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.

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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.