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.