Fiber Fluff: I think this sweater is going to make me crazy.

 Dear Reader,

I'm working on a sweater for Cuddle Bear that is a pattern that dates back to WWI. Doing the pattern exactly as it is written, it looks like it's going to fit him for two seasons. He's super excited about this and doesn't care if he gets it a bit late. Given how slow progress is going on it, it may be January when he gets it. I don't know. I have tried dedicating two hours everyday to working on it. But garter stitch is painfully boring. I'm debating finding audio books that I can listen to as I work. Maybe it will relieve the boredom.

Snuggle Bug asked for a pair of slippers. I'm struggling to find the notebook that I wrote the pattern down in. The project room is kinda something of a disaster because I haven't got in there to organize and clean things. And that disaster has spread to part of the living room because I have books I'm working on that I need my notes to complete. It's just a mess because I was not well for multiple months and never got to this.

Now we're getting to the time where I'm getting nervous. Functionally two months to go. I just might be screwed, y'all.

Re: that emotional train wreck - still haven't figured out where to bury survivors.

 It hit me that I've been stalled in all of my public writing projects because my father-in-law acted like my father one day when we were visiting. I had a emotional flashback regarding his dismissing my writing as a mere hobby and talking over me. I was silent then but now ... Well, I keep thinking about that joke 'What's red and bad for your teeth? A brick.' and introducing the old man to a fundamental piece of building equipment in use since antiquity. That, however, must remain an idle fancy for the sake of peace and keeping frith. He may be a bad host, but I will be an exemplary guest.

So, the emotional flashback to my parents mocking my goals in life hits me. Around the same time, the neighbor ramps up his violence and the other neighbors who are constantly having screaming fights are back in action. This sets off a few months of bad cptsd episodes. Ones where I basically find a place I can hide but still watch what's going on with an escape route. And as I hide, I sit there feeling numb and shaking. Then, when the kids get home from school, dissociation switches on and I'm cheerful enough that even they are a little suspicious something's not quite right. By the time the end of the day comes, I am too exhausted to really do anything.

First, came the five day migraine. After it had passed, I discovered I had zero fucks to give about anyone except my immediate family. It was like my brain reset somehow through all that pain. It prompted me to talk to my doctor finally about my migraines because they were becoming more frequent due to the weather being stupid. (My migraine trigger is changes in the weather.) So, he put me on a generic form of Imitrex and my life's been significantly easier on the migraine front. After it seemed like that problem had been put to bed, something else pops up.

I freaking had Covid-19. Beloved and I are pretty sure it was the Omicron variant because the kids bounced back in a few days and had little more than cold symptoms. Beloved got the sniffles and was taking care of me. Because it happened like every  time I get sick - flat on my back and sick as a dog for weeks while the rest of the family bounces back real quick. I was talking with Beloved about this and we agreed it has only gotten to be more of a pain in the neck since I got diagnosed with diabetes.

So, about week 2.5 into my being sick with Covid, my blood sugar starts fluctuating wildly and the lows are really scary low (at one point I had a 56 when 55 is the point you need hospital assistance). I was worried that Covid was attacking my pancreas. I had seen medical studies talking about how hypoglycemia is an overlooked symptom of Covid because it wasn't well known. To say the least that scared me. I got into contact with my doctor described the pain I was having in my abdomen and the crazy blood sugar drops at random. So, he ordered some tests and told me to come in if the abdominal pain continued. (The tests were put on hold because I wasn't over Covid yet.)

About five days later, I'm in the office and he checked me over. I was just over Covid at that time. He postulated that the problem wasn't Covid itself but the fact that due to Covid's fuckery I hadn't moved my bowels in a week and a half. So, he directed me to keep taking the fiber that I was doing already and get a laxative. I was a little suspicious that the laxative wasn't going to help with  my abdominal pain. But, after a few days, it eased up a lot. As for the blood sugar matter, he halved my dose of Glymiperide because apparently Glymiperide can cause people to have randomly low blood sugars. When I was off it, my blood glucose numbers were higher but they weren't dropping into the scary zone. He put me back on it at the half dosage and things were looking more normal.

Then on the Saturday after I saw the doctor, I went to the lab and got my battery of tests done. I was waiting to do one last test when a massive dizzy spell that nearly knocked me on my butt happened. I was gently guided to a chair and they asked if they could help. I said that I thought it was because of my diabetes (because I had been fasting for some of the tests) and they gave me a juice box of apple juice. I confess, as much as I wanted to grumble about diabetes, I couldn't help being happy because I was able to have my favorite type of juice for the first time in years.

Just this Sunday passed, the doctor called me. At first I didn't answer the call because I forgot I had his cell number. The second time he called, I answered it and he had some good news for me. My pancreas, liver, and everything else associated with the production of insulin tested at normal levels. That was a huge relief. It was also a surprise because I thought I was going to have to wait for Wednesday and my appointment to learn what the results of the test were.

There was also some bad news, that was relatively minor. At some point over the time I was sick, I developed a uti. I kinda wondered how it happened but the doctor discussed antibiotics with me and figured out one that will kick it out of my system. I'll be getting that soon. I just hope that they're not horse pills or like the antiviral pills for Covid (4 pills to swallow 2x a day and they tasted gross). But between mental illness problems and fucking Covid, I haven't been blogging or writing anywhere but in my daily journal. And a section of it was a recording of my symptoms.

It is my hope to get all of this stuff that's been blocking me sorted out. Now, the screaming neighbors have been evicted, so that makes one less trigger to deal with. Since the police had a conversation with the other neighbors, things have been a lot calmer and less violent. I'm on tenterhooks to some extent because I know how the abuse cycle works. I keep telling myself that the guy isn't going to come after me and if he did, cast iron frying pan to the face will drop him like a rock. It's not working super great to convince me that I'm safe, but I'm trying.

Screw Covid with a rusty chainsaw, sideways.

 I haven't felt well enough to write on any platform except quick notes in my daily journal tracking my symptoms since about the middle of last month. My youngest son got sick with Covid during what I think was the second week of school. Within 72 hours, my eldest son and I had it too. Beloved came down with it a few days later. (His case was super mild and all he got was the sniffles.) The boys had mostly cold symptoms and a lot of gas.

I need to back this truck up a bit and start over. Snuggle Bug went to school on a Tuesday and in the time it took for him to get there (wearing a mask for safety, like we've been doing the whole time) and get through two classes, he caught Covid. He was sent to the nurse for flu like symptoms and he was there feeling awful. We got a phone call to pick him up and Beloved got out of work for a little while to pick him up from school. Snuggle Bug was not his usual chatty self. He was running a low grade fever and we did a Covid test. He tested positive pretty much immediately. 

I called our family doctor and asked how we should proceed. He said that as a family we should quarantine for the rest of the week and when Snuggle Bug was recovered he can go back to school wearing a mask for 5 days, with us keeping an eye on him for the resurgence of symptoms. Three days later, the boys have mild cold symptoms and a lot of gassiness. Between the two of them, they finished off the two boxes of gas-x that we had in the cupboard over the course of that week. I had half the laundry list of symptoms but tested negative. 

I quickly reached a point where I was nearly delusional from fever, dizzy, and barely able to keep track of a conversation. I was exhausted and constantly running to the bathroom for my butt to explode for the first few days. Then the diarrehea stopped and I had wicked gas pains.  The dizziness and the inability to think clearly became more intense as did the other flu like symptoms. I was sleeping sitting upright for a week and I hated it because no matter what I did I was coughing and hacking like hell. Towards the end of the second week, the area around my pancreas began to ache. At first I passed it off as just muscular pain from all the coughing.

I was dumb. The ache grew more intense and hasn't gone away. As of last Saturday night, my blood sugar has been dropping into the mid-60s to upper 50s. I knew anything below 70 was bad. A little research and I realized with horror just how bad it was. 55 is the number where you need an injection of glucagon. I have none in the apartment. Yesterday was bad with my blood sugar repeatedly plunging. I've called my doctor's office and I am waiting to hear back from them what I should do. To get through the night, I ate a full meal right before I went to bed. The scary part of this is I am not having the symptoms of hypoglycemia when it happens. I just get a hunch to check my sugar and go 'oh fuck!' when it is low. 

Honestly, I am scared because I have never had blood sugar this low. I still feel pretty rotten. The cold symptoms are clearing up. The fever hasn't broken yet. I am still having dizzy spells. And my guts aren't right. I'm really hoping that my doctor has a good idea on what we can do to stabilize my blood sugar. Eating multiple full meals through the day instead of 3 with 2 snacks is not the way to do it, but it is the best we've been able to come up with. And all of this is happening as I am doing extremely low impact activities.

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.
 

Time to change focus, apparently.

 Nope, I'm not leaving this blog. Since '07, I've been attempting (and kinda failing) to run a tarot reading business through Keen. They have made a lot of changes over the last year and a half. Y'all may remember the last time I said fuck Keen it was over a platform change that screwed over my access to my client base. Well, they've done it again in a bigger way. I'd go into detail over it, but I suspect the fact that I have even mentioned Keen on here means that I'll be on their radar and get a nastygram over it. Suffice it to say, long term advisors are getting screwed, again.

This business has changed hands at least two or three times in the last few years. Each time, things have gotten worse. And the people who are supposed to suck it up and take the hits are the advisors. We're being treated like we're employees, except we don't work for Keen. We're not even affiliated beyond the fact that we're using their platform to connect with clients. Customer service for advisors has gotten atrocious and I know that the advisor side of the platform has been hacked at least once (I tried logging in and the firewall popped up to block malware about two weeks ago.).

I was planning running the Keen thing I had going on as a part-time business in a serious sense. I was doing that before my brain went explody. Now that I have that semi-resolved, I see here that Keen is fucking around again. I love reading tarot cards. It's been a hobby of mine since I first started back in middle school (against my parents' permission). My aunt suggested last time this happened that I look into another platform like California Psychics. I am angry and, honestly, kinda hurt by the position I am in.

At the same time, I don't have the spoons to meet the workday requirements of these other platforms because of my disability. The reason I was on Keen was because I could set my own hours and not be penalized if I wasn't on there for an extended period of time. I can't do this bullshit anymore. My anxiety is ratcheted up. I feel like I'm working in a call center and failing at my job because the job requirements keep changing and I don't pressure sell anything because I have a sense of ethics.

What I did on Keen was read cards and give people an ear to listen when things got rough. What I did on Keen was read cards and give people advice on how to fix their marriage. What I did on Keen was read cards and treat all my clients like they were old friends. I can't do that now. I can't with how they've got things set up. I can't because they're getting to be more like the other platforms with their demands upon advisors. I don't have the spoons to dance and be Keen's puppet and pay them for the privilege of it.

So, fuck Keen. I'm just going to focus on my writing now. If you know me personally and want a reading, cool. We'll get in touch and I'll do one for you. But this hobby, I have to put it down because I don't have the energy to get into a big fight with the people who are screwing me over. I'm angry, I'm sad, and it didn't have to be this way. Because what Keen had was working for over 20 years. They got greedy and wanted a bigger bite, and then wanted an even bigger bite. They can choke on my $10 in that account. I know they're going to close the account when I don't go back after a year. So be it. I have other shit to do with my time. I'll find another way to make a side gig work and fund my writing work.

I'm not even going to go on Keen and post a 'good bye' blog post because they won't show it. They'll edit the blog feed and it won't show up. Anyways, their blogging platform is stuck in the 90s and a pain in the ass to use.

This sucks.

I am a coffee fiend.

 Stitched this in one day because I was stressed out over doctors' appointments. One of them got canceled and I just sat down with my project and got to work. The 'tabletop' was only partly finished the night before after I had drawn the design out on the burlap. 

The 'tabletop' is cross-stitch. Then I got bored. The coffee drops on the right hand side was an attempt at satin stitch inside an outline. It looks uglier in person. The coffee beans on the left side was the same and you can really see how the burlap didn't work well with the satin stitching.

The motto is back stitch. The coffee in the mug is cross stitch. I reconsidered cross stitch for the whole affair and used tent stitch for the mug (switching the direction of the stitch for the handle). The saucer is back stitch. I failed to realize that I couldn't do it in tent stitch and maintain the spacing that I had planned.

Stitching on burlap is on one hand a lot easier to pass your  needle through than stitching on 14 count Aida cloth. On the other hand, it has a lot of the same hang ups and it tries to shred itself as you're working. I wore an apron so that I wasn't covered in burlap bits.

I had my three month follow up with my general practitioner doctor (long way to say our family doctor) to discuss the bloodwork that he ordered and how I was doing with my diabetes, as well as any other health concerns I had. It was not a super great visit. He's a good doctor with excellent bed side manner and a great sense of humor. At the same time, he got serious when he pointed out the trend over the last six months that my A1C is going up. Nine months ago, my A1C was 6.4 units. Three months ago, it was 6.9 units. I got a little nervous but he said that it was still a good number because it was below 7. This time, it was 7.2 units.

Then we talked about my cholesterol. It went from being in the ideal range to being up 20 units, and that was the bad cholesterol. I confessed to stress eating cheese, a lot of cheese. He said that was the most likely culprit and that I should work on cutting down on the stress eating. He reassured me that the situation wasn't dire but I needed a course correction. He told me that I needed to start exercising more and work on lowering my stress levels. It was explained that stress can elevate blood sugar levels and prolonged stress can elevate your A1C due to the elevated blood sugar levels.

So, I'll be posting more pictures of stitchery that I have been working on in an effort to calm the fuck down. I am also going to try to see if maybe I can do walks at the park and take pictures of their gardens or something to help me be accountable for my exercise. Today, I paced back and forth in the kitchen spinning some alpaca roving for 30 minutes. Apparently, 30 minutes of walking is a good number to start out at. At one point the diabetes magazine I was subscribed to (which is no longer in print) had a couch to 5k program that would get you ready to run a 5k in a month. I laughed and moved on to the next article. Now, I'm starting to think that couch to 5k program, with the goal of walking it might be reasonable.

I don't know. I just know that I feel kinda shit and the reason why is all my own damn fault. So, I have to make changes to my diet and schedule. I don't know how I'm going to fit in the exercise time, but if I can get back to where I can stay awake after the kids get on the bus because my blood sugar didn't spike after eating breakfast, that'd be great.

Coping skills.

 I have bad anxiety issues. I'm on a laundry list of medications to help me with it. It's due to a laundry list of trauma. It really sucks. I do my best to cope with it. Recently, I recalled that doing embroidery helps my brain calm right the fuck down.

So, I worked on the Ukraine sampler (you'll see it down thread in the feed) to cope with my anxieties over the war in Europe. Raised during the Cold War by parents that insisted that bombs were going to drop any day now and that we were going to be forced to do inhumane things to survive was bullshit for so many reasons on so many levels. 

I'm still dealing with anxiety even with my medications. So I am working on this projects. I didn't like the suggested stitch sections for various bits so I changed them. 

The leaves are a detached chain stitch in the center with a straight stitch to either side to fill out the shape. The orange blossoms are detached chain stitch with a single straight stitch in the center. The centers of the orange blossoms are leviathan stitch. The pink blossoms are satin stitch (done as per project directions, but I'll rant about that in a second). Their centers are French knots. The stripes on the pink bird are badly done satin stitch, because I was distracted and not wearing my reading glasses to get a good look at the fabric. Everything else is straight stitch or running stitch.

The pink bird's tail on the left side is whipped straight stitch, they wanted me to use chain stitch for it but that would have looked sloppy. I used straight stitch for the beaks instead of chain stitch for the same reasons. The project came with a sewing needle, not an embroidery sharp that was the correct size. Thankfully, I have plenty of embroidery needles and some in the right size for this fabric. They wanted me to work everything with two strands of floss. I managed the outlining of the pink bird and the satin stitch for the pink flower petals and came away wanting to throw the thing across the room. So I switched to three strands and things are working up much easier. 

When I outline the lower bird with the blue floss, it'll have to be with two strands to make match the upper bird. But the details are going to be worked with three strands of floss. I refuse to do the tiny circles in satin stitch. It will probably be more leviathan stitch, rice stitch, or something else that fills the space but looks more interesting. This thing is supposed to be cut out and mounted on cardboard. They want me to tape it to the cardboard, which just doesn't make sense. 

It's clear this project was for someone with minimal stitching history. I'm going to hem the edges and sew the project to the board with long stitches connecting the sides together just as my Grandma K. taught me to do with my other embroidery projects. The trick will be finding a frame for it and figuring out what I'm going to work on next. It'll probably be hemming the Dune Fear Litany tapestry that I  made.

Wut r werds?

 It's be a hell of a while since I posted, it feels like forever. On my tiny side blog which I use to promote my religious writing blogs, I got a Russian troll to anonymously send me propaganda with the expectation I was going to post it because I am not a supporter of neo-Nazis. I apparently am going places if I am getting that kind of response to posts calling out neo-Nazis for attempting to use my morning little prayers that I post on there for their bullshit.

I have another embroidery project. This is from the Jaydan company and is simply called Birds. It's a printed fabric one. I had a counted cross stitch one but discovered that the chart they printed was off by ten stitches in random directions. I got so frustrated with it I threw the damn thing away.

This project has been annoying in its on special way. They sent me a sewing needle to do fine stitched embroidery instead of one of the smaller embroidery sharps that you're supposed to use. I did the pink sections with that until I got fed up (bird and flowers). At which point I put my shiny new sewing needle into my sewing needle case and found my smallest embroidery sharp needle. They wanted the flowers and the leaves to all be satin stitch. But with this weight fabric and the small size of it all, even with two threads it was a pain in the neck. I did the pink flowers in satin stitch, managing not to throw the project across the room in frustration because I was doing embroidery with a sewing needle.

After I switched needles I did the brown sections in running stitch. They wanted the solid portions of the branches and the left most part of the tail of the pink bird to be in chain stitch with two strands of floss. I said screw that, it was just going to look wrong. So running stitch for the branches and that part of the tail was whipped running stitch. The leaves have a single detached chain stitch in the center and then single stitches to either side of it to fill it in. This way, they actually look like leaves. The centers of the pink flowers were supposed to be satin stitch but I used French knots because it looks better. I know that I'll keep modifying this thing as I go along. I am filling it in by color instead of my usual start with a motif and move on.

I still want to make the "I Can't Adult" project, but I think I will be freehand-embroidering it because the chart was awful and nothing was lining up correctly. I'll probably put a different motif than the cross stitch roses on the four sides of the motto. I've been working on a lot of embroidery and sewing of late to cope with my sky high anxiety. I forgot to take one of my medications and just about had a panic attack later in the evening because I didn't have my medication in my system to keep me calm.

I'm really frustrated with this whole business of being on a cocktail of medications to keep me calm and help me sleep. It doesn't help that there's a whole heap of learned shame over this because I'm afraid that if 'people' find out that I'll be deemed a drug addict and lose my kids. It's all programming from when I was a kid. I'm trying to unravel it but it's really hard. 

Glory to Ukraine!

 The war in Ukraine broke out and I started to panic. I grabbed some embroidery materials and started stitching. I wish the war was done as fast as this sampler was. It's on 14 count Aida cloth. I have learned it doesn't lend itself well to long back-stitch with the same issues as satin stitch. That's why some of the lettering looks funky. The smudged area is where I tried to wash off some pencil marks. It's just wet. When it dried out, the smudge mostly went away.

The garden at the base of the image is hope. The light brown fence represents the troops who are defending their homes and their hopes. The dark brown field represents Ukraine's importance as an agricultural center/breadbasket for the region. The central figure is Ukraine. The sword represents their willingness to fight for their homeland. The flower represents their willingness for peace. The crown is their sovereignty. I tried to incorporate traditional Ukrainian elements into the sampler. My counted cross stitch skills are filled with fail.

My feelings on all of this is the Russian army needs to get the fuck out of Ukraine, all of Ukraine, and go home to fix their own country. Vladimir Putin needs a kick in the teeth, literally. And I'm terrified that WW3 is going to break out. So I stabbed the shit out of some fabric to make something that showed my support for Ukraine and mentally was stabbing the dictator of Russia in the eye with each stitch.

Proof of Life.

So, here's a current pic of me just trying to get by. I am still depressed. My head still feels like there's a committee arguing in it, but they shut up when I tell them to. Or at least get quieter. 

I'm not doing well, to be honest. I try to sleep at night but I keep waking up around two to three times. When I do sleep completely through the night, I don't wake up rested. I stumble around as I get dressed and then make breakfast for the kids and I. I manage to stay awake long enough to see them get on the bus and then I pass out on the couch for an hour and a half.

After which, I stumble around making Beloved's lunch for work or just trying to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to be doing. I haven't been doing creative writing. All of my writing has been focused on therapeutic work. I've been having lots of memories from my youth coming up witnessing this war in Ukraine. My parents told us things like the Russians were going to enslave us and that we were going to have to fight off people like our neighbors to keep the farm safe. 

I had a nutball teacher when I had to repeat kindergarten (because the first time around, I didn't play with the other children and I talked back to the teacher when they said something that made no sense, I set an early precedent for myself) and she had us to nuclear raid drills. Her version of nuclear raid drills was to have the short students hide under their desks and the tall ones stand beside their desks. Theoretically, if the building collapsed, the taller students would ensure the survival of the shorter students by holding it up. This is exactly what this nutball teacher told me when I asked her why. I then got booted out of the classroom to sit in the hall for talking back when I asked why I had to stand when I was literally the shortest kid in the room. The more I learn, the more it becomes apparent that this particular teacher wasn't playing by the same rule book as the rest of the school.

It was special growing up during the Cold War. The windows of that bus were extra clean. I have been dealing with 10 different parts of myself. My therapy work has been focused on cross communication between them and my conscious mind. I've learned to recognize when I space out and wander that one of them is partially 'out' or completely. It's been hard because they don't generally trust me because they expect me to ignore them/abuse them/reject them. Basically, a repetition of the way I grew up. That sense of dread has ratcheted up higher with Russian bullshit happening.

I'm pretty sure that Vladimir Putin has lost his goddamn mind. That or he thinks that Covid has weakened the rest of the world enough that he can go and start steamrolling his way through places to get what he wants. I'm real worried about how his forces hold Chernobyl. I'm equally concerned about how they're fixing to get the other power plant, the one that's one of the largest functioning nuclear power facilities in Europe. I fear that he's going to turn them into dirty bombs before exiting. A way to start a nuclear war with out having to fire something at somebody.

As you can obviously tell, my train of thought is off the rails and my ability to focus is impaired. It's kept me from blogging and writing for the last month. It's kept me from doing my tarot reading thing. I am not doing great.

At a loss for words.

 This business in Ukraine (and I learned it isn't 'the Ukraine' but just 'Ukraine' because 'the Ukraine' was a Soviet propaganda movement to delegitimize the nation to a minor extent) is making me as nervous as a cat in a rocking-chair factory. I've been trying to focus on domestic things like cleaning up for spring and my daily routine. It's been difficult.

Now, I don't have any family in Ukraine, as far as I'm aware. The family members with all the genealogical records and I are not on speaking terms right now. Still, these people don't deserve what's happening to them. And the rest of the world is doing what little they can to oppose Russia's incursion with out setting off WWIII. I can't help it, though, I'm watching these people taking a heroic and defiant stand against the Russian army when they're clearly out gunned. It's gut wrenching.

It is terrifying the fact that we are a few footsteps away from an open conflict with Russia. I don't want a nuclear war to happen. I don't want this war in Ukraine to happen. I want Russia to close up shop and go home. The fact that they hold Chernobyl is disturbing. Especially with the reports that there's been an increase in radiation being emitted at that site. Who needs a bomb when you can just throw a nuclear powerplant (that is damaged) into chaos? It's a huge threat to eastern Europe and the various Baltic states between Europe and Russia.

I'll not be watching the State of the Union address tonight. My wrecked nerves can't handle it. I'll read about it in the news tomorrow. I'm suspicious about the Republicans and their holding the 'real' State of the Union meeting right now. Things in this country are a powder keg that no on wants to admit. They want to just sweep it under the rug and say that things are going back to normal.

Meanwhile, there's still a pandemic raging. Mask mandates are being discarded left and right for political reasons when wearing a goddamn mask is what keeps you from breathing in the exhalations of a carrier or someone who is sick with Covid. Our school district said that it is up to parents if their kids are going to keep wearing masks. Our family is going to do it because this thing, even in it's more 'mild' version could seriously fuck me up. We've got people around the world doing 'freedom convoys' and using big rigs to block traffic as part of their protest of mask and other covid safety protocols that have been instituted by various governments. These fucking morons are forgetting that we're losing over a thousand lives a day to Covid. They figure it's not happening to them or their immediate circle of associates/families/etc. so it can't be as bad as it sounds.

Donald fucking Trump is out there flapping his gums and encouraging these protests. He's also talking about how great/smart Putin is for invading Ukraine. In the process, he's been talking trash about the US. And his fan base doesn't even notice that. They're too star struck and brainwashed to believe that he's damn near the second coming of Christ rather than recognize that he's a charlatan and a general bastard. We've got people in the GOP talking along the same lines (who are members of the Trump cult). It's getting ugly.

And there isn't a damn thing I can do about any of it.

I'll be back soon.

 The last month of intensive therapy journal work has been hellish. I feel isolated (which is darkly funny given the fact that I have people in my head). I have been on the hell-ride of depression still though daylight lasts a bit longer. Theoretically, I should be doing better but I don't feel like it.

My blood sugar got fucked up by my medication as my psych and I were trying to figure out the right cocktail to get me to sleep through the night. I was on Seroquel (at it's lowest dose) to get me to sleep since October-ish. That made my blood sugar go up. I didn't put two and two together until recently. We're first trying a moderately high dosage of hydroxizine to see if it takes care of the problem. Hydroxizine is in the same family as Benadryl (which is why I shouldn't take Benadryl when my sinus allergies act up). At the dosage I'm on, I fall asleep relatively easily. The issue is am I staying asleep through the night.

We'll see over the next week or so. I wake up in the middle of the night and then around three or four in the morning. Recently, it's been five in the morning. I know I'm not in a mixed or manic episode. My mood and my behavior puts me pretty squarely in the mild/moderate depression state. I've been struggling to find the motivation to do anything. That makes hours of therapy journaling a struggle. Hell, it makes putting my laundry away a struggle.

Still, I'm trying and I'm planning on coming back to blogging next week. I don't have anything special planned, I'm just going to post random shit that comes to mind. As of the moment, I am tired but I'm doing my best.

Going Radio Silent for a Few Weeks.

 I am stepping away from social media and blogging for a few weeks to do some intensive therapy work. This business of voices in my head (which is different from hallucinations because I can make them shut up with some effort) is getting to the point that it is interfering with stuff like my ability to get things done around the house and causing me distress.

So, I'm taking a few weeks to work on this and try to find some kind of equilibrium that I can live with. My anxiety would be off the charts if it wasn't for the medication dosage being increased a while back. I'm having more flashbacks (typically of the emotional sort) back to when I was a child and things were awful. It's just all around not a good time and I am struggling.

I'll probably post on this blog once in a while to keep all six of you who are reading updated. I'm going to warn you right now, things are probably get weird for a little bit.

Looking over old posts.

 Looking over some old posts and noticing the ones with the highest reads are typically angry posts about bullshit that people in some group I've been involved with have pulled. I think I manage to stumble onto key words in my ranting and that's how I wind up with something like one hundred and eleven views on a single post. I also noticed that I was getting more traffic across all my blogs when I was posting more a few years ago when I wasn't having as severe problems with seasonal affective disorder and with my other brain issues.

This leads me to conclude that I should be posting more across all platforms. I just don't know what to write. I feel like my life is boring, depressing, and that no one is really going to be interested in the fact that I had the spoons to put a whole basket of laundry away today. I know what's going on here is that I internalized the bullshit that my mother spewed at me when the concept of blogging first came up: Nobody is going to want to read what you have to say.

That rattles around in my head a lot when I'm depressed. When I was younger and struggling with bouts of depression, I was regularly told to shut up when I asked for reassurance or even some understanding that I was struggling. I was regularly mocked in my home and at school for the outward symptoms of depression (i.e. evidence of poor self care, downcast expression, slow speech, etc.). When I attempted to do things that made me feel better (i.e. isolate from my toxic family members, spend time making art, writing poetry), I got the third degree. I was accused of taking drugs. My room got ransacked on a regular basis. They went through my journals when I started keeping them regularly (I didn't note which notebook was for what and carried the one that was my daily journal on my person almost all the time, so they didn't get into everything, but they tried). My randomized notebooks for poetry, fiction, and other writings made a half way decent method to secure the journal that was handling my life and inner thoughts. I also hid them in random places because of the fact that I had no privacy.

I digress, but who knows, maybe that'll pick me up a bunch of readers. I don't know what I'm doing. I just know that I need to write more. I've been writing more off line and that's getting a bit hairy. Exploring this plurality expression of trauma is creepy shit. I'm having trauma memories come up as I'm writing what feels like somebody else's memories being dictated to me by somebody in my head. Somebody that I don't know but knows me.

I just don't know what to write. Some of the therapy journaling stuff is horrific. Like being beaten for taking a single slice of cheese and accused of trying to starve my younger brothers. I don't think that stuff is quite appropriate to post on here just because it is distressing. If I do take the therapy writing online, which I tried a while back and then deleted after I got extremely anxious and uncomfortable, I will probably be doing it on a different blog.

I may post recipes on a weekly basis. I don't know. I'm not really cooking anything with variety now. There isn't the time and the kids won't eat it. Our menu has been fixed at:

Sunday: Pizza
Monday: Burgers
Tuesday: Tacos
Wednesday: Meatloaf and mashed potatoes
Thursday: Sandwiches
Friday: Fishsticks
Saturday: take out

We've been doing this for a few months now. I'm bored out of my skull. Lunches have been nothing but salads for me and sandwiches for the kids. Deviation from this norm gets the kids up in arms and kicks my anxiety about my carb load into gear. I can't have my favorite foods from the take out places. I've developed a shellfish allergy, so I can't even have my favorite soup once in a while (clam chowder). The stuff that I loved from the take out places are all too many carbs. This has Beloved and I resorting to scanning the nutritional facts about everything on a given restaurant's menu to try to find things. 

It's stuff like basic burgers. It's depressing. It's also very stressful when we go to the in-laws. My half-addled father in law either keeps forgetting I have diabetes or is trying to insult me by talking about food that I should try. It's equally bad with my sister-in-law. It's been three years now since my diagnosis. You'd figure that they'd recall. I don't know. Maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way. I'm not ascribing malice to what could just be falliblity and/or stupidity. I'm just sick of it.

Anyways, old posts. They seem to get the most readership when I'm ranting and accidentally hit buzz words. I make a point to keep this blog separate from the other blogs that I have. I do my best not to cross-reference material. This is a more personal thing than the others. But sometimes it seems to bleed into them or vice versa.