Dear Hacker.

I honestly am amused and almost flattered that you attempted to hijack my account. Kindly go fuck yourself and may a plague of fleas infest your crotch.

Operation Clean for the Holidays is GO!

I have begun the process of deep cleaning the apartment for the holidays. I'm not really expecting too many visitors. Most of my friends live a good ways off and it is something of a hike to come visit. Still, there is this ingrained thing from my childhood that before the holiday decorations can go up, the home must be utterly clean. Something of a challenge with two prepubescent boys, but they're even getting into this idea.

My brain is misfiring presently. I'm pretty sure that Beloved was right when he said that I seemed to be entering a mixed episode. I feel like crap and I want to sleep. At the same time, I feel incredible pressure to do ALL THE THINGS. I have the kitchen pretty close to clean. I spent my day yesterday cleaning. I was going to do a blog post on here but I just got into this cleaning groove and worked on the kitchen. I scrubbed up dishes, wiped down the stove and the sink. I put away a small pile of toys that were just kicking around the room. I did a bunch of things.

The room looks a lot better, but it's not quite done yet. Today, I am going to attempt to finish it up. Tomorrow, I scrub the bathroom. I'm not looking forward to that task. For some reason I can not fathom, I can't manage to get the tub fully clean. I have my orange based cleaning stuff that I am going to try. If that doesn't work, I may have to go get a can of scouring powder and do it the old fashioned way. That orange based cleaning spray usually can clean most everything up. It was an accidental find years ago at Dollar General. I haven't been able to find it since.

Also on my list of things to get done today is to finish my planning of yule presents. I feel sad that my night vision issues keeps me from attending the yule vigil party hosted by my friends out in Buffalo. I am thinking about doing a nice dinner and inviting a few folks over on the Solstice. It depends on how stable I am and what I can accomplish between now and then. 

Inbound Winter Storm?

Last night, I got an alert on my phone's weather app that we were under a winter storm adivsory. It was going to go from  4 am to around 3 pm today. It's been extended to 7 pm tomorrow. It's raining right now. I don't know what that means for later today. We're mostly prepared for being stuck in the house if we get a legit winter storm. I may fill up a few pitchers with water just to be on the safe side. Thankfully, Beloved got all the shopping done yesterday despite the stores being pure chaos.

NaNoWriMo finished yesterday. My book is not finished. It is not anywhere close to finished. I don't know if I am going to get it done during Camp NaNoWriMo or if I am just going to peck at it over the next few months. Final word count for the month is 101 k. All of this started of as a stupid piece of fan fiction featuring characters I developed for a LARP. I thought it was going to finish up at 30k. I was completely wrong. I started at 20k. So, I wrote 80k over the month despite my depression and things like family responsibilities.

I have been struggling in other areas, though. I keep forgetting to update my food log for the last month. Stuff just keeps happening and I get caught up in trying to get things done. I forget to write down what I ate, but I am careful to stay within my carb limits so it isn't a complete disaster. I forgot to fill in my daily planner over the month. This makes two months now that I've done this. Beloved said that this isn't typically like me. Usually, I am right on top of keeping things organized and keeping my records. I've been really depressed over the last few months. Not to the point of suicidal thoughts but it's been hard.

NaBloPoMo 30

I did it. I made it to the end of the month posting every day on here. I feel like most of what I was posting was pointless rambling. This blog, however, is not focused on promoting books or something else like that. I'm going to attempt to keep up the daily posts. Now, however, I have to start coming up with titles. Because NaBloPoMo ends today. That's going to be the hard part.

The kids are playing and talking RIGHT behind me and they keep getting louder. It is exceedingly annoying. I'm doing my light therapy right now. I feel like changing the type font on this post is making it easier to read. I think I may need to schedule an appointment with my optometrist because the default font setting is getting hard for me to read with out my reading glasses. And the laptop is sitting at a distance where my reading glasses shouldn't be necessary.

I don't know what to write on this blog. I've been depressed and anxious. That is improving somewhat with medication and this light therapy stuff. But I find myself feeling like I have nothing of value to post here for y'all to read. So, I go quiet for long stretches of time. NaBloPoMo was an attempt to fix that.

I'm trying to reestablish the habit of blogging daily across all of my blogs. Having my brain telling me that it is a worthless effort and nothing but vanity makes that pretty hard. NaNoWriMo was another attempt to reestablish the habit of working on my books on a daily basis. That's just gone off the rails. The goal for NaNoWriMo is to write a story that is 50k words long. I'm almost at 101k words long and the story has no end in sight. I'm going to keep working on this in an effort to actually finish the damn story. But I think I'm going to take a break from it for a little bit.

The holidays have just begun and I have things I want to do for them. I want to get the kids each a little chocolate advent calendar. I want to do the 12 days of yule with them. And I want to find away to do some manner of small gifts every day of yule for my husband as well. I'm just stumped as to what to do.

Typing this up in the Courier font is very nostalgic for me. It brings up memories of using a typewriter. It reminds me of the countless term papers I wrote in college. It reminds me of the first book I ever wrote. I have some fondness for this type font. Not everyone uses it. It is somewhat dated. Times New Roman has become the standard blog and web page font. I think, however, I am going to start using Courier on this blog at least because it is easier for me to read.

NaBloPoMo 29

I don't know what to write at the moment. I am tired. It's almost seven in the morning and I am doing my light therapy. I'm not the biggest fan of this. I feel like I am just wasting time sitting here with the lamp on. I am tired and I want to go sleep. At the same time, I don't think I will have a better opportunity than now to do my blog posting. Thanksgiving was yesterday and we went to Beloved's parents' house. It was good to see everybody. Food still caused me some angst but I had brought a dish that was diabetic friendly and was careful not to eat too much.

NaBloPoMo 28

Here's some music I have been listening to as I have been working on my novel:

Heilung (random stuff from their top listener picks)
Helisir  (random stuff from their top listener picks)
Peter Gundry's Volur album
Medieval Ambient playlist on Spotify
The Chieftains' The Best of the Chieftains album
My Writing playlist on Spotify
Wardruna (random stuff from their top listener picks)

NaBloPoMo 27

One thing I can say about NaBloPoMo is that it gets my post count up on here. It sort of gets me back to daily blogging on here, which I did more of when I was employed. Right now, I'm super anxious about the holidays. I have nothing made for people. I want to do something special for the 13 days of yule. I want to go out to the yule party that my friends are having. But so much is getting in the way. Most of it being psychological stuff on my part. I've become afraid to go away from home where I have everything I need to manage my diabetes stuff. I've become afraid to drive at night because my eyes have become more light sensitive due to my medications and my diabetes. That makes my night vision even more horrid, and it wasn't that great to begin with.

I miss my friends but my anxiety tells me that I have nothing of value to say in any conversations and that I shouldn't even bother with social media. I am still going no contact with the majority of my side of the family, which is depressing. At the same time, there's enough toxicity there from certain relatives to make those gatherings as safe as playing in radioactive waste. I keep feeling guilty for this. I know that going no contact was a hard decision. I changed my mind for a period while my grandparents were dealing with end of life stuff. Or should I say, my familial dead harassed me until I did so by insisting "the family needs you".

Now we're looking at things like how to help Beloved's parents in the event of end of life complications. It's kicking up a lot of complicated feelings. The hardest part is the waves of guilt that I feel that I am not doing any of this for my parents. But things are ... complicated there. And we simply don't have the spoons to handle that complicated mess on top of everything else going on in our lives.

I have seasonal affective disorder on top of bipolar. The Vraylar has done wonders for keeping my mood stable with the bipolar. But the seasonal affective disorder is really kicking me in the head right now. Throw in the guilt for decisions I've made to protect my family from the toxicity of my birth family and the anxiety that I have over communicating with people on anything deeper than a surface level right now... well, let's just say that Thanksgiving is going to suck for more reasons than the fact that I won't be able to eat most of what's on the table. (Which makes me depressed as well. I just can't win on this front.)

NaBloPoMo 26

I am weary and yet I have so much I need to do. There is just not enough time in the day. I know exactly why I am so damn tired. It is a side effect of one of my psychiatric medications. It just happens to be the one keeping my mood relatively stable right now, so I can't exactly skip it. I'm am feeling cold and kinda miserable right now. I confess, I took a break in the middle of writing this to take a half hour nap. I'm a little less weary right now. But I can't stand how cold I feel. I'm tempted to turn up the thermostat but that's just a silly idea.

So, I have a blanket across my lap and I'm wearing one of my warm sweaters. I'd say that I am going to get some benefit from drinking my coffee, but that has gone cold. I hate being cold. It reminds me of how I could never get warm in the winter in my parents' house because the place was so drafty. I got another haircut Saturday. I didn't go quite as short last time. I think, however, after this cut, I am going to allow my hair to grow out long again. There's more grey in my hair than there was at the last haircut. Beloved says that it's likely due to stress.

I am not sure how I feel about the grey hair when I have friends who haven't any and are the same age. It makes me feel like I look older than I really am. In my seasonal depressed state, I find myself thinking about opportunities lost and friendships that have fallen by the wayside. I look back and find myself yearning for when I was in my 20s. I was healthier in a number of ways. I was more social. I don't know how to recapture that. Because there's literally nothing stopping me except myself from being more social and getting more exercise.

It's not laziness but social phobia (which has gotten worse over the last few years), a screwed up sleep cycle due to bipolar and seasonal affective disorder, and executive function issues because of all of the above. It doesn't help that I keep comparing myself to other people who don't have these things on their plate to deal with and going "I should be able to do this. I should be able to power through and get that daily exercise done and still stay on top of all of my other things."

My weight is stable at 180 but my pants size is not the same as it was two years ago and I was at this weight. I think the fact that my pants size is smaller means that I have gained muscle. I want to drop somewhere between twenty and thirty pounds over the next year. That's roughly one and a half to two and a half pounds lost per month. I know that when I was in my 20s, I had a job that had me walking 4 miles every day round trip to and home. Beloved's noted that approximately 5k is three trips down to the far stop light and back. I am considering taking up a walking regimen that's more like what Beloved did as he started training for that big run a few years back. Part of my problem is I get bored. In the dead of winter, I am not going to be able to bring my spinning or my knitting to keep me entertained as I walk. And it will be cold out.

It will be the dead of winter when I start this. When the kids go back to school after winter break, I'm going to start walking while they're at school. No one shovels the single sidewalk that we have here. So, I will definitely be wearing my hiking boots and probably using a walking stick to navigate the frequent icy spots along the way. I'd go over to the park but I'm fairly sure that the grounds crew are not shoveling the paths then. I suppose I'll find out when I get over there.

NaBloPoMo No. 25

Linen stitch (crochet)

Starting chain: 30 stitches + 2

Row 1: Skip first stitch, single crochet into second stitch, chain one. Skip next stitch. Single crochet into fourth stitch. *Chain one. Skip next stitch. SC into following stitch.* Repeat * across the row, ending on a single crochet stitch. Chain two.

Row 2 - ?: Skip first stitch. SC into chain space. *Chain one. SC into chain space.* Repeat * across the row. Final SC into the loop made by the two chain stitches from turning last row. Chain two.

Repeat row 2 until piece is as long as desired. If a wider or narrower piece is desired, starting chain must be a multiple of 2 plus the 2 chain stitches for turning your work.

Final row: Work row 2 as per usual. Bind off at final SC in the loop made by the turning chain from the previous row.

This stitch works up on plain yarn looking somewhat woven in effect. With variegated yarns it is possible to get something like an argyle pattern out of the color pooling effects.

NaBloPoMo 24

I'm bored. I just am unable to wrap up plot lines and get this story to a satisfactory conclusion. I'm at 90 k words (that's 132 pages) and I just got to one of my major plot points that I had planned. I am again at this point where I feel like I'm just churning out word vomit and no story. I am dreading going on social media because I don't know what to say. I am still depressed but I have a little more energy. I don't know if that means this light therapy stuff is working or not. This is also the week of Thanksgiving and there's a whole lot of stuff surrounding it that is just painful.

I am dreading this week.

NaBloPoMo 23

Thanksgiving break is in four days. I am not prepared. The kids want to go visit cousins and I'm having a hard time getting a hold of people. I just wish that Thanksgiving wasn't a thing this way I didn't have to worry about what food I can eat and if I make a special dish for myself that everyone's going to love it and I get a few bites at best of what I had planned to eat for my carb load for that meal.

I am struggling to keep up with housework. Some of this is my seasonal affective disorder. Some of this is my attempting to finish a novel this month. Most of it is the fact that I look at the sheer volume of housework that needs done, this meme has been my brain. I'm exhausted and depressed. I just don't have the spoons for everything I want to do and I don't know how I'm going to get any handmade yule presents done this year. I have been struggling for ideas. I hate to say it,but I think this is going to be a year where we are buying.

NaBloPoMo 22

Basic knit scarf:

Cast On 30 stitches.

Knit three rows.

*Wrong Side: Knit three stitches, purl twenty four stitches, knit three stitches.

Right side: Knit all stitches.*

Repeat * until desired length. 

Knit three rows. Bind off knit-wise.

NaBloPoMo 21

Election season started early this year. The field looks like garbage. So, here's another option for you to consider. Pyromaniac cows.

NaBloPoMo 20

So, there's controversy in the Filianic community. I weighed in and now there are figures backpedaling and saying that I have taken what they said out of context. I suppose it was a matter of time until this happened. I kicked over a rock and all things come skittering out. I'm weighing how to respond.

I don't know why this keeps happening. I get involved with a community. At some point some hoity-toity garbage gets spewed and I can't help but respond. It's a visceral 'wait a second, that's weapons grade bullshit going on" response. At the same time, I've gotten an anonymous question in my ask box inquiring if my position on TERFs (trans-exclusive radical feminists) remains the same. I have a feeling that my "down to earth" style of communication may wind up with my getting asked to leave the community.

I am of a bad feeling that this is going to go like the last time I got involved with a "organized" group of witches. Someone says something that sets off my bullshit radar. I speak up. They get into a collective snit because I called out someone that they decided was above being called out. And I either get booted from the group or the situation becomes hostile enough that I just leave so I don't have to deal with their shenanigans.

There were people, back when the TERFs matter initially came up a few months ago, who tried to argue that we should be tolerant of TERFs. I blasted that argument to pieces with scripture quotes and logic. This time around, it was logic and a linguistics lesson. I'm sorry, but when their sources say that the term "lady" means "loaf kneader" and "lord" means "loaf warder", I have to correct that. I love the English language too much to let that slide.

NaBloPoMo 19

It is a cruel and bitter irony that yesterday, I woke up feeling rested and ready to take on the world, whereas today I am exhausted. I forgot to take my evening medications on Sunday. I woke up several times in the night, had some surreal dreams that I couldn't quite chalk up as nightmares but just confusing, and laid there worrying about some of the most random things before I fell a sleep Sunday. Last night, I woke up a couple times but I slept most of the night. And here I am, ready to crawl back into bed and sleep.

I hate these damn pills. I hate that I need them to function. I hate the guilt I feel for taking them and questioning if I am a 'druggie' for it. Being a 'druggie' was being one of the lowest of all people in the eyes of my parents. They didn't care if you legitimately needed the medication. They tried to talk me out of vaccinating my children because of how entrenched their loathing of medication has become over the years.

NaBloPoMo 18

I'm out of coffee. It is a bit before 7:30 am and I'm doing my light therapy thing. I think I have figured out the correct angle for this thing not to be causing my eyes a lot of grief. My eldest child is off at school and it is almost time for us to go out and wait for the bus for my youngest child. My NaNoWriMo story still has no title because I wasn't able to think of a good one. I'm up to 70k for my word count. This thing is going to probably end up somewhere in the range of 100k when I finally get it done.

NaBloPoMo 17

So, I finally have my planner for this month set up. We're only half way through the month. Not a big deal, right? I have done nothing with my writing bullet journal. I have done very little journal writing. I have been focused on NaNoWriMo in an attempt to just finish one damn story. I am getting frustrated with it because it is taking me so long to get through plot development points. It's like playing a game and you don't get to choose to take the side quests or continue on the main quest, you automatically take every side quest.

It is almost as mentally fatiguing as trying to figure out the right way to finish book seven. This thing I'm working started as fan fiction. It has turned into gods only know what now. I think that working on this is giving me ideas for how to solve some of my book seven problems.

I'm not a big fan of this light therapy lamp but I'm using it anyways with the hope that it will do some good for me. It still gives me a mild headaches and makes my eyes unhappy.  After using it, I don't come away from the experience feeling energized and ready to take on the day. I find myself tired, still, and ready to take a nap. It makes me wonder if I am using this thing right.

NaBloPoMo 16: meme edition

NaBloPoMo 15

I am now at 71k on my project. I still have no idea what I am doing. But, hey, I finally hit one of my vague plot points. I've been struggling to have the discipline to sit down and write for the big word count days like I had back in the beginning of the month.

It is less a question of motivation and more a question of how to deal with my frustration with this project. I'm still at about the middle of the story, it seems. And when I am at this point, I feel like I am writing garbage and no one's going to want to read this thing. It happens every time. I suppose it is like second sock syndrome in knitting or crochet. You get one sock done and then you must summon up the energy to get the second one finished.

I'm still working out the ideal placement of my light therapy lamp. Right now, it is sitting on top of the stand holding the router and modem that is on the desk. It sort of works. I really have no idea what I am doing with this. I haven't seen much of a change in my mood right now. It takes around two weeks using it for the first signs of a change in mood shows up.

NaBloPoMo 14

I don't like my special SAD light. It hurts my eyes and I can't manage to find the right way to position it so that it doesn't. I can't help feeling that I am missing some crucial part of the process here and that is why I am struggling with how to use it properly.