Monday, just one more grueling day.

On the kids's side of things, today was just tiring. They were somewhat fussy about their meals, but they don't exactly enjoy fresh veggies. Cuddle Bear decided that the only way he was going to eat raw carrots was if they were dipped in barbecue sauce. I decided I didn't care and gave him some. Snuggle Bug ate all of my grapes. I'm a bit disappointed, but at least he decided he was going to eat something healthy.

Tomorrow, I suspect they are going to be cranky about cereal for breakfast again. I just don't know how to make donuts. If I did, I would make them for the kids. It seems to be their absolute favorite thing to eat for breakfast. I am considering buying a baking tray that looks like it makes min-bunt cakes and whipping up a bunch of them and calling it good enough.

We have loads of laundry that need put away. I look at it and feel bad about it all. Which then turns into my desperately trying to ignore them until the end of the day where I can't avoid them any more. It is a vicious cycle that eventually turns to piles of clean vs dirty laundry about the apartment. It's about as pleasant as my mood roller coaster.

My mood is still down. I'm still super anxious about everything. I'm on the hunt for a new psychiatrist and probably a new therapist. The combination of 'just think happy thoughts' and 'it's not as bad as you're saying it is.' attitudes I'm getting from the clinic has me feeling even worse. I am trying to get over this fear that a new psychiatrist would decide that I am too much of a problem client and try to shuffle me out the door on a boatload more medications rather than help me.

I have not been having good days regarding self image, unsurprisingly. I realized this evening, however, I need to start wearing my new heels if I am going to have them broken in enough so that I'm not walking around on blistered feet at K&R's wedding. I'm still quietly going "OH GODS WHAT DO I WEAR!?!" never mind the fact that Beloved helped me narrow things down to two possible options.

I am really getting tired of this social phobia telling me that whatever I pick is going to be the wrong thing.

Burning out.

Today was a long and exhausting day. I spent 90% of it cleaning and directing the kids in cleaning. After all of this work, the toys are now sorted out. The books are all organized on their shelves. The toybox is full and sitting in its proper location. The extra blankets are stowed in the kids' chests. We got a lot of stuff done. Looking around the room, though, it doesn't feel like we did. Thinks were relatively picked up this morning.

I tripped over a few toys as I was walking across the room and saw a bin full of just random stuff. I got angry. Then I started cleaning. The kids were confused when I dumped out the toybox. They were even more confused when I insisted that they couldn't just throw anything in there. It was a painful process to sort all of their toys. They didn't like it. I didn't like it. But it was something that hadn't been done in over two years. When things started to shape up as how they were going to get put away, it got easier.

I'm glad that I saved those stupid McDonald's halloween buckets. I used four of them. Two to hold dinosaurs and random animals. One to hold knock off transformer toys (which were in happy meals originally) and one to hold all of the action figures they've got. We have three gallon sized bins full of toy cars and an additional fleet stowed neatly beneath a shelf and a table, mostly. I have recycled a large box that held pullups to hold large dinosaur toys and large action figures. I also recycled a slightly smaller box to hold stuffed animals.

The big innovation was taking the box that Cuddle Bear's toy weed wacker came in and turning it into a shelf on the wall. Instead of holding the weed wacker, it is full of small stuffed animals. The whole affair is light enough that it can stay up with three anchor points. The other innovation came from taking a box that the electric grill came in and cutting it up to make a 'tool box' out of it. Between the two tool boxes they had to begin with and this third one, they have 90% of their toy hand tools put away underneath their toy workbench. Sitting on top of it is the rubber work belt that came with it (with tools in their respective places) and a handful of others with it.

I have folded up the extra blankets that the kids kept shoving around on their beds and put them in the base of their chests from Grandpa M. When they went to bed, they didn't notice the blankets missing. Maybe we can manage to get to the beginning of cool weather before they come back out. I don't know. It did make for them to have an easier time making their beds. (This is a new thing. The kids mess up the sheets on their beds and, in the past, we fixed them. Now they are taking responsibility for it. The results thus far have been mixed. Hopefully putting the blankets away, this will make for more positive results.)

Their brand-name Transformers toys are sitting on top of their bookcase. The extra large ones are in back against the wall. The smaller ones are towards the front, where they are easier to access. Snuggle Bug broke Cuddle Bear's new one this afternoon, so I took away his more complicated version of Bumblebee. We'll see if he bears this in mind when he is sharing with his brother. If he breaks his brother's brand new transformer again, I believe that I will have to put them up for a bit. As it stands, we are missing one somewhere. In all of our cleaning, we have not found it. I suspect it is under the couch, which we did not touch today.

I didn't get the kitchen clean. I ran out of energy for that. I didn't get any laundry put away. And I have a pile of mail that I really need to go through but I am apprehensive about it all. I look back over the day today and I realize that in some respects today's big business of going through the toys was a form of procrastination. Because why procrastinate in a small way when you can go huge, right? Thus, tomorrow morning, I think I will do a 'bad mommy' thing and let the kids watch cartoons as I go through the mail, balance the checkbook, pay bills, and make official phone calls.

I'm super anxious about looking for a new psychiatrist. I'm afraid that they're going to look at my file from where I have been getting services and take the abject nonsense that these people have written as gospel and ignore what I have to say about it all. Money anxiety is taking a backseat to this.

Fuck Bipolar

I haven't been well. My silence over the last little while may have lead some of you who know me intimately to suspect this. I am ... angry. This is on top of the lingering depression problem. It has not been too the extent that I believe it is necessary for me to go into the hospital. It has, however, been enough that it makes getting my household duties done difficult. It has made getting out of the apartment and being in the community difficult. All the little things that my therapist says I should be going out and doing right now, I am really struggling to do it.

I have had this happen before. I mentioned it to my psych nurse way back in Spring. I think I posted something about how well that went. My kids were on spring break. She thought that putting me on another SSRI was a great idea. I went from depressed to suicidal in the span of about 3 days and then I was in the hospital for about a week while they fixed my medications. At that time, one of the psychiatrists that was treating me asked me how long I had been on the combination of Seroquel and Geodon. I explained I had been taking it for about 7 years. Cue him being offended and all around not happy. He was particularly not happy with the fact that my dosage was so high.

Next thing I know, I was taken off of a LOT of medication. I felt a bit better. A little time goes by and the mild sense of dysphoria grew more intense. I say something to my psych nurse. She tells me that my moods are not really fluctuating, it was just life happening. She tells me that my problem is the stress that comes from being with the kids when they are on break is causing my depressive symptoms. After a few months of this nonsense, she says 'well, let's increase your seroquel.' I voiced my concerns about this because upping my dosage of antipsychotics really didn't do anything to stabilize my mood, unless you counted mild zombification as stabilized.

At which point, she says that I'm being overly anxious and triples my prescription for Ativan. This all happens Monday this week. I start taking the 300mg Seroquel and problems become apparent. My coordination is off hard core. I was stumbling like I was intoxicated. When I got out of bed, I nearly brained myself on the door jamb which is a few feet away from the foot of the bed. It was awful. I couldn't walk across the room with out tripping (and this was with out kids toys in the way). I was exhausted and I had a massive headache. But, the part that really disturbed me is my vision changed. My close range vision is blurry now. My moderate distant range vision is what my close range vision was before (I have a mild astigmatism in my left eye so things are a bit fuzzy). And, things have a bit of a halo about them.

Cue a panicked call to my pharmacist who says that is all an indication that I am on too much and I should call my dr stat. Call the psych nurse and I don't get an answer back until the end of the day, despite the fact that all three of the messages I left clearly conveyed my distress over the situation. She says that we're going to press on with the increase in the antipsychotic, stating it will be a 50mg increase before a 100mg increase. (Originally, I was on 200 mg of Seroquel. Which I got put on when it became apparent that the Geodon was losing effectiveness as a mood stabilizer. And I was put on that when the Seroquel in the past was losing effectiveness as a mood stabilizer. And before that, I was on both meds ... and the drama and bullshit just goes back to when I began dealing with these people.)

So, Beloved and I discussed it. I was upset and afraid. We decided that I was going to go back to the 200mg dosage. The mind fog lifted to a significant extent, the coordination issues cleared up, but the vision issues remained. I tried again today to get ahold of my psych nurse. No one called me back from her office. So, I called my general practitioner. I gave the nurse I spoke to a quick rundown of the situation so I will be going in on Monday to figure out what the fuck we're going to do.

In the mean time, I'm going to feel like shit, be frustrated because I can't see properly, and want to crawl into a hole and hide from everything.

Fuck this bipolar business with a rusty chainsaw.

August. Woo.

The dry weather has been pretty hard on my plants. but, you can see that I did get a little bit out of my garden. On the left is a chocolate mint, in the center is an orange mint, and on the right is a sweet mint. And at the extreme right is Billy (aka Snuggle Bug) showing off his new trucks.

We have begun the process of acquiring school supplies. I am graciously sharing two of the super cute pencil erasers that I found out at the store. Going by the school's lists, we're all set for the first day. The boys each have new backpacks. because the bottom seams were looking worn. I discovered that I had a stock pile of supplies left over from last year when I was cleaning. So, I brought them over for Gin's girls to have.

I'm WAAAAY behind on my knitting stuff for the holidays. I am, however, pretty much set on what we're doing for the wedding present to Katie and Roger. I'm partially finished with the gift I am making for J&J's wedding anniversary. And, in the midst of all of this, I'm left struggling to think of something that would be a good present for Beloved.

Why emotionally blackmail someone over stuff?

I confess, I have a few guilty pleasures in my blog reading. There is a mommy blogger who tends to have recipes that are usually pretty awesome and I find some humor in her chattering about life at large. While I do my best to avoid the mommy brigade, there are a few that I read because their writing style entertains me and I usually find them a point of light on a dark day. So, I was disappointed when I saw her triumphant post about how she finally managed to get her spouse to throw away his childhood baseball card collection after harassing him over it for 19 years.

I get that she wants her house to have as little waste as possible. I get that she wants to have as few nicknacks to clean up as possible. I even can appreciate the frustration of someone in your family collecting things that you don't understand the appeal for and get irritated upon the sight of them. All of these sentiments I can empathize with and appreciate. At some point in time, I have had them myself or been the object of this sort of feeling.

Those feelings don't give me free reign to pick at my spouse over the hobbies he has. They don't give me the right to tell him 'you're a grown up now, get rid of this childish stuff.' That is simply beyond the pale. I don't dictate who my husband is (aka how 'childish' or 'adult' he is) and I don't get to tell him that his hobbies are bad if they're not harming anyone or causing us problems in our ability to take care of our children, home, responsibilities, or marriage. A few binders full of cards is not a problem.

I'm sorry, but if you are going to take the position that the equivalent of a photo album is enough of a problem in your household that you have to harass your spouse about getting rid of them for an extended length of time, you've got a big problem and it isn't that photo album. Telling someone that they're immature or that they're childish because of what they enjoy is harmful to them. You are telling them that there is something WRONG with them because they're doing something that makes them happy and YOU are uncomfortable with it because it doesn't meet YOUR expectations of what and adult is supposed to be like. You are the problem here.

Because you don't get to tell your spouse WHO THEY ARE. Full stop. You are attempting to dictate elements of their personality and psyche on the basis of arbitrary bullshit and your level of discomfort with the way they fit into your arbitrary bullshit generator. If your uncomfortable with your spouse's hobby but it isn't doing you any harm beyond making you mildly uncomfortable with how you perceive their maturity level, you need to fix your issue. A pack of cards does not dictate the maturity level of the person possessing them. Additionally, a pack of cards does not dictate a damn thing about the state of your home other than the fact that you or someone in your home owns a pack of fucking cards.

The world is full of ugly, horrific things. If your spouse finds joy in little things and it is not causing problems in their ability to meet their responsibilities, provide emotional support, or otherwise be a partner in your relationship, then you need to suck it up and deal with the fact that they are going to find joy in things that are not going to appeal to you. You don't get to dictate what is 'grown up' and attempting to do so is going to cause emotional damage to your spouse and undermine their sense of self esteem.

I'll rephrase that into something a little more concise.

Your bullshit behavior over a pack of cards is emotional abuse. You are telling them that they're not good enough as who they are. You don't get to do that. You are not the gatekeeper of what is an acceptable adult. You are not the gatekeeper of who is an acceptable person.

The only person you get to make those kinds of decisions for are yourself.

And if you can't handle someone getting some happiness out of a pack of cards that has some warm, fuzzy emotional memories attached to them, then you need to acquire some emotional and psychological fortitude because this kind of crap is what dooms long term relationships.

So, yeah, after 19 years you managed to brow beat your husband into getting rid of his momentos from his happier childhood days. Good job. Next, are you going to start telling your kids to throw away their favorite belongings because you've decided they're too old to do what makes THEM happy too?

Long day is Long.

This heat and humidity is making me miserable. I am tired because it is hard to sleep from it. I did a ton of laundry but I feel like I accomplished nothing. Which is perverse because I managed to keep the kids out of the really high heat, entertained, and engaged in educational activity with out spending a whole lot of money. (That's a hard thing to do it seems judging from what I see lots of other folks posting about their summer.)

I narrowly dodged the migraine that was threatening this afternoon. Beloved was awesome and he watched the kids while I took a cool shower. Between that, a dose of aleve, and a hefty amount of coffee, I just had a bad headache for a few hours. I wish it was that easy to avoid migraines other times. I didn't do any walking outside today really because it was so horribly hot. (My friends from the tropics, the desert, and pretty much anywhere else that has temperatures of 90+, I recognize I am a lightweight compared to y'all.)

My mood has been going back and forth between cranky and upset. I think part of the problem is just the physical discomfort of all this heat. I am pretty sure that I would also be a bit less upset with things if I wasn't premenstrual. I am still having some difficulty sleeping and not having intrusive thoughts pertaining to the murders that happened last week. It has brought up a mess of unresolved stuff pertaining to things like when my uncle was murdered as well.

It's just been rough.

Did some crafting.

Today was tiring. I went out to my sister in law's bridal shower. It was ok. I had a nice time cuddling a little baby and chatting with two other young mothers. I was pleased to see that my present was well received. It was a bride's emergency kit with pretty much everything needed in case of a wardrobe malfunction. I also gave her a fancy white lace parasol. And a sampler.

I have spent my evening looking at mindless things on the internet. I did a little playing around with jewelry supplies and made the necklace I'm holding above. It is a gold filigree cage holding two pearls and a raw bit of garnet on a gold chain. I'm hoping that I won't have problems with having a bad reaction to the necklace or the pendant. It is gold plated onto copper. I have some issues with plated metals.

The sampler above was the highlight, in my opinion. For some reason, everyone was surprised by the lace parasol that I found for her. (The pic was from when I finished the thing.) It was really quick to work up. I am presently working on another embroidered item. I have a little surprise that I'm making for my mother-in-law. Because the mother of the bride should have something special as well.

As Seen on Facebook

ok i am going to make some people angry. i will be honest, i don't give a damn if it does right now either.

people should not be gunned down by law enforcement if they are not actively shooting or putting people in a state where their life and limb are in danger. stuff can be replaced, so property damage is something i give functionally no fucks about in this case. why? because you can not replace a person. when someone is dead, they're a corpse.

i know there are people who are pro-law enforcement. that's cool. law enforcement serves an important role in our society and, when functioning properly helps everyone. there are a lot of good cops out there who, i suspect, are mad as hell about the stuff that the bad cops do. i'm pretty sure that there are people who would be happy to take the ones who make the rest of them look bad out behind the woodshed for a long conversation via morse code and a bit of applied force.

my problem is not with the good cops. my problem is with the society that says that this crap of people dying in police custody is acceptable. my problem is with the society that says if you have any sort of arrest record, you deserve brutality because you must clearly be guilty and deserve all forms of systemic oppression because you were arrested at one point for something. my problem is with the society that says that if you were, gods forbid, ever imprisoned for something that you are worth less than everyone else because you must continue to pay for your crimes long after the courts say you're done. my problem is with the society that turns a blind eye to systemic oppression for minorities and are quick to label the people who are not of the 'chosen' socioeconomic and cultural markers as deserving of essentially all forms of abuse that can be heaped on them by people who are from that chosen group and their agents (including but not limited to governmental agencies that are treated as serving said chosen group).

i have an enormous problem with the fact that people in this country have forgotten about habeus corpus. i have an enormous problem with the fact that people in this country have forgotten about the presumption of innocent until proven guilty. just because you have a gun, you are not judge and jury. and you are sure as hell not executioner. the sheer number of times that these rogue elements within the agencies that are charged with keeping law and order get away with gross violations of the rights of the people they are supposed to be serving is repulsive.

the people who are saying 'stop killing us' and 'our lives matter' are not doing it to make your life inconvenient. they're not doing it to be dramatic. and they're sure as hell not doing it for funsies. they're doing it because their blood is in the streets and it has been shed by the people who are supposed to be protecting them. when law enforcement edges towards failing to not only obey the laws set upon them by their own nation but the rules of war, there is a big fucking problem.

last i checked, the rules of war said you don't get to murder people you have taken into custody. (take a second and review article 3. then ask yourself, just how well have people been doing on following that bit of late?http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/instree/y3gctpw.htm ) maybe i am a wild person with mad ideas. i know there are people who manage NOT to act in this sort of horrific fashion. maybe we should do something about these motherfuckers who are failing to recognize the most basic of human rights as covered here.

anyone who seems to think that the arrest history of the dead justifies their killing, drop me off your friends list. anyone who seems to think that the color or socioeconomic status of the dead justifies their killing, drop me off your friends list. anyone who seems to think that we should accept these people in positions of power failing to uphold the FUCKING GENEVA CONVENTION with respect to MOTHERFUCKING CIVILIANS, drop me off your friends list and go fuck yourself with a sideways cactus.

Flies?

I don't know why, but there has been an increase in the number of flies around today. I'm not sure what is going on with that. I am a bit annoyed with them, but what can you do?

I feel badly that I have done no writing today. I am feeling upset with myself on several levels. I think that the predominant problem today was the fact that I forgot my morning medications in the rush to get Beloved off to work and then get to my appointment. I then spent the rest of the day toodling around town getting things done with the boys in tow. It was a very warm day today and the heat had me a bit crabby as well.

Moodwise, I am on the lower end of normal-ish. My psych provider commented on how I am doing so much better than I was a few months ago. I suppose that is a good thing. I have been out and about. I have been doing things and being somewhat social. I presume this would indicate that I am making progress in a healthier direction. If nothing else, all the walks to the park (which averages 2 per day and a total distance of a mile) must be doing me some good. This heat has had me less than thrilled about eating much, thus my appetite has been a bit lower. Not dangerously so, though.

I'd post a picture but I feel unpresentable. My hair is somewhat mussed from driving around with car windows down. I look as overheated as I feel. It just is not something I feel looks any good. I have been having low body confidence for a few days now. Realizing that there is a fair amount of grey in my locks has me feeling upset (which is funny because as a child I desperately wanted to have grey hair like my great grandmother). I feel like I look old and shabby.

I'm trying hard to remember that many feel that my grey hair makes me look dignified. I honestly can't say I feel that way today. And I can't manage to shake the bodyshaming nonsense about how I should magically reacquire my pre-pregnancy body after I have birthed my children. It is a little thing that keeps worrying at the back of my mind. I am not having much progress in getting that out of my head. Which has me saddened and frustrated.

It's the 4th of July. Meh.

The last several days have been busy. I am honestly looking forward to when summer school starts. I have been just worn out by the business of keeping up with the kids and all the stuff that goes into keeping them out of mischief over the last week and a half. I haven't a photo to share today. I honestly don't feel particularly photogenic right now.

I am behind on my writing work. I don't want to place unreasonable demands on myself but I want to have this manuscript off to the publishers in short order. I feel a great deal of pressure to do a ton of things right now and like I haven't the means to accomplish pretty much anything. I am also feeling somewhat burned out. This is not much fun. I will, however, persevere and do my best.

Aside from that, I'm so tired of the jingoism that is running rampant right now. I once felt that sort of thing. And then I realized just how much people are getting screwed over in this nation. Now I am jaded and tend to view that sort of thing as a level of immaturity. I am also sick of the bubbly 'happy 4th of July!' that I have encountered everywhere.

How can it be a happy day when we have people dying for bullshit reasons in and in the name of this country? How can it be a happy day when people are disenfranchised at functionally all levels of government and social strata? It is hard for me to have warm fuzzies about it all when there is so much that is wrong.


Also, unrelated to anything, I'm fed up with these wee tiny bugs flitting about the apartment after the sun goes down. And I feel mildly depressed with how grey my hair looks and the fact that I look all of my 37 years. I think that I have over exerted myself a bit on several levels and it is catching up with me.

And I feel like I can't go and sleep because there is so much that must be done.

Long day but progress, maybe?

I don't feel up to a pic right now. Today was a long day. I spent a significant portion of my day trying to keep the kids entertained as I struggled to gather my wits. I did not sleep well last night. I kept having dreams of my computer crashing, my back up copies of my books being corrupted, and all of my notes getting destroyed. I think watching that video about how long storage stuff is supposed to last got to me. Add to this how I have been struggling to do much writing at all and it made for a bad night.

I have piles of papers everywhere. I have no less than three knitting projects going on right now. I have two spinning projects that are frustrating me to the point where I am contemplating burning the fiber so I don't have to look at it. My home is a bit of a mess at the moment. I know some of this is a natural function of the kids being on break. Some of this is also due to the fact that I spend more time trying to keep the kids out of fights and engaged in activities than I do on cleaning right now. I feel guilty about it. I have this little voice at the back of my head telling me that I should have a clean house right now, dinner on the table every night, and all of the clean laundry put away. (We're living out of laundry bags right now.)

I think I may be heading towards a downward shift in mood. I'm not sure. I feel over extended and like there is no hope of relief ahead of me. I don't know what my problem is right now. Once, I handled this stuff better. Why am I such a ball of anxiety now? Is this really the bipolar?

Yay, it's the Solstice!

I'm a bit overheated right now. It is 80+ in the apartment right now. It has been a good day. Beloved took the day off to spend some time with me while the kids were at school. I am a bit tired, as can probably be seen in the pic. I hope that I will sleep better than I did last night. The heat and humidity made it difficult to fall asleep last night. Still, I can say with full confidence that I had a great day today. There were some minor irritations but it didn't detract from the joy that I had in some alone time with Beloved or my amusement with the kids trying to direct traffic for the tow truck that was helping the folks across the way with their car. (It looked like the tie-rod went and the entire passenger side front steering assembly just fell off of their vehicle as they were attempting to turn into their drive way. Fortunately, no one was harmed and there was no other damage.) I also got a chuckle out of Beloved talking at a squirrel that just played creeper in the tree and stared at us for about a half hour.

All in all, today was a good day. And I have made good progress on yule gifts as well.

Father's Day = typical Sunday

Beloved does not like it when people make a big fuss over him. He utterly loathes it. Thus, his day today was like pretty much any other Sunday. The exception was that the boys had art for him from school and he got stuff for his birding hobby. (So far, it seems that the acrylic baffle is working really well to keep the squirrels out of the big feeder.) My day today was like most other Sundays as well.

I didn't do laundry today. Beloved and I agreed that the laundromat was most likely going to be insanely hot and probably would trigger a migraine. Mood wise, I am in my 'normal' range. I am a bit grumpy but that is because between my hormones not deciding how they were going to effect my mood today and generally being overly warm, I am not feeling comfortable right now. It didn't help matters much that I somehow managed to skin my right elbow on something. I have no idea what.

I'm just that much of a klutz. Tomorrow is going to be a fairly busy day. The boys have school until Wednesday. In between now and then, I want to get the edits that I finally finished writing down in the text of book 2 (which I am beginning to suspect didn't upload the correct version of the document when I sent it to the printer a few weeks ago) done on the manuscript. I also have a long list of files that I really need to copy and back up for safe keeping.

Beloved has tomorrow off from work. We may go out and have lunch, I don't know. I know, however, that tomorrow morning after I put the kids on the bus to school, I will need to run over to the laundromat to wash a few things. I'm trying to decide if I can afford it and what color I am going to go with, but over the last two weeks, I have gone from 'nope, not going to dye my hair some funky color' to 'you know, I'm 37. I should live a little.' Beloved has been amused with this gradual transition in attitude on the matter.

Meh.

Feeling less anxious and depressed today. I spent my day pretty much doing household stuff. I have the kitchen mostly clean now. I will most likely finish up that bit of work tomorrow. I was going to go out to spinning guild tomorrow but plans changed. I don't remember how to get to where the guild is meeting (somewhere aside from the usual location in Victor) so I will be home. If the weather is nice, I will take the kids to the park. I have finished the first of many Yule gifts. I have now started work on a scarf. I'm actually knitting two at the same time. One is in varigated yarn, so it is just plain, basic knitting that I don't have to think about. The other is an illusion scarf with two colors. So, that one will require some attention and thought.

Tired.

End of a long day. Went to the dentist and had two fillings done. Had lunch with Beloved, which I honestly thought he was going to be too busy for. It was a really nice time. Then spent the rest of my day running around after the kids. I feel worn out. My eldest is still awake, staring at me as I sit on the couch and wait for him to go to sleep. My mood is tending towards just worn out and cranky right now. And I started my menses, sort of. Last month, I just spotted some and then there was nothing more. I don't know if this month is going to be the same. I would really appreciate it if my body made up its mind as to what the hell it was doing right now.

Long day is Long.

I suppose my big accomplishments today were folding laundry, watering plants, and keeping the kids from burninating the world. I'm tired and uncomfortable. My stomach hasn't been feeling too great today. I'm not entirely sure why.

A part of me says that this business of daily pics and a note of what the day was like is foolishness. But, the various blogs and sites out there say that if I keep a mood diary, it will make it easier to track my bipolar. Right now, I'm not a ball of anxiety. I am just... numb and cranky.

My thoughts on Orlando.

It is a very ... meaty post. I tried to give a little bit of a crash course in philosophy in my post. It is at best, the beginning of a discussion on what is happening and how to handle it. At worst, I will have managed to single handedly offend a laundry list of people through the use of my philosophy and religion minor's being applied in my writing.

Here's the link: Atrocity, Evil, and the Gods.

So tired, so worn out.

Today has been a typical, quiet Monday. I have been doing what I can to avoid the news about the atrocities that happened over the weekend. As a result, I have been pretty much off of the computer. I repotted my root bound miniature roses. I repotted my mint plants in the hopes of salvaging them after them being forgotten for about a week or so (as best I can tell). I also put the geranium cuttings in the ground. They have roots now and one is budding out blossoms. I put up the plastic fencing along the second flower bed out front.

I spent my afternoon editing. It was difficult because I am having a hard time focusing. I went to start work on dinner and discovered that I had veggies that had gone bad. So I threw them out. I think I am going to have to just clean out the whole fridge. I walked a bit today. I suppose it was about a quarter of a mile or so that I have gone.

Did stuff, now beer.

Just got home. Spent all day out helping out with some family stuff. I'm exhausted. My nerves are fried. Somewhere around 2:30, my last fuck flew away. I was polite and pleasant. I did this by being quiet and focusing on entertaining small children with my crochet. I have demonstrated that I am competent with a knife and good at making food look appealing on a plate. With a chef's knife and an ice cream scoop to work with, I managed to make an attractive centerpiece for the fruit plate and hollow out the honeydew melon to hold the melon pieces I had.

If I am in this position again, I will be bringing my melon baller. It would have been a lot easier than what I did this morning. Now, I have a lukewarm bottle of Not Your Father's Root Beer sitting nearby and I'm enjoying peace and quiet for the first time all day.

I am tired of adulting. Screw this shit. I'm drinking my beer and looking at stupid cat memes or something. My mood is low, my anxiety is high, and I want a distraction from feeling rotten and used. Scumbag brain can shut the fuck up anytime now.

Fuck Anxiety.

Me, right now. Super anxious, but medicated. (All hail the gods of pharmacology and praise their blessings. I have taken the sacrament of Ativan and it is good.)

Beloved says this is pretty clearly a mixed episode day. I've been somewhere between wanting to curl up in a ball somewhere and cry and wanting to punch a wall, throw things, and scream in rage. I hate my brain right now.