Winter storm named whatever is here.

The places that are really impacted by this storm are up along the snow belts along the Great Lakes. The hills have us pretty protected from this thing. For the most part, we've got pretty low temperatures and a lot of wind. They're projecting gusts up to 55 mph. The kids are happy because they got to shovel the snow off of the walk before they went to school.

I have been hiding indoors because the cold makes me hurt. Thanks, meat suit and arthritis. I'm glad that the worst of this thing is north of us and that it is farther north than the next couple towns over. (Beloved works two towns north-east of us.) Because I've been hiding indoors, I have been doing things like working on finishing projects. I finished up the shawlette that I started back the day after Yule. I honestly thought I had enough yarn to make a full sized shawl when I started on this thing. I don't have a second ball of this yarn so it's going to remain a shawlette. It's just barely big enough to sit on my shoulders and keep the draft off of my neck.

It's a simple half granny square. The yarn is from Purl Essence Everyday's Rainbow line and the color way is multi royal blue. It's a very soft acrylic. It tended to stick to itself a fair amount as I was working with it. I'd almost swear it would felt if it weren't for the fact that I know acrylic doesn't do that. Ok yarn to work with, I suppose. It makes for some warm stuff. I made a pair of fingerless mitts out of the leftovers of a different ball of the same yarn in a different colorway. They kinda look like clown barf but they're warm.

My anxiety has been ratcheted up pretty high. My emotional flashbacks have been hitting pretty regularly over the last few weeks. I realized that it was because this is right around the anniversary of when I was suicidal in high school and my mother, being the wonderful person she was, slapped a butcher's knife on the table and said "If you're really feeling suicidal, do it right now." as we were waiting for my father to get out of work and all of us to troop up to the psych ward at one of the hospitals up in the city. I am still working through the trauma of shit like that and the anniversary of that always hits me in a bad way at the end of February on top of my seasonal affective disorder.

I also had a bad brain day yesterday that is lingering somewhat into today over the fact that I am disabled. I guess the term for it is "internalized abelism" or something like that. I am angry and hurt by the fact that my brain can't handle the 'normal' stressors of work and such. I want to go back to work. I want to be social. I want to go out and do things. I have this feeling like my body and brain have betrayed me. I also have been having echoes of the abelist crap that my parents said ringing in my head. Nothing quite so lovely as remembering your parents declaring that persons who were disabled were a drain on society and should be euthanized. They said stuff like that a lot. They were a real couple of winners.

Feminist =/= Feminazi

This has been percolating in my head for years. Surrounded by people who threw the term around casually, I was reluctant to say something against it because I'd be shouted down, at best. I then spent years attempting to ignore the term. But, honestly, I can't. I can't stay quiet because there are actual Nazis running around and there is actual fascism going on.

You say that extreme feminists are "feminazis" and I want to throat punch you. I'm being perfectly honest. It evokes a damn near violent rage out of me. Not because I'm one of those extreme feminists. But because feminists are not stealing men's property and destroying their homes ala Kristallnacht. Because feminists are not marching men into gas chambers and slaughtering them wholesale. Because feminists are not performing horrible experiments (including vivisection) on little boys or young men. Because feminists are not systematically rounding up men and branding them like cattle before shipping them off to gods only know where to starve and beat them to death.

You use the term "feminazi" and that tells me that you support women shutting up and tolerating rape because you think the body has ways to  'shut that down'. You use the term "feminazi" and that tells me that you support the patriarchal agenda to control women's bodies and forced birth practices, damn the consequences to the mother. You use the term "feminazi" and that tells me that you give a sly wink and nod of approval to the systemic violence against women who stand up for themselves. You use the term "feminazi" and that tells me that you think that rape victims have to prove a crime has been committed against them before the police will even begin to do their job or, gods help me, you think that the victim somehow deserved it because of stupid reasons like what they were wearing or where they happened to be.

Are there extreme feminists out there? Yeah, I met a few. But the term "feminazi" gets thrown at any feminist who stands up for themselves or some one else. Call me a "scold" or a "harpy". Call me a "bitch" or a "cunt". Go ahead. I could care less about those insults because they've been thrown at me for a long time with out the implication that I am ANYTHING like the Nazis. Rush Limbaugh invented the term "feminazi" for the explicit purpose to equate feminists and outspoken women he didn't like with the abomination that are the Nazis.

And before any Nazi apologist comes along and say that there were nice Nazis, there is no such thing as a nice Nazi. If you sit at a table with nine Nazis and you are not actively arguing with them over things like human rights, there's ten Nazis at that table. By associating and giving implied approval to their actions, you are one of them. The only way there can be only nine Nazis at the table is because the tenth person is forced to be there under duress.

Take your "feminazi" term and march right off into Hel. I've been called that many times. By some people who were once close to me. No big surprise, they happened to be people who admired Adolph Hitler and said that he was trying to do a good thing by uniting Europe, he just did it the wrong way. Like the mass slaughter of innocent people was just a mistake, whoopsie boom.

Halp.

The pile of papers I have to file are about to eat me. They'er joining forces with the mail. I believe I am doomed. I'd post a pic but I can't find my phone in the pile. They ate it earlier, along with half the desk.

Ugh.

I don't know what to write. I'm not doing horridly but I'm not doing well, either. I haven't been sleeping well. I have been having bad nightmares/flashbacks to living in my parents' house. My anxiety has ratcheted up kinda high despite the medications I am on. Something about February makes it really hard. Maybe it's the fact that I'm in the dead of winter here. Maybe it's the fact that there are multiple trauma anniversary dates in this month. I don't know.

I've been struggling to write. It's been hard to get myself motivated to blog because I feel like I'm just writing for no one to read. The relative silence that my blogs get depresses me. I am just tired of feeling like I'm nobody. I know that my feeling like nobody is a reflection of my boatloads of psychological trauma. It still is painful. Over the next month, I'm going to be practicing the Filianic version of lent called Moura. It's the final month of the Filianic calendar and the fifth season. Sounds a little odd, but it actually works if you look at the calendar structure. It's like an intercalculary month. Their calendar has 13 months. And there is a intercalculary date called hiatus (which is 2 days during a leap year) to make the calendar match up, roughly, with the Julian calendar. I prefer the Filianic calendar because its easier to keep track of, every month has 28 days and every season has 3 months, except for Moura which is one month of 28 days for the season.

I'm focusing my efforts on practicing self discipline. Among the things I am working on is building better exercise habits, building more social activity in my life, and doing more writing. It's also going to be a month of focused cleaning this way when spring arrives my home is ready. Right now, it's pretty much a disaster. I'm having a hard time motivating the kids to clean up their messes. It's overwhelming. I also have a ton of laundry in my room to get sorted out. I think I am going to be donating some of the shawls that I have in my collection to charity. It's frustrating, but I don't need so many shawls.

Monday Menu, Week of 2/3/2020

I'm not quite at 100% but I'm doing much better than I was two weeks ago. I'm just a bit woozy and only mildly congested now. If only this cold would go away for good, I think my blood sugar levels would drop back into the normal range. Right now, they're mildly elevated and it's been making me tired and cranky. For some reason, if my blood sugar levels are around 200 mg/dl I feel ravenously hungry. The fact that I can't eat something because it will make that go higher just makes me cranky and grumpy. Nothing like feeling super hungry and being unable to do anything about it. Like I said, when this stupid cold is done, I think it'll drop back down to 175 or 160. My goal for this year is to get myself down to 130 as my fasting blood sugar level. I don't know if diet and exercise can do it, but I'm going to try. My weight is stable but my pants size is dropping. I guess even a little bit of walking every day adds up to gaining some muscle after all.

Here's this week's menu. Breakfast is oatmeal and an egg for me. The kids have breakfast at school as well as lunch. My lunches are going to be leftovers again. And Beloved's got his sandwiches and ramen as per usual.

Sunday: Pizza
Monday: Burgers and salad
Tuesday: Tacos / taco salad
Wednesday: Meatball subs and salad
Thursday: General Tso chicken / chicken nuggets
Friday: Pork chops with mashed potatoes and California mix veggies
Saturday: Chili

Monday Menu Week of 1/27/2020

Dear Friends,

I am scatter shot disorganized right now. I blame this rotten head cold that refuses to go away. Because of the stupid diabetes and my psych medications, I can't take anything for it. So, I go about my day feeling like my sinuses are packed with wool or with them running constantly. There is no in between. It's getting so annoying. My planner is a bit of a mess. I still have to catch up my notes for the last few days, and I have to set up my pages for next month. To say the least, I have a lot of writing of the un-fun kind to do right now. I am trying to get myself back into the swing of serious writing again. It's been a grueling effort.

I finished that Filianic manuscript that I had started back in October. Now I am editing it. I'm most of the way through the first round of edits. It is mildly disconcerting to see how many spelling errors I have in this draft. Apparently when I write by hand, I am more prone to mashing together words and misspelling them by flipping around letter order in the middle of the word. That finalizes my decision that the next manuscript I write is going to be typed from this point forward. I need to be able to read what I wrote in order to edit the damn thing, after all.

I'm working on getting the kids back into the swing of doing daily chores. Somehow we fell off of that wagon and it shows. I may not be FLYLady's biggest fan but she had some really good points. (I kinda walked away from that program when she got more preachy about her religious choices and less focused on home management. I hope she's happy with where she is and that seems to be the case, but I didn't go there to have some one tell me that I needed to have my soul saved by their god.) So, I have a chart up in the kitchen with daily chores for the kids and their assigned chore for each day of the week. Perhaps it will be more than just wall art this time around. Everybody is going to have a 15 minute cleaning session. The kids will be working in their room this afternoon when they get their homework done. Then it will be time for television or electronic toys. As the kids are working in their room, I'll be attempting to sort out the kitchen. Wish me luck because there are legos hidden everywhere.

Here's the menu for this week.

Sunday: Pizza
Monday: Burgers & salad
Tuesday: Tacos / Taco salad
Wednesday: Meatball subs & salad
Thursday: Breakfast for dinner
Friday: Italian sausage patty sandwiches & salad
Saturday: Chili

The kids have breakfast and lunch at school Monday through Friday. Beloved's lunches have been either leftovers or sandwiches with ramen noodle soup. My lunches have been leftovers. I plan, however, to do some cooking during the day while the kids are at school to get some breakfast things prepped for the remainder of the week and to make a meatloaf for whatever day I happen to run out of spoons for cooking things. I'd be working on that right now, but I kinda have a pile of other tasks that are more immediate need.

"You're so brave." Not for that reason.

Dear Anonymous Women of the Internet,

Stop telling me that I'm brave because:

• I have facial hair.
• I have natural eyebrows.
• I don't squeeze myself into a girdle or similar torture devices.
• I have grey hair at a relatively young age.
• I am disabled.
• I am parenting children with special educational needs.

That's all bullshit to make yourself feel good about patronizing me and anyone else in this situation. Here's a check list for you to use when you consider telling me that I am brave:

1. Would you say it to a man for the same reason?
2. Is it because YOU are uncomfortable with me?
3. Is it because you are uncomfortable with MY CHILDREN's existence?

I'm sick and tired of people telling me that I'm brave for bullshit reasons. I'm 41,  over weight with diabetes, a disability due to mental illness, and absolutely zero tolerance for this patronizing prating. If you think I'm brave because of the fact that I simply exist, you deserve a kick in the goddamn teeth. I know there's people who are going to say, "But, Deb, that's a person who is being NICE to you." or "But, Deb, that's a COMPLIMENT." I'm sorry to say but telling someone that they're brave for existing is the subtlest form of undermining you can find in town.

It implies that my existence is threatened. It implies that I am some how a wretched being that requires you to stoop and commend me for the minimum effort that it takes to exchange oxygen into carbon dioxide. It tells me that there's something wrong with the fact that I have facial hair and a little extra weight. It tells me that my features are hideous in some fashion and they must be complemented in the same manner that one leaves offerings out for the fey, lest such horrors unimaginable might be visited upon you. (PROTIP: Natural hair isn't hideous. Society's policing of our bodies is what's hideous. Burn your fashion magazines and your hatred of your body on that pyre.)

It tells me that my children are freaks of nature and that I am burdened with raising them. I'm going to be as direct as I was in the above paragraph, if you think that I am suffering or that my children are suffering because we don't fit your idea of neurotypical, you can fuck yourself with a cactus. I suffer in ways that I talk about due to my disability but that doesn't make me unique. I'm a pretty typical case of a person with c-ptsd and bipolar II. It's reassuring that my psychiatrist says that my symptoms and experiences are normal for someone with these conditions. Equally reassuring is my family doctor's handling of my diabetes and telling me that my experiences are normal. And just as reassuring is my gynecologist's declaration that my experiences are normal with having poly-cystic ovarian syndrome. There's nothing especially heroic about my experiences here. 

As for my kids, they're suffering with the beginning of puberty. They're dealing with the challenges of learning complex mathematics (which they hate) and navigating the changing waters of life in school where the social situation turns on a dime and even the most neurotypical child will have a hard time. Their Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis is just as much a part of them as my facial hair is a part of me. Your praise on their existence is equally patronizing and poisonous.

You want to praise someone for being brave, do it when they did something that you know was hard for them, even if it is easy for you. You want to praise some one for being selfless and charitable, do it when they're actually being that way instead of fulfilling their obligations. And if it isn't something you'd walk up to a man and say "Wow, you're brave for [thing]!" don't say it to a woman. About 85% of those "You're so brave about [thing]." comments revolve around the idea of women daring to be themselves. What in flaming fucking hell is wrong with my being my vulgar, dark humored, and sarcastic self? If it's all right for a man to be vulgar, dark humored, and sarcastic, then it's fine for me.

I'm not brave because I flaunt YOUR standards. I'm brave because I survived some horrific shit. I'm brave because I fight people who try to keep my kids down when I walk into IEP meetings. (Those administrators get uneasy when my name shows up on the list for the meeting and I can see them sweat when I walk in wearing anything from sweats to a power suit, because they know I am like a bull dog and I won't give them an inch with out making them fight for it. If you're in an IEP meeting and don't understand wtf they're talking about, demand they explain it. They hate doing it, but if you're vocal and make them explain what they're talking about and planning, you can better advocate for your kids.)

So, as I was saying at the beginning, if you're telling me that I'm brave because I have facial hair, go have an intimate date with a cactus. You don't know who you're talking to and you don't know what the hell you're saying when you spew that garbage.

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

If you made it this far and you are one of the people who genuinely know me. You know that I'm not squaring off with you. It's the random asshats who decide to tell me that I look so pretty "despite" my facial hair. Especially when they decide they're going to attempt to reach out and touch it, like I'm some kind of exotic specimen. No one's made contact yet, my glare has kept the hands at bay. But if it happens, someone might be the reason I have to clean my rings out with a toothbrush. 

Random Short story: June

There's an apartment complex in some nameless small town. Hidden away in the back corner is an apartment with a little old woman. She comes out to get her mail. She doesn't really talk with her neighbors. Every Sunday, she goes shopping with some church charity. These are the only times she's really seen - mail and shopping at the local grocery store.

If you were to step inside her apartment you'd find it almost claustrophobic, but organized. Furniture is a mishmash of different eras. The kitchenette is still in the style of the 1950s. A large radio that dates back to World War I crackles and hums even as it plays what you recognize from the local talk radio station. It is not plugged in.

Every chair and all along the back of the couch has the respective crochet antimacassar to protect the fabric from the hair of fashionable men. She sits at the Formica table with a steaming cup of tea, with what looks suspiciously like Belladonna flowers floating in it. Before her is a pack of cards. Perpetually, she plays Solitaire.

When you came in, you noticed sitting on that kitchenette counter is a cake stand with a perfect looking, photo worthy red velvet cake. Beside the cake stand are two plates, two forks, and a cleaver. The old woman didn't look up from her game when you entered.

As you draw closer, you realize the figures on the cards move like holographic images despite laying flat upon the table. She taps on the deck. In the static of the radio, you hear someone's voice begging you to get out. When she turns over the next card, you see yourself in her little kitchenette.

But, the old woman never goes out or talks to her neighbors. No one really knows how old she is. Some say she's been there since the place was built. Others say that there's something not quite right about her. No one visits. No one's been seen going in or out. The kinder neighbors say piteously that she's probably outlived her family.

The police came round. They had your picture, but it didn't move. It was just a regular picture. They knocked at her door and she opened a curtain to look out. They held up your picture and she shook her head before going back to her Solitaire game. Your card moves like a hologram even though it is flat on the table with the others. You're seen beating your fists against something in the foreground, like a window that one is looking through. In the static of the radio, your voice is begging her to let you go.

Fiber Fluff & Ramblings

Shortly before Yule, we got a new landlord. This makes number four, if you're keeping score. It was a pleasant surprise when he and his crew got to work on fixing the building up. There's talk of enclosing the lower portion of the back deck so that it is storage area. We've been told to put the kids outside toy bin down in the storage area of the lower closet beneath the entryway. They repainted the floors of the entryway and the stairs. It looks like a whole new place. It's kinda nice.

Except for the muddy foot prints. Those have been driving me to distraction. As a result, I had Beloved pick up a Swiffer wet jet on his last shopping trip. I wasn't sure how well the thing was going to work on those floors. I am pleased to say that it cleaned things up nicely, despite the neighbors going back and forth over the walkway as I was working. I have a feeling that I'm going to be cleaning the entryway on a regular basis now because it really irked me to see things as a mess. It may be because I'm coming out of a mixed episode, but it bothered me. I have a bad feeling that this business is going to be like the snow removal from the steps and the walk, an operation handled solely by my household.

I've been doing a lot of cleaning over the last few days. I'm not hypomanic, I'm just still trying to catch up on the chores that fell by the wayside over the course of Yule and the half of last week that got shot to Hel by a migraine and general chaos. As a result of doing the cleaning, I am not getting very much done in my spinning or my other hand crafts. I started work on spinning a 1lb pile of fiber. I don't know who dyed it. It is wool. I think from here in NY. The colorway is called 'Plum and Berries' but I'm tempted to call it unicorn fluff. Lots of purple, pink, and blue in it. There's a faint trace of green. It kinda reminds me of the Unicorn Frappe that Starbucks had as a novelty drink a few summers back. Hence the desire to call it unicorn fluff.

I'm spinning a small handful of it on a drop spindle made from a drawer pull handle and a paint brush handle. It's pretty light. As a result, I am spinning stuff that is cobweb weight. I'm not going to spin all of it with this spindle. But I am going to do a good amount with it. I am going to try to set up my distaff (which I loaded up with about a quarter pound of this fiber) in a way so that I can spin off of it with my kick wheel. I'm not sure how successful I am going to be. I've tried this with various orientations. I'm beginning to suspect that I can't use a distaff with the kick wheel. That frustrates me because I want to start producing more yarn at a greater rate.

I am pretty sure I fell short of my goal of a mile of yarn for last year by several hundred yards. I still have two balls of plied yarn to measure. That requires getting the last skein I wound on to the niddy-noddy off. It's been on there since last November. Hopefully it won't be too difficult to manage. I still have to wet it and wack it to make the yarn bloom however much it will. I don't think it will be that much because the stuff didn't have a lot of halo to it to begin with.

I'm about half way through my sample of Horned Dorset fiber. I've been spinning it on my delgan and I plied it on my Ashford Student Spindle. Plying it was a pain in the neck because the stuff just didn't want to cooperate with me. I am going to spin the other half on a different spindle. It will be, I hope, approximately the same amount of singles out of the process and I can ply that to compare to what I did on the delgan.

Menu week of Jan. 13, 2020

This week hopefully will be a better week than last week was. I was doing ok last week until Wednesday afternoon. That was when the mixed episode began to hit. The mixed episode ate up Thursday, Friday, and most of Saturday. The weird weather we had over the weekend gave me a migraine that lasted a couple of days, that made doing stuff even harder. On top of that, we had the glorious disaster of the kids' room that had to get cleaned up. They worked all weekend on it. It's still not done, but you can at least see the floor. This is what you get when you don't do chores for two weeks and give them a ton of stuff to play with in addition to what they already had. So, the week and weekend were pretty challenging.

On the new and exciting front, Beloved picked up a new vacuum cleaner. It may not be exciting for most people, but I'm glad for it. Our old one is busted, again, and just makes a horrible noise as you run it. I think part of it is the thing needs professional servicing by someone who has more skills than I do. It sat for the better part of ten years going unused because the children have auditory processing issues due to their autism and they were terrified of the sound it made. Only within the last year have they gotten to the point where they can tolerate the sound of a vacuum cleaner. We burned through three electric sweepers over that course of time. Much quieter and less effective cleaning tool, but at least it was something.

With the new landlord making an effort to fix and clean up this place, I'm vaguely worried about my rent going up. My FIL keeps insisting that is what's going to happen. Beloved tells me his father's likely wrong about this because the landlord is working with us to do things like get the entryway sorted out and such. There's a chance that our busted sink will finally get fixed. That would be fantastic because this is the other thing that the children are terrified of. It isn't vented properly and as such makes a horrendous gurgling noise randomly. The kids may be ten and twelve, but they're still terrified of the sink. It wouldn't be so bad if it had been this way from day one. I think they'd have had some tolerance for it by now if so. But, I guess it was about four years ago we had a downstairs neighbor who fancied himself a handyman. He decided he was going to 'fix' the plumbing and made a gods awful mess out of it all. That was when the gurgling business started.

I'm pretty sure there's some valve somewhere in the plumbing that is set to closed that is the reason why the thing has this problem. The problem is, no one knows what it is to fix because the plumbing is a mess down there. But, back to the gurgling thing, the kids didn't have this gurgling going on from day one of being in here. It started as a thing when they were cognizant that scary things exist. Since then, it's been as much if not more of a source of terror as the vacuum cleaner because it is loud as fuck and random. The kids now can somewhat tolerate the vacuum cleaner because we've got 'ear defenders' (they can wear headphones/a pair of earmuffs to quiet the sound of it) and they have learned that it can't harm them at all.

I think it helped that they watched me take the thing apart and service it as best I could. I explained what the parts were as I was working and did my best to explain how they worked. It took the thing from a big scary monster to a noisy machine. Noisy machines are ok, though they don't like all of them up close. The biggest problem with vacuuming now is the fact that there is stuff all over the place here that needs to be purged or somehow put up this way I can actually clean the apartment properly. Hence the big push with the kids on their room this weekend. I hope that by the end of the month, we can have this place fully clean and I just have to do light maintenance on it all with a moderate cleaning session once a week. It's a work in progress. The bribery of allowance helps some but Beloved and I still have to sit and watch them work. I know they'll eventually mature out of stopping in the middle of the job to play with the latest toy they discovered.

This week's dinner menu is pretty simple. The kids are having breakfast at school all week and lunch there as well. Beloved's been having leftovers and ramen for his lunches. I've been working on leftovers as well.

Sunday - Pizza
Monday - Burgers and carrot salad
Tuesday - Tacos / Taco salad
Wednesday - Chicken nuggets
Thursday - Pasta with meatballs
Friday - Pizza meatloaf
Saturday - Chili

One day migraine... nope, two day migraine.

I was so convinced that my migraine was gone and this was just a stress headache from trying to get the kids to clean their room.

Then the feeling of the evil daystar was stabbing me in the eyes started creeping up. I blame this insane weather cycle that we're stuck in right now. I'm watching to make sure that the ice storm goes north of us. It's all supposed to blow through tomorrow. We're supposed to be on the south end of it all.

Gods willing, it won't be that bad. At least my back isn't joining in on the fun. Now to get my glasses.

Fiber fluff: Distaff day & Final Yuletide Project

Last night I finished this fancy table scarf's embroidery. It was a difficult project because the colored portion of the pattern was printed badly over the blue base which was supposed to align everything properly. I wound up having to hold the embroidery hoop up so that I could see where the stitches were supposed to go because having the project back lit allowed me to see the blue base layer of the pattern. I would have had it done a day or two earlier if it weren't for the fact that life got a bit complicated Sunday and Monday.

Distaff day was spent stitching instead of spinning. I've been busy catching up on chores and such. I have yet to measure how much I spun last year. I don't know how close I am to my goal of 1 mile of yarn. I have to do some measuring and some math. I think I may get to doing some spinning with my Scottish drop spindle tonight. (I can't spell the name or pronounce the name of it but I'll share a pic of it once I get the present project off of it, hopefully next week.)

Monday Menu, week of Jan 6,2020

I fell out of the habit of posting weekly menus and stuff about the middle of last year. My depression got really bad for a while there and I just gave up on blogging. I'm going to do my best to fix this. I'm still battling depression right now, but I am doing better than I was a few months ago. It seems that light therapy actually does work.

Sunday: Pizza
Monday: Burgers & salad
Tuesday: Tacos / Taco salad -or- breakfast for dinner (depending which I have the energy for)
Wednesday: Meatloaf and salt potatoes
Thursday: Pork chop fajitas (I have boneless pork chops I can slice up for this.)
Friday: Mongolian beef and riced cauliflower
Saturday: Chili (this was going to be curried chickpea stew, but that recipe didn't work out right)

Rambling thoughts

Today has been a long day. I didn't sleep very well last night. I had surreal nightmares about living under my parents' roof and plotting my escape with Beloved's help. Somehow, Wile E Coyote and Yosemite Sam were about to square off over things too. The coyote of chaos being the one in my corner.

The kids have been ok today when they weren't bickering and getting in each other's face. I put them to making themselves toys out of the remainder of the blank peg dolls that I had kicking around in a bag. I was wondering what to do with them and I realized that I had the instant solution to their boredom. They sat and were coloring and drawing on the peg dolls for about an hour. One was making fire fighters and the other was making extras for their version of Star Wars.

I got most of the dishes washed today. All that is left are a few pans. I am hoping that I can manage to get all of my dishes done this weekend and put them away so that I have room on the counter to chop veggies for my batch cooking this weekend. I started some of that by making eggs in the oven for me to have with my breakfasts most of the week. Next, I have the veggie hash to make. Theoretically, it is an easy recipe.

Tomorrow is going to be less than fun. I have to go get my blood drawn at the lab station in Geneseo. I haven't been there before. I don't know what their bedside manner is like. I am a little nervous about it. It's a fasting blood draw so I can't eat anything until after I am seen. I hope that the line is short and that there are not hiccups in the process. I'm a difficult stick because I have small veins that roll. The lab draw here in town had someone who was really good and got me on one try every time. They're no longer at that site. Maybe I'll be lucky and they were rotated to the Geneseo site and I'll see them there.

I have been keeping within my carb limits, for the most part. It's been frustrating over the holidays. Piles of cookies and eating schedules getting thrown off have made it difficult. Beloved had to sit down with some one and explain to them the reason I had to have my own special pizza and I couldn't eat the homemade pizza (as much as I wanted to) was because the specialty pizza that we buy at Walmart is super thin crust and means that the carb load is low enough I can actually eat it.

I am getting back into the habit of keeping my food log. Between the last two months of depression, busy work, and dealing with holiday stuff, I fell out of that habit. I kept track in my head as I was eating to make sure that I was eating properly. I just wasn't writing anything down. I am now writing things down as I am eating or shortly after. It is frustrating and I am sick of doing it. But, diabetes doesn't take a day off.

Fiber Fluff: Yuletide projects.

I have taken my annual break from spinning to celebrate Yule. I lasted about an hour before I was twitchy and had to have some kind of project to work on. I decided that during daylight hours, I was going to work on embroidery and in the evenings work on crochet.

So far, I have finished a tulip pillowcase that my late Grandmother had started years ago before her dementia got bad enough that she couldn't do embroidery or cross stitch.

I am now working on a table runner with roses on it. The pic isn't the best, but this thing isn't finished either. It's half done.

The crochet project is a purple ombre granny square. I have no idea how big this thing will be when I get it done. I'd post a picture of it but it's kinda difficult to spread it out with out making a tangled mess of the yarn that I'm still working from. When I get it finished, I'll post it.

Just before Yule, I made my annual scrap yarn project. It is a shawlette that's just big enough to sit on my shoulders and keep me warmish as I sit by the window and work on these projects.

SAD sucks.

Light therapy is helping some, but SAD is still an issue right now. According to Beloved, I am doing much better than I was around Thanksgiving and light years better than I was this time last year. All I know is that I'm tired and frustrated with the fact that it is hard for me to summon up the energy to get the things I want to do done. I also suspect that I might be beginning to come down with a cold, but I'm not entirely sure. The sinus issues could be because everybody in the building except for us has a dog and I am now allergic to dogs. 

Yesterday was a rough day. It was overcast and raining all day. For some reason I have yet to fully divine, heavily cloudy skies and rain makes my mood even worse than normal. I have been doing a bit better on the anxiety front with the medications and avoiding things that trigger it. [...]

So, my youngest child broke a portable fan he had. He's now crying and furious because I threw it away. I told him it was ruined and we had to throw it away. He is fussing and insisting that he's a bad kid. He's basically saying everything he can think of to try to get me to fish the thing back out of the garbage. I'm not doing it, but he's now miserable and is irritating the hell out of me with this whining.


I tell myself that he's going to grow out of this. 

It's almost the end of the show.

Yes, the title is a reference to that damn sock puppet show that my Beloved loves. He'll probably snicker when he reads it. I've been busy over the last few weeks. Presents are done, except for the small ones for the kids over the remainder of Yule. We celebrate 12 days of Yule, starting at Christmas so that the extended family who are predominantly Christian don't feel weird.

I am glad that my kids don't have the flu this year. I'm glad that my husband doesn't have the flu or that I don't have it either. We got that fun over with the week before the holiday break. Snuggle Bug had it and he was miserable for a few days. He got well just in time to go to the last day of school for the year. Unfortunately, he had to spend some time catching up on classwork instead of doing all the fun activities that were planned. He was particularly grumpy that afternoon when he got home from school.

Cuddle Bear's report card came in and he's on honor roll again. He's really proud of himself and with good reason. He's been working hard and maturing a lot over this last year. He is still very imaginative and engages in a great deal of imaginative play. He is, however, getting better at accepting the difference between reality and what he wants to be real. That's a big milestone. The developmental delays due to the autism still have an effect on his academics but the school is working with him and he is thriving.

Snuggle Bug's report card isn't due until February. His last report card indicated all good things. He also is maturing and working hard over the last year. His imagination is very much at play, at times distracting him from his school work. I expect that he will reach the similar big milestone that his big brother is at around the same age as his brother has. Because, Snuggle Bug is very much at the same place his brother was with a bit more of the ADHD being a problem. Interestingly, however, he is really getting into the STEM subjects, just like his brother.

I don't know if it is because we encourage them to explore the world and such. I kinda taught them the scientific method as young children, it was a watered down version but it was still there. It has turned out to be a really helpful thing for them. It has given them a better grip on problem solving skills and helps them organize reality a bit better.

It's been a good year for the kids. We're hanging in there on all other fronts. The old Subaru was in the process of collapsing back in October, so we replaced it. The new Subaru is a bit bigger and came with more bells and whistles standard. Beloved's taken to it like a duck to water. I'm still getting used to it. I'm thankful that it is an automatic transmission. I hate and am not very apt at driving stick shift. It has those ridiculous military grade 500000000000 watt headlights that blind damn near everybody on low beams. I feel a little bad for other drivers but then I remember that these are common in the newer cars and that's why they've been beaming me in the eyes for the last few years.

So, life goes on. We have our collective health and well being. I am thankful. Although, I am looking forward to when the kids go back to school so I am not having my day soundtracked by fart noises.

Random Bullshit is Bullshit.

So, my youngest child is sick with some kinda virus. He's been home for the last two days. His fever broke yesterday. I thought maybe he'd be well enough to go back to school tomorrow. I was wrong. Snuggle Bug has been eating light because his stomach is bothering him. As such, when he had dinner and actually ate the whole meal, I thought he was feeling better. Twenty minutes later he was getting sick to his stomach.

I have a list of things that I'm trying to get done before yule. My major cleaning is mostly completed. I have all of the gifts that I was going to make by hand done now. And presents for a number of people are taken care of. They just need to be wrapped. But the boys keep trying to figure out what their presents are. And they know that everything that you could possibly need for anything is in the project room, and deduced that their presents are hiding in there as well. So, whenever I open the door to go in there and get something, they bust in and look around. It's getting exasperating.

I have an enormous pile of laundry that I need to fold and put away. It's been sitting there for weeks. Summer clothes waiting to get put away among stuff that I have actually been using. It's just been hard to get to it and get it done. Now, I feel this pressure to get it finished by the end of the week before Beloved goes out and does this week's laundry.

I was going to do some baking this year. I had Beloved pick up a bag of brown sugar substitute for me to use in baking a batch of cookies. I am just unable to gather up the energy to attempt to bake cookies this year in the face of last year's disastrous results. When they say you can substitute an artificial sweetener for sugar 1:1, check the fine print on the bag. It will likely tell you that the ratio is actually such where you use half the sugar for the recipe and then half your sweetener. If you try it out like I did last year, your cookies spread and don't firm up. They make a mess.

I am attempting to gather up the will power to do batch cooking breakfast items for me to have over the next week. My goal is to make something that I can freeze and thaw to eat later. Again, I am having difficulties doing this. As a result, I have been just staring at the eggs and breakfast sausage in the fridge morosely before shutting the door. The kids christmas break is going to be two weeks long this year. It is going to be a very long two weeks with the weather promising to be very cold.

It feels like every time I turn around, there is something waiting to go wrong, topple over, or generally make a disaster out of itself. I've been attempting to get into the 'holiday spirit' but this business of resurrecting my computer and stuff is raining on that almost as much as the seasonal affective disorder is. Thank gods for the anxiety medication though, because I'd be pretty much non functional right now with out it.

I had to explain to someone why I couldn't do a 'girl's night out' some time this month. That conversation went better than I expected, but it still sucked. Because I feel like I'm defective due to all of my psychological issues. Social phobia is a bitch. I had to turn down going to a yule gathering on the solstice because I knew that I was going to have difficulty getting there (because my night vision is increasingly fucked thanks to my genetics), it was going to interrupt in a major way the daily routine for the household, and I basically turn into a pumpkin around 9 or 10 pm thanks to my medications. No point going out to a party where the point is to stay up late, socialize, and watch the sunrise when you can't do it.

I'm angry that I have so many issues getting in the way of things like seeing my friends out in Buffalo or doing normal stuff like grocery shopping. Because of the holiday crowds in the stores, my social phobia has been really high. Thanks to my medications, I can get through some of it and power my way through the anxiety. But it's been rough.

It's all bullshit. I'm sick of the bullshit of the diabetes getting in the way of what kind of food I can cook. I'm sick of the bullshit of my ptsd and social phobia making me check where the exits are whenever I enter a crowded building and hyperaware of who/what is behind me. I'm sick of the depression making it damn near impossible for me to enjoy this season where so many others are having an obviously good time. I'm tired of being the odd man out by not being Christian and having my holy days ignored, or adjusting when I celebrate them so that they fall more inline with the Christian calendar, this way my kids get to experience the holiday season like their peers.

I wish that there was a way to make things work better. I wish that my brain didn't have the issues it does.

I am annoyed.

I have been trying to write and it's been all going sideways. It didn't help that my youngest got sick. He's been sick for the last 3 days and he seems to be doing better. If his fever is truly gone and he keeps his morning medication down, I may send him off to school tomorrow. I don't know.

I wanted to write something for someone as a gift but I am stuck. My brain tells me that it isn't a fitting gift to give. It is also something that I am concerned the recipient may not enjoy.

I still feel like I should write something. As I have said, I am annoyed.

Being a Responsible Adult is mightily vexing.

I officially am done adulting for today. Fortunately, my Beloved just got home from work. I have spent my day doing my best to drop kick life into order. Took care of bills, folded up some laundry, cleaned up some of the disaster the kids left in the living room before they went off to school, the usual. It weighs on me.

I feel pressured to make things for the holidays but having just over two weeks to go, I know that I am not going to accomplish handmade gifts for everyone. I'm having difficulty finding things for the 12 days we celebrate Yule. It's primarily a thing for the kids. Still, I am struggling to find little stocking stuffer types of toys for them. I've got stuff for peg dolls. I made two yesterday. My hands shook pretty bad as I got going on them. They really didn't come out as planned. Aside from peg dolls, I don't know what else to do. I need to go shopping. The prospect of battling the mobs of people at the store makes me extremely uneasy.

I spent my day today fighting with the computer. We had to completely wipe it and reinstall windows. In the process, I have lost all of my bookmarks and the passwords to the websites that I have been using, like Facebook. Fortunately, my notebooks were mostly accurate in what I had written down. And I was able to create new, stronger passwords for the sites I use. That, however, ate most of my day. And my patience.

If it weren't for the fact that we really need to be frugal with our money, I would have ordered a pizza for dinner tonight. If it weren't for the fact that I couldn't eat it, I would probably have done it anyway. Still, I am a responsible adult and I made what I had on my menu for this week, tacos.

I'm tired. I am exasperated. And I am upset. I have enough life circumstances happening, that I can't go out to the Yule party that my friends are holding. I am frustrated with my limitations that have come because I am sick. I am frustrated with the fact that my night vision is getting worse. I am tired of not being social because I'm so anxious about judgment.