CW: Eating disorder vs diabetes

 As some of you may know, I am a recovered anorexic. It took about five years of Beloved forcing me to finish meals when we went out before I could eat a meal and not be filled with guilt that I was taking food from someone else who needed it more. See, when I was a kid, when I got hungry and tried to get a snack that was the line thrown at me "You're taking food out of your brothers' mouths." My parents strictly limited how much food I was allowed to have. I learned to take the bare minimum that was enough to make the hunger pains stop. Gradually, that lessened until I just accepted that a certain level of discomfort when it came to food was 'normal' as my parents heartily encouraged my brothers to eat more and gave me scorn when I tried to do the same.

When I got to school, I got harassed for eating a full meal because I was so skinny. Rumors flew around that I was bulimic and I started restricting what I ate in public. That was about when I developed a revulsion for watching and listening to other people eat. The confluence of my upbringing and the stressors of high school ended up with my weight fluctuating between 110 and 95 lbs when I was a senior and stood 5ft 8 in. My doctor never fully caught on to what was going on with me. He was a nice guy but assumed that my build was a result of the fact that I was born a micro-preemie. The secret about how food was managed in the household wasn't breathed for fear of dire punishment.

Backstory presented, I am finding myself struggling to do the things I need to in order to manage my diabetes. Fasting blood sugar numbers higher than 130 has me eating less than 30 carbs prior to taking my blood sugar lowering medication for fear that my blood sugar is going to run up too high once those carbs hit my system. I have spent the last three years (give or take) strictly limiting my food intake to between 30 to 35 carbs per meal. I struggle with the urge to skip snacks. I've lost a fair amount of weight. People praise me for it and I get nervous. I get afraid that I'm losing weight too fast. 

At the same time, I can't help the feeling that the more I restrict, the greater control I have over the diabetes. I struggle with the temptation to cut my meal carb load down lower. Especially when my fasting blood sugars a running over 160. I find myself sorting foods into forbidden and not forbidden categories. I get scared that I'm going to cook the wrong thing for myself or that I'm going to accidentally eat a forbidden food. I used to love cooking. Now I dread it. Between all the math I have to juggle to figure out to make the meal (and I'm bad at math) and the psychological torture of eating tiny meals compared to the rest of the family it's awful. 

I just don't want to cook anymore. I can't do that, because the boys don't know (and are not willing yet to learn) how to cook. I get emotionally torqued up over food and try to stick to things that I know are low carb as best I can. I keep finding myself tempted to switch over to the keto diet (which is basically what I was doing in high school) to limit my carbs even more. My doctor has explicitly banned the keto diet because it can be lethal for diabetics. So, I'm stuck gradually reducing what I am eating as I watch my blood sugars bounce around. 

And, as I struggle with the urge to restrict my food, I am sneak eating snacks that fall under the keto category. I am hiding when I eat. I am falling into the habit of eating my dinner before the kids come to the table to eat so I don't have to deal with the revulsion of my personal eating on top of the revulsion of listening and watching them eat. It's not good and it is slowly getting worse. But because I am a bit overweight, people are like 'oh, good job losing weight' and 'you can't possibly be an anorexic.'

Long day is long.

 I am weary. It has been a long day. I got a bunch of writing done on my other blogs to the point that I'm almost caught up on my work. I posted links to stuff on social media and I'm waiting for people to notice it. My goal right now is to hit between fifteen and twenty reads on a given blog post for a given blog. It was mentally exhausting to do three days worth of blogging on three blogs. For some reason, it is easier for me to sit down and work on a novel for an equivalent length of time than it is to do the blogging stuff right now.

I had a dentist appointment yesterday that actually went pretty well. I was a little nervous going in because I've been having some sensitivity in a tooth that has a lot of work on it. The dentist explained that the filling material transmitted heat and cold a lot easier than enamel and that was a relief. As was the fact that I had no cavities. On the whole, my oral health is a world better than it was a bit over ten years ago when I got so depressed I stopped taking care of my teeth. This resulted in my having a bunch of cavities, one almost bad enough to require a root canal. Thanks to the Eastman Dental Clinic, those got taken care of and my dental care has been excellent. And they have been patiently teaching me how to properly take care of my teeth. I'm always asking questions about how I am doing and how I can improve. 

That experience with getting all those fillings scared the hell out of me and made me change my approach to self-care. I still struggle with it because of being taught that my needs come last out of everyone in the household and that it is selfish for me to spend more than the bare minimum of time on my self care. Between the diabetes, my skin issues, and my eyesight getting slowly worse, I've been forced to take time for these things that I was all but prohibited when I was growing up. I am tired and I could probably use a shower but I don't know if I'm going to get one tonight. It depends on if the kids use up all the hot water and if I have the energy for it (and the associated task of moisturizing everything now).

I didn't feel like washing dishes or cooking dinner but I pushed through that. We had meatloaf and cheesy mashed potatoes for dinner tonight. I didn't have the Italian sausage to add to the recipe, so I used more beef. The kids didn't notice the difference and still enjoyed their meal. I ran out of space to put dishes to dry earlier. So, I will have to wait until tomorrow to wash the broiler pan from Monday's burgers and the dishes from tonight. My life is painfully boring and domestic on this front. My biggest accomplishments today it seems, aside from writing, was getting all my laundry folded and put away; washing a fuck ton of dishes; and making dinner. 

I'm really frustrated with how my tarot reading business is going. I was logged in for my usual hours and only got one call. Which netted me three dollars, that's one dollar per hour before you factor in stuff like tax. This has been the case for a few weeks now. I don't know if it is a case of clients not having the money for readings in the face of prices for everything going up or if there's something else going on. I did an experiment a few days ago of logging in at nine in the morning and staying logged in until four thirty in the afternoon. I only made fifty dollars the entire day. This is a sharp decrease from what I had going on in September. In September, I averaged something between five to ten dollars per hour on my calls. I ended the week with something around forty to fifty dollars. 

A part of me says I should just give it up. Another part of me says that this is just a fallow period and I need to hang in there. I just get anxious that we're going to need that small extra bit of income over the coming months. I know that my anxiety is based in the fact that I grew up poor and we needed every dime we could get our hands on. But I am struggling with how to market my business and my books. I'm actually getting some small royalty checks for my books. It's averaging to be around twenty dollars a month. I am hoping that the holidays may mean more sales but I'm not hanging my hat on that.

Suffice it to say, there's a lot of balls up in the air right now. I've been slowly gathering things for Yule. Because of my issues over the Summer and early Autumn, I didn't get anything made for anybody. I don't have time to craft stuff between now and the 25th. I just don't know what to get some folks and I am struggling with anxiety over pricing since going shopping and observing how much the cost of stuff has gone up since the last time I did serious shopping. A small ham should not be over ten dollars at the discount grocery store, but that's where we're at.

And this isn't even looking at my mental health picture right now. Let's just say that I'm tired, dealing with seasonal depression, and the different parts of my brain are arguing with each other on a semi-regular basis. Also, last week, I had three panic attacks. It sucked. I don't even know why they happened. But, I am struggling to find time to do my therapy writing in the face of everything else going on. I barely find time to get my daily work done. I haven't been sleeping great and I'm sure it's tied to all of that. However, I am a fighter. I'll just keep my shield up and press forward until I have ground the problem beneath my heel or forced the situation to one that I can bear, like I always do.

Sleep helps my brain reset.

 I took a nap after that last post and that screaming in my head sensation went away. If it stays away, I don't know. Apparently just a bad night's sleep is going to screw up my head now. *sigh*

This getting older with multiple mental illnesses to deal with is bullshit. /rant

There's screaming in my head.

 Fuck all, I've gone and talked about this on FB of all places. This blog gets barely any pings, it's a theoretically safe place to talk about it.

Today, there's someone in my head screaming. It's not the introject of my mother. That particular someone is locked up and gagged as sufficiently as I can manage by force of will and magic. But there's a part of me wailing in terror and cowering. I can't make sense of it. I just take the magic pill and the wall between them and I gets a little thicker. 

I've had almost as many panic attacks this week as there've been days. I've dissociated a lot when I wasn't panicked and just sat staring at things not really connecting with reality. This concept of being 'plural' or whatever it's called terrifies me. That might be why one of the people in my head is screaming right now. I've been stuck on trying to write all morning.

All I know is that there's a part of myself in deep distress and I can't do anything about it. I don't know why there is this distress. When the panic attacks hit, I feel like I need to run and hide. Not take my children and hide. Not prepare for a fight. But flee for my life and hide in or under something where I can't be seen. It makes being on the computer hard because my living room is not a secure location with it's three big windows. Yeah, it's a laptop and I could theoretically carry it off into another room to write. But that's not going to resolve whatever the fuck is going on in my head.

All of this started months ago when I couldn't sleep. I thought we had the sleep problem resolved. I'm starting to wake up stupid early again. (Last night was because I was coming down from a panic attack and forgot all my evening meds because I couldn't grock what time it was on some level. That doesn't exactly count like most of last week where I did take 'em and I kept popping awake at 0400.) My head feels even more fucked up than it did when this shit began.

I'm not having flashbacks, most of the time. But that's because of the magic pill that quells the panic response and short circuits the flashback. I keep dissociating in a fashion where I just sit and stare not really connecting with reality, just in a fog. I know there's a lot of trauma anniversaries through this time of year. I'm not too surprised by the dissociation, but this rising, repetitive sense of panic and feeling like my brain/personality/self is fractured and held together with spit and bailing wire has been growing stronger over the months.

I'll be talking to my psy doc about this soon. I know that he'll say that I really need a therapist. The problem is none of the therapists in my area will take my damn insurance. And I'll just suffer with this shit if my choice is going back to the county clinic. Those people damn near destroyed my life with their bungling of my case. No fucking way am I going to darken their doorstep, be it literally or figuratively.

Fiber fluff update

 Well, it's December and I've only got one present made. That's right, I've only made one present. We'll be baking cookies later on in the month. But, that's not the same as making stuff like scarves and toys. I'm panicking a little bit about what I'm going to give people. I was going to make my increasingly famous Apple Pie Moonshine but the list of people who can have it keeps growing smaller. I may just give out the recipe.

On the preemie hat front, I'm grinding away at making hats. The people who write these patterns and say they work up in fifteen minutes lie. They're dirty, filthy lies. It's more like a half hour regardless of hook size and yarn weight. It is vexing but I'm going to keep at it. I've lost count as to where I'm at right now. But I know that I'm not going to hit my goal of 100 by January 1. Those few months back in the summer when I had a mental health crisis really screwed up my plans for the holidays. That's typically when I'm working on making things for people.

Spinning is on hold at the moment because I'm trying to finish off this damn ball of yarn for the preemie hats. I'm a bit frustrated. I love the way the Alpaca fiber is spinning up. I'm sure that it'll be a beautiful yarn. But I can't make anything for myself out of it because I will react to it. Nothing is as disappointing as getting all that work done and discovering that you can't do anything with it.

I'm debating rebooting my Etsy store and slapping up some of my yarn hoard for sale. I've been considering spinning for production for a little while. I enjoy spinning and I know that I can spin for production level work by the fact that I have spun a mile of yarn in the span of a month. And it was good, fine weight yarn. On a drop spindle. Since I have a kick wheel, I can probably do double that in shorter time. I am just in the situation that I don't have a comfortable chair to sit in and do this work. 

Looking at the yarn offered up for sale by others and the cost of their spinning services, I find myself thinking I could probably undercut some on the price and still make a decent bit out of my hobby. And not be left with the question of what the hell am I going to do with all of this damn yarn that I have spun. I'm still deciding on this one.

Monday Rant: Posted at the writing blog.

 So, I did my free writing exercise and it turned into a rant. Here's the link. 

https://evandarstories.blogspot.com/2021/11/aw-morning-pages-no-88.html

TL : DR - Fuck the holiday season.

Friday Life Hack: Gift Edition.

 So, we're coming up on the season of inundating people with things. We've got cookies to make, pies to bake, and C'thulu to wake (because somebody's gotta do something about the way things have gone down hill around my neck of the woods, people are just getting down right impolite and ugly about things).

Seriously, if you're someone who is hard to shop for (like myself) you probably get the deer in the headlights look when someone asks you what you want for [insert holiday/gift giving occasion]. What's even worse, however, is leaving people to just guess. Because then gods only know what is going to arrive and if there's a single thing you can do with it. 

Stop and take a moment before someone ambushes you with the big gift question. Come up with a handful of ideas based off of your hobbies and interests. Your list need not be exhaustive. It can also include the unconventional gifts of donations to charity in your name, random acts of kindness in your name, or some other form of giving to others on your behalf. People may think it a little odd that you're asking them to give to someone else on your behalf. Don't worry about it. A year or two of making that 'odd' request, they'll get used to it.

Monday Rant: What's wrong with being Chaotic Good?

 I make people uncomfortable by doing nice things for them. I don't understand it. Somewhere along the way, the practice of random acts of kindness started getting frowned on if they didn't meet a specific standard (usually some WASP suburbanite vision of it ala buying coffee for the next car in line). When I was in labor with my second son, I had brought with me a crafting project to keep me distracted. I overheard a mother in the next bed over (we were all waiting our turn for our c-section delivery) who was very distressed about being a single mother and her lack of goods for taking care of the baby. I asked the nurse if I could give that woman the baby blanket that I had finished, explaining that the entire thing was made from a hypoallergenic yarn and machine washable. The nurse was confused but said it was ok, as long as I stayed in my bed. My solution was to hand the blanket to the nurse to give the woman (which made the nurse visibly uncomfortable). The other mother started crying when she received the blanket.

I told this story to someone I knew and they got offended. I was chastised for making the woman cry when her situation was so bad. I pointed out that I had given her something that was going to help and they proceeded to defame this mother claiming that they were likely a 'welfare queen'. It took a great deal of restraint not to punch them in the face when they started talking smack about this poor woman who was in a hard spot that they knew nothing about.

This isn't the first time I've been told that my random acts of kindness and charity are 'wrong' because I'm giving to the 'wrong' people. Apparently, you're only allowed to give to the poor if you're part of an organization (preferably run by a church that you're a member in good standing), you're only allowed to give money to charitable organizations instead of directly to the people in need, and if you're making things to give away it has to be to charitable organizations instead of to people directly, because the people might sell it.

The general attitude that my acts of kindness and charity to others is going to enable some kind of nefarious behavior on the part of the people who are in need is bullshit. But I run into it a lot around these parts. There's always the assumption that the poor are going to use cash to get drugs or alcohol. There's the attitude that you've been conned out of your money if you pay for an impoverished person's lunch. And this vacillating sense of virtue signaling on if you're giving to a charity. If the charity is one that is considered virtuous based on their public image, you're a bad person for not giving to them when you choose someone else. (I'm looking at you, Salvation Army and your anti-LGBT+ bullshit.) I hate the default assumption that if a charitable organization is nominally associated with Christianity, that means they're better than the other organizations.

I tend to skip the organizations for the most part and just give to people in need as I meet them. Things tend to find me that people are in need of and I pass them along instead of insisting on charging a buck. The only organization that I work with is the spinning guild because they're well vetted and have a good set of contacts for distributing goods to the people who need it. I also picked to do so because they're secular. I know that nobody is going to be getting pressured to convert to anything in order to get what they need to be ok.

But this cultural attitude that all poor people of bad moral character and that by helping them I am enabling them to do nebulous, nefarious things makes me furious. If the homeless person I gave a scarf to decides to sell it, obviously they needed the cash more than the scarf, so it still helped them. When I give things away, they're no longer mine to dictate what happens to them. The same is true about any act of charity. You give it away, it's not yours anymore and you don't get to say boo about what people do with it. Don't like it, don't give it away.

Chaotic good for life. To Hel with the haters.

Fiber fluff update on hold this week.

 I'd love to describe my latest creations to you but I haven't been working on anything over the last little while. I'm struggling with some really rough feelings right now and my heart isn't in playing with yarn. This isn't grief from my maternal grandfather's death finally catching up with me (though some would have possibly theorized that since he died on the first). I'm actually perfectly fine with the fact that he's dead and I say good riddance to that man because he was a bully and an abuser. He and I weren't close and I know that he would have disapproved of my entire lifestyle. So, fuck that noise.

No, what's got me in a bit of a tizzy is the fact that C- is out of prison. He's on parole which means that he's being monitored. It still doesn't change the fact that I'm afraid that he's going to come looking for me, harass me, and/or do some kind of harm. I don't live down in Wellsville anymore. I don't think anyone lives in that building now, if the family even owns it still. That'd be the place he'd look for me because that was where I lived when he was in my life.

But, there's these websites that let you look up people and they give phone numbers, addresses, and a list of people connected to them. I found my information up on one of those sites and I nuked it. This was shortly after some idiot in Texas tried to steal my identity. (I then put my credit on freeze and started looking up my information so that I could make it go away.) I know there are other sites that have my information up there. I'm afraid of him using that to come find me. I tell myself it's an irrational fear.

Then again, C- has started roaming around in neighborhoods where one of his former girlfriends have lived, presumably looking for them. I got a panicked message from her and she explained that she didn't know what to do. I told her what my plan was if he showed up on my doorstep intending to harm me or my family - cast iron frying pan to the face at full force. 

The last time I had interaction with C-, he was attempting to wrestle me down into submission so that he could have his way with me. I managed to get my arms free and told him to stop or I'd break his neck. He laughed and said I didn't know how. It was one of the few things I remember Sensei teaching us in the self-defense class with crystal clarity. I positioned my hands and arms so that if I had to, I could. C-'s face went white and he scrambled off of me in a hurry. He made a point of leaving the premises damn quick after that.

My getting involved with C- was a mistake. C- played a game and figured out the buttons to push to make me dissociate. It made that relationship difficult and confusing because it really fucked with my memory and mental state. Beloved was concerned and encouraged me to start seeing a therapist. We figured that my c-ptsd from being in an abusive relationship in the past was acting up again. When C- was out of the picture, my memory and my mental state improved.

It's made me a bit gunshy about polyamory with incarnate people. I worry that it'll be a repeat of what happened with C-, but with even worse consequences because Beloved and I are married and have kids now. Life's changed a lot since 2003-2004. Unfortunately, I am still on some level afraid of C-. It's made the last few days difficult.

Monday Menu is in the Past, Monday Rants are the Future!

 I don't really have much to rant about at the moment except puberty. My kids went from cheerful morning people to surly, half feral young men. This morning was a challenge. One insisted he didn't need to get out of bed until the last minute and was about to wear dirty clothes to school because "they don't smell dirty." The other was making sniping comments at his brother about how he was going to make them late for the bus from the moment he got out of bed until (probably) the moment they got on the bus.

Breakfast was met with suspicion. I was serving them what's previously been a favorite breakfast item. Today, they looked at it as if I was trying to poison them. Then came the aggravation of trying to get them to take allergy medication. It wasn't as awful as it could have been, but that suspicious reaction as if I was trying to feed them arsenic was there. It was exasperating to say the least.

Oh, and the son who was ranting that his brother was going to make them late for the bus insisted he didn't have time to brush his hair for a full half hour because he had to rearrange his army figures for the battle he was planning for in the afternoon. And the kids wonder why I have white showing up in my hair.

It'd be a little easier if they didn't argue quite so much. I don't understand it. They start arguing as soon as they're both awake and continue until they're out the door. And half the time, one of them comes in to announce that the other has called them an insult as soon as they're outside. It makes me think I need something stronger than coffee to keep up with these two.

Oh, one other quick note: how the hell did my son grow about four inches in the course of three months? I swear those pants fit him at the beginning of the school year. Now he looks like he's wearing cut-offs or something. And his brother is hording all of his old clothes but can't tell which pants fits him properly so it's a completely random game of "Will it Fit?" every morning. I sense that they're going to be getting clothes in the near to immediate future.

If they keep annoying me, they're getting socks and underwear for Yule. *rolls eyes*

Fiber fluff update

 Well, I had a bag of mostly felted fiber that I just gave up on and threw out. I felt like I was wasting precious resources when I did so but there was no hope for it. The least felted bits of it, I managed to spin some really slubby yarn out of it. I don't like it and I don't know what I'm going to do with it. There's not enough to make something big. I am debating the possibility of something like fingerless gloves. I just don't know if there's enough there for even that. I really didn't get much yarn out of it, though I did accomplish the heavier weight I was trying to spin with it.

I finished spinning the cotton-candy purple merino that I dyed and carded myself. My mother in law has a drum carder. I used it for the first time to card that stuff. It was an interesting experience. It again came out as a slubby yarn. I don't particularly like slubby yarns because I find them difficult to work with. That said, It still looks like cotton candy. I have to wet it and hang it. I'll probably do that while we still have the decent weather. I know that I overspun it. It's an uneven, slubby yarn but it was not only my first attempt at using a drum carder but my first project using a ring-distaff. I think I like the ring distaff for the mini-batts of fiber that you get off of a drum carder. I tried using it with pencil roving and it was an unmitigated disaster.

The alpaca pencil roving that I was working on is sitting in the bag. I have about a quarter of the first ball spun. I am going to spin the rest of that ball on the super cheap drop spindle that I started on. It may have been super cheap and it's lacking ornamentation of any sort, but it works ok and I think I might be able to fit the entire ball of pencil roving on it. The second ball of pencil roving (which is about the same size) is going to be spun on my kick-wheel. That probably won't be happening until after the holidays.

The baby hat project is up to 35 hats. I don't think I'm going to make my goal of 50 hats by the end of the year despite the fact they're preemie hats. When people tell you these hats work up in 15 minutes a piece, they lie. I finished off the really obnoxious ball of yarn that was making each stitch a different color because of how they dyed it and I had to use stitch markers to tell where I was in the process of making the damn hat. The current ball of yarn isn't half as bad. The color runs are longer so it works up like stripes and it's a lot easier to see where the increases are.

I'm stalled on my neon pink wingspan shawl. I've just been too busy with other stuff, like being sick for two and a half weeks. I'm working on trying to get caught up on a bunch of things. I am probably going to be working on that shawl in December or January at this rate.

Yay a new couch is coming.

 It's a convoluted story but our beaten to hell and back couch is getting replaced soon. Beloved is pleased. He's got a plan for how to dispose of the old one. All I have to do is make space for it. This, on the surface, isn't a problem. Except for there's one hitch in the process. There's a plastic set of shelves that we've been using as an end table for a long time. It's got to be moved and I have no idea where to put it. I have forgotten everything that was inside of it. I think it's a bunch of computer related stuff for an old computer that we no longer have. And I simply can't figure out for the life of me where I'm going to put that blasted thing. I have a bad feeling that I need to massively rearrange the project room and sneak it in there. Some how.

Still not over the bronchitis.

 The z-pack did a lot of good. I'm no longer coughing up stuff that's ugly colored. But I still have a fair amount of chest congestion and my peak flow meter has me firmly in the yellow zone. I've developed a sinus infection on top of this. But, my fever is manageable. I spent most of last week with a moderate to high fever and I wasn't at the point of hearing colors but it was pretty close. That came down a lot over the weekend and last few days. Now I'm at a low to moderate fever. According to theory the antibiotics stay in my system for ten days. So, according to theory, it should resolve my sinus infection and the last lingering bit of this bronchitis by the end of the week.

Cuddle Bear caught this a few days after I did. I tested negative for Covid-19. Now the school wants him to have a test done before he can return to school. It took some digging, but Beloved found a mostly affordable rapid Covid-19 test yesterday after work at one of the local pharmacies. It was disappointing to realize that the closest pharmacy to us was engaging in price gouging on the tests because this thing was half the cost of what we paid for the last test. Same brand and everything. They're nice people but that was a dick move on their part. I have a feeling that a lot of places are selling these things at cost, because they have a sense of 'this is good for the community'.  The mark up at the other place just disappoints me because they "pride" themselves on being our community pharmacy and being there for everybody. 

It's just more evidence as to why we've taken our business elsewhere. We visit them when we have no other recourse. Their hours are such that Beloved can't stop there after work to pick up prescriptions. They apparently mark things up for profit. And their selection is limited for what kind of things you can get. Beloved found me diabetic cough syrup at the other pharmacy, which we didn't even know existed based on what this place had to offer. (Diabetic cough syrup is seriously disgusting. The only way I can manage to take it and not gag is to throw it back like a shot of high test whiskey.)

I'm going to be really annoyed if this stupid cold turns out to be some variant of the Covid-19 virus. There's been no loss of smell or taste. But, the doomsayer in me is going 'this is it, the plague has reached your house.'  The sooner we get Cuddle Bug's test done, the better. It'll shut up my anxiety. It'll make it possible for him to go back to school (which he's been asking about for the last week since he got sick). I just wish I didn't have an anxiety disorder that is constantly prophesying doom.

Damn bronchitis.

 I've had bronchitis since Sunday. It started out as a head cold and dropped into my chest Saturday. Then I was coughing up ugly stuff with my nose running like a faucet. It was awful. The doctor did a telemedicine visit Monday with me and prescribed a z-pack at the 'doc is not fucking around' dosage. I have a fever that's been bouncing up and down between 99 and 98 degrees (I typically am 96.8 deg when I'm healthy). So, I've been woozy and spaced out for the last several days. The world feels like it's spinning and my sense of balance hasn't been the best because of it. 

Now, Cuddle Bear's caught this stupid thing. I am really hoping it will just be a nasty cold and that he won't get bronchitis from it. I kept him home from school today because he's got that wicked sore throat that came at the beginning. This is the same stupid cold that he had a few weeks ago and his brother had last week. It's really exasperating to feel too fucked up because of this cold to stay on top of my chores and other shit. Just my daily tasks, not even talking about starting on yule presents or anything. (Which I need to do soon or people won't be getting anything.)

Beloved caught it and had the sniffles. I love that man and envy the hell out of his immune system. When ever I get sick, it seems, that I am flat on my back and in bed because of it, where as he basically sneezes a time or two and then is fine. I mentioned my envy last night and he said, "Hey, somebody has to stay upright and take care of you guys." I couldn't argue with that position. Not when the guy went out of his way to find me diabetic friendly cheesecake that doesn't taste too horrible in his opinion. 

This cold/bronchitis situation has been playing havoc with my blood sugar numbers. My fasting numbers have been low. I was mildly alarmed this morning when I saw that it was 77. I've never had a number that low before. I didn't feel hungry at all but I made myself eat a full breakfast before I went about my morning routine. When I checked my blood sugar an hour later it was 180. A bit high, but a lot better than 77.

I feel pretty rotten right now. I'd be writing other stuff, but I can't follow a thought to completion really. I'm really spaced out right now. Stupid bronchitis and fever screwing with my life. I've got shit to do and this is in the way on top of all the other stuff that was making it hard to get it done. As I've been spaced out and frustrated, I've got one of the people in my head very firmly telling me to rest because I'm useless if I push myself too hard. Well, more than one. But, when the voices in your head have come to a consensus that you must rest, and they don't typically agree on everything, you should probably listen to them.

Fractured.

 I'm typing this up as I wait for dinner to cool off. I am having a hard time staying in the present. Some of it is recurring flashbacks. The anti-anxiety medication is helping with that to some extent. Some of it is I keep losing time. I have suspected for a very long time that I have dissociative identity disorder. It's creepy and disturbing when people talk to me about conversations we've had that I have absolutely no recollection of. It's equally disturbing when I'm told how I acted in situations that I don't remember. These are not people recounting trauma situations but just common occurrences that I happened to have been entertaining or said something memorable. 

I don't know what to do about this. I have felt like there's more than one person in my head since I was a child. I've been journaling about it off and on for the last three years. It's really hard and rather distressing. There's at least six 'others' in my head, probably more lurking in the dark. Some come out when I am handling distressing situations. Some come out when I am overwhelmed and just barely holding it together. When I go from distressed to suddenly calm, I've switched. I don't know 'who' is in the driver's seat. Sometimes, I have the impression of watching what is going on. Other times, I just am not there. Ask me later about any element of the situation and I may have a vague recollection of the beginning and then nothing after that.

I had a therapist laugh off my concerns and telling me it was impossible because I didn't change my clothing or mannerisms around them. I stopped seeing that therapist not too long after that incident. Another therapist took what I said and encouraged me to write about it. I would have continued working with them but they moved to another practice. There's a reason why I am not obvious about my fractured psyche. 

As a kid, if I didn't act what my parents viewed as 'normal' I got punished, severely. I was verbally, psychologically, and physically abused by them for a very long time. It wasn't safe to let the 'others' be known. They stole out when things got to be too much and carried the weight of the situation. It didn't happen all the time, I've got plenty of trauma that I remember clearly, but it happened enough that I don't remember almost a solid decade of my life. Some people tell me "Oh, that happens to everyone." It doesn't happen to everyone. You don't have a blank slate where your memories are supposed to be and a gaping sense of dread and terror.

There are bits and pieces of my life before I turned 20 that stand out clearly. There's bits and pieces of my life after I turned 20 that don't stand out clearly with this foggy sense that it happened to somebody else. People have laughed at me and said 'You're so random.' with out knowing that different parts of me come out to handle situations that are high stress or hit certain emotional buttons. People have laughed and said that I was the 'craziest' person they knew in high school but they didn't know that I was struggling with undiagnosed bipolar II and this other horseshit of having a brain that doesn't function right because of repeated trauma. They just figured that I was 'random' and 'eccentric'. 

Here I am in my early 40s and I'm trying real hard to figure out why I can't remember things. I'm trying to process trauma. I'm trying to figure out why in hell I can't sleep at night with out some heavy hitting sedation. I don't have a therapist. No one in my area takes my insurance. I tried to switch to the one that everybody takes around here but I got denied because I have diabetes. It's bullshit, but it's the way it is. So, I take what the one therapist who said "Ok, let's explore this concept and see what we find." and I give it all an effort to make it work.

It's scary as fuck. It seems like the more I work on this, the more there is to do and the more I find myself in weird situations that my brain just doesn't work right in. I don't wander off. I never have. I wasn't allowed to leave. There was no where I could have gone anyways because we lived in the boonies. (Farther out in the boonies than where I live right now.) So, I built interior worlds and hid there while things went down.

But now those interior worlds are bleeding into the real world. My brain is desperately trying to process something and I don't know what it is. All I know is that the last three and a half months have been difficult. And that I'm hearing them in my head again. I'm not hallucinating. But, the 'others' are getting vocal again. I don't know if it's because I finally feel safe enough to let this happen. I don't know if it's a symptom of some kind of major traumatic memory about to surface. I have no idea. And that scares the fuck out of me.

Ramblings about life.

So, after spending the last three months having sleep problems and trying different solutions, the doctor has brought me to an ironic solution. This doctor is honest. He tells me that the medication is an antipsychotic that I have been on previously (Seroquel) and he's putting me on the lowest dosage for it's heavily sedating side-effects. It won't interact poorly with the Vraylar or my other medications. I'm temporarily off of the Temazepam because it would negatively interact with that and it's taking over the job that the Temazepam was failing to do (getting me to sleep).

The irony of this is the doctor who first put me on Seroquel lied to me about what it was. He said it was a sedative and that I needed it to resolve my sleep problems that I was having during my postpartum depression. That doctor went on vacation at a time that I needed a new script written. The nurse at the clinic "wasn't comfortable" writing the script, well aware that going off it was going to do bad things to me. I had to wait two weeks for the doctor to come back from vacation. The Friday before the doctor was back in office at the clinic, I had my major crisis with suicidal ideation and psychosis, which were all aggravated by the side effects of going cold turkey off of an antipsychotic medication. Because the side effects of going cold turkey off of an antipsychotic medication are suicidal ideation, depression, and psychosis. 

I was uneasy going back on the Seroquel. I found myself concerned that I was going to be a zombie again and unable to function. When I got to Dr. M.'s office, I was on 800 mg of Seroquel. I have memory problems because of it. The going theory is the fact that I was on that and Geodon (another antipsychotic medication) for about seven years by then that majorly contributed to my developing diabetes. Basically, my pancreas is shot on top of the insulin resistance that I have caused by my psych medications and my PCOS. I'm playing a hard game of manage my condition with meds, diet, and exercise to forestall being on insulin as long as I can manage it.

I was handled real badly by the county mental health clinic. Theoretically I could sue them. I don't have the energy, money, or the time to pursue that. The people who made life hell for a year, screwed over my career in education, and put me on medication that's resulted in my developing a life long medical condition are getting away with it. I'm angry. I'm angry at the people who tried to make political hay off of my suffering. I'm angry at the people who were too damn lazy to do their jobs and put me into that position to begin with. And I'm angry that there's no justice here. They get to keep their jobs. They get to live their lives with zero repercussions for their actions. I'm a bit bitter on that point and still traumatized.

But, back to the Seroquel. I've been on this super low dose now for about a week. I'm actually sleeping through the night. Dr. M. thinks that if we do this for a few weeks, it should be enough to reset my sleep cycle back to what it should be and then I can come off of the Seroquel again. Because he doesn't think it's good for me, which is why he took me off it in the first place. In the meantime, I'm doing journal work trying to process whatever hellish thing my subconscious mind is trying to disgorge. It's ugly and kinda scary writing this stuff. I don't know what I'm going to do with it.

The 'noise' in my head, which is entirely different from psychosis, is back again. I've been feeling fractured in my brain for a long time, like ever since I was a kid. Now the different parts of me are making noise again. I need to process something and at the same time, I need to figure out just how fractured I am. It is seriously making me think I have a mild case of dissociative identity disorder with how I lose time, have conversations that I don't remember, and do stuff that I don't remember. That's been the last three months.

I don't have it happen that I go somewhere and not remember how I got there. I'm afraid to leave the apartment on some level most of the time right now. Which is why I'm on a higher dose of antianxiety medication at the moment. Again, Dr. M. thinks this is something that will resolve as I continue doing my work and we'll be able to step me back down to a lower dosage. He figures that both problems will resolve (the high anxiety/increased PTSD flashbacks and the sleep problem) around the same time. The estimate he gave me, given how aggressive I am about trying to stay on top of my mental health issues and take care of the problems as they pop up, is a few months. So, theoretically, by the time the holidays hit, I should be doing better.

I am just getting to the point where I can start doing stuff a bit more normally again. I'm just getting back into my writing. Of course, this is where I have someone calling me out for being 'aloof' and 'ignoring their efforts to communicate.' So, I have to explain, yet again for my readership, I am disabled and a social-phobe. It's really frustrating because there's some serious discussions that need to happen in the religious community that I've found myself in and there's been push back against it. And there are people in my readership community who expect me to be neurotypical and that I'm just being a contentious and aloof by raising questions and then going radio silent for three months.

Covid-19 has really fucked up my life. I didn't get it. No one in my household has gotten it. But, it's brought up a laundry list of trauma memories because of the isolation. It's made it harder to go out because the air is now lava and people are running around maskless as if there's no pandemic now. There's the looming specter of remote learning with two kids who have very different academic needs and very different learning styles. We did this before, it sucked. It went beyond sucking and into a realm that I lack adequate words to describe. It psychologically fucked with me on multiple levels. I don't have the capacity I used to for rapid switching between student needs because of how fucked my brain is. And there's just a lot of fucked up shit flying around, barely missing us.

We don't get a weekend off. Beloved and I are constantly 'on duty' and it's burning us out. Then I see other people doing shit like going on vacations and acting like the pandemic is no big deal. I get angry. I see other people with diabetes loading up on sugary snacks and I get angry. Some of it is envy. I want that vacation. I want to eat 'normal' food. Some of it is just pure frustration because I can't see away that we're going to get a break or improve the situation. We're just treading water and trying to get by. Covid-19 really brought that out into high relief. I tell myself that I should be thankful because we're better off than some others. I tell myself that I should be thankful because we're healthy (for the most part). I am bitter and angry with the fact that we're just hanging in like kittens on a window screen.

My brain and heart hurts.

 Raising kids isn't easy to begin with. We've officially hit puberty and Cuddle Bear has gone from ... well, a cuddle bear to an angry young man half the time. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that I haven't slept well in about three months. That makes me a bit hair-trigger with my c-ptsd. Throw in on top of that the fact that we've had a few screaming arguments that set it off, it's been rough.

Beloved spoke with him. I don't know what their conversation was like, I wasn't in the room. Cuddle Bear is not quite as angry, just moody. I know that puberty is rough. Hormones swinging like a pendulum is bullshit no matter why it's happening. He's chafing at the bit to get the privileges and freedom that he sees his older peers have. It leads to some friction, to put it lightly.

Snuggle Bug is looking at the way Cuddle Bear and I have clashed over the last few months and NOPED out of even trying to be involved by either defending his brother or trying to calm him down (which they've both done in the past). It's very confusing. Where Cuddle Bear has gotten angrier and more aggressive, Snuggle Bug has slowed down and become more deliberate in what he's doing. There's still maturing happening and there's still stuff that has to be sorted out, but it's like they switched brains right now. It's bewildering.

I've been struggling with my c-ptsd for about a month now. My doctor has increased my dosage on one of my meds to help me regain control over the flashbacks. I've been attempting to force myself to do my therapy writing but I just get real upset when I try. I've been catching myself struggling to stay present in the moment. It is hard because the age difference between my sons is exactly the same as the age difference between my brothers. And the boys, if you look at the right angle, look like their uncles did at those ages. 

So, I swing between being in the present and being Mom and being in the past and being the terrified older sister desperately attempting to keep her brothers 'in line' so that all three of us didn't get some sort of awful punishment. And I was punished for this behavior. I couldn't win for losing. On top of that, I had untreated bipolar which lead to being accused regularly of drug use when I was actually depressed. Hypomania just meant that I got loaded down with more chores and told to shut up more often. My parent's approach to kids was "children should be seen and not heard" and "spare the rod, spoil the child." They didn't believe in mental illness or chronic illness.

The whole business of my mangled upbringing makes living in the present hard. I have to take a lot of medicine between the diabetes, pcos, c-ptsd, and bipolar II. Having my parents criticize me for taking cough syrup when I had a cold and insisting that I was using drugs when I wasn't left a mental scar that leaves me feeling guilty and like the world's going to judge me as a bad person for all of the medication that I have to take to function and be alive. It's so upsetting that Beloved has taken over the management of filling up my pill sorter for the week. (I am eternally thankful to him for that. I could do it, but then I wind up just about crying afterwards every time.)

I'm rambling and I don't really know what to say. I am struggling to function. It seems like every time I turn around, there's a 'new' trigger that I wasn't aware of until now. And the old triggers that I had thought I had under control are bringing back up anxiety again. Seeing a pile of dishes in the sink shouldn't make you panic, but it does because when I was small I got beat for not doing the dishes properly and then made to wash them all over again in nearly scalding hot water. Seeing that something needs dusting shouldn't make you shake with fear, but it happens because my insane mother used the white glove treatment after we cleaned. If there was a speck of dust on her glove, you got hit and made to do it all over again. In some cases, it went on for a few iterations because we simply weren't tall enough to dust the entire area (like the top of the upright piano) and weren't allowed to stand on anything to get to it.

It's a whole bunch of stuff like that coming back up. It is painful. It is disorienting. I try to hide it from the kids because they get scared when I am not my usual self. Especially if I am crying for some reason. I think it's because they expect me to vanish for a few weeks off to the hospital. It's a heavy load to carry. It hurts.

Current embroidery project.

 The pattern that came with the hoop and 14 count Aidia cloth was one I couldn't read properly. As a result, I free-hand drew out this and ran back stitch over it all in shades of blue. I'm still in the decision making process on how I'm going to fill in details. The outer portion that is outlined in the darkest shade of blue is going to be done in that shade of blue in tent stitch out to as close to the edge of the hoop as I can manage.

I'm thinking about using French knots to fill the roundels under the wave crests. I have no good ideas for the hearts. The triskelion in the center will remain as is. I believe that the white space between the design elements will remain as is. That, however, is not a fixed decision.

Health issues suck, especially brain related ones.

 Leading off the post with some fun news. I got a haircut and now can finally pull of the fauxhawk that I've always wanted to wear with out fear of parental retribution. I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror as I was wandering the store and felt pretty damn good about the androgynous quality of the look. I feel like it gives me a lot more flexibility in my wardrobe and style options. It also takes my white hair and turns it into a feature instead of an 'oh goddamn it, I'm getting old' look like when I had shoulder length hair.

I've completely changed my wardrobe around. I still have color but the primary feature is black because I've always wanted to wear goth styles. Again, I didn't do it because of fear of parental retribution. Shortly after I got home after getting errands done and such, yesterday, I could almost hear my father scornfully saying that I looked like a 'bull dyke.' This has been his position on women with haircuts like this and his opinion of people who don't dress 'normally' is that we're all freaks and on the 'outside' of society.

The collar is where he'd really lose it. But I have hit a point in my life where wearing this thing is a comfort item. It helps calm my anxiety and increases my sense of safety. It's why I have two now. Beloved spoiled me and purchased that one I'm wearing that incorporated my favorite color with my goth aesthetic. Mom would lose her crap over the septum ring, regardless of the fact that it is a faux one. She repeatedly threatened me that if I had gotten my nose pierced that she'd rip it out. So, it took me a long while before I felt safe enough to even wear a faux one.

One may wonder why I'm bringing this stuff up. Well, my brain hasn't been that great over the last two months. I've been having problems sleeping. Then I put my back out picking up a damn scrap of paper. The same day, I had an epic fight with my eldest son, who said some stuff that seriously triggered my c-ptsd. That was three weeks ago. My sleep problems have gotten worse and I've been pretty regularly having emotional and vivid flashbacks where I just sit and stare but I'm not here.

All of this stuff is making it hard to write or do much of anything. I'm working with my doctor to get a better handle on the c-ptsd stuff. He's got a plan and I'm hoping it works. He thinks that if we can get the c-ptsd symptoms under control, my sleep will settle back into a correct cycle. And maybe, just maybe, I can get stuff done again. I just want this shit out of my head. I've been journaling but it's not going so great. But, my brain's decided that it's safe enough for me to do what I've wanted to and it's time for me to start processing things. We just have to get the flashbacks under control so I can do that more effectively.

C-PTSD inspired poem.

Born unwanted
Beaten but unbroken
Orphan by choice
Survivor by fate
The past casts long shadows
The wounds still bleed
Grimly, I move forward

Twenty years later.

 The attacks that happened twenty years ago are still fresh in my memory and in the memories of many other people. They remain a horrendous tragedy. At the same time, the war in Afghanistan should never have happened. It was entered into in a fit of collective rage. The way the issue of Al-Queda should have been handled was the way campaigns against unsavory people or people who are out of favor with the government have been traditionally handled. Putting money out there for the mercenaries to clean up the mess.

I was against the war in Afghanistan from the day it was declared. I had people spit on me. I had people tell me that I was a traitor. I had people tell me that I was a terrorist sympathizer. I had people tell me that I hated America. My position has always been we never should have gone to war with Afghanistan, regardless of the fact that Al-Queda was hiding in their mountains. It would be like a country declaring war on us because of the Proud Boys or the KKK are tolerated by people in our country. 

The few thousand who died this day does not justify the many more who have died over the last twenty years. Don't tell me that the dead wanted this. They wanted to just go about their day and go home to their families. The dead on both sides of the conflict were human beings with simple desires. And now they're corpses.

People accuse President Biden of 'failing' in Afghanistan when he was following up on what President Trump negotiated. The fault of the unfurling fiasco lies on the shoulders of multiple presidents. Al-Queda was trained by the United States to carry out terrorist activities against the Russian forces in Afghanistan and the immediate region. They eventually drove the Russians out. At which point they turned on the United States because they wanted autonomy. They had a taste of it after driving the Russians out of Afghanistan and they wanted more.

So, Al-Queda did what they were trained to do. They carried out a terrorist attack against a larger opponent. As for the Taliban, we should have stayed the hell away from them as well. I'm not sure if the Taliban developed under the same influences as Al-Queda. I suspect that is the case. Now that Afghanistan is back in their hands, I presume their regime will be especially punitive in an effort to force the people back into the state they were in prior to the war's beginning and the complete upheaval of that nation.

All we did was make things worse. Why? Because we were mad and decided that somebody had to pay. It's the mentality of immature people that speak with their fists, if I'm going to call a spade a spade. We punished an entire nation for the actions of a few. And established a dangerous precedent. I'm watching and waiting for that to come back on us. There's a reason I and my family don't live in a major metropolitan center known for some national significance. The closest one is barely a shadow of what it was and only film and photography nerds would be able to identify the significance of it.

And we made things worse in this country. All y'all act like Donald Trump's presidency unmasked the ugliness in this nation. No, it was the zealous behavior in the time after the terrorist attacks that did it. And that level of zealotry is encouraged, even today. I know people who practice Islam and they have to hide their practices as to remain safe. I don't practice Islam but I do wear a head covering. The Islamophobia has spread and grown such that anyone who does so is assumed to be a 'towel head' and are harassed with relative impunity. President Trump's open support of racists, white supremacists, and literal neo-Nazis only made the situation more blatant and ugly. But this attitude has always been here.

The attitude that you're not really an American unless your white, Christian, and live in the right neighborhood. Don't believe me, go ask your black neighbors. Go ask your Asian neighbors. Oh, wait, if you're white you probably don't have neighbors of different ethnicity. Self-segregation is a thing that's only gotten worse as time goes on and economic disparity due to systemic racism and religious persecution persists. What religious persecution? Oh, any religion that isn't nominally Christian.

But, that's all in the past, right? We're mourning the dead again, as we do every so many years, in a form of ritualistic masturbation to justify the horrid deeds that this nation has committed. People die every day. But we don't mourn them. We don't build monuments to them. Not even the ones who've died due to Covid-19. (Which is still a fire raging out of control but everyone wants to desperately to go back to life before Covid-19 that they're willing to sacrifice children for their 'liberty'.)

Long story short, it was a tragedy. All of it. It still is a tragedy. It was also one of the most horrific failures of the modern United States that I have ever witnessed. The other being how all y'all are handling Covid-19. I don't think the Covid-19 situation will take 20 years to resolve itself, though.

My back hates me.

 I didn't fall or anything injurious like the last time. I bent over and picked up a stupid piece of paper. One single sheet of loose leaf paper was all it took for me to put my back out. I had a telehealth appointment yesterday with one of the doctors in the practice that my family doctor is part of. (He was out of the office yesterday.) She was a lovely person and the student who sat in for the conference was pleasant as well. I described what happened. She asked me a few questions and then prescribed a muscle relaxant and told me to continue the pain reliever that I had taken at the time. She recommended that I alternate between the Aleve and Tylenol to help with the pain.

The pain with out the Aleve is a 9. I don't hit that number typically. The last time that I was in pain that rated a 9 out of a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being damn near incapacitating pain, I was in labor with my son and my husband cracked a joke during a contraction. The time before that was when I was carrying said son and he kicked me in the spine. So, this was serious business discomfort that is dialed down to about a 5 with out the muscle relaxer. Sleeping Wednesday night was tricky. Sleeping last night was a lot easier because the medication stopped the spasm from cramping down so hard.

This morning, I could feel everything wearing off around 6 am. So, I took all my morning pills and the muscle relaxer before I ate breakfast. The end result was I wasn't just about crying in pain when ever I moved my back. It aches but it's not enough to put me out of commission, mostly. Standing up is uncomfortable. Walking is uncomfortable, so I've been using my cane for both. I've been spending most of my time sitting here in front of the computer bored half to death.

I have a solid half dozen writing projects sitting around me in various stages of completion but focusing on them is difficult. Because the muscle relaxer kinda has my brain a bit spaced out. I'm not to the point where I couldn't hold a conversation but doing serious writing is an entirely different story. Pardon the pun.

Of course it's a bad brain day, it's raining.

 Multiple studies show that people who have bipolar disorder have problems with changes in the weather. Extreme shifts in the weather can bring on manic or depressive episodes. Minor shifts in the weather can effect the sensitive and bring on hypomania or mild depression. When it's raining, snowing, or just really cloudy, I get into a low mood. Throw on top of that the fact that I am in a low mood makes me more prone to having flashbacks (thanks ptsd) and it makes for a shitty day.

I just want to cry. But I can't because if I do that makes me 'weak' and subhuman, as per how I was raised. Now, that doesn't make other people weak or subhuman, just li'l ol' me. I've been having emotional flashbacks to being called a useless waste of flesh and a pathetic excuse for a human being during depressive episodes in the past. The verbal abuse heaped upon me by my parents when I was depressed was atrocious. And they didn't think/believe I was depressed. They were of the opinion that I was seeking attention and/or lazy.

Loki dropped a truth bomb last night as I was cuddling with Beloved and feeling bad. I've been having trouble wrapping my head around it. That truth bomb was that I've always had bipolar disorder. I was living with it untreated for about 32 years because I thought everyone had this happen. I was living with it untreated because I thought that it was my trauma that was the primary problem and the depression was symptomatic of that. I was living with it untreated because I never had the opportunity for legitimate care when I was a child.

I guess my bad brain day started with running out of spoons the day before trying to get everything done around here. Put that together with the exhausted fall out from being social on Sunday and a day of low spoons and high anxiety on Monday, the week has sucked. I haven't slept well in almost a month. It has me starting the day at a spoon deficit. I was literally stumbling over my feet after I woke up and almost face planted into the doorway, again.

I'm just past the middle of my day and I have absolutely zero chores done and only part of my morning routine complete. At least I remembered to take my medications as I needed. But, I'm not doing well. I'm really, really sad that I never got the help I needed because my fucking parents decided I was a drama queen.

Just grinding my way forward.

 I am exhausted because I haven't been sleeping well. I keep waking up at 2am and then I have to take melatonin to get back to sleep. Most of the time, I wake up at 5am when my alarm is set for 5:45. I just am frustrated because being tired makes my brain run slower. I don't do so great in the brain department anyways because of the bipolar and the ptsd. So any detriment becomes a real hinderance. 

So, I'm sitting here with two pots of coffee in me, blinking owlishly as I try to update my blogs. I'm behind schedule but getting things done. I started working on my writing tasks at 7:30 instead of the scheduled 9am just because I had so much to get done. I've rebooted my therapy writing and I'm seriously considering taking some of that to digital. I've been keeping a time-log to check on how I'm doing about this whole 'losing time' thing. 

It's creepy as fuck. I go through the whole day doing stuff and when I get to the end of the day, I can't remember about half of what I did. It's just as bad as when I have a conversation with someone and they are referencing something I said that I have zero recollection of saying. I still feel like my sense of self has some serious fault lines in it and I can't tell if they're getting worse or not.

I've suspected for a long time that there might be more than one 'me' in my head. When things got bad as a kid, I dissociated and let another part of myself handle the shit that went down. Now, I am safe but those different parts of me are still vocal. I'm not literally hallucinating but it's like having a random thought that doesn't belong to you go through your head. I've had therapists question this and suggest that I am just interpreting things wrong because I'm not dressing in different clothes, making rapid hairstyle changes, or doing things like switching from needing glasses to not needing glasses.

I'm sorry, but if you grow up in a household where mental illness is cause for a beating, you learn to stuff as much of that shit into a box and don't talk about it. The shifts that happen between these parts of me are subtle. But they're starting to happen again because of the long term stress of Covid-19 and the isolation of being in my home 98% of the time to avoid getting it. So, I've started that journaling exercise that the one therapist who found what I described curious and it basically doubles my time for journal work.

Blog posting is supposed to take an hour but because of other factors, I'm now a half hour into my book work time for the day. I just keep having little things come up to put me off schedule despite the fact I started early and I am getting frustrated. My hormones being all over the place doesn't help matters any. I just want to get stuff done so I can move on to other things, more pleasant things. But each task I complete, it seems like three more pop up that need done. 

I'm going to try to blog on this one more frequently. I'm going to try to be more social on social media. I need to interact with people. It's part of the reason why I am doing tarot readings on Keen again. It's because I need to talk to people. It's like exposure therapy for social phobia from my own home. The social phobia has gotten pretty bad and has been running the show for the last few months. It's why on social media I have practically zero activity going on. So, I'm trying to force myself to be active. And I'm terrified to do it.

Monday Menu

 We're in the home stretch of summer break. Breakfasts have been pretty regularly things like mini-muffins, fruit, and donuts. Lunches have been their favorite sandwiches and chips. As such the menu just features dinner items this week. My breakfasts remain the boring low carb yogurt with low carb granola. Lunch is either a salad or a peanut butter wrap on a diet flat bread with a bit of fruit to round out my carb load. 

At some point, I'll get the schedule tweaked so that I actually can get back into batch making food that is more diabetic friendly. It's been hard to do that with everything that goes on over the weekend. Fridays don't seem to work for that, which has me leaning towards doing it Monday mornings after I send the kids off to school. I can't believe that school is a little over a week away. We're pretty much all looking forward to it.

Here's the menu for this week.

Day	Menu Item
Sun	hot dogs & salad
Mon	Hamburgers
Tues	chicken fajitas
Wed	meatloaf
Thurs	meatball subs
Fri	pork chops w/ salad
Sat	take out

Social phobia sucks.

 I've gotten quiet again. I have stopped talking about things like my spirituality even with Beloved. I'm terrified of being judged. I know that he won't judge me. I know I can talk to him about anything. At the same time, this creeping terror gnaws at me and tells me that no one wants to hear what I have to say, not even the man I love the most.

Since the beginning of the pandemic in our region, I've functionally been housebound. I haven't gone grocery shopping in over a year. After I got the vaccine, I bought some clothes and struggled with this mishmash of feelings. I felt guilt over buying new clothes. I felt excitement about buying them and transitioning my wardrobe to something more authentically me. I felt gratitude that I was out of the house doing something 'normal' for the first time in a long time. And I felt creeping terror that the vaccine wasn't enough and I was still going to catch Covid-19 and die.

My anxiety keeps ramping up and when it does that it gets harder to be social. I find myself reliving the emotional trauma of the bullying I endured in school as a kid. (Including and not limited to people trying to light me on fire and spreading rumors that I was a whore so extensively that I had students from the local college ask me at 16 what the cost of a blow job was in public. It was awful.) I find myself reliving the emotional trauma of how my parents raised me and the scorn that they heaped upon me when I was in a depressive episode. I find myself reliving the mockery they made of my desire to become a professional author.

All of that together, I find I just scroll through social media platforms and struggle to reach out and even post stupid memes. I just lurk and feel left out. I know that no one is excluding me. I just have to post something, even if it's a few words. At the same time, I can't bear the thought of being utterly ridiculed and harassed. I've carefully curated my social media accounts to keep people who are kind in them and yet I am terrified that they'll prove as bad as the harpies that I had to deal with as a kid.

I don't know what to say. I feel lost and afraid. And I hurt very deeply. I should probably be working on this stuff with a therapist but none of the therapists in my area take my health insurance. And I'll be damned if I go back to the county mental health clinic for any reason. They made my life a thousand times worse with their bungling, ham handed, ill spirited bullshit. I'll not go back there even if I was paid to do it. So, I just write in my notebooks and feel awful. I'm going to try to be social, but it is very hard. And I feel like I am somehow defective because I can't bring myself to do it when it comes so easily to virtually everyone else.

Monday Menu

 The kids are officially on break until the 7th of September, when school starts again. Breakfasts have been things like muffins, french toast sticks, and fruit this past week. I presume the same for this week. Lunches have been their favorite sandwiches and chips. I've been having bagged salads and peanut butter wraps for lunches because I haven't had time to do batch cooking of better meals for myself. Breakfast has been yogurt with granola and an occasional bit of fruit when my blood sugar isn't too high in the morning. So, the menu is just dinners right now.

Day	Menu Item
Sun	pizza
Mon	Hamburgers
Tues	Tacos
Wed	raspberry chicken w/ quinoa
Thurs	pork chops w/ salad
Fri	chicken stir-fry w/ 'rice'
Sat	pasta w/ meatballs

Not really sure how to title this.

 There's a lot going on right now. I'm not sure if I have enough spoons to do everything. As a result, I'm not blogging across any of my platforms right now. I'm barely keeping up with my daily journal work. Actually, I'm not doing too great at that, to be honest.

My brother-in-law is in the hospital. He had a kidney transplant recently. He started out looking ok and then everything went sideways. My sister-in-law is just this side of having kittens because she doesn't know what to do. Beloved is doing his best to be supportive and the voice of reason. Things were looking really grim for a little while. Now, my brother-in-law is doing a bit better but his cognitive state isn't the best. The going theory is his problem is sleep deprivation. He's at the best hospital in the area and getting the best care that can be given. It's still a very stressful thing for the family.

The kids are not aware of the ongoing matter. They've been a handful all on their own since summer school ended two weeks ago. That ended on a contentious note due to a massive communication failure, which got resolved (?) the day before school finished. The kids got their first shot for the Covid-19 vaccine at the beginning of the month. Next week is when they get their next shot. Amazingly, my needle phobic boys didn't freak out. One of them actually high-fived the pharmacist who gave him the shot. I'm hoping that the second round goes just as well.

Cuddle Bear is currently doing talk therapy once a week to develop some behavior interventions for his tendency to perseverate on his imaginary world to the exclusion of things he needs to do. We got started on this path because of a teacher thinking he was suffering from psychosis. This lead to a full psychological evaluation back in April (I think, time's a blur). The result was the psychologist said that he is showing classic autistic behaviors and that he is perseverating on his imagination. The experts have consistently said this through out the entire business. We've made a point of keeping all of his care team in the loop and making sure that the school shares information with them. 

But, at the time of the teacher's panic, I called the autism center and got set up with their behavioral intervention program. I then forgot all about that until the behavior intervention program people called me to apologize for the wait and schedule his assessment. That was at the beginning of the month. We've hit the point now that the child psychologist that we're working with has developed a treatment plan and we're getting ready to implement it.

Less damn fights about what's real and what's not would be fantastic. Less fantastic stories about how his imaginary friends are causing trouble would be helpful too when the situation is that he is actually the one up to mischief. I don't want to snuff out his imagination and I don't have a problem with imaginary friends. But he has to learn when and where to let his imagination to run wild. I am hoping that the treatment plan is going to work and he learns what we've been desperately trying to teach him on our own - discretion in his imaginary play and better focus on reality.

If we're lucky, some of the skills and interventions that we learn from this process will be helpful with Snuggle Bug, who is beginning to demonstrate some of the same perseveration behaviors (obviously on different topics). I just want my kids to be able to navigate the world with some measure of success, I don't really care about their approach because everyone does it differently regardless of how neurotypical they are. The perseveration, unfortunately, is turning into a hinderance and I don't want them to struggle because of it.

I'm just still kinda burned on how we got started on this path. The teacher who thought that Cuddle Bear was psychotic is going to be Snuggle Bug's teacher next year. I'm rather dreading it. Because I have a bad feeling that she's going to find something else to complain/fuss over. Beloved and I are fairly sure her education in Autism is lacking. But, I know what I'm going to do if we go down that road again because of Snuggle Bug's fascination with robots and his occasional insistence that he is one. 

It's been a rough couple of months.

Monday Menu

 This is the kids' last week of summer school. As such, this is going to be the last week of the summer where the menu is only dinners. The boys have taken to refusing what the school's offered for lunches over the course of the last week and been eating their favorite sandwiches for lunch at home. I don't know if the trend is going to continue this week or not. But I'm going to be prepared and make sure I have plenty of bologna, raspberry jelly, and bread on hand. We have enough peanut butter on hand to kill a horse, and that's before you count the dried stuff I picked up to try doing some recipes with.

My breakfasts are still just yogurt and granola. I'm getting bored of it, but I haven't had the time or energy to batch cook on the weekends right now. I'm sure I'll figure something out that's different. Probably refrigerator overnight oats if Beloved can find me some relatively low carb fruit to put in it. But, it's all a juggling game because we've had fruit go bad before we can use it when it's been picked up recently. I'm seriously considering going with frozen fruit, even though the sugar content for a number of the selection is higher. The menu is below.

Day	Menu Item
Sun	hot dogs & salad
Mon	Hamburgers
Tues	Tacos
Wed	grilled cheese & gazpacho
Thurs	pulled pork & broccoli slaw
Fri	raspberry chicken w/ quinoa
Sat	Take Out

See, I haven't completely forsaken colors!

 I stole Beloved's old t-shirt from college and I've been wearing it off and on for years. It's the one I've got on today. It's a black and denim day because laundry day is tomorrow and what I have left that is straight up black isn't fitting for the weather. I'm happier than I have been in a while since I've changed my clothing style to a more goth themed one. I'm still figuring out how to make it work.

I have a love of wearing collars. Partly because of kink and partly because I really like how it looks. I am still throwing in pops of color to break up the black on black look. I'm doing the goth thing on my terms. It's made for some interesting reactions from people around town.

The ladies at the post office think it's fantastic that I am going with a clothing style I've always wanted to do since I was a teen. They've given me some suggestions and have asked me about what accessories I am going to pick up next. It's been fun stopping over there.

The rando sales person who stopped at the door got uncomfortable. Part of it, I know, was the collar and the fact that I'm not some 20 year old thing bebopping around trying to impress people with how edgy I am. Part of it was the fact that I made very clear that I wasn't a push over, which some people would think because of the collar. I got a subtle 'y'all need Jesus' out of one of the guys and they haven't been back since, despite my making an appointment to discuss what they were offering. If they can't handle the fact that I'm 42 and wearing whatever the hell I want in my own home, they need to get a life.

I haven't worn the bdsm collars out to doctor appointments because the established relationship there would be a bit upended by the stylistic change. I see that they're getting used to the all black garment and the ribbon choker with the big glass heart on it. I figure give it a year and they'll be ok with it. Easing people into the concept that you're not as 'normal' as they assumed you were seems to be the process of getting them to accept that you're not going through a midlife crisis.

I've been contemplating picking up a third style of collar. I adore the two I have. I finally figured out how to clean the tarnish off of the steel on the one I'm wearing (cleaning vinegar and a soft cloth). The pink and black one is super comfy. I'm hoping to possibly locate one similar to something I saw on Etsy that had flowers on it. There was an absolutely gorgeous painted leather one with a bright pink wild briar rose design on it. It was also super expensive compared to some of the others I've been looking at. But, it has stainless steel hardware (which I need so I don't react to the metal) and it was really lovely.

I find myself thinking about using some of the money from Keen to buy it for myself. I know that is set aside for book promotion, but it's been at the back of my mind since I saw that thing a few months back when Beloved and I started looking into getting me a new collar because I was reacting to the one I'm wearing now. It was pure luck that I learned about the vinegar to clean up steel. 

I was super happy yesterday when I realized that those knee high sneakers that I had from when I was LARPing still fit. I had to adjust the lacing a bit, but I can wear them with my dresses and look nifty. I also found the fingerless gloves and with a bit of adjustment, I think I can make them work. So, the question now is what style of goth am I going for. I do kinda want a spikey collar for fun but I think my kids would put out an eye when they came running at me for a hug. That was the whole reason why we didn't get one. Because there were some really cool looking ones.

I'm also thinking about dying my hair. Well, to be more precise, I'm thinking about bleaching my hair out and then dying it some unnatural color. It's not very long yet. I haven't decided how long I want to get my hair. I already of white streaks showing up. I thought it was grey and my hair was thinning until I got a close look in the mirror and realized that it was white. Stress, it's a hell of a drug. But, if my hair is going white, I might just bleach it out to white and dye it some neon color and go with some interesting partial coverings. Or, I might go with an ombre color so that my dark roots just need a touch up as my hair gets longer. I haven't decided yet. 

The hair business is going to have to wait for when the kids are in school and I have more than a few hours free to sit and do so anyways. I last tried royal blue. It didn't take very well because of how dark my hair was a few years ago. I might try a royal blue ombre starting at the top of my head and going to the tips with a cotton candy blue. Then again, I may go with red fading down to neon pink. It's hard to decide.

Building planners for the boys for school

 The kids are starting to think about when the school year begins. So have I. As the modified bullet journal system has been working really well to help me manage my executive dysfunction due to my disability, I thought that it would help the kids. I let them decorate the covers with all the stickers they wanted. Snuggle Bug went with almost a full page of Transformers stickers.

I set it up so that the 'calendar' has their week at a glance. The first day of the first week is highlighted because it is a day off from school. It's part of the same way that I code days off from school on the wall calendar and in my own planner. I used the bullet journal notation for an event 'O' to mark that it was Labor day. The second day of the week also has that 'O' mark with a note stating it is the first day of school.

On the extreme right hand side of the daily section, I note the calendar date and the letter for the school day. I've decided that I'm going to do something a little fun for the kids and put stickers in on the days they have off. I included at the beginning of each binder a copy of the bullet journal key.  On the first page of each section, I put a short note on a brightly colored post-it sticky note explaining how to use the section.  This is partly for the kids to use and partly to inform the teachers how it's set up.

And, if we go back to distance learning because of Covid-19, I've got that beginning of structure in place that meshes with what I've got going on so I can do a better job of supporting them and their academic needs.

There is one section that is not assigned yet. But this gives the teachers flexibility to assign something to that section. It it my hope that this will work better than the last planners that the school gave out which were much smaller and poorly organized. We're going to practice using the bullet journal system with notecards over the next few weeks where they have their tasks for the day written down and they mark them off according to the system. I bought some extra large notecards to make this a little easier.

Monday Menu

 I found the table generator webpage again. It made this a breeze. As the kids are still doing breakfast and lunch courtesy of summer school, the menu only features dinners right now. My lunches have predominantly been peanut butter wraps or salads. Breakfast has been yogurt with low carb granola. It's boring but easy and not too hot with the weather we've been having.

Day	Menu Item
Sun	hot dogs & salad
Mon	Hamburgers
Tues	Tacos
Wed	steak & peanut noodles
Thurs	meatball subs
Fri	raspberry chicken w/ quinoa
Sat	Take Out

I'm tempted to become a misanthrope.

 For the third time since we've lived here, some asshole stole my gardening stuff. It wasn't something small like the first two times. It was a large planter and a strawberry pot (with its terracotta saucer). I've called the landlord who is checking the camera history. I've gone through the cycle of fury, grief, and resignation in record speed. These neighbors who are doing this shit we leave alone. And yet, they've done it.

I am resigning myself to house plants. I can't apparently have nice things outside. I tried to make things a little nicer around here by putting plants at the end of the walk and people rip them up and steal the pots. They rip up the flowers that come up in the beds by the house. I just can't have flowers apparently unless I buy them from the store.

I don't think the landlord is going to do anything about it. I just have a pessimistic feeling that nothing is going to come of the complaint despite the fact that there are cameras out front. As it stands, the state's moratorium on evictions goes until the end of August. So, even if he catches them in the act on his camera system, he can't necessarily boot them out.

I am hurt, angry, and disgusted. I also am deeply saddened because I was planning on planting flowers in those pots this weekend. The first weekend in a while that we were actually going to have time that I could possibly get to that. And now I can't. Fuck people.

Bees in bonnets.

 So, that little book that I worked on revising and updating the Filianic scriptures pissed off a bunch of people. Now, a video that I've made has pissed off a bunch more. And the video was my discussing my experience and what's going on with me. Like cowards, people are going "a certain someone" is saying bad things about us and proceeding to the no true Scotsman argument about the grief that I've been getting about that book.

I have decided I'm not going to read the comments on my videos anymore. I am probably not going to read the comments on my blogs anymore. And I'm just going to focus on my writing and stop giving a shit about my audience. Because, apparently, there's a pack of cowards out there deciding that it's better to get their asses up in the air and be snide rather than face a problem that I pointed out in their ranks.

I have a problem with people who can't be reasonable when giving criticism. I have a problem with people who decide that passive-aggressive crap is the way to solve a problem. And I have a real big problem with people who are going around rumor mongering. I just don't get why this high school level crap is happening. The only logical answer I can think of is I have pointed out that they are not nice people and they're offended by that. This is what I get for telling the truth, people being snippy and telling me that I am wrong because they're not experiencing what I am.

I fucking hate gaslighting. I fucking hate the no true Scotsman argument. I'm so tempted to say to them, "Well, Cinderella, if the shoe fits, wear it." But, I'm not going to. And I highly doubt that any of them are going to find this particular blog because they're more interested in my more public ones. All seven of you who follow this and read it, thank you for your readership. And if one of the randos who reads this post happens to be Cinderella, wear the damn shoe with pride. Because, if you think I was calling you out then you need to examine your position on a number of things. /rant

Fiber Fluff: I like this ring distaff.

 I don't fully have the hang of using it, but I like this ring distaff. It's a little awkward to use but my fiber doesn't get clumped up or anything when I'm spinning as it has when I'm just holding it in my hand. 10/10 would recommend.

I'm stalled on the NICU hats right now because I've been so busy with other stuff. I'm trying to get more done this week. I'm not particularly thrilled with the yarn that I'm currently using but I anticipated longer color runs in that variegated yarn. As it is, each stitch is a different color and there's zero color pooling. It makes keeping track of stitches difficult because I get visually confused by it all. Thank goodness for stitch markers.

I have some sewing to do. I bought myself a pair of shorts and realized after I had gotten home with them that they were 'fashionably' torn. This wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that the hole has no stabilization for the fabric around it. It's just torn. So, I'm going to darn the holes in it with some bright color that'll be easy to see and stitch on the black fabric. This is the second time that I've bought something that was 'in fashion' and it needed to be resolved. The last time, I bought a pair of boot cut jeans with no hem. It was super annoying.