Too many cookies

 I have been having trouble over the last couple days getting my web browser to work properly. After a bit of poking around at it, I discovered that I had several thousand cookies. So, I deleted the cookies and ta-dah, it started working right again. I am annoyed with the fact that I had to do that but that is the state of the internet right now. It's like the 1990s returned to gift us with popup ads and bullshit. Unfortunately, the funny memes haven't come back into fashion.

Life around here has been challenging since I last posted. Hence the long silence. My mother-in-law was in treatment for cancer. She's successfully completed that and is working on getting back to what passes for normal. Now we wait a year and see if it comes back. If it doesn't she'll be declared cured. 

Work continues to drive Beloved batty. His boss has a bad case of undiagnosed ADHD, we're absolutely convinced of it. The man is in squirrel mode 95% of the time. His dog just about runs the office, when Dan doesn't put his foot down and get the dog to back down. She's a beautiful rescue dog that is very mouthy and anxious. And seems to have a bladder the size of a walnut. Between these two facts of his boss's lack of ability to stay on task and the dog has needs, Beloved is frustrated and trying to keep work grinding forward. It's been an on going problem for a while that is just slowly getting worse and more insane.

Cuddle Bear had oral surgery yesterday to extract a baby tooth and make room for the adult tooth erupting behind it. He's still feeling the effects of the anesthesia and is kinda grumpy and tired. He is doing ok with his driving lessons. Cuddle Bear is real cautious about four way stops now because he witnessed an accident a few days ago where someone tried to get through the stop before another person. There was a t-bone collision. Cuddle Bear was pretty rattled by the whole business. Apparently one of the vehicles involved was a police cruiser. Police showed up in enough numbers they were directing their own traffic. The drivers of both vehicles were taken to the hospital by ambulance, but fortunately alive and relatively whole. The fire department had their rescue truck out. It was a whole thing.

Snuggle Bug is very irritated with school. For anyone who has been keeping score, he started the year in the BOCES program for computer programming. This went sideways in a big way. He was failing all of his classes at BOCES, suffering from severe depression, and getting bullied a lot. We intervened at that point. He was pulled from BOCES and returned to his home school district. They gave us a line about how they didn't have room in any classes for him aside from his three morning classes before he went to BOCES. After some friction and frustration, he now is at school for a half day and comes home after his lunch period. Snuggle Bug isn't pleased but he is doing his best to stay positive. Bullying is still a problem, but less of a severe one. Now, however, he is getting super anxious over final exams later this month. I'm going to bring up his concerns with his guidance counselor to see if there's something we can do to help him be more successful.

Both the kids are not pleased about the talk around town about making changes to the park around the corner from us. From what they have heard, the playground is going to be ripped out and completely replaced. Snuggle Bug has been making noises about protesting the changes. Cuddle Bear has been making noises about never going back to the park after the changes are made because they are "ruining my childhood". To say the least, they have Opinions on what's happening. Nobody knows what is being built on the formerly empty lot between the old real estate office and the office park where our doctor's office is located. Whatever is being built, they're moving quick to get it done. It's been about 3 weeks since they started and they've got cement slabs poured and walls starting to go up on the exterior.

That's pretty much everything that's been going on in our neck of the woods. I am going to try to write more soon. Life has been challenging on top of daily irritations and the adventure of perimenopause. Hormone therapy helps even out the mood swings and make the hot flashes less frequent, but I still am off kilter. My doctor says that I'm about 2/3 of the way through it. I'm being optimistic and taking that number as a solid benchmark. But I'll go on about that on another post.

NaBloPoMo: What Would Loki Do?

A couple months back, Cuddle Bear got scammed out of all of his savings. (He had a good start on saving for a car.) Then the scammer harassed him for more money and started making threats. I didn't realize how bad things were until yesterday. I sat back and asked myself what would Loki do in this situation? Obviously get even, but how? Then it hit me, troll the scammer until they're back in the stone age.

A few gentle nudges and suggestions and Cuddle Bear was having a grand ol' time messing with the scammer. He was sending messages that were long and nothing but gibberish. By the end of the day, he was snickering and plotting what to do today. The scammer foolishly messaged him first thing in the morning. Maybe they were hoping to get 'normal' responses if they caught him earlier in the day. The fool.

Cuddle Bear was back at the blocks of gibberish messages. By lunchtime, the scammer went silent. Cuddle Bear asked them if they were angry. He told them to hold on to their hats because he was just getting warmed up. The scammer replied 'oh no.' The deluge of insanity resumed with the scammer begging him to stop. He finally said, "I'll stop if you send me my money back." Cuddle Bear got no response to that. He decided it was time to eat and proof read the job application he filled out in between sending blocks of random characters to the scammer.

Right now, Cuddle Bear is dropping off the job application. Somewhere downstate there is a scammer who is trying to decide what to do about Cuddle Bear's shenanigans. We're pretty sure that the scammer's already spent my son's money. Cuddle Bear's decided if he's having a bad day he's going to cheer himself up by messing with scammers.

Contrary to the desires of some people, I am still alive and annoying.

First, I can't believe I haven't written here since March. I feel kinda guilty about that. I am irritated that I missed Camp NaNoWriMo. It's the middle of the Tour de Fleece and I haven't worked on a single spinning project. It is also the middle of July for Loki and I haven't produced any poetry, art, or writings for him. It's been really hard to get myself moving on anything, to be honest.

I'm not depressed, though I am disappointed. If anything, I am cranky and mildly ill tempered because my back hurts since I slept on it funny last night and frustrated that I can't have food I'm craving because of my diabetes and medications. I suppose I should summarize what the last several months have been like.

In a word, exhausting. April was just a challenge to get things done because I was trying so hard to help the kids with school stuff. May saw my doctor's check in for the diabetes resulting in mixed news. My A1C is down to 6.2 from 6.5 but my heart rate jumped up to 130. I am now on a beta-blocker and feeling exhausted, spaced out, and struggling to focus on anything for an extended period of time. Some time in May, I got my denial of disability from Social Security. I am now working with LawNY to challenge that denial. 

That came with a pile of paperwork that ratcheted up my anxiety. As did the piles of paperwork that I am still slogging through for the kids to get Medicaid so they can work with OPWDD. Fortunately, everyone involved in this process has been very patient and helpful.

June brought Cuddle Bear's graduation and a heap of anxiety over that just for fun. It also brought news that my heart rate is back in a much more tolerable range. The kids had physicals and for the most part they're doing well. Snuggle Bug has lost weight again, so now we're adding protein powder to his milk at dinner time. We'll see how it goes.

July, thus far, has been my struggling to get paperwork done for the kids. Snuggle Bug is doing extended school year and will be retaking exams in August. The classes that he bombed, he was being bullied in. I am pretty sure that contributed to him failing them. I've been prodding Cuddle Bear to act on his desire to get his learner's permit and his desire to get his working papers. No progress yet on that front. I suspect that August will roll around and the working papers will no longer be necessary.

Here's a picture of Cuddle Bear from his graduation. (Yes, all that curl is real. My hair used to be that curly when I was a small child.)

It has not been a good week.

 I wish that I had happy things to share and fun pictures for you. I don't. This week has sucked. First, there was the business of being on tenterhooks waiting for my father-in-law's condition to change. He had been in the hospital most of last week (which wasn't a good week either) due to complications from fatty liver disease and a fall the Friday before. Fortunately, the fall just left him with some good sized bruises but there was no concussion or broken bones. About the middle of last week, he decided that he was done taking medication for his fatty liver disease and dealing with the side effects. So began our death watch.

To some extent I was on the sidelines for this. But it was still stressful. The kids were prepared for the news that he was dying, but they still were upset with it. They had a close relationship with the man. A day or so after my father-in-law decided he was done with treatment, we got a phone call telling us that he had anything between a few days to a few weeks before he died. At which point, Beloved called out of work and we all trooped up to the hospital. Snuggle Bug wanted to see his grandfather and say something to him. Cuddle Bear preferred not to go into the ward where the man was. He waited with me and we all headed home when Snuggle Bug had his say. For my part, I had nothing to say.

I had to restrain myself from saying when Beloved asked me if I wanted to step back and say anything "Naw, I've seen corpses before." To put it very lightly, I despised my father-in-law based upon his past behavior, politics, and general attitude. And he never knew the depth of it. My father-in-law would tease my Beloved and insist that I actually liked him. The old goat mistook my politeness for actual pleasure in his company.

 I didn't disabuse him of the notion but as time passed on, he started to think that there was something a bit off there. Perhaps it was the fact that I had my hair chopped after he fawned over a haircut that I had gotten, I think it was two or three days after it that I got a super short pixie cut. He made me uncomfortable, angry, and I decided to do something about it. But between the mannish haircut and my changing my clothing style to black everything with occasional splashes of color, I got suspicious looks from him and he started queer baiting me. I made a point of not getting into an argument with him over it because I was observing frith and sticking to my own faith's rules of good behavior in another's home. There were several times he said things that made me want to loosen his teeth, but I replied with a dry 'that's your opinion.'

All of this exposition is to explain the background for why I am not mourning the man. I'm actually somewhat relieved and glad that he's dead. He can no longer hurt anyone now. He can no longer terrorize his wife. He can no longer spread his brand of hatred. And, he's made himself semi-useful in death by donating his body to science. I have but one childish regret, that I didn't punch him when I had the opportunity. I, however, recognize that I have anger issues and do my best to keep that in check. And I recognize that punching him would have been breaking frith, done nothing to resolve all of the agony he has caused in the course of his lifetime, and would probably have netted me an assault charge. I still feel like he deserved at least one punch for how he behaved in life, though.

All of that aside, the old goat dying has left something of a mess that Beloved and his siblings are sorting through with their mother. Changes got made to important legal things which didn't get down in writing before my father in law went into the hospital. Palsy made it impossible for him to feed himself, let alone write something down. And I presume that when he made these changes to his wishes for end of life stuff, he expected that he wasn't going to die essentially immediately after. The extended family are in the process of converging on the town. This is going to be complicated and messy because feelings and opinions on what should happen next. 

I'm not looking forward to the next few weeks. I expect that Beloved and the kids are going to have a rough time of it all. I expect that Beloved's mother and his siblings are going to have a rough time too. I'm going to do my best to support them and disregard what others have to say, even if it makes me angry. 

No Monday Menu this week.

 It has been one heck of a weekend. Friday, Beloved was sick with the flu. The rest of us fell like dominos over the course of Saturday. Today, the neighbor's kid who came to visit Thursday has come down with it. I feel bad that he's caught it but there isn't much I can do about it. I may offer them what's left of the ginger ale to help settle his stomach. But if it goes like it did over here, they're all going to have it in short order.

Thinking about food is making my stomach roil still. I'm no longer getting sick to my stomach, thankfully. The kids have started keeping solid food down. It makes things easier. Beloved is just about fully recovered with the exception of some stomach misery and a lot of gas. We're all hoping that nothing was caught by his parents with respect to this.

As logically as I can figure it out, we picked it up when we visited the hospital for the kids to see their grandfather. Because all week last week during the kids' winter break, that was the only place we had gone. At first, we thought that Beloved had food poisoning from a bottle of flavored milk that had gone off. Then the rest of us got sick. It's made things exasperating. I have two sinkfuls of dishes to wash, food to prep for Beloved's lunches this week (one of his favorite things is tuna salad to have for lunch), and another pile of dishes to take care of on the stove.

I also have to still clean out the fish tank and get rid of the fish's corpse. I was waiting until the garbage went out this way the kids didn't get upset seeing Snap laying in the garbage. But it's going to be a challenge to catch up on this stuff. A part of me says that making two pans of brownies last week was a poor executive decision. But there was no way I could have known that we were all going to get sick. I'm trying to give myself a bit of grace and just be reasonable about it all.

Dinners this week are going to be tailored to what people can keep down and what will keep the blood sugar stable for us diabetics in the household Beyond that, who knows the things I'll be putting together. If any of it comes out particularly good, I'll make a post here.

Since the cat is out of the bag ...

 My husband's parents are not doing well. We've been doing our best to offer support and help out. But there are something that you can not avoid, help, or otherwise make go away. My father in law is actively dying of liver failure due to fatty liver disease. Now that I am aware that this runs in Beloved's side of the family, I can educate the kids about it. I'm probably going to wait until everything finishes unfolding for my father in law, to be honest.

So far, Beloved is doing ok handling complicated feelings about his father. I am doing my best to hold space for him and support him in whatever way that I can. I understand the complicated feelings that he's going through, having gone through them myself when my own father got a cancer diagnosis. (Dad's in remission thanks to an experimental treatment and will be declared cured if he doesn't have it come back by August.) It is rough to hurry up and wait for someone to die.

It doesn't matter how much you're angry with them, how much you hate them, or how you feel on any front. It's still unpleasant and difficult. You see the suffering of the people who love them and it gets to you. Or at least it gets to me. Grief isn't easy. Grieving someone as they're still technically alive is a paradoxical experience and painful.

Right now, my father in law is spending a lot of time sleeping and getting pain medicine. He fell last week and was in the hospital with respect to that when it was discovered that his liver enzymes were high. The old goat refused treatment after a few days because he was just sick of the side effects. Not long after that, he started spending a lot of time sleeping. The doctors think he has anything from a few days to a few weeks to go. 

It's odd. The idea that it can be that uncertain is just strange to me. Then I think about acute liver failure and how it kills you in 24 to 48 hours. It's been a surreal week. I feel like I should have more empathy for the grieving that my sister in law is going through because she is close to her father. I don't, however. I kinda feel like a bad person for that.

I have spent a fair amount of time thinking about death and coming up with no good ideas on how to talk about it. The fish died on Tuesday. I haven't been able to clean out the tank yet because of all the stuff stacked around it right now. As the fish had been acting strangely for about two weeks and he was old, the kids were prepared for it to happen. There wasn't really any wailing and gnashing of teeth like the last time we had a fish die. The kids were disappointed and sad, but they accepted it as a natural part of life. They've agreed that death is not cool and that it's a sad thing. By letting them come to their own conclusions about the matter, I have done my best to keep my opinions out of it.

Looking back on the last week, I think that the death of the fish prepared the kids for the coming death of their grandfather. My only concerns about all of this is how to help my immediate family navigate this process. Beloved, as I said, has conflicting feelings about it all. He has a bad relationship with his father for much of the same reasons why I have a bad relationship with my parents. But we're standing behind the kids and doing our best to guide and support them through this, because they have a relatively good relationship with the man.

My mother in law is obviously distraught. It has driven her blood pressure up and she's had medication changes which have impacted her in various ways due to it. I suspect her doctor didn't fully consider her situation when he made the change and put her on a high dose rather than titrate her up to it. Hopefully as the medication is adjusted, she'll be doing better. But her cognition isn't the best right now for a number of reasons. This has kickstarted my anxiety again about myself developing dementia, because that's in my side of the family.

I try really hard not to think about it but watching my great grandmother H. lose her mental faculties scared the hell out of me. It was somewhat traumatic to watch from the side lines as a kid and it instilled in me a deep fear of losing my memories. Hence why I started journaling to begin with. My thinking was if I wrote everything down, I'd have reminders about the important things as my mind started to go.

Then bipolar happened to me. After living with the facts of how bipolar effects my cognition, I have come to recognize that my frantic urge to save as many memories as possible is futile. I still journal. It helps me to get a handle on my brain and sort through my feelings. But the anxiety about preserving everything just kinda got pushed aside in the light of how this last depressive episode really messed with my memory and stuff. And realizing that the next depressive episode will likely do the same.

Ugh, politics.

 I must confess, I am horrified by everything going down on the political stage over the last year. At the same time, I am exhausted with it. I am sure everyone feels that way. I don't think people have realized that with an act of Congress, a stroke of a pen, and support of the Supreme Court, we are no longer a democracy. The changes that were made to the Executive branch of the government's powers (via the act of Congress) fundamentally changed the government of the United States from a democracy to a totalitarian state. These waters are unknown to us but we have to forge forward. I have hope that the Republic will be restored, but it is rather slim.

I feel betrayed by Joe Biden. Now one may ask why that is, after all I vote Democrat. He was the bulwark against which the act of Congress that changed the Executive branch's powers should have crashed. And he caved in like paper. A part of me wonders if it was spite that moved him not to veto that act. Here he was, facing the fact that Donald Trump was breathing down his neck and his own political party had jumped ship based on the smear campaign that Donald Trump was running. His vice president took up the mantle of candidate with out much apparent protest shortly before this mad bill was pushed through Congress at lightning speed by the Republicans that were swayed by the cult of personality which surrounds Donald Trump. I still think that law should never have been signed to expand the Executive branch's powers. It's all rather logical but disgusting at the same time.

Let me explain. There's been a push in the United States towards a totalitarian state since at least the Regan era. There's this book that details it (The Cult of the Presidency by Healy) but I'll try to summarize it. The educational system of the U.S. hasn't done a very good job of teaching civics and the fundamental under pinnings of the government we had before this Executive powers nonsense took hold. (I think it is only going to get worse moving forward.) As a result, people took to this idea that the PotUS was like a monarch or a dictator. This was something that has been fermenting on the Conservative front since at least the Civil War. (Yes, that long.) Language surrounding the PotUS changed and voting habits changed over the years.

People shifted to looking at the parties nominally running the government as teams in sportsball (hat tip to the Oatmeal for coming up with that expression). They rallied around their 'team' and didn't think about the long term consequences. The old tribal habits that lurk within social structures of humanity roared to the front and created a schism. The government was run by ...

No, I'm not going to detail it all out. I'm just tired and as much as I want to be an educator, I'm too busy with my cold and trying to take care of my family. If you understand what deep shit we're in here, you understand. This isn't another day at the office in the USA. We've collapsed, betrayed into the state we're in now by people who should have known better. I accept that everyone involved was fallible and probably were more focused on the moment. After all, it's only human to worry about the immediate consequences and not consider the long term effects. (And it is effect not affect, effect is a result and affect is an air you put on. Goddamnit!) It doesn't change the fact that our government is destroyed and fundamentally transformed into something repugnant.

There's a reason that George Washington refused a crown when it was offered to him. Those people who wanted him to be king linger on in their many descendants apparently. Washington believed that the government that he put together with his associates was fundamentally better than a monarchy. Now, people who are eager to bask in the light of the PotUS because they assume that it's the same thing out of ignorance and being caught in a cult of personality ... ugh. 

Maybe there's no hope right now. I don't know. I just know that life has become fundamentally more risky for my family. No one has moved yet but it's only a matter of time. So many people have told me that I was paranoid for worrying about such a thing happening in my lifetime since childhood. The same people assumed that they weren't changing the fundamental structure of the government in voting for these assholes who are in power now. They were too worried about what was in somebody's pants to stop and think long term for the generations that come after them.

It only took till January.

 I can barely remember the last six months. Between depression, medication changes, and various other stressors, my brain has NOPED out of recalling all but the most important details of the last six months. During that time, I struggled to write. I stopped writing, to be honest. The persistent sense that what I had to write was fundamentally worthless was all but impossible to shake. I still have it whispering in the background that I should delete this thing and go fold laundry or something. I am endeavoring to do my best to ignore it.

My father got diagnosed in late July with lymphoma and that's when all writing (even keeping track of things in my dayplanner) ground to a halt. I struggled for months with my feelings over it all. I am still angry over my youth and how things happened. At the same time, I do love my father dearly. My mother, let's just say I am ambivalent and angry towards right now. I worked with my therapist and wrestled with my feelings before calling him last week. I wrestled with my feelings from as soon as I got the news until last week when a reckless sense of 'what's the worst that's going to happen?' struck me and I called. I half expected to be hung up on by my mother. When my dad answered the phone I was relieved to hear his voice. He told me that he's part of an experimental treatment's study phase. He's currently in remission and if he remains in remission for eight months, he'll be declared cured. Then I was buried under family 'news' (aka gossip) about the rest of the family. Relatives that I expected to be retired were. Relatives that I guessed had changed careers had. Other relatives were still chugging along with their lives as I had figured they would be.

I was cautious about how much I shared about my life in return for that info dump. I mentioned that I was surprised by how complicated the preparations for Cuddle Bear to graduate are. My dad laughed and told me to wait for college entry preparations. I mentioned that my father in law and mother in law were in declining health. My dad mentioned that he had seen my father in law at the grocery store and he looked to be in really rough shape. I agreed with him. We cycled back to the school angle and I mentioned that the kids are doing well this year. Dad asked how Beloved and I are doing. I told him that we were getting by. Because there's not a whole lot to add to that statement. Every day it's chop wood and carry water, as the Zen koan goes. The conversation wrapped up with my dad telling me that I could call him anytime for any reason. I am pretty sure he misses me. When I bump into him at the grocery store, he lights up with a big smile.

My father in law, on the other hand, is still a surly cur. He's got this bad habit that I'm familiar with of tending to ignore his health. This lead to him going to the hospital right before Yule. He was there for a week as they drained the ammonia that had built up in his system. By the time he came out, he was somewhat shaken by the experience and deeply thankful to Beloved, my brother in law, and his wife for 'saving' his life. Beloved and I agree that the credit lies with his brother, but his father wasn't exactly in a clear mental state as everything went down. The holidays were the holidays. Extra weird this year with that near death experience looming over things. I described it to Beloved as it felt like a hostage crisis and we were dependent upon Cuddle Bear's ability to talk non-stop about trains to get the good outcome. Like I said, extra weird. There's always a little weirdness because our family unit is atypical but this went beyond it in ways I can't quite describe.

As I was trudging through the year, last year, I managed to set up services to help my boys transition from school to life in the 'real' world. There's still a lot of learning that needs to happen and I can't seem to managed to get it done. As such, I was really thankful when the school recommended us to Catholic Charities for services. Each kid got a skill builder and there's been focused work on skills like anger management, emotional regulation, how to look for a job, and social skills. Cuddle Bear has finished his sessions with his skill builder as Snuggle Bug is still working with his. So far, I have nothing but good things to say about Catholic Charities and the assistance they've provided us. I'm still working on getting things going with the Office of People With Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD). It's a long process, but I think we're going to get things nailed down for Cuddle Bear before his 18th birthday.

Speaking of biting the bullet and getting help, I have decided to try again for disability. There have been hoops to jump through and a whole lot of hurry up and wait. But progress seems to be happening. The therapist that I've been seeing works really well with me. It has lead to a good deal of progress on things that I have always struggled with. I am pleased with this and hope to continue in this fashion as the year goes on. Some time in September, I gave myself a hernia. Our family doctor does not think it requires surgery at this time and gave me a list of activities I should limit. I am not pleased with this, but it was a result of my pushing myself too far. A bad habit I have. Next week, I get to experience the joy of a colonoscopy. I'm not looking forward to it. I am concerned they're going to find something pre-cancerous. The whole business of my grandfather and my father having cancer scared me. My doctors all reassure me that the likelihood of my having cancer isn't as high as my anxiety tells me it is. My therapist is talking me through the anxiety of it all. So my professional support system is working fairly well.

That pretty much wraps up how things are at my end of the internet. I am going to do my best to get back to writing. It feels like I'm missing a limb or something with the fact that I haven't been writing. Posting this helps with that feeling, I hope I can do more.

It's been a long week ... 9 days long!?!

 I try to set modest goals for myself. Then I get swamped with stupid problems and stupider situations. It is all very vexing and I rather hate it. But that gets turned inward because of conditioning and shit, which turns into my cycling between feeling like a failure and feeling useless. It all together is rather awful. I kinda hate my parents for fucking with my brain like they did for the entire time I lived under their roof.

Anyways, it looks like my FiL is having health problems. He's an older man, it's not that surprising. Nor is it terribly surprising that he's been doing his best to ignore it and push everyone away. That's him being old school 'manly' and suffering in stoic silence, alone. In other words, stupid. How do I know this is stupid? Because I was trained into doing that kind of thing by my parents (who didn't want to be inconvenienced by a child crying because they were sick). I won't go into details about that process, let it be enough to say it was barbaric and cruel. I'm still dealing with the fall out from that.

If you're sick, you get help. You don't sit there and say that you are tougher than your illness, whatever it may be. It's senseless to do that instead of managing your illness and, depending on what it is, getting medical assistance when you need it. It comes from a toxic and archaic attitude that seems to be on the rise with the increase of 'conservative values'. I put that in quotes because most of the conservatively aligned people I know will go to the doctor and get antibiotics when they have an infection. They're not anti-science or anti-medicine. I may abhor their political views, but they're not what's on the rise here.

But that's a subject for a different day. Right now, I'm just really annoyed that my FiL's stubborn streak may put me in the position of having to reschedule my dentist appointment again. I have a pretty strong feeling if he got some help when he was beginning to have these ailments he sort of complains/be bitchy about, he would be doing much better and would necessarily have to under go this procedure he has coming up. 

However, I'm a woman with multiple chronic health conditions, what the hell do I know about managing my illness? *rolls eyes hard* And, yes, that was pretty much his response when I suggested he talk to his doctor. Adding insult to injury, he mansplained chronic illness to me with all of his biases and prejudice in place. I was good, I didn't punch him. 

We survived but presents are not done. Gods help me.

The holidays were stressful as per usual. No one was seriously sick in our household but the in-laws were. It made for awkward times with the kids. They wanted toys and they got books. For a moment we thought they were going to explode but they immediately sat down and began reading. I kinda feel like we dodged a bullet there. It's going to be a gradual process to transition them from eagerly looking for the latest toys and more mature items. But, they are getting older and this is part of growing up. They'll still get little stim-toys and candy via the 12 Yule boxes. But things like clothes, educational material about their special interests and what not is what's coming down the line for the next few years.

I have blocked Cuddle bear's sweater. I'm afraid to take the pins out and watch it shrink. I really have no idea what I'm doing with this sweater. I have two seams to sew and ends to weave in, then it is finished. Snuggle Bug's bear is ... in parts with my still crocheting more parts. I am wondering if this was a poor executive decision. It has been stressful to say the least.

Now that we're into the beginning of the secular year, the teachers at school have been pressuring Snuggle Bug to make New Year's Resolutions. We don't do that here. In fact, we discourage it. Our feeling is if you want to improve yourself, you can do it at anytime. The social pressure of doing it now is high and the lad is not happy. He's struggling. We've done our best to give him guidance on resolutions he can make that are not school oriented but appropriate. 

We'll see how that goes.

NaBloPoMo post no. 27: Shoppmageddon tempts me.

Beloved pointed out to me that I didn't have to make everything for everyone on my list. I hear the siren call of shopping and I am doing my best to resist. I suspect in the end half of what I have planned will be made and I'll be working on a shopping list in a week or so. Because there's a lot to do to fix the disaster of this apartment. 

It is my goal to have it all clean by Yule or Mother's Night. I'm not throwing a party or anything. I just want to have this place sorted out kinda like a present to myself. I don't know how I am going to get the kids to participate in this. It may be a temporary suspension of tablet time. I don't know. Snuggle Bug is very forgetful and I have to watch him like a hawk to keep him on task. (As much as he assures me he doesn't need the supervision, he really does.) Cuddle Bear is finally beginning to step up and start handling some of the chores.

I don't know what Beloved said to him in that conversation, but it's made for a turnaround in his attitude towards housework.

Nablopomo post no. 24: Thank gods, THAT is done!

 Turkey Day was not a complete fiasco. The old goat wasn't quite as goatish. He didn't have snide comments about the diabetics at the table this year. I think it was because there was three of us instead of one. Dinner was well tolerated. No one got snippy over my boys not having much of an appetite. Beloved and I did our level best to not get into the food with too high of a sugar content. My red lipstick didn't transfer to anything (except when I blotted the corner of my mouth, then it transferred to the napkin, but it was the same color as the cranberry sauce, so I think I'm safe).

The Boomers were happy to talk among themselves. The Gen-X crew was washing and cleaning up from dinner on the sly to irritate the old goat (whose hobby is washing dishes now). And the Gen-Z kids were on their tablets giggling at cat videos.

I got absolutely no knitting done, but I expected that. I did get started on a soap sack for Beloved. I brought two projects with me so that I had something to keep my hands busy while everyone else was twirling around before dinner with setting the table and cooking. It also worked pretty well to keep me out of conversations I didn't want to be involved in.

Nablopomo post no. 15 - cleaning marathons and rest days.

At one point I was a devotee of FLYLady's method of cleaning and keeping house. I found I had to keep adapting it and adapting it yet again to fit my lifestyle and schedule until it looked very different from her program. Instead of going by the Julian calendar for the basis of my cleaning schedule, I switched to the lunar cycle. There's more consistency in the lunar cycle than there is in the Julian calendar, which makes things easier for me.

I have four major living areas in my home. I was including the entryway but because I wasn't getting paid for the work and it still looked awful when I was done because of dirt ground into the paint, I gave up. Nowadays I sweep the space with a glance and just go out of it. Between filthy neighbors who throw their trash everywhere and the fact that I can't get it truly clean, there's no point. (My eldest son did me a big favor pulling the trash the neighbors dumped into the garden out of there last week.)

My four living areas are the kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms, and the living room. The week after the new moon, I work on the kitchen. The week of the waxing gibbous moon, I work on the bathroom. The week of the full moon, I work on the living room. And the week of the waning gibbous moon, I work on bedrooms.

To some this may look like madness and that I'm engaged in panic cleaning for the whole month. But that's not completely true. The three days around the new and the full moon, I have a rest period. If a holiday falls during the week, I take a day off from cleaning to observe it. And I'm not spending all day cleaning, just 15 to 30 minutes. I have been trying to get my sons in on this. My eldest is finally starting to fall into the rhythm of it. He's been helping out with daily chores like dishes. We work on them for 15 minutes and then he's done. My youngest is still very scattershot about cleaning. When he focuses and stays on task he does a great job. But that ADHD makes it hard for him to focus. Beloved and I think it is a maturity thing and over the next two years he'll make some leaps and start falling into the cleaning rhythm too. 

Some rambling thoughts on parenting teenagers.

 Hi, All!

So, my eldest son keeps insisting that his one desire when he finishes high school is to leave the country. He's been saying that a lot over the last few months. Every time he says it, my heart breaks a little bit. I sit there and say to myself is this because I walked away from my side of the family (with the exception of a few people).  Is this how he thinks things are supposed to work? You grow up and just walk away.

We've done our best to explain to him how a large number of people on my side of the family are toxic if not dangerous for them to be around. He launches into rants about how this country is turning into a facist state. (This is what we get for making sure he was well educated about WWII and the consequences of such types of governments.) He talks about how much he hates this country on the basis of all the past injustices against everyone you can think of and the ongoing bigotry and policy making based in hate. I don't blame him or begrudge his feelings. He just wants to leave before the country collapses. I don't know if it is going to collapse, but he's insisting it will and it will be like Nazi Germany when it happens.

This kid is no dummy. His arguments are well thought out and fairly sound. He gets ticked off with counter arguments that tell him that staying in the country is a better option than risking being off in another country with no idea what it's like there or how to speak the language.

Still, he's breaking my heart.

My youngest son keeps insisting his one desire is to be a roboticist. He understands that means college. He wants to get there as fast as possible so he can start building animatronic robots. He's been fascinated with them for years. His response to his brother's desire to flee the country is "You'll come back and see us, right?" He gets upset at the idea of his big brother just disappearing out of his life. They're real close. They think a lot a like, which means there's a fair amount of bickering. (Thank you Beloved for the noise cancelling headphones.) But my youngest son at 14 years old has a huge heart and worries for his brother. And I can't console him.

This is the rough part of being a parent.

No Menu, but there is more malarky

 Cuddle Bear did not only claim the jacket for himself, he asked for a fedora to go with it. I was searching all over for the compass he asked for as a birthday present and couldn't find one. I'm going to keep looking. But between the had, the sunglasses and the rest of his look, I was half expecting him to quote Blues Brothers (We're on a mission from God.) or ask me when I am going to be giving my weekly protection payment to the Don. 

His small birthday party was yesterday. We had pizza and cupcakes. Well, the guys had pizza and cupcakes. I had a salad. It was another 'oh damn diabetes" moment. Let me tell you, those chocolate cupcakes looked delicious. We didn't have any guests over because we weren't sure how to get a hold of his friends.

Originally the plan was to have the party at his grandparent's house, but they are feeling under the weather. Instead of delaying the party, they told us to go ahead and hold it at home. They'll let us know when things are favorable for visiting.

Snuggle Bug has been all about his skateboard where as Cuddle Bear is a bit gun-shy about the whole affair. Balancing on it while standing is proving very challenging for both the guys. Snuggle Bug figured out how to sit on it and make it move with a stick. Not only that, he figured out how to use the stick as a brake. It was interesting and amusing to watch. 

As soon as Cuddle Bear got the hat to go with his jacket and sunglasses look, we started talking about suits for formal occasions. I don't know if he wants to go to homecoming. He isn't into school spirit stuff. But he does want to go to prom when it comes up. We talked about it and I convinced him that a tux for prom wasn't necessary. At some point, we're going to find him a pinstriped suit like his hat and a nice tie. This way he's got himself a suit he can wear to special occasions. And that he can wear on a job interview. Plan it a size big and it'll last him a while. Of course, I could see Beloved insisting he wear one of his wacky, garish ties in his collection to prom. We'll burn that bridge when we get to it.

I can't believe the kids are 16 and 14. Time flies, folks.

It has been an eventful few days.

 Last Saturday was Snuggle Bug's 14th birthday. His class at school made a boat shaped like a manatee with googly eyes because of how the painted beach balls bounced on the waves. At first, the Regatta was scheduled for Saturday. We went over to the park early and then I got a text message that it was postponed to Sunday on account of incoming inclement weather. So, the kids got to play at the park for a bit and then we went home.

They got their skateboards. It was early for Cuddle Bear to get that gift but we wanted him to have time to play around with it. He got frustrated with trying to balance on the thing and said 'Nope, I can't do it.' before walking into the house and putting it away. His brother, on the other hand, figured out how to use it sitting down and crouching on it. Beloved has a feeling that where Cuddle Bear taught Snuggle Bug how to use his bike, Snuggle Bug may be teaching Cuddle Bear how to use his skateboard.

It has been a few days and Cuddle Bear's skateboard remains where he put it. Who knows what will come of this. Neither Beloved or I know how to use a skateboard but we thought the principle of it was simple enough that both of the boys would pick it up pretty fast. *shrugs* You can never guess what's going to happen around here.

Last Sunday was the Regatta. Snuggle Bug actually got on board of the 'Majestic Manatee' and was the unofficial captain. He sat in the middle of their googly eyed boat as others rowed. Last year, there was some boats that sank. It was a close thing with the Manatee a few moments. But they stayed upright in the water and made it back to the dock. They won an award for the slowest trip around the course, because none of the boats sank, not even the recycled cardboard boat. (The recycled cardboard boat turned out to be the fastest. It started coming apart when it was taken out of the water.) The award for most spectacular sinking got repurposed for their award. They also won family favorite for design. I am pretty sure it was the googly eyes that did it.

While Snuggle Bug was on his ship, Cuddle Bear started jogging laps around the park. By the end of Snuggle Bug's course around the buoys that marked the race perimeter, Cuddle Bear was warm and looking for a drink. So, I bought the boys some refreshments and let them have their run of the park for a little while before we went home. Because our plans for an actual party for Snuggle Bug's birthday fell through, we just casually celebrated through out the day. He got his gifts and he was delighted to have another bit of Poppy Playtime merchandise. (This kid is collecting merchandise from his favorite two horror games and rewriting the backstory of the characters. It's been interesting.)

Dinner was pizza from our local delivery place. For some reason my typical order of a salad with extra meat got an excited response from one of the staff. Apparently they thought this was really cool. *shrugs* I don't understand other people. Snuggle Bug had ice cream for dessert. We bought Cuddle Bear a brownie because he doesn't like hard ice cream. Turns out that they changed their brownie recipe and drowned it in chocolate sauce. Cuddle Bear gave it a try and told me that the chocolate sauce was a weird feeling in his mouth and the brownie soaked with chocolate sauce felt all wrong. He said the taste was ok, but he couldn't stand the textures. Such is life with people with food sensitivities.

Beloved was kind enough to eat the evidence later. I felt a bit off through the weekend and then Monday this bug hit me like a hammer. I was feeling so rotten in such an odd way, I tested myself for Covid. The test was negative, thankfully. Beloved suggested that I might have picked up a stomach bug from him because he hadn't been feeling too great over the last several days. I slept through most of the day and went to bed exhausted. For a little bit, it looked like I only had Gas-X to handle my stomach symptoms.

This morning, I still felt off but I had errands to do. Thus I called the pharmacist to ask if good ol' Pepto was going to conflict with my laundry list of medications. I was relieved to hear that it wouldn't. So when I picked up the various things we needed at the store and our prescriptions, I got a box of tablets. My first dose and I felt so much better. I had forgotten how effective it is at settling upset stomachs. For the last four years, I thought I couldn't take it. So, I suffered through various stomach bugs for no reason but my ignorance.

I am now working with a sleep specialist to figure out why in hell I can't get to sleep and stay asleep for the last two years. They are suggesting a preliminary possibility of sleep apnea and a need to have behavioral therapy to fix my sleep habits. In September, I have the in-home sleep study. In October, I have the follow up to discuss my results. And in February of next year, I see their sleep psychologist for an initial intake appointment. 

I kinda feel like I've bit off more than I can chew. But, if I can get back to getting a decent night's sleep, that'd be wonderful.

No menu, just malarky.

 Hey folks!

I'd have made a menu yesterday and posted it today but ... well, the kids happened. They've been extra silly over the last several days and I'm having a hard time keeping up with it. Blanket fort shenanigans, jump scares around corners, making monster noises at each other, and the occasional bickering has my head spinning. I thought that this kinda stuff was stuff they grew out of. Apparently if they get sufficiently bored, my boys will start up with this. I must admit, it was funny to see Cuddle Bear in the blanket fort with most of his body sticking out because he didn't fit. I snapped a picture of it and sent it to Beloved. He cracked up.

When they started to get bored with surprising each other by randomly poking their hands out, Cuddle Bear grabbed his big bag of clean blankets to make his own blanket fort in his bed. If only I could get them to pick up the laundry. Maybe later, after they get some of this goofiness out of their system.

I don't have a menu, but summer feels like it's turning into a Nine Inch Nails song: Everyday is the Same. I've been tutoring Cuddle Bear in Algebra for the last several weeks. We've hit a point where my scrambled brain is trying to do calculus and linear algebra on his work. It made today very frustrating for both of us. Add into this mix the fact that his new scientific calculator is not operating on the decimal system, it's been rather vexing. We tried to find the instruction booklet but it is missing in action. We'll probably find it in September.

Snuggle Bug is doing pretty well with summer school. I don't know if his class is going to be making something for the "Anything that Floats" regatta happening at the end of the month. Last year they won Family Favorite. We've talked about going to it again. Both boys are hoping to see their friends at it. And, to be honest, I hope they get to. They've been a bit miserable and grumpy because they haven't seen any of their friends since the end of school. Snuggle Bug has made a few new friends but mostly he is pretty lonely even at school.

Perseveration sucks.

 Perseveration is the act of thinking about one topic for an extended period at the exclusion of other topics. This is different from concentration or being focused. It can go on for hours or, even, days. It's part of a collection of symptoms I have from  my mental illnesses. I pretty much hate it because I perseverate on horrible things from the past that I don't have 'resolved'. Honestly, I don't think you can resolve the breech of trust that comes from when your parents throw you out of the house when you're extremely ill in the middle of winter. I had pennies to my name and they were going to leave me with just the clothes on my back out in the street. My Grandparents intervened and that's how I wound up living in east Jesus for a year before I got married.

 I grew up on a farm about 5 miles from civilization in any direction. There was literally nowhere for me to go. I've been thinking about this for weeks. I had to deal with threats of being thrown out from the age of 12 through my early 20s. When they did it, they claimed it was because I wasn't pulling my weight as a member of the household. Meanwhile, one brother chain smoked, played video games, and was unemployed for years by that point, with a child. The other brother was in the military but wasted his money on alcohol instead of supporting his wife and children, leaving the rest of the family to do that. And when he was on leave, he would play video games and fuck off to bars in the area to get his drink on instead of going to be with his family. Neither brother cleaned anything, they wouldn't cook, or do their own laundry.

It was my childhood all over again during the time from graduation from college to when they threw me out. I was basically the household serf who had to perform perfectly and be silent. There is a lot of unresolved trauma around all of that. I think that's why I can't get it out of my head. It's part of a long list of things that I am certain I can never 'resolve' only learn to live with.

A special embroidery project completed.

 The fan pictured to the right is a project that was stuffed into a bag of yarn I inherited from my late paternal Grandmother. She only had the handle of the fan done before it got put into a bag of yarn and forgotten. (Not that I've done that before, wink.)

It has taken me months to work on it because it was an emotionally grueling task. Finding a strand of her hair tangled up with some of the wool for this pattern, I got teary eyed and twisted the wool a little tighter so that silver thread of memory was in it. Looking at the finished product you can't tell where it is, I felt that was appropriate.

I still have to mount this and frame it. It is going to go beside the white fan with flowers on it and a Monarch butterfly beside it. That was the one she completed. It is sitting on the bookcase. This will likely go beside it. I miss my paternal Grandparents terribly and I haven't fully mourned their deaths. Family politics and circumstances kept me from their internment. At the viewing I was wandering around comforting relatives. I got a brief glimpse of my Grandfather in the box at his viewing and not a single glance at my Grandmother's viewing.

Some day, Beloved and I are going to go down to the family plot and lay some flowers down. It won't be easy, but it will be healthier for me than thinking they're still puttering around at the farm.

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.