rose bush didn't make it. I ripped out all of the weeds and checked it over, but the entire thing was dead down in to the roots. The first rose bush is in rather sad shape but I trimmed back all the dead canes and pocketed the rose hips so that maybe we can grow another one or two at my in-laws' house.

I ripped out so much grass and oregano from the flower bed on the right side of the front steps. I have a couple of bunches saved for my mother-in-law to plant. I'm going to put some into a bucket and grow it on the back deck. I am going to put an ivy vine into a bucket and try to grow it on the left side of the front steps up a trellis that I have there. Theoretically, the ivy will grow well and winter over well in our climate zone here. It's English ivy (the type famously grown along the walls of ivy league colleges). I figure if I keep it in a bucket at the base of the trellis and keep it trimmed back, I shouldn't have to worry about it escaping and taking over the flower bed.

The hostas that I planted about a week ago are settled in well. I was worried that I hadn't planted them deep enough, but I did. Now they have new growth. I am considering trimming off the really battered leaves. Theoretically, that will encourage new leaf growth. The apple mint that I planted has grown at least an inch since I put it in the dirt. My indoor garden isn't in such great shape.

I have an African violet that is slowly dying since my attempt to repot it and a cutting from it that is beginning to put out roots. The snake plant cutting started to rot instead of put out roots. I'm going to attempt another cutting at a later date. In the mean time, I need to get a bigger pot for my original devil's ivy plant because it is suffering from being root bound. I keep having to find places for spider plant babies because the spider plant in question is happily flowering and producing babies.

I think I need to repot my white inch plant. I know that the devil's ivy cutting that is in the big pot with the inch plant that's enormous is starting to take over. So, I am going to have to get that out of there and put it into it's own pot. So far, I have managed to keep an orchid alive for about two years, not realizing it was an orchid and just being very cautious about watering it. That thing needs another pot and I don't have one the right size or style for it. But I am hoping that if I can get it repotted in the correct potting mixture, maybe it will bloom. The Xanadu philodendron was looking pretty sad until I clipped back the yellow leaves and moved it to where it had more indirect light. Now it's putting out new leaves and greening up nicely. Again, I think it is going to need a bigger pot. 

I'm kinda running out of room for plants. I think that means I am going to have to start giving some of them away. Definitely giving away spider plants. It's a shame that most of my indoor plants can't tolerate being outside in this zone. I'd have a really interesting garden then. I still need to pull weeds and clean up where I had plantings out on the back deck. I'm working my way from what the public sees back to what is a more private space. At the same time, I am planning on helping my mother-in-law with her garden because arthritis is making it hard for her to get down and into the dirt. 

I am finding that all the bending and stooping to work in the garden is making my legs ache. Kneeling makes my arthritic knees hate me (and I keep forgetting that stupid foam pad kneeler that I bought just for this purpose). Still, the results are a lot more satisfying than what I see from doing yoga. My gardening may be my yoga replacement. I get some light (or not so light, depending on what I'm doing) exercise and in the end I have something pleasant to look at. I'll post pics as I finish cleaning up the space and get my flowers/shrubbery going in the empty spots.

Trimming dead wood and such.

 The tree out front, apparently, was in dire need of trimming as per the tree company that came to tend it at the landlord's request. They were out here at eight am and, now, about two hours later, they are finished here for the day. They took out a bunch of dead wood out of the tree and pruned it heavily on the side facing the house.

I asked the owner of the company a few questions, as I was curious and never encountered tree trimming on this scale before. They were able to leave some branches out for us to hang bird feeders on. The trimming on the house side of the tree was to cut back on the moisture and shade on that area. This will, reportedly, help with the moisture problem that the residents in the downstairs apartments have been having. They went around the property and took out a few dead trees and a few trees that were growing way too close to the trailers.

I asked the owner to look at the trees on the property line and he confirmed that they were definitely dead ash trees (he cursed the Emerald Ash Borer Beetle as he did so, because it's been a scourge on the ash trees here). He encouraged me to call the landlord to discuss the company returning to get them away from the house.

The kids left for school with a much larger maple tree in the yard. They may be mightily offended by how heavily it's been pruned. I am disappointed by the fact that the trees by the trailers had to go because there were cardinals nesting in two of them. I don't know what all of this means for Beloved's bird watching hobby. I suspect that we'll be seeing less variety of birds. I may be wrong, but I don't know. There's been a progressive decrease in trees in the area around the property due to Emerald Ash Borer Beetle damage. The lot behind us used to be fully wooded but it was all cut down about two years ago because of that damn beetle. The lot two parcels up the road from us was wooded and it got cut down a few months ago for the same reason. 

I'd plant new trees but I know that it's not my property and the trees are not wanted. I just am going to miss the birds. Every year, there seems to be less birds around because there is more tree loss.

[insert witty title here]

 [insert droll commentary here]

It's been almost a week and I haven't written in here. It's been a struggle to write in my daily journal. It has been hard to do any form of creative work. I have been actively avoiding my therapy journal because I feel like there's some kind of trauma memory trying to break through and it's always agony when that happens. I don't feel well right now. It's not depression. It's not my bipolar acting up. That's more or less under control right now. *knocks wood* 

I feel afraid that nothing I do is ever going to be good enough. I feel afraid that I am a fraud. I feel that my work as an author is ultimately as worthless as my parents deemed it when I was a kid. (Never mind that I got a royalty check for $16 to put towards charity based off of a project that I did last year.) I feel like I did when I was living in my parent's house. 

I don't know what is triggering these emotional flashbacks but they are persistent. My boys get home from school and I see my brothers whom I was supposed to look after but, paradoxically, not boss around. Nothing I did was ever good enough for my parents. My college graduation was more about the prestige they could claim by proxy than anything else. My mother claimed that the Sisters were telling her how she did such a good job raising me. (I know that was a straight up lie. The Sister that I introduced her to in that conversation said that she was sure that I was going to accomplish my goal of being a published author and that I had impressive talent.)

The time that I'm oriented correctly in the day is when I'm with Beloved. It's hard and getting harder. I don't know what to do about it. I've lost count the number of times where I've almost called my sons by my brothers' names. Medication can't fix this. I don't know what can.

Anxiety vs writing, round ???

 Between the conditioning that I got as a kid that my writing about anything occult/religious was going to get a highly negative (aka people trying to hurt me and my family) response and the negative response to the edition of the Clear Recital that I spearheaded, I've been anxious about my writing. I have been worried about a troll army descending on me and destroying everything I've worked for. I have been worrying about the prospect that in putting out that one book, I have lost my one steady market. Most of all, I have been afraid that my writing is, as the negative review and my insane mother described it, all vanity.

I'm not writing this stuff to try and make myself look important. I made the changes to the document based off of things revealed to other independent Filianists and the fact that the grammar was so awful that my kids (who are at a middle grade reading level) wouldn't be able to read it. I wanted to make the document more accessible to people. I am getting flamed for it and accused of not understanding English. It's made me angry and hurt because this came from someone that I had thought I had a good working relationship with.

I am trying to say 'fuck it, let the gods sort it out.' but that's not working so well because I have anxiety issues. They're ameliorated by my medications but they're still there. I am afraid that what I am going to write is going to result in an angry mob showing up and throwing bricks through my windows. It's awful. I go to write on my witchy blogs and I just freeze, questioning everything that I have to say.

It's like dealing with the mean girls from school all over again. While I don't have to worry about some one literally trying to light me on fire, it's triggering a lot of the trauma responses from all of that harassment. I know if I post this on the other blog, some wit will come back with 'if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.' It's hard. 

Unwelcome?

 It seems that I've become unwelcome in the Filianic/Déanic community for that work I spearheaded. One of the big names in the Orthodox community got a bee in their bonnet and basically roasted the whole work and declared the copyright protection of it as evidence that I was arrogant and not pious enough or something. The entire community has gone silent involving me. I used to be a bit more active, then I got sick and I was less active. But there was still some interplay going on. Now? Radio silence.

I'm finding myself reminded why I didn't like organized religion. I'm finding myself wondering why I even bothered getting involved with this mess. It was nice to have a community, while it lasted. I guess I am going to be writing in a dark corner and just basically shout into the void.

untitled post no. i + 2

 I have nothing catchy for a blog post title. Right now, I am not feeling confident in my writing skills. I am not depressed. I just want to make that clear. I just have been shaken by the last few months of active difficulty with my bipolar. I grew up in a household where I was told that no one wanted to listen to me 'whine' and that nobody was going to be interested in my troubles. I was told to shut up if I didn't have anything that my parents or brothers found interesting to say on a regular basis. I also had parents who didn't believe that mental illness was real. My depression issues were declared laziness. My anxiety issues were declared being dramatic. My posttraumatic stress disorder from an abusive relationship in high school was declared that I was simply 'nervous' whenever the guy's name came up. And, to make matters worse, my parents used my mental illness as a tool to control and manipulate me.

It was bad in that household. I have been working on reparenting myself. I have been working on treating myself with the compassion and kindness that I show my children. It's really hard to do that when you've been conditioned to think of yourself as worthless and that your value will either be a product of what you produce or the cost of the sum total of your body parts on the black market. Those thoughts have been in my head since I was about seven. It is ugly, but it is what I lived and for the longest time I had thought was just normal. Along with the passive self harm ideation that was always there at the back of my head.

With the med change, I don't have those thoughts. It feels weird. It's not bad. I don't really miss them, but it is strange not to have those things constantly running through the back of my mind. My anxiety is a lot lower, so I am not rehearsing arguments for forever, regardless if I'm going to even see the person that I keep rehearsing the argument for. 

I have decided that I am going to make an effort to blog every day across the multiple blogs that I have. That's going to take some scheduling. Especially with the fact that in about two weeks the kids go on summer break. They're going to be doing summer session again this year. The goal is to keep them on track academically speaking and get them prepared for next year. Summer session lasts about a week and a half. The school will be providing transportation, which is a good thing because the time that they have to be at the school is the time that Beloved has to leave for work. Sometimes having only one vehicle sucks.

I honestly have no idea what I'm going to be writing. In this blog, it's pretty much anything at all. It isn't focused on my writing or something else like that. I may start talking about how my attempts at gardening are going. I was talking about giving up on gardening when I was really depressed. Now that I feel better, I am back at it. My mother-in-law gave me a bunch of white and green variegated hostas. I planted four beside the three solid green ones on the left hand side of the front stoop. I planted three on in the flower bed on the right hand side of the front stoop. They look pretty beat up but I think that they'll perk up with a little water and time.

Yesterday was a big gardening day. The kids helped me pull a bunch of weeds out of the flower bed on the right hand side of the front stoop (it gets the most sun). We clipped out some black walnut saplings and pulled up the oregano that was trying to take over the front yard. The Memorial Day Parade got cancelled but as we were working out in the front yard, I guess you could say that the parade came to us. The fire companies for our neighborhood and the town next door got together with a bunch of folks with vintage cars in the community and went rolling through the residential streets with lights and sirens going. I lost count the number of vintage cars there were. It was a really nice day out and I think that one person got the idea of joining the group as they rolled by and drove out of their garage to team up.

Mental health update.

 I'm now approximately a full month into the med change that Dr. M. made. When we spoke last week, he talked about keeping me on this dosage of Vraylar because of the dramatic improvement is has made in my symptoms. My anxiety is within tolerable limits, even with life throwing dumb stuff my way. My sleep is finally such that I am getting a full night of sleep. He's going to keep me on the medication that he switched me to for that (I'd spell the name but it is even more like a random handful of scrabble tiles than the Vraylar).

My mood has gone from moderately depressed all the time to actually feeling ok. That is a big improvement over the severely depressed that got this med change rolling. I was scared that the medication was going to make me a zombie and mess with my short/long term memory. It hasn't. This is a very good thing because while I was in that severely depressed/too anxious to function state, I didn't keep track of things like my blood sugar and other health details that I need to so that I can stay on top of my conditions. (Fortunately, my glucometer has a function that it saves the information. I'm still filling it into my planner just in case this thing goes wonky like the last one.)

My memory from the severely depressed/too anxious to function state is shot. It's pretty much all brain fog from about mid March up to when this med change started taking effect. Beloved tells me that the brain fog is my mind protecting me from the pain that I was in during that period. It makes sense but is aggravating at the same time. Fortunately, I do have one thing that I can use to help reconstruct what was going on during that time, my morning journal. I wasn't writing anywhere else, but I had my daily entries. Most of them were about how tired I was, how guilty I felt for not getting stuff done, and my terror over things like the idea that someone was going to come and destroy my family. The entries after I had my medications adjusted were about more typical daily stuff, the change was just about immediate.

So, that's where things stand right now. I got really bad for a while. I got help. Now I am not only functional but I feel alive and like I can tolerate what the world throws at me.

The computer has died, long live the computer.

 Three days after my last post, my old laptop computer took a dirt nap. It still turns on but runs so slow and is so glitchy that it might as well be a paperweight. I had the foresight to back up everything important to a thumb-drive. I am, however, still trying to wrap my head around this new model of laptop. I rather hate the touchpad. It is super sensitive and will just start to respond if my hand is even near it while typing. 

It is a Windows10 machine. I noped out of a bunch of features that were supposed to help me be productive through anonymous data sharing. I wasn't pleased that it randomly installed a new browser when it updated. It is, however, Windows and I've been using Windows machines since Windows3.1.1 so I'm familiar with their brand of fuckery. I'm still learning the ins and outs of Windows 10. The old machine was a Windows 8 that they tried to force update to a 10 when 10 initially came out. I noped out of that pretty hard. I heard lots of fishy things about 10 and people's data being used surreptitiously. 

Now, however, I don't have much of a choice. Either I use 10 and hope that nobody steals my data when I'm not looking or I have to learn how to use a whole new operating system. As somebody who has anxiety about technology, the prospect of learning how to use a whole new operating system kinda freaks me out. Hell, when I got my first smart phone, I was worried that if I hit the wrong button I'd blow something up. (I'm still figuring out how to use the damn smart phone and I'm now on the second version of what I had. Just about everything's the same but I still have no clue what the fuck I'm doing.)

I don't know what we're going to do with the old computer. Beloved is pretty sure there's no way to save it. When he says that it's toast, I believe him. He works with these kinds of things for a living and can spot critical system failures long before I do. Ironically, the same time that the old laptop died, the bluetooth mouse that I was using because the old laptop's touchpad wasn't working (there was an update and then the touchpad became nonfunctional) died. I was going to plug in the wired mouse that I have except there's one small problem. All of the USB ports are on the left side of the computer. I am not left handed nor am I ambidextrous. This problem, however, is really an annoyance in the grand scheme of things.

As I was in the process of logging back into websites and such, I scared the hell out of myself. One of the sites that I have been publishing books through, when I logged in, seemed to have all of my books missing. I freaked out, cried a little bit, and then, after Beloved calmed me down, got into contact with tech support. That was when it became clear that I had been using a different id to use the site for publishing than the one I used for purchasing via that site in the past. The kindly tech support person helped me get back into the correct account and all my books were still there. I'd have sent them a reply email saying thank you for your help but I know that it would be taking time away from someone else's open help ticket.

So, that's what's been going on over here for the last few days. Mental health update will be in the next post. That's been a trip.

Med change: Day 4

 I think we're going to switch when I take this pill to the evening. I wake up groggy and somewhat functional. Then the pills kick in and it's nap time along with a heap of brain fog. My anxiety has been quelled to a significant degree. My mood is meh but that's an improvement over where it was. I think once this stuff hits full effect in about a week and a half, I'll be doing better than I am right now.

My guts have been in utter rebellion for the last week. I don't know if this is because of the side effects of the medication, stress, or the vaccine. It has been really uncomfortable. On top of this, it happens to be that magical time of the month where my uterus decides to try to perform origami on itself. I haven't had the side effect of feeling like I need to eat everything in the house, like I did the last time the dosage went up. My blood sugar is still within reasonable levels. On the nights that I actually get a full night of sleep, it actually looks pretty good.

Sleep and I are not having a good time. It is hard to fall asleep and when I do get to sleep, it is still a bit of a mixed bag as to how well I sleep. From what I can recall, I'm not having horrific nightmares. At the same time, I am not waking up rested most mornings. Given that I am getting  5+ hours of sleep a night, I don't know what's going on. Again, switching this med to bed time again may solve this problem as well. I've increased the amount of melatonin that I am taking at bed time and it doesn't seem to be making much of a difference. My doctor said that I can go as high as 40 mg with out there being negative issues. So, I might try that tonight to see if I actually wake up feeling rested. Who knows, maybe this will work.

Med change: Day 2

 Now the doctor changed two thing here. First was what time I take one of my medications and the second was the dosage of said medication. I'm sitting here feeling completely spaced out and exhausted. This is some of the side effects of the medication. I am having difficulty concentrating because of how spaced out I am feeling. 

Mood wise, I think things are improving. I noticed that my passive self-harm ideation that has been with me for forever is gone. I keep waiting to consciously tell myself that I can't do XYZ because it's not good for me, but it's not happening. It feels like waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm sure I'll get used to it. The negative self talk has gone down significantly.

Sleep is a mixed bag. The new medication to help me fall asleep is not working quite as expected. But the higher dosage of melatonin is helpful. Things are still getting tweaked and sorted out. At least the horrific nightmares have stopped. They ranged from being buried in live insects (I am utterly repulsed by the sensation of insects walking on my skin.) to dreaming of rodents chewing my fingertips off. I woke up a few times last night, but, as I said, we're still getting this sorted out. My dreams last night were boringly mundane like of washing an endless pile of dishes or sorting a billion kid socks.

Progress is happening. I had thought that I'd bounce back from this med change in a few days. I forgot it takes about a week to see how it's going to go. So, I get to be spaced out and loopy for a week. This is going to be interesting.

Insomnia can die in a fire.

 Yep, 0500 and I am awake. This keeps happening throughout the night for the last few weeks. Posted from my phone so I don't wake up everyone. I hate this. I woke up three times before now. And now, I just give up. Because fuck my brain issues.