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.