Please forgive the emotional train wreck, we're still trying to figure out where to bury the survivors.

 Dear Reader,

My posts have been intermittent, horrifying at times, and generally full of angst. It's been this way for a while.

Today, I finally figured out why. When my grandparents died is 2013 and 2015, I went into an emotional tailspin that I haven't quite managed to pull out of. I simply haven't had the opportunity to properly grieve their deaths and it's been playing havoc with a number of things, like my writing.

At their funerals, I managed a quick glance in the casket but wasn't given the time to say my goodbyes because I basically was the emotional support person for a number of other relatives. 

At some point over the next month or so, Beloved and I are going to go visit their grave sites so I can have that closure. I can't go back to the farm because of family politics. I'm not welcome there anymore. I think my grandparents were the only ones who truly were happy I was around when I was there. I'm too much of a misfit for the rest of the WASP family, like my aunt (who I am still in contact with).  So, the only way I am going to get closure is to go to the other end of the state and have my breakdown.

Migraines, more CPTSD adventures, and exhaustion, oh my!

 Dear Reader,

Apparently my last post got put behind a warning because community guidelines says it is sensitive material aka material that would distress some readers. I'm kinda going 'How about how distressed I've been and this is my outlet?' But the overlords have made their decision so I will not question it further and invoke their ire.

With the up and down weather we've been having over the last month or so, I've been having migraines. Big surprise, because it's known that when the weather shifts I get them. It was when I had one for 5 days that I finally called my doctor and asked for prescription medication. He put me on a generic version of Imitrex and, my goodness, when the next migraine hit, I took it and was not in pain after waiting 20 minutes. It lasted all day. The next day, I could still feel the migraine but it felt less severe so I took Excedrin Migraine and felt well enough to go on with my day.

The stuff that I talked about in my last post is still ongoing. Through the course of the month, I was barely able to function because of flashbacks and my going numb. Then a wellness check got called in for their apartment and things have calmed down to a significant degree. A few days after that happened, came the 5 day migraine. I was in agony and the Excedrin was barely touching it. When it finally finished, something strange came out of it.

I'm not afraid anymore. I give zero fucks about 90% of the neighbors again. Yes, I'd like to see them alive and well, but beyond that I just don't care. When the neighbors had an argument, I just put on my headphones and listened to music.

Adjusting to the Imitrex is hard. It has me experiencing the mild dizziness and drowsiness side effects. It's annoying. My psydoc and the pharmacist warned me that this was going to happen. I foolishly thought it'd be like the side effects of Benadryl. Nope, I felt like I was on a slow moving tilt-a-whirl and was taking naps every hour. So, I'm still out of commission when a migraine hits. I had this hope that it would make the pain go away and I could just go about  my day slightly dizzy and just yawning. I was wrong. They were absolutely right when they said I shouldn't drive until I know how it effects me. Holy cow, I now know that driving on the migraine medication is a bad idea. It doesn't help that its side effects are enhanced by the side effects of the other medication I take. It sometimes feels like I can't win for losing.

Oh, for you who are keeping score about the thinning hair stuff, here's an update. I stopped using that expensive shampoo and conditioner that was supposed to cure it because it made my head itch and feel like it was lit on fire. Apparently my scalp is sensitive like the rest of my skin. (Beloved is trying it out and it seems to be helping him and he's not having that itching and burning sensation that I was.) I look like I'm going to have a high forehead if this goes the way it appears to be. Fashionable in the 11th century but not quite so much in this one. And the grey, holy cow, it's really showing up. I know partly because my sides and back are buzzed but wow. If you haven't seen my pics on instagram, my hair is no longer long enough that I have to worry about sitting on it. I have a partial pixie cut on top and an undercut. Through the summer, I had the undercut at a 1 but I think the winter it's going to be at a 2.

The funny thing is my hair cut confuses and makes my father in law uncomfortable because it's very masc coded in his opinion. And with my style change from flowy dresses to black clothes and more pants than skirts, he's just squinting at me suspiciously at random. It's been funny.

Dear gods, make it stop.

 Back at the beginning of the month, new neighbors moved into the apartment next door. Usually this is not exceptionally news worthy. These folks, however, are a problem and I can't do a damn thing about it. The young husband is abusive to his wife. Exceptionally so. The walls of the apartments are paper thin and I can hear everything. Sometimes, the fights go outside and I can see him doing things like shaking her around like a rag doll while screaming at her.

As a result of this, my c-ptsd is in full blown action. I'm having emotional flashbacks, I've had a few visual flashbacks. I'm getting confused about *when* I am in my life. I alternate between terrified, numb, deeply hurt, and saddened. Mostly, I've been numb and confused about what on earth I am supposed to be doing.

Down beneath all that is simmering rage. But, I recognize that I'm not twenty anymore and I can't tool this guy up with a louisville slugger as I could back in the day. Add to this he has a gun. He dry fired it in the entryway last week. Then, last Saturday, he fired it off the back deck. He got very lucky that he didn't hit any of the houses across the way or injure some one. And the neighbors just assume the noise is from the gun club across the street.

My brain hasn't been working quite right. I've had three migraines over the last two weeks, each lasting three days approximately. I'm sure some of it is stress from all of this. I'm equally sure that the up and down weather we've been having hasn't done me any favors. But the end result is I tend to sit and stare into space or wander around the apartment not sure what to do, half sick with terror, and perseverating on taking a baseball bat and having a conversation with the guy in Morse code.

I was going to write a story but life happened.

 So, here's how my week has been. Stressful and filled with terror that I'm going to do everything wrong/terror that someone is going to come in to the apartment and assault my kids and I'll freeze and be unable to help them/flashbacks to my shitty childhood.

I really wanted to write to fiction for you guys. You've all been wonderfully patient. It's really hard to write when you are struggling to distinguish flashbacks from reality and having a near constant panic attack. What set this off, you ask? Well the walls in these apartments are really thin and I overheard the neighbor beating his wife, who was running through the apartment slamming doors. It triggered me in a big way.

I fucking hate ptsd. Check again next Friday, I may have something for you, provided my brain calms down.

Tour de Fail

 I was going to participate in Tour De Fleece as I do most years. There has been so much going on here and my brain has been wonky because of it, the most I have spun is 9 yards. It's barely spit in the bucket. I'm disappointed but it's not like I can go back and time and get more spinning done.

I somehow screwed up the preemie sweater and am going to have to rip half of it out because I keep losing stitches on the odd rows. The first half came out fine but that bit where I had to bind of for the front neckline and then pick up stitches for the back line I managed to lose ten stitches. And it continues with that side despite my best efforts. To say the least, I am mightily frustrated.

I started actually knitting a preemie hat. I forgot how much of a pain DPNs are. Sure, you look cool after you get past the wrestling a porcupine stage, but they're still a headache. I'm finding myself reminded why I crochet these things.

I have started on Cuddle Bear's Yule gift. I'm making him a WWI pattered sweater from the Red Cross. Because I couldn't find out what the Red Cross standard for needles were or the yarn that would have been used in the project I had to improvise a bit. It's going to be tan, as he requested. I've already made mistakes in the ribbing. I figure if I keep making the same mistakes for all 4 inches, no body will  notice.

Snuggle Bug has requested a new pair of slippers which will work up fast. I have no clue what to give Beloved. I'm sure I'll figure something out.

Things I hate No. 652: Cleaning up after the neighbors.

 The entryway of the building is a mess. We have our stuff tucked tidily away to one side, practically stacked all on top of each other. Then there's the neighbor who moved in about two months ago (I think, my sleep deprived ass can't tell time quite properly right now despite my first full night of sleep in months.) who has crap all over the place in the entryway. The steps are a covered in dirt and some of it is ground into the paint from way back when the landlord we currently have acquired the building and decided that the entryway needed painting. (Little over a year. Looks like crap because there's the equivalent of muddy prints everywhere.)

The landlord wants the entryway to be tidy. I attempted but gave up because I couldn't keep up with the mess of the last group of people who were living in the other apartments. Just a ton of foot traffic and it was exhausting to try to stay on top of. Miss Thing (because she thinks she's the shit) volunteered to do it. She cleaned half the entryway, the bottom half. Once. Now, Miss Thing is an older woman who talks out both sides of her mouth and is worse at executive function than I am on my really bad days.

I try to be patient with her but I kinda want to punch her in the face when she talks because that's just how great her personality meshes with mine. And who it is that has nicknacks all over the place but Miss Thing. She doesn't dust shit. She doesn't really do anything but bitch and moan or try to con you into doing things for her. But when the landlord is around, she makes a display of herself being 'useful'. I think the landlord is catching on that Miss Thang is as useful as a box of hair and listens like a bag of hammers.

So, where does this put me? Well, I am back at trying to keep the entryway tidy. I'm going to make a point of talking to the landlord when I next see him as to this and explain that I am disabled. The entryway, if I am going to maintain it, is going to cost me spoons that I could have been using on other things. I will work out a cleaning schedule. I will come to some kind of conclusion with him on compensation for the work. Because I am not going to do drudge work for free. I have a hard enough time keeping up my own apartment with two teenagers.

Why am I doing this? About a week ago, the landlord softball pitched a rent hike to me. If other people can lie about doing stuff around this place for a theoretical decrease in rent, I can actually do shit and our rent can stay relatively stable. I may not be able to work a full time job anymore, but basically cleaning one more room once a week is not beyond my reach. Hell, on a good week, I could to it three times. But, I'm going to explain to him that you can't mop ground dirt out of paint and the fix is to sand it all and repaint. Beloved's of the mind he can work on that to help move this entire thing forward and between him and I it'll be done properly.

I can see it now, the crime scene tape that I bought him as a gag gets used to warn people to keep off of the wet painted side of the steps. Come to think of it, it would be kinda funny to be honest. But, I am not going to enjoy this process. Other renters have just thrown trash on the floor and into the garden. They've flicked cigarette butts into the garden or ground them out on the outside steps and left them there. It's been a mess. If we have to clean up after these motherfuckers, it's going to get done right and we're probably going to have some creative solutions to problems like the cigarette butts and trash.

Working on a migraine, yay. /sarcasm

 Today has been beastly hot. It is currently 90 deg F in the apartment with all the windows open and the fans running full blast. It would have been worse if I hadn't opened things up. The high temp has me feeling awful and exhausted. It didn't help that my sleep last night was rotten thanks to this cursed heat and humidity combination. I got more done yesterday than I did today. I folded a ton of laundry. (I still have more to fold but no energy to do it.) 

I tried going on Keen but so far there's been no fish biting. I'm taking the approach that this is like fishing and eventually I'll catch something if I am patient enough. Honestly, though, it looks like Keen is just degrading. It makes me wonder why I am even attempting it right now. Not the bad policies, not the stupid political moves, or the sniping between advisors (which can get bitter in the back channel communication). No, there's just been no flow of business. I'm questioning the whole point to this exercise.

On the fiber front, I did a little spinning today. I had to wear an apron because bits of second cuts off of the roving were flying through the air. I didn't have this happen with the first ball of pencil roving. I'm hoping this is just a coincidence that I'm starting with the wrong end of the ball or something. I'm spinning grey alpaca fiber on a drop spindle that was dirt cheap and I honestly have no idea what the weight of it is. The first single is in a hank sitting on top of some magazines I plan to use in a collage at some point for art therapy day.

I have been wrestling with the badly written instructions in a Leisure Arts manual for how to do the faggot/fagot stitch. After a week of trying different things, I finally dropped the manual and started messing around with the yarn based off of what I saw in the picture. Thus, today, I have a half finished washcloth made in this stitch. It is a yarn-eater stitch and is like the bastard love child of a puff stitch and a v-stitch.

No progress has been made on my black and white sampler. It's been so hot that I just couldn't sit in the front yard and use the light bouncing off of the sidewalk to backlight my work to find the holes so I could stitch. And it looks like the one day it is going to cool off a bit, it'll be raining. So, that project is on hold.

I finished the back of the preemie sweater that I started. It is a six inch square. Now to make the front panels and the sleeves. It's a bit of a pain because I am using 'baby' yarn which is stupidly fine and an e-hook which is a bit of a strain on my eyes. I am thankful that I have my bifocals that let me read but it's a bit more challenging to do crochet on a small scale because these eyeglasses are smaller frames than my last pair. I have to find my cheap readers that work pretty good for this stuff. They're buried somewhere on the kitchen table.

A struggle.

 I am going to ramble for a bit as I try to parse out the best decision to make right now regarding Keen. They've made changes to accommodate veteran advisors. They seem to be ok from what I'm seeing in the Advisor's Forum. I've been getting messages from clients (some new) asking when I'll be back. Keen's main appeal was the flexible schedule. Then they changed metrics so that advisors who are on longer tend to get a higher number of approval points. It makes it really hard for people who have to be part time like myself.

I got real angry when they made those changes to the metrics. I was just getting back to working with Keen when things went topsy-turvy. Now, they seem to be settling out and it looks like there is some interest in my returning. I just don't know if it is a good idea. I go and try to get clients with my limited skills at self promotion and nothing comes of it. I attempt to rely on Keen's promotion program and it's been very hit or miss if I make anything on a given day. With their acquisition of the European equivalent of Keen, I don't know if I am going to have a better shot at getting clients during my limited hours.

I really enjoyed doing readings on Keen. And I'm good at it. I take some pride in my work. It pained me to walk away from Keen and threw my schedule into chaos. This didn't help my mental state. It is still challenging to try to keep a schedule because I don't have that outside influence to help give a guideline. I don't exactly have a 'real' job to enforce my schedule. I see that Keen's getting greedy regarding money. That means I am going to have to raise my rates to keep up with the increasing overhead cost of having the account on there. I don't know if that's going to scare off clients.

The biggest struggle that I am having here is should I be focusing on Keen or my writing? I am stalled on my writing because my brain isn't behaving very well. Chronic insomnia for about a year makes it really difficult to focus. A thing that could be problematic for working on Keen too. I did some bibliomancy on it. I was advised to put aside my misgivings and tangled thoughts to focus on what I love. I'm torn, because I love doing tarot readings and helping people and I love writing. It's hard to find a way to do both.

Schedules are great when they work. But they are a problem when they don't work because you're continually playing catch up. I don't know. Maybe I'll give Keen a try today and see what happens. And when I'm not doing readings work on some off-line writing. Blog posts will probably have to wait for the evening, but I still have to plan what I'm going to do for the week. Last weekend was a bad brain weekend and I didn't get any planning or writing done. I didn't really get anything done because I spent so much time panicked that I was going to do everything wrong.

Color therapy.

My Brother-in-Law gave me this book for Yule/Christmas a few years back. I have only finished one of the images in it. But I've decided that when I do my weekly half hour of art therapy, one time a month I will bust out my colored pencils and work on a page. It's going to take me a while to get through the book but it's brainless work. I suppose it lowered my stress levels some. I was a little frustrated that the half hour passed before I could finish the design element that I was working on. I had one more element to do before what I planned for the day was done.

Still, I am making progress on this. I tried out coloring books aimed for younger audiences and I got bored quickly. I am giving this one an honest shot. The details in it are interesting and can lend themselves to complex color combinations. I'm not attributing therapeutic meaning to the colors that I pick. I'm simply going of of aesthetics here. It's like the coloring pages they had me do when I was in the psych ward. Brainless work that just forces you to slow down.

Before, I did the green portions. I guess that was back in April. Then I set the book down and forgot about it. Today, I did the yellow and red portions. I was planning on doing some of the inner section in red as well, but I was  having a hard time choosing from my massive colored pencil collection. (I have been hoarding colored pencils since childhood because my parents were prone to confiscating them and my artwork. So I kept them hidden away in random places. Now that I can have them out, I've got them organized, roughly, by color and I've almost 100 of them of various brands.)

I'm not hypomanic, so I don't know how well working on this coloring book when I'm in that state would do for slowing my brain down. I'm just tired and mildly anxious about Cuddle Bear getting his braces tomorrow. This was an ok distraction from that anxiety. Now, I have a ton of housework to catch up on ranging from laundry to dishes to wiping down the bathroom. All the stuff that fell by the wayside during the hypomanic episode and the depressive episode that came before it. I wish my brain worked properly. Then I'd be able to keep up with stuff.
 

Is the fish dying or not? I have no clue.

 We have a dark blue betta with fancy name (Shimmer). He's been my youngest son's Lego buddy since I brought the fish home. Snuggle Bug will make a point of showing Shimmer what he's built, how it works, and the whole deal about how it fits into the play narrative that he's working on at the time. (Right now, the play narrative is robot Pac-Man vs. possessed animatronic toys. I blame Five Nights at Freddie's for this.) Snuggle Bug is Shimmer's biggest fan and the first to point out when he starts acting weird.

Well, as the kids were at school yesterday, I noticed that Shimmer kept coming to the top of his tank and floating on his side. I cleaned the tank and dosed him with some medicine. He seemed to be a bit improved in the morning but now he's doing it again. Snuggle Bug will be pissed off if his Lego buddy doesn't make it. He was making plans to build a robot version of Shimmer this weekend.

It doesn't help that Snuggle Bug is terrified of death. And yet, what did he pick for us to read for a bed time story but the Illustrated Children's Classics version of Dracula. (He did not like Renfield and the sparrows.) I don't know if reading about the Un-Dead is going to make him less afraid of death. But I know that despite his horror at Renfield eating the sparrows and his disappointment with the death of one of the FMCs (female main characters), he still wants to finish the book and find out how they stop Dracula from doing horrible things in the end.

We've talked about death on a semi-regular basis because we've gone through about six betta fish over the last few years. (It makes me suspect that there's something not right about our water.) Snuggle Bug just is afraid that death is going to be awful, painful, and terrifying. He's not afraid that he's going to blink out of existence. He's not afraid that he's going to be punished by an angry deity. It is death itself that he is afraid of. No amount of talking that I've done on the topic has done much to reassure him.

It doesn't help when there's this shit about mass shootings in the news. The Buffalo one was upsetting for Beloved and I because we have friends who live a few blocks away from the store where it happened. The school shooting in Texas was what got Snuggle Bug worked up for a few days. As they watch the news as part of their social studies class, I have a feeling that hearing about last night's shooting in Maryland is going to have Snuggle Bug upset again. So, this business of the fish is actually a pretty big deal.

I know some people will go 'It's just a fish, get a new one.' But to the boys, this fish is a part of our family and they love it dearly. They love to watch the fish get excited and zoom around the tank before feeding time. They will 'share' new toys with the fish by putting them beside the tank for the fish to investigate. They've been doing this since they were small. The fish is a big deal for them. Just like their pet snails.

So, I hope this business of the fish swimming sideways at the top of the tank resolves itself soon. I really wouldn't want to have to explain to Snuggle Bug that his little buddy is dead. Because then Snuggle Bug will perseverate on if Shimmer suffered horribly through his death. I'm doing my best to keep the kids calm and say 'well, Shimmer is a weird fish and he does weird things sometimes.' Because, Shimmer is an odd fish that will randomly attack the tank for no reason, start zooming around the tank because he saw something green, and generally be strange in the way that only betta fish can be.

Yeah, I missed mental health month. Still important thing here.

 If you've been keeping score for as long as I've been running this blog, I have mental illness struggles. Part of it is suicidal ideation due to depressive episodes. Thanks alot bipolar, it's just a great feature. (Where's the sarcasm font again?) Today is art therapy day. I spend 30 minutes doing art and thinking about it's meaning.

The semicolon is a symbol for suicide awareness. Generally, it is found among people who have survived suicide attempts. I have struggled with depression and suicidal ideation since I was a kid. Some of it was growing up in an abusive household. Some of it is just due to my genetic lotto win of undiagnosed bipolar (which finally did get diagnosed in my 30s through a series of horrific events, but that's beside the point). 

The heart below the semicolon is for love. It is love that keeps me pushing forward and moves me to get help when I need it. The blue portion of the semicolon is a tear for all the lives lost due to complications from mental illness, such as suicide.

Important note: I am not suicidal right now. I am feeling maudlin and thoughtful. I think I'm out of the hypomanic episode. It's raining and gloomy. It tends to make my mood gloomy. That's part of where this came from. I just stared at the page with no idea what to do. Then I drew this with my oil pastels and put the book away. 

Coming down from hypomania & med changes is exhausting.

 As I've been dealing with hypomania for a spell, I've been doing a lot of stabbity. Some of it is on that sampler and some of it is on this project that I found at the bottom of a bag of yarn that I was given after Grandma K. died. She worked the handles of the fan and set it aside. I started the butterflies last week and as I was working the purple arch across the top of the fan, I found a strand of Grandma's hair tangled in it. 

I confess, I teared up a bit as I stitched it into the project. It's a small bit of Grandma that will always be with me now. She was using a round frame to stitch it but I simply didn't have the same sized frame in my collection (shocker right there, because my collection of hoops is extensive). I won the small scroll frame that fit this project perfectly in an auction at the spinner's guild.

When I wasn't doing embroidery, I was cleaning things, pacing, and just a ball of energy

I spent that energy spinning as I was pacing around the apartment. I managed to get the first single for a two ply alpaca yarn finished, wetted, thwacked, and hung. It's S-spun and is cobweb weight, for the most part. There's a few slubby sections but mistakes means it's handmade.

Still wired, but maybe there's hope.

 I'm definitely hypomanic right now. I've been up since 0320 and I feel like I can vibrate through space and time right now. I have been avoiding the internet and social media because I don't want to do something stupid that I'll have to clean up later. It's been a long week or so. The days blur together and between my sleep difficulties and my brain going 10k mp/h, I have a hard time keeping up. Somehow, I am managing to keep notes, though they're scattered through different locations. I'm going to try to channel this urge to organize and clean everything into getting my notes into order.

I have been dealing with what I call 'brain itchies' for the entire time I've been like this. It's aggravating and it is making me a bit grouchy, on top of the mood randomly going between Fighty McFightface and HappyFunBall. Things like the kids' Rubric's Cube being scrambled is irritating because I look at it and my brain screams at me all the colors should be the same on each face. I'd solve the damn thing but I don't remember how to solve a Rubric's Cube. In my rambling last night, I was talking about how I was going to buy two and work at each slowly until I master how the damn thing works and then I was going to unscramble the cubes. Beloved then showed me a video on Youtube of how these damn things can be disassembled and put back together to be cleaned. Of course, he described it as how you can explode one and my brain thought t.n.t., which made me immediately start cracking up hysterically.

I started reorganizing and cleaning the project room. I am finding all kinds of shit that I forgot existed. Like the two bins full of fiber that needs to be washed (they're sealed shut and the samples of fiber are in sealed plastic bags, so there's no smell). I found most of the floor and then covered it up again with boxes as I was going through stuff. But, I am actually putting things away in places where they can be found. 

I have been restraining the urges to organize the kitchen and our pantry-shelves (a bookshelf repurposed to hold dry goods and canned goods) by color and such. It's been a major brain itchy because I look at it and see that there is no rhyme or reason to it and I feel like I must fix it. When that feeling gets too strong, I go into the project room (which evokes it writ large because of the chaos in there) and start working. I am right now taking a break from cleaning. I'm struggling with the urge to start dragging out all of the plastics from underneath the sink and scrubbing them. It's been a day. And we're not even half done yet.

As Beloved says ' @whee '

 Finally the depressive episode is lifting. But I'm transitioning into hypomania. I kinda suspected this was going to happen since I have been waking up at o'dark thirty every morning for the last three weeks. I've promised Beloved that I will not reorganize the kitchen by color again. But, I have no idea how far up I am going to go because it's been a while since I've been hypomanic and I can't entirely predict what I'll fixate on.

In the meantime, the Spinning Guild meets Saturday. I may or may not be going depending on brain state. It's musical wheels and everybody who has an interesting spinning wheel brings one for people to try out. I have a kick wheel (made by Jim at True Creations) and I totally love it. I also won random rainbow striped roving that I can use on it to demonstrate  how it works and share with interested parties. I'd like to make this happen, but if I'm at a point where I'm bound to say whatever potentially awful thing comes to mind, I really should stay home.

Monday,  I go to see my other eye doctor and talk about if I am developing glaucoma or what's the deal with my right eye being wonky. (I see the optimologist next month about a possible new prescription because of this business with my right eye.) I'm kinda scared about the glaucoma thing.

Tuesday, I talk to my psychiatrist. If I'm hypomanic at the time, it may be a bit of a surprise for him because most of our sessions I have either been depressed or meh.

Wednesday, Cuddle Bear goes to the orthodontist. I have some suspicion that this will be the appointment that he gets braces put on and we make the down payment on the second round of braces. He's nervous. Heck, I'm a little nervous. But the orthodontist is a good guy and really knows what he's doing. It when we get to the oral surgery stage that I am real nervous about because I don't know how that'll go at all or who we're going to see or anything else like that. The kids have a great dental care team. I know they'll recommend someone who is good. I hope that they'll do the procedure under sedation so that Cuddle Bear doesn't have a panic attack.

[insert witty title here]

 I am struggling with depression again. It is a never ending merry-go-round of suck. Start to feel ok and then I drop into depression because of situational bullshit. Or, start to feel ok and then I drop into depression because my brain chemistry is fucked. Either way, it's bullshit.

Book five of my fantasy series is out. The paperback got approved yesterday. I have yet to slap up links to it on social media and such. Honestly, I feel like I am going nowhere fast with my fantasy series. I am not going to give up, I'm just very frustrated that I can't seem to manage to find my audience. (Hence the dog pic.)

I'm going to shut down the adult fiction blog I have going and start actually publishing it under a pen name. I don't know if I am going to have to keep a blog for that pen name to keep readers interested or what. I just don't know. I don't have a solid plan in mind. I'm making shit up as I go along. I've been hesitant about attempting to sell adult fiction because I was convinced that I was real bad at writing it. But, upon consideration, I am a decent author whose narrative style is pretty dynamic (or so I've been told). And I've been doing research into this for about three years, maybe five. There's some really awful stuff on the market that sells fairly well. If I set my price low and focus on writing quality short stories, maybe I can make a few bucks like those people writing the bad stuff.

Because I keep struggling with mental health issues, I have been struggling to write pretty much anything. It's not helping me any. Some of the low confidence issues that I am having right now are due to a three year project falling apart. Some of the low confidence issues are because I keep having flashbacks and intrusive memories of my parents telling me that I wasn't ever going to be successful as an author. C-PTSD sucks.

My computer is acting suspicious. It isn't charging. I don't know if it is because I have been using it as a laptop and this is how it is conserving the battery or what's going on. Windows is pushing real hard for me to upgrade to Win 11 and get Windows360, their office suite. It's really annoying. I was ok with my Win 8 machine until it literally started having mechanical failure issues. I'm kinda concerned that this computer, which isn't a year old and is 3 days away from having the warranty lapse, is mechanically fucked up some how. Planned obsolescence is a thing. It makes me miss the clunky, big desktop computer that we had running for almost a decade.

I don't know what I'm going to do with this machine. I'm considering reupping the warranty. I'm considering taking it to the local computer fix-it shop and having them figure out why in hell this thing isn't charging. I know one thing, I'm not upgrading to Win 11 and I'm not getting their office suite. They're working on forcing everyone's data off their boxes and into the cloud, where they can hold it hostage for money. Fuck that noise. I will switch to a different operating system before I let those assholes have more of  my data than they already got. 

I mean, the system is still trying to get me to use a pic of myself to unlock the computer. I refuse to do it. Passwords are a thing. They're useful. And I don't trust Microsoft Corp. They've done enough shady things in the past, I am suspicious of the whole 'unlock your computer with a smile'. Also, it's creepy as fuck to have Friend Computer demand that I smile.

Angry again, over Pandemic shit.

 So, we get a note home from school that someone in my son's class has tested positive for Covid-19. No idea when this happened, maybe the school found out from the parents today or maybe it was Friday and it took a little time to organize the response. But, we got a test kit from the school with a note saying if we needed more test kits we should contact them. (The school has been very supportive of the community through this whole business.)

We did the test. Snuggle Bug tested negative. In a few days, we get to do this again. It's a pain in the ass but if he is healthy, I suppose that's the price of doing business. But that's not what I'm ticked off about. I'm annoyed with it but I'm not ticked off.

It's the fact that majority of people at the school and in our community are not wearing masks. These kids were not getting sick, not even the common cold, when wearing masks. But my neighbors wanted the masks off their kids because they felt that their babies were having their rights oppressed. My neighbors wanted to ditch their masks because they felt that they were being oppressed.

Now people are getting sick with Covid-19. They're seeing something of a surge of cases in the local hospitals and people are acting mystified. It's like they honestly don't understand that masking and social distancing does a big thing to prevent transmission of disease. It makes me real angry.

I get dirty looks at the store for wearing my mask. I'm seriously tempted to locate masks with vulgar things on them like 'fuck off plague rat' so the people who are offended by my effort to preserve my health have a legitimate reason to be offended. If it weren't for the fact that there's so many Islamophobic assholes around, I'd wear a scarf across my face to cover up the mask. Less about an extra layer of protection (because it doesn't really add that much) and more about they can't fucking tell if I am wearing one or not. I also find myself wanting to hit people with my cane when they are saying that the pandemic is over. It's not over because some politicians say it is.

A bit calmer, but still angry.

 Dear Reader,

In the conclusion of my last post I gave a directive to the people who didn't care if they died of Covid. Said directive was to eat a bullet before you kill somebody else.

I am sure that you found it offensive and out of character of my usual posts. I have been listening for the last two and a half years to my neighbors act like this pandemic is a conspiracy to take away their freedoms. I'm sick of it. I'm furious. And if I weren't disabled, I'd be doing something about it.

When Black Lives Matter became a big part of social discourse, I had people telling me that these protests and riots were because people were bored due to the Covid social distancing. I had people telling me that this was all because things weren't 'normal' enough. When MeToo became a big part of the social discourse, same people were saying similar shit.

I'm sorry, but when things go to shit all of the problems that you swept under the rug are going to pop up. Expect more of it.

There's no going back to 'normal' only forward into the future.

[keyboard mash] IT IS STILL A PANDEMIC!

 Here's a pretty picture to distract you for a moment from the horribleness of the world. If you can not read the text on the image, it says 'Chasing Hope' and the image is a series of blue butterfly stickers arranged around the text. The sparkly stickers are pop-up stickers, though the pic doesn't do a good job of demonstrating it.

Rant in-coming, if you're faint of heart or can not handle coarse language, focus on the butterflies.

I get why he did it. Dr. Fauci is under incredible pressure to declare everything is fine and that we're done with the pandemic. He said it because if he didn't he was probably going to lose his job and someone more malleable would have replaced him. Still, it's a dirty fucking lie that's going to get people killed.

There's 23 counties where people should be masking in my state. My county isn't one but is surrounded on all sides by them. It's only a matter of time until the CDC says we should bring back masking. My family didn't stop masking when the mandate got dropped. This goddamn disease mutates like nobody's business. It's killing people. It's just not killing them quite as fast. This is why we're still wearing masks and maintaining social distance despite the strain it puts on relationships.

I now understand that the Influenza Pandemic didn't truly go away. People just cast off their masks and accepted that people were going to die as a cost of being comfortable and living life as 'normal'. There is no fucking 'normal'. Until they come up with a damn vaccine that this cursed virus can not evade, I will be wearing a mask because this disease can fucking kill me. My children understand that I am in the high risk group for lethal complications and they're wearing masks because they don't want me to die.

I want you to think about that for a minute, Reader, a 12 and 14 year old have to consider their parent's mortality every morning they go to school. They're part of a very small population at the school still wearing masks. Everyone is real good about not giving them shit. But I'm waiting because at some point there's going to be an issue. My sons shouldn't have to worry about my dying because they brought home a 'common cold' that turned out to be Covid. They've been more anxious about my diabetes since Covid has come into the picture. Every morning when I check my blood sugar, they ask me if it is a good number. I always tell them it is a good number, even if it is running high, because I am not going to have them worried over if I'm ok when they have typical teenager shit to worry about.

I want my kids to be ok. I am working my damn ass off to keep my anxiety about the effects of long term Covid and the fear that if my boys get it, they'll be long-haulers, or dead. I see my neighbors and relatives casting their masks away and going 'It's all over now.' When, no, it is fucking not over. This is how we wound up with surges that killed a lot of people. 

There are mass graves in NYC of people who died from Covid. Over 1 million people in the US have died from Covid. But we're supposed to ignore that and focus on things like what Susie is going to wear to Prom! And the OMG!DISNEY IS GOING TO HAVE TO LEAVE FLORIDA?! I'm sorry, but that shit doesn't matter. Coordinate the prom dress with the mask. Let the professionals hash out what's going to happen with Disney. Focus on trying to be hygienic, focus on trying to be safe, and start thinking long term with this mask business.

Because there's a lot of people who are dead or permanently disabled due to Covid because of stupid shit like people saying that it was 'just the flu' and getting their ass up in the air over the fact that they had to cover their mouth and nose. Let me tell you something, masks are a hell of a lot more comfortable than bras. You can actually breathe with them and you don't have a damn wire digging into your ribs to make your breasts look more socially acceptable (larger). If I have to wear a goddamn bra so that you're not offended by the fact that I have nipples (when every-fucking-body has  nipples, we're goddamn mammals), you should wear a fucking mask so I don't catch whatever disease you're carrying.

Fucking hell, people, we've had two and a half years of this shit. And you're crying about your freedoms? Your freedoms end at the tip of your nose. Social responsibility is part of being in a society. If you're sick, you get it taken care of and avoid people until you're better. It's common sense when something this damn contagious is running around. By the way, the biggest proponents of throwing the masks away and dismissing the vaccines are the generation who saw major national intervention for Polio and Measles. 

The death rate for Polio is the same as the death rate for Covid. But because Covid looks like a cold or the flu, they scorn it. Fuck those assholes. Polio was damn near eradicated because of intensive research and the public realizing that something was seriously fucking wrong. Why can't you morons do the same damn thing? Because you feel uncomfortable and irritated with a fucking mask? Grow a hair on your ass and put on the damn mask. You're going to kill people with this attitude and possibly even die yourself. If you don't give a damn about dying, that's fine. Eat a fucking bullet and get it over with so that you don't kill other people in the process.

I can do minimalist design too.

Pic # 1

 I bought the hoop and the butterfly sticker at the craft store the other day. My total working time on this project was about an hour (with Snuggle Bug distracting me). First pic is with out the sticker. Everything is back stitch and using leftover floss from the birds project. The buttons I randomly found in my bag, which inspired the whole process.

Pic # 2

 I have come to the decision that I am going to resume art journaling for therapy. Doing mandala coloring is mind numbing and doesn't really work for me. I'm finding that embroidery helps me calm down.

Maybe art journaling will help me process the stuff I'm dealing with. I will post pics of pages as I get them done.

Projects and my sanity.

I have started on a new sampler. I just grabbed fabric out of my stash and discovered that I had a significant amount of black 14 count Aida cloth. So I popped it into a large oval shaped hoop and started stitching. I am a masochist. I'm not insane because I am not doing black on black embroidery here. But it is difficult for me to see the hole in the fabric where I need to pass my needle through. Still, I'm going to make this thing. I'm going with white on black for this one. I have another, larger but narrower thing of black Aida cloth. That'll go on the scroll frame and I will do something like gold work on it. I mean, if I am going to torture myself, I may as well go whole hog on it.

I am not doing well. I am getting towards the bottom of my current depressive episode and feeling like everything is hopeless. It's part of the reason why I haven't posted most of this week. I just have been so full of despair and disgust with myself that I feel like I am an utter failure as a human being, just as my abusive parents predicted I'd be because I didn't conform with their concept of what normal was.

The business with Keen has really upset my apple cart. I have looked into other platforms where I can give readings for hire but they want full time commitment. I can't do that. The whole reason why I was on Keen was because of the flexibility of the platform worked with my disability limits. Now they're pushing towards this other model of business and I just can't do it.

I have been rather dejected and thinking about other things that circumstances had forced me to give up, like painting. Being depressed and thinking about these things does not help being depressed, it just makes it suck even more. 

Throw on top of this, we have a new neighbor who triggers my c-ptsd whenever I encounter her. I either get the powerful urge to flee, space out and go on autopilot, or a visceral urge to do violence. All three are really bad options so I have been hiding in the apartment as she has been steadily redecorating the entryway and public spaces of the building.

Her sense of taste in such things is atrocious. I hate it with the fire of a thousand suns. She's making noises about repainting the entryway. If I wind up going to the hospital with an asthma attack because of her crap, I'm giving her the damn bill. She's just a few steps away from taking over my gardens. She's talking about putting mulch over everything. We're not past the danger of frost. I haven't purchased the plants that I want to put in the beds this year. And she's sticking decorations out there where I wanted to put a planter, all proud of herself.

It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that she's entitled and has an attitude problem. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that she's demanding that the other residents of the building put up with her shit. I want to punch her in the face but assault is not the answer to the problem. So, I am doing needlepoint and envisioning stabbing her in the eye with just about each stitch. I posted the front and the back of my current project because both look kinda cool.