untitled no. ?

 As I am sitting here, I am unable to shake this feeling that I am going to start openly sobbing for no apparent reason. I am struggling to process trauma memories that have bubbled up along with random 'ok' memories from my childhood. It's like there is no bottom to this well of sorrow. Because remembering trauma that is 'new' brings up the memories of other trauma that are more familiar (but no less harrowing). I am so tired of trauma work. I have been doing trauma work since I was eighteen.

I've been dealing with some form of trauma all my life. First there was the part where I lived through it. That sucked. I compartmentalized and pushed that into a closet to be able to pass as a 'normal' kid. It didn't work. So, on top of the business of being traumatized at home, I got traumatized at school by bullies. There were few safe havens and those places I could go, I couldn't stay there for too long before my parents were looking for me.

When I finally went off to college, I was in the weird state of limbo. I lived a double life. At college, I could freely express myself. At my parents' house, I had to do my best to live the role they expected of me as the dutiful daughter and emotional punching bag for just about everybody in the house. It was exhausting. As I was at college, I started therapy because my room mate insisted on it. Theresa, if you're reading this, thank you. 

It was still a weird limbo on the psychological front because I was working on healing the trauma of the abusive relationship I was in during high school as I was living in the traumatic environment of my parents' house. When I was out with Beloved, I had some flashbacks and panic attacks. Fortunately, we were off on our own at a park when I had the screaming fit and I started clawing/hitting myself. I had these sort of incidents a few times. It almost broke our relationship. My parents had no idea because I never had that happen in front of them.

Flash-forward about a decade and my mother makes a comment that rips through my mental barriers. I didn't have a screaming fit, but I devolved into incoherent babbling and sobbing as I curled into a fetal position and sat rocking on a step. Mom called Beloved. When he showed up, I was still a wreck. In less than five minutes, he had me calm. The next day, we got married. I dissociated through most of that day. Memories of my wedding day come back to me in flashes. It wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for the fact that it was my wedding and it was a comment from my wonderful mother that set me off.

I don't know why but I find myself feeling like I'm on the edge of a cliff and someone's about to push me off. It's not a 'jump from the fiery airplane as it is crashing' or a 'you're going to fly now' kind of feeling. It's more like I'm standing at the edge of the abyss and I have some malevolent force at my back trying to force me over the edge. It is something I've had nightmares of. Many nightmares of being forced over the edge of a precipitous drop to fall to my death. Those started after my mother dangled me over a three story drop with the threat to let go if I didn't obey her whims. I was four. I had stopped my brother (who was old enough to crawl but not yet pull up and walk) from going over the edge. 

I pulled him back when Mom stormed into the room and started screaming at me for being in my parents' room (which had a smaller room off to the side and a drop down to the basement where a flight of stairs was supposed to be, those steps did eventually get built about a decade later). She just about kicked my brother aside and gripped me by my shirt. She held me in such a manner that the majority of my body weight was upheld by her grasp on my shirt despite the fact my feet were on the floor as I was levered out over the drop to the basement. She held me there for probably a few minutes but it felt like forever. She shook me like a rag doll and I was convinced I was going to die. Then I was half thrown into the main portion of her room towards the direction of the room that was eventually to be my bedroom. I don't clearly remember what she said. I just remember the sensations and the murderous look in her eye.

It is memories like that which have been coming up. It wasn't the only time she did that, by the way. It happened again when my other brother was approximately the same age and about to do the same thing as his older brother (tip a laundry basket over the drop and fall with it). In both cases, I grabbed my brother (who was holding on to the laundry basket like it was for his life) and I dragged him back into the room. The second time, Mom first shoved my face into the bookshelf next to the doorway into that room. The only reason why I didn't get a face full of books and a black eye was because I dodged and caught the door frame with the side of my head. No black eye but a bit of a bump on the head. But she dragged me over to the same spot that she did the first time. This time she held me by the back of my shirt. But the process was the same, hold me at a 45 degree angle over that drop down to the basement and scream at me about how I was bad and attempting to harm my brother.

It is oddly ironic that the time Mom nearly kicked my youngest brother out a window, I was the one who grabbed him and pulled him back as the screen got knocked out the window. That time, Mom didn't scream at me. She was confused and partially awake, wondering why my toddler brother was shrieking and where the screen had went. It is bitterly ironic that the same brothers that I had saved from death multiple times turned out to hate me because of the mind-fuckery of my mother.

I don't regret saving my brothers from our mother's insanity. I know I did the right thing. Even if they are of the opinion that the wouldn't piss on me to put me out if I had caught fire. (Yep, one of them actually said that to me as the other laughed and agreed.) I feel like I'm going crazy. Loki says that I'm going sane and that the two feel about the same. It is awful. I feel like I'm falling apart. Beloved tells me that this is happening because I finally feel safe enough to remember these things. I know he's right, but it is awful.

I am annoyed.

 Way back in 1998, when the site Mysticwicks was still around, I shared a chant that I had written the year before. Flash forward twenty some years, I find that an artist took my chant and set it to the exact music I had planned for it, and adapted it by adding 'baby talk' gibberish as a chorus between the lyrics. I am not amused. I am highly annoyed. This album came out sometime in early 2000s, so they sat on it for a little bit while MW was still up and running.

I have a note book with the dated entry of when I wrote the original chant in September of 1997. A part of me says that I could go after them but I'm broke and the effort of getting into a fight about this isn't going to do me any favors. I am just really annoyed and disgusted. It makes me disinclined to share original material for free anywhere. I'm posting stuff up on Tumblr because if you repost it, it automatically pings back to the original source. 

I think my annoyance with this is just heightened because of someone attempting to rip off my witchy blog in an effort to pad their blog post count and to steal my readership base. That's why I turned off the repost feature on that particular blog. Because that is one of the blogs that I'm using to try to make some money and build a career with, I tend to take a hard line against the theft of intellectual property. It's one thing to quote a blog post. It's one thing to quote it and add commentary. But to just copy it wholesale and then post a link to your blog in the comments is bullshit.

Scumbag brain is doing scumbag brain things again.

 I have been working to build my online presence as an author of esoteric and non-Christian religious texts. I'm actually making some headway in this process. Facebook has been a bit wonky about the author page that I'm working on. At the same time, however, I am having anxiety over finishing this page and such.  Why?

Well, I'm afraid that my parents are going to use this public access point to harass me. I'm afraid that the horrible things that my mother predicted about my writing on these topics are going to happen (including but not limited to people coming to burn my house down and kill my family). Mostly, I'm afraid that my parents are going to get back into the psychological abuse game in public and destroy my budding career. I have them blocked from my personal page. I don't have them blocked from my professional pages. But I don't think they're even following them.

I am just afraid to move forward, to be more aggressive in my pursuit of my career in writing because I'm afraid that they're going to come slithering up to me and make my life hell. It doesn't matter that I've been married and functionally out of their lives for the last fifteen years. My brain says that they're going to show up and drag me back to the farm at any given point in time because they have some kind of claim of ownership on me due to the fact that I am their child. I panic that my life today is just some kind of elaborate fantasy that I invented to cope with the hostility that I was living under in that household.

It's been rough. Last week, I had a traumatic memory bubble pop and I've been reeling with emotional flashbacks and anxiety for the last several days. There's no way for me to get justice for what happened to me. There's no point to trying to confront the people who traumatized me because they'll act like nothing happened (at best) or damn me for trying to make problems in the family (at worst). I don't have a therapist to talk to about this crap. I feel like it would be helpful but I can't find anybody who takes my insurance.

I'm just not doing fantastic right now and it's making everything hard. I'm not sleeping well because of it, and that's despite the cocktail of meds that knock me out every night. I am just afraid to do anything. I'm afraid that everything I do is going to go wrong and I'll be subjected to corporal punishment and psychological torture for it. I keep reliving my late middle childhood and my early teen years. I don't know why but it's exhausting and I want it to stop.

I'm writing poetry again.

 After about five years of not writing poems on a regular basis, I've been writing poems again. I feel like most of them suck, but I am going to keep writing poems until I get back into shape again. I used to write a lot of poetry back in the day. I am going to attempt to do it on a daily basis. I'm trying to catch up on lost time because I am working towards a goal.

What might that goal be? Well, I'm attempting to have a small book of poetry done by the end of the year. The goal is to write love poems. I'm not there yet because I'm still relearning stuff aside from blank verse. I figure if I can manage to write a book of love poems and get it done by the end of the year, maybe I can hit some holiday sales with it. Long term planning is what's happening here.

The other reason why I'm writing poetry again is to get back to writing heroic style poetry so that I can add it into my novels. That is going to take a bit longer. Here's one I slapped up on Tumblr today that I feel is relatively decent.

https://ladybrythwensinclair.tumblr.com/post/642949497231638528/another-poem

Fiber Fluff: Nothing's happening.

 I'm still working on the monstrosity. I'm up to the halfway point of finishing the final triangle. I don't know how I am going to keep this thing from curling up. It's so big that the weight of it might work when I try to block it out (by hanging on a laundry line) but I honestly don't know. I am a bit vexed with the fact that this project is taking forever. At the same time, I am half finished with the final section so I am going to work on it and complete it before I pick up that sweater I started for myself or start making things for other people.

Next weekend, when we see the in-laws again, I am going to bring the red fiber to run it through my mother-in-law's drum carder. I just don't have the spoons to sit down and card it by hand. And I am still trying to decide how I want to approach spinning up the alpaca fiber. I wish the weather would warm up because I could go out walking with my distaff and spindle. I don't have enough room in the apartment to do that and my attempted distaff stand isn't working with my kick wheel.  

Thanks to the monstrosity, however, I have nowhere I can put the kick wheel and get spinning right now anyways. This project is going to eat my living room, I'm sure of it.

Monday Menu

 The kids are planning on eating breakfast at school most of the week. That cuts down on the amount of planning I need to do. Due to my blood sugar being stupid, I am eating really small breakfasts in the morning (a cup of diet yogurt and a tablespoon of granola plus my morning coffee, it's depressing). They've requested their favorite  foods for lunches. So, Cuddle Bear will be getting his bbq bologna sandwiches and chips for lunches all week. And Snuggle Bug will be getting his peanut butter and blueberry jam sandwiches with chips for his lunches all week. Beloved has taken to packing his lunches the night before and  I don't know what he is putting in them aside from ramen noodles and some kind of sandwich. My lunches are going to be salads with some form of meat along side it (likely something lunch meat or tuna). So the real menu of any interest is going to be dinners.

Monday: Hamburgers

Tuesday: Tacos (with homemade seasoning mix)

Wednesday: Chicken stew with biscuits

Thursday: Take out (because the schedule has me running everywhere that day and no time to cook)

Friday: Fish sticks with peas

Saturday: Peanut butter stew (I'll slap the recipe for this up later in the week, if I remember.)

Thinking about finding a therapist.

Image from Kat Jayne at Pexels.com

 My psychologist has declared me to be one of his most stable patients. That's a big deal because a few years back my mood cycling was really bad. This Vrylar stuff had done wonders for sorting out my mood. I spend most of my time in a low level depressed state but the lows are not as bleak as they were before and the highs are not as unhinged. He's really proud of the effort that I have put in and how well I am doing.

So, some good news there.

At the same time, he has noted that I'm coming up on about five years with out a therapist. He knows about my medical conditions. He's aware of the struggles that I've been having over the last year with trying to get my blood sugar under control. Between the stress and anxiety that comes with having diabetes and the fact that Covid-19 has a rather high death rate for people with diabetes, my psychologist has strongly encouraged me to find a therapist to talk through the anxiety that I've been dealing with.

This year, the trauma anniversaries have been a bit more intense. I think it's because of how much I have been isolated. It makes for a weird parallel to my youth when I spent a good amount of time isolated to avoid people who were harmful towards me. The doctor is of the opinion that a therapist would be helpful in getting me through all of the emotional flashbacks I have been having over the last few months.

The problem is my health insurance. There are therapists in the city who take my insurance. But my insurance dicks around on paying them. So, I have been turned away from people who could have helped me. I will never darken the doorstep of the county mental health facility after the hell they put me through. I have been attempting to do what I can with journal writing and using prompts that I find on the internet. It's been rough and I often forget to write in my mental health journal. Last year, I had three entries in there for the whole year.

My goal is to have three entries in there per week. I'm going to treat it like I'm back at college and I have writing homework. I am doing a lot of writing across various platforms. I have scheduled time for this type of work. I just have to stay on top of my schedule to get it in. I don't have a therapist but I have over a decade of experience being in therapy so I have a pretty good grasp on how it works. So, I sit down and write like I'm talking to a therapist. I'm going to call my health insurance company to see if I can make arrangements to have a list of approved providers sent to me. I fear that most of them are off in Buffalo, which is a 2 hour drive away from me and that they're not going to take me because of Covid and/or the games that the insurance company keeps playing in trying not to pay people for the services provided.

I'm angry because I want to be on the better health insurance that is accepted pretty much everywhere. But, I can't change providers due to my preexisting conditions. So, I'm stuck with this second tier insurance that isn't going to get me much help with my mental health stuff. I am sick and tired of mental health (as well as dental and eye care) being treated as a luxury. It's necessary for us to be well and get the help we need to function as best we can. Especially during a pandemic. But, what difference is that going to make to the people who are counting numbers and don't see the members as people but as income sources.

Adding to my arsenal.

So, it took me literally four months to find these things. I had a set about ten years ago that I gave away. I forgot about them and then I realized that I kinda suck at knitting in the round on double pointed needles (DPNs). I picked up a sock loom thinking that I could use that on my back log of sock projects. I promptly discovered that I had no clue how to do the purl stitch on a knitting loom which I had to know in order to use the sock loom.

I sent Beloved off in search of a set of round looms. I had seen them at Wallyworld back before the pandemic began. I figured that it would be something that would be in stock. I was wrong. Everybody, their sister, and their brother went out and bought up all of them as fast as they came into stock. Same was true with some other craft supplies that I was needing to make Yule gifts. Fortunately, I am crafty and I had enough resources to come up with alternate things to make.

Last month, Beloved found me a long knitting loom. I opened up the package and read the directions. The book was ok, but it didn't cover everything I needed. I also needed a larger loom than what that long knitting loom was going to provide me for the project I had planned. So, I took a trip up to the city. I checked at the two different craft stores but it wasn't in stock. There were slots for it but not a single loom knitting kit was to be found.

Last week I had the car to run some errands while the kids were at school. I stopped at Wallyworld with the hope to find one. I got lucky and there was a single kit left on the shelf. To say the least, I snapped that up and some yarn to go with it. Now I am going to have to reteach myself how to use this thing. Next, I will take over the world with yarn. ... Ok, maybe not take over the world, but I will make more hats faster.

I'm having a rough time right now.

 No pithy comments or snarky sarcasm. I'm just having a rough time. Yesterday was the anniversary date of my first miscarriage. All of the emotional flashbacks that lead up to it suddenly made sense. I suppose I have to explain a few things about this first miscarriage.

First, I was barely fifteen living with my parents. My boyfriend at the time was 19 and serving in the military. We had gotten together as a couple in the autumn of the year before at the high school home coming dance. He walked up to me and declared that I was going to be his dance partner. I refused and went to go back to my conversation with the guy with the sound system playing for the dance when N- said, "I don't take no for an answer." and proceeded to pick me up and drag me out onto the dance floor. 

I struggled, I tried to break out of his grip, I yelled. I was ignored until I was put on my feet in the middle of the crowd and then people stared at me like there was something wrong with me. I tried to stomp on his foot but he just laughed and refused to let me go. This set an early precedent. He introduced himself to my parents when they came to pick me up as my new boyfriend. Then he blew me a kiss and promised to see me at school on Monday.

My parents read me the riot act. My plan was to give it a week and then drop him like a hot rock. That didn't work. Social pressure and love bombing at the same time is a hell of a thing. About a month later, the sexual assaults began. At the same time, I was pressured not to say or do anything because he made threats against me and physically hurt me to "keep me in line". I got good at concealing marks with makeup. I learned to ignore sharp pain in intimate areas. And I got really good at spacing out and just letting my body do whatever it was going to in response to what he did because I wasn't there.

Cue a year and a half later. He's on leave from his first real tour of duty. N- spent most of his time that he was on leave with me. He did his best to impress my parents on his sincerity. At one point, he and my father had the Talk. N- stated that he planned to be a career military man and keep me happy as a stay at home wife. (This was after in the summer, N- promised me that we were going to some day get married. This promise was made after he had grossly assailed me and I was completely spaced out. I remember staring at him in shock as he took the emerald ring that my Grandmother had given me as a gift and slipped it from my right to my left hand. All I was able to think in that moment was, why wasn't he giving me a promise ring that he got if this was what he was going to do. To this day, I have complicated feelings about that emerald ring.)

My parents had begrudgingly come to give their approval of this relationship with no concept of what was going on behind closed doors. (This note comes back to haunt me a solid decade later.) So, N- brings me out to dinner and then to where he is staying while on leave (his grandparents house). He tells me that he has some interesting family heirlooms to show me because he knows I have an interest in such artifacts. At which point I find myself in an old bedroom underneath the stairs and he forces himself on me.

I tried to resist. I told him to stop. I told him no, but N- didn't take no for an answer. That was New Year's eve. I went from being with him all day New Year's eve to going with his father to drop him off for his flight back to Norfolk. Then I was dropped off at my grandparents house for dinner. I was nearly sick at the sight of meat because it reminded me of what happened. I cried off eating, claiming that I had a stomach ache and had already eaten something on the way there from the airport. N-'s father, during the drive, was talking about how I was a proper match for his son because I was so quiet and 'docile'. (The man was divorced, I suspect with good reason.)

About a week later, N- called me and proposed to me over the phone. He told me not to tell my parents. He said that when he was back on leave again, he'd have a ring for me. (Fun fact, N- stole the last gift that my younger brother had given me in good will to get the ring sized, a silver turquoise ring. I am still angry about the theft. N- never gave it back to me. I suppose he kept it as a trophy, I don't know.) A few weeks later, the band trip happened and we marched in a big parade in Florida. All the time, I was keeping a secret from everyone. Not just about the rape but the fact that my period never came.

It was the beginning of February when I had the miscarriage. I remember it clearly. My mother was screaming at me for using too many menstrual pads and wasting so much time in the bathroom. I passed blood, clots, and a small pink curly thing that was the size of a pencil eraser. What I had suspected turned out to be true. I grieved this and yet was relieved. Because I knew that if I stayed with N-, I was going to eventually die. Because I knew, if I had remained pregnant my parents would have named me a slattern and thrown me out of the house at fifteen. So, I kept the miscarriage a secret.

About a week later, I experienced my first suicidal episode. I mentioned this to the school counselor. The school counselor called my parents. My mom picked me up and brought me home, berating me for wanting attention and calling me a liar. Then when we got home, she slapped a butcher's knife down on the table in front of me telling me if I was suicidal then I should do it right in front of her and prove it. My father came home from work. I got read the riot act again for being a 'hypochondriac' and brought up to the hospital in the city for a 24 hour observation with my parents sitting there glaring at me.

I was terrified. I didn't say or do anything. I just slept for the time I was there. I was released with people saying it was all a cry for attention. And that, my friends, is why February is an awful month for me.

Ramblings

 My new headset came in the mail yesterday. So, I am going to be exercising it doing readings this week via the phone and on chat through Keen. I'm nervous and excited at the same time. My kids have declared it to be the coolest thing they've seen this week. The week is early yet, there may be something else interesting that pops up.

Going back to doing readings on Keen was a tough decision. But, I was strongly encouraged to do so because I apparently was getting squirrely with the lack of regular adult communication. So, Loki and Freyr pushed me pretty hard on that front. They were also concerned by the fact that I was giving up a hobby that I love because of politics (basically). So, at their urging, I went back to Keen. I boosted my rates and informed my previous clients why. It was a pleasant surprise when they came back for readings despite the price increase.

I'm not doing readings today because my schedule has been thrown into complete disarray by the fact that I had errands to run and a child to take to the dentist. Snuggle Bug lost a tooth last week and the new one is coming in well. He was a big wiggly and giggly for his appointment today but apparently the electric toothbrush tickles, so it kinda makes sense. I never thought of it as a ticklish sensation, but he was emphatic that it was. To the point of he was trying not to start laughing, so he decided to make duck noises not to laugh. This made the hygienist laugh and confused almost everyone. Of course, Snuggle Bug did it even more because he had an audience that was laughing. I swear that kid is going to grow up to be a comedian.

I picked up a new journal with a llama on the cover. I needed a new journal like I needed another hole in my head but it was my excuse to solve a mystery. I know now what the deal with the gift card that's been living at the bottom of my purse is. (I had forgotten if I had even used it or not.) And in the course of my travels today, I realized that the craft store is no longer my supplier of cheap ink cartridges for my favorite pens. I'll have to be going to the office supply store now for that. I think that those pens are going to be off the market soon with my luck.

I am planning on buying a new pair of tarot decks. I also have supplies to make my own oracle deck. This is something that I have been considering for years. I think that I'm finally going to do it. I don't know how fancy I want to make it or not. But I like the idea of making my own oracle deck and using it for readings. Putting that together with a tarot deck may get interesting results. I'll post pictures of the cards as I get them done and of the other artwork that I've been working on (or will resume working on).

I want this blog to be more active. I want to write more and communicate with people that are dear to me but far away. This blog lets me do that in a more freeform method than the other blogs I have. And I don't have to worry about some censor taking offense to what I've posted and booting me off the platform.

Exhausted for no reason.

 I just feel tired. Like I could curl up and sleep until tomorrow kind of tired. I don't know why. I slept well last night. I took a short nap earlier today, which should have helped with this. But I've felt this way all day. I am struggling to summon up the will to do the things that I need to in order to get ready for next week. I just feel like there's no point. It's like everyday is exactly the same. Except today I am exhausted.

I don't know what it is. Maybe I should be using that light box more. I thought that since we were past the end of December, I was going to do ok with natural light. Perhaps I was wrong.

Fiber Fluff: Indecision time.

 I am currently struggling with deciding what to spin out of my stash right now and what to use for it. I have some random blue-purple dyed Merino in a neatly rolled up batt. I have two balls of grey baby Apaca in pencil roving. At the same time, I still have some fiber that I washed that I need to pick and card from last summer. And I have a box of fluffy random Blue Face Leicester wool dyed a delightful shade of red to card. I want to do spinning but I just can't settle on what I'm going to work on. It doesn't help that I can't decide if I want to get out my kick wheel or use one of my spindles. I've been stuck in this state of indecision for about a month now. So I have gotten no spinning done at all.

I have a bag that I am making as a gift for someone almost done. I need to put handles on it. I'm trying to decide what manner of handles it is going to get. I didn't enjoy that ball of yarn and I wasn't impressed with the color pooling as it worked up. It is commercially spun acrylic yarn that is very loosely plied. While that gives it some softness in its hand feel, it makes the yarn very splitty and frustrating to work with. I got through most of the ball of yarn with the bag pattern. I still have about a third of it left and another whole matching ball that I need to figure out what I'm going to do with it.

I have started making a yellow sweater for myself. It's going to be a pair of granny-hexagons sewn together. It's just like the baby sweater pattern, just made bigger. I figure it'll be fun to make and wear. I don't really have any yellow in my wardrobe, so this could be a thing. It is left over acrylic yarn from the monstrosity. I only needed two balls of yellow for that section, not four as I had thought.

Speaking of the monstrosity, I am almost half through that final triangle. It's basically a big blanket now. A big, weirdly shaped blanket. The first triangle was half of a ball of yarn. Silly me, I didn't realize that each triangle was a double of the one before it. So, I went from 1/2 a ball of yarn to 1 ball of yarn, to 2 balls of yarn, to 4 balls of yarn. It wouldn't be quite so bad except I'm working from a 1lb ball of yarn per each ball. The final four balls of yarn are green. I'm not doing eight balls of blue and sixteen balls of purple to do the full color spectrum as I had initially planned with this project. If I had started this thing with the correct (smaller) sized hook, it wouldn't be this huge. I, however, made a tactical error and used a big hook.

Coming in for a landing?

 I think I'm coming down out of the hypomania, but I'm not entirely sure. I didn't sleep that great last night. Partly because my blood sugar was running high and partly because the shelf I had up over the bed literally fell on me at 4 am. I recall ninja dodging it and then cleaning up the mess, being wide awake. I then debated if I should go back to sleep or not. I laid down and eventually fell back asleep but had some difficulty waking in the morning. I wake up on weekdays at 5:45am so that I can get the kids up at 6:00am this way they can get to the bus on time at 7:05am. On weekends, I let myself sleep in to 6:30am. 

I've been awake and very alert today. I completed just about everything on my To Do List by 5:00pm. That hasn't happened in quite a while. I was left befuddled and kinda wandered around not sure what to do with myself. I am having some difficulty focusing but my brain isn't spinning quite as quickly and I'm not as grumpy as I was yesterday.

Today was my first day back on Keen. I had four clients contact me. I'm hoping that tomorrow that I'll do the same. If I'm lucky, maybe it'll be five. I am being cautiously optimistic about this. It looks like the price increase hasn't necessarily scared people off from coming to me for a reading. I'm going to continue to be aggressive about blogging and posting links to my Keen stuff. I haven't set up a Facebook page for my Keen stuff yet, but I will eventually do that. It is going to go along with the witchy writing stuff that I have been doing and I'm going to work on maintaining a presence on Facebook with my two pages. 

I forgot to type up the menu today because I was busy with housework during the time I had scheduled for blogging. Well, not completely busy at that time, but it ate about half of my blogging block of time so I only got one entry on one blog done. I'm approaching my life with the attitude that I am an independent businesswoman who deals with three different things. My first concern is the running of my household and the care of my children. After that comes my writing work and then my Keen work. It's taken a lot of scheduling.

I've managed for the last two weeks to stick to this schedule that I set up for myself. I'm about 10k words away from finished with the third book I had started back in NaNoWriMo2020. Considering that I'm devoting about an hour a day to working on it, I'm not doing too bad on daily word count. My goal is to keep this schedule for good. I'm going to do my best to stick with it for the next two months. I am not good at keeping a schedule but if I can make it stick over the course of two months, it will stick for good I think by way of the force of habit.

And if I can get force of habit strong enough here on this front, it will carry me through the depressive episodes. That, at least, is my plan.

Oh, hi there Hypomania.

 The magical merry-go-round of moods has landed on hypomania after spending a few days spinning through the mixed part of the cycle. I'm not having the happy, giddy filled with tons of ideas and feeling like I could burst out singing form of hypomania. I'm having the anxious, grumpy, irritable one. You know that feeling when you wake up on the 'wrong side of the bed' and the whole day is viewed through a filter of just sour mood and anxiety? It's like that but I can't sit still or focus for very long. 

I'm doing my best to listen to music to try to ignore the sound of my kids talking. It's driving me batty. They're not loud. They're actually behaving pretty well. But they keep being repetitive and interrupting themselves and each other. It's aggravating. Most days, I'm just mildly annoyed and I can ignore it. Right now it's like nails on a chalkboard. I am restraining the urge to start cleaning the entire kitchen. 

I've been restraining that urge since I woke up at 4:30 this morning. I spent some time writing in my journal. It is surprisingly legible considering my brain state right now. I am torn between three different writing projects that are waiting for attention. I have an almost finished gift for someone that I just have to make handles for (or buy them).

I want to get out of the house. A part of me says I should go for a run. I haven't gone running since high school. I sucked at it then, I would suck at it even more. And the temperature outside right now is fuck you degrees. (A highly technical term used by familial meteorologists for a while now. That's worse than cold as balls.) Because I can't run, I've been pacing. But I am getting bored pacing. So I wander around the house feeling twitchy because of all the cleaning that needs to be done.

My house isn't  disaster. I have kids and they leave toys in their wake. It's frustrating. Again, typically a minor annoyance but right now it is making my brain itch. The thing is, I can hyperfocus on stuff when I am like this. It's hard to figure out what that will be. Sometimes it is something craft related. Sometimes it is something writing related. Or it's cleaning and reorganizing everything in the whole place.

But, this is the first hypomanic episode in the last year. It is an improvement, sort of, over being in the grey fog of mild depression since last April. I'm trying to avoid social media so that I don't say or do something stupid. But I am updating friends on how my brain is behaving. I just am trying to break the stigma of silence and get myself back to being social again. Still, when my brain's going a million miles a minute with the attention span of a butterfly and my word filter off line, that's not the time to go online and chat with people.

Fuck my bipolar with a chainsaw.

Flash Fiction coming next week.

 Hi Folks,

My brain is still mixed up right now. I'm having some trouble focusing on tasks. As such, I am pretty sure that I'm not going to manage to get some manner of flash fiction up for you this week. Check again next Friday. Hopefully, I will have something amusing for you.

♥

To Hel with Mixed Episodes.

 Mixed Episodes suck. They make my brain even more screwy and unpredictable than when I am manic. I have the restlessness of my hypomanic episodes and the down mood state of my depressive episodes. I feel like I'm ready to crawl out of my skin. At the same time, I feel like I must DO SOMETHING and I can't focus enough to do anything. Except for the one thing I find I can hyperfocus on and then if I get interrupted I get super angry/irritated.

I'm generally grouchy and sullen. Except for when I start to rant. I mentally rehearse arguments and perseverate on things that bother me. I just feel awful. I sleep poorly and find myself more prone to nightmares. I'm dissatisfied with everything. I can't stop moving but I am not motivated to do something, unless it is that thing I hyperfocused on to.

Music helps. White noise helps. But I don't know what to do about the rest of it. I feel my brain winding up, my thoughts getting faster at the same time my response to the world becomes muted. I feel it happening now. So, I am taking a few steps back away from the internet so I don't say or do something stupid. I've learned that mixed episodes are almost as bad as manic episodes for my putting my foot in my mouth.

I hate bipolar.

Incoming Rant, take cover.

 I am so angry and frustrated with diabetes right now. My A1C is 6.5, that's a good number. My fasting numbers should be in the range of 80 to 100. They're in the range of 160 to 200. My diabetes educator was confused by this and we discussed the matter. I explained that I had taken her advice from last year quite seriously. My meals got reduced and I've been avoiding snacks that are carb laden.

After a bit of discussion, she explained that fats will raise your blood sugar. What does that mean? Well, I can't snack on cheese when I am hungry between meals (which happens a lot). I have to cut down on how much half-n-half I put into my coffee, if not get rid of it. And I basically have to give up bread and grain related foods. Also, I need to keep my portion sizes small.

I mentioned my concern that I was on a fast track back to having an eating disorder again. In high school, I was undiagnosed anorexic and my weight fluctuated between 90 and 110 lbs for a young woman who stood 5ft 6in. I was a size 3 when I went to my senior prom. I didn't eat a proper diet. Oh, the food I chose to eat were healthy but I didn't eat enough. It literally took me about five to six years to learn how to eat like a normal person. I know several women my age who mourn their figure from when they were in high school, but I never want to look like that again. 

I was cold all the time. I took to wearing sweaters in all weather, including summer. I was hungry all the time but I learned to be indifferent to it. I padded my stomach with liquids so that I didn't feel hunger pains quite so strongly. (Part of the reason why I drank copious amounts of tea was so that I didn't feel hungry.) I also took to sneaking food out of the fridge when my tyrannical parents weren't looking and eating little snacks on the sly.

Judging what I ate then based on what I know now about portion sizes, I was skating the line of the keto diet. In my efforts now to reduce my blood sugar, I eat increasingly smaller portions. I am now eating on average somewhere between 20 and 25 carbs for breakfast and dinner, 30 carbs at lunch, and at most 6 carbs for a snack in the afternoon. It isn't enough, though, because my blood sugar still spikes after I eat.

The diabetes educator told me to keep doing what I have been. I don't think I made it clear to her that I am getting back to where I have to force myself to eat at times or I am binging on low carb foods (cheese, meat) in an effort not to eat what my brain is telling me is forbidden. It has been a very long year. She was more impressed with the fact that my A1C was a 'good' number than she was concerned with the resurgence of old habits. I fear the prospect of going out to eat dinner because I'm afraid that I'm going to eat too many carbs and my blood sugar is going to spike way too high. I fret about meals because I don't know how few carbs I can safely eat with out going into ketosis.

On top of all of that, I've been having emotional flashbacks to being in my teens. My home doesn't feel safe. My home doesn't feel like my home. It feels like I'm at somebody else's house waiting for my parents to come drag me back to the farm. I'm afraid to engage in personal care because I'm afraid I'm going to be assaulted whilst doing so (because that happened on the regular during that period of time).

My psychiatrist strongly suggested that I find a therapist. I can't, however, because nobody takes my health insurance. And I'll be damned if I go to the county mental health clinic again for care. They screwed me over in a big way before. I'll figure it out on my own before I go back there. I'm still traumatized from that year of hell.

Fiber Fluff Update

 I'm still catching up on embroidery projects from Yule. The kids love their unique bookmarks. I have bookmarks that I am making for others. When I get so far as having them done, I'll post pictures of them. I am almost finished with the Dune Fear Litany tapestry. I've taken it off of the scroll frame (which met its demise in the process of finishing the embroidery for the main part of the tapestry) and now I need to hem the edges and block it. After I get it cleaned up, I plan on getting it framed and hung. The question is where to hang it.

The monstrosity continues to lurk waiting for me to finish it. I have approximately two and a third balls of yarn left until it is done. This thing is huge. I can't work on it with out taking up the entire couch. When I am next dealing with it, I'm going to have Beloved snap a picture of me working so that you can get an idea of the scale.

I have been making baby clothes because Rocker Chick is expecting a baby girl in May. I have a full layette set done in bright rainbow colors. I'm seriously considering making a dress as well. I'm undecided. Most of the clothes that she has right now for the baby is 0-6 months. I'm considering the options of making things that will fit a larger baby into a young toddler. At the same time, I have to start thinking about what to make for Yule this year.

I haven't done any spinning in a while. I've just been busy with so many other things that I haven't had the time. Also the chilly weather prevents me from going outside with distaff and spindle and taking a walk. I suppose I could do some work with my support spindles. I'm undecided. I'm also dreading the amount of work that is going to go into cleaning up the pile of wool that I have waiting to be touched from the sheep study that the spinner's guild got going.

It's been a while since I have heard from the spinner's guild. I'm beginning to suspect that the group is going to dissolve because of the impact of Covid-19 on our ability to meet and do business.

Monday Menu

 My days of been exhausting. I'm not working up super detailed menus right now with the kids being in school most days and I only having to worry about breakfast and lunch for myself. As such, here's what dinners look like this week.

Monday: Hamburger
Tuesday: Tacos
Wednesday: Kielbasa with veggies & noodles
Thursday: Meatloaf & mashed potatoes
Friday: Fishsticks
Saturday: Parsley tabbouleh with chicken
Sunday: Pizza

I'll try to write a bit more about life in my next post. Right now, I am behind on stuff because I passed out on the couch due to high blood sugar. Apparently half a banana for breakfast was a bad idea even though it was theoretically only 15 carbs.

Better the Devil you know.

 So, I have investigated different platforms. I looked into if I had the capacity to set up my own site and such. In the end, I've decided to raise my rates and go back to Keen. I'm still not happy with their business practices. Platform fees eat about 80 cents of each dollar that gets made each call. This is not how they were doing business before. I didn't want to pass the cost on to the customer, but I can't sit there making 20 cents on each dollar spent on the call. I raised my rates and informed my past clients of this fact. I'm keeping my fees for email readings flat this way they still have those options to go for.

I'm still of the opinion that this is a predatory business practice but Keen is the only site where I am allowed the flexibility to be a responsive parent and handle things like sudden schedule changes. I've set up a schedule where I do my writing work in the morning and my Keen stuff in the afternoon. Today, I attempted to keep that schedule. I had a hard time writing this morning but that was because I'm stuck on how to finish up a scene.

During the time that I would have been on Keen taking calls or chat messages, I was setting up my schedule and doing some planning for blog posts on there. I can't cross post Keen posts because Keen reserves all rights to what is produced there. Basically, if I write it on Keen, they own it. As such, I'm not doing serious fiction or similar work on there. I'm pretty sure that my serious fiction work would get me into trouble on Keen, to be honest, because of their strident policies about what can get posted.

So, I post things like random recipes that I have kicking around. I'm going to get back into daily posting across all of my blogging platforms. It is going to be a fair amount of work, but I look at this as training for the larger, long term writing that I have going on. Last NaNoWriMo, I wrote two and a half novels. I am trying to finish that third novel. Then, over the next month, I'm going to edit them and send them off to the friend that offered me a working arrangement based off of the fanfiction I wrote about their game system. (Yes, I am that nerd. I may not LARP anymore, but I still love the characters and will write about them. Now with the game creator's blessing and encouragement with the prospect of turning a profit off of it.)

I sat down and looked at it all real hard over the last few months. I realized that the income from Keen is good seed money to invest in my writing. Reading tarot cards is something that I am damn good at. If I have learned anything, it is if you're good at something don't do it for free (except in special cases). So, I am digging out my box of tarot decks and getting back into it. It is also a hobby that I enjoy and important socialization during the time of Covid-19 isolation. I'm going to start promoting my Keen stuff across different platforms.

Previously, I only advertised it on my Veiled Witch main blog. That is going to go back up along with a post similar to this one, explaining my logic and my reservations about this. Now, I am going to do things like note when I am on Keen when I go on Facebook and Twitter. I am going to link back to blog articles on Keen that pertain to psychic stuff on my witchy blogs and on Tumblr. It's going to be a fair amount of work, but this will help me learn the skill set I need to promote my books. Because just relying on Keen to advertise my service isn't enough. They've proven that over the last few years. So, I am going to learn how to market my work and advertise it across various platforms.

I am also going to make a point of reengaging some old blogs of mine as marketing platforms too. Those blogs are going to start getting content again. It isn't going to be the same as the others, but I am going to do my damndest to make this work. I can smell trouble in the wind and I have a feeling that I am going to need these skills in the near to immediate future.

The challenging part of all of this is going to be keeping myself motivated and working despite depressive episodes and working around schedule shifts that may come due to the school going to remote learning. 2020 was going to be the year that I made this happen and ... well, 2020 happened. Now that I have a little experience under my belt for how to handle the remote learning situation and such, I think I can make Keen happen under those conditions with minor changes to my schedule and approach.

Untitled.

 It's been a while since I've posted on here. I've been struggling to write. It's partly because I am depressed and partly because it seems like I lack the words to express what is going on with me. The holidays were brutal. I got through them more or less unscathed and with all of the gifts that I was making done in time. I was horrified by the insurrection attempt last week. At the same time, I was unsurprised. They have been making noises about this for literally the last year and a half. I anticipate more trouble coming from that front.

I have been doing my best to focus on my own hearth and home. It's my place of sanctuary. It is, however, difficult to do that when you are almost daily having emotional flashbacks to past trauma. It's been a hard year. 2020 was awful on so many fronts. On one hand, I am thankful that it is over. On the other hand, I dread what 2021 is going to bring us.

I have no idea when I'll be eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine or if it'll be effective against the strain running around in my neck of the woods. There's a lot of big 'what will this do?" kind of questions out there. No solid idea how long the vaccine provides immunity. No clear idea if it is effective against all strains or just one. It's scary. Will we get vaccinated when it becomes available? You bet your ass that we're going to do it. And we're probably going to continue with the safety protocols that we follow right now for a good while after we get vaccinated.

I am still in the position where I am going very low carb in my diet right now because of stress making my blood sugar numbers high when I eat normal portions. I am due to get my A1C checked again soon. I can't remember when my next appointment is supposed to be to follow up with our family doctor regarding my diabetes. I'll probably be calling them tomorrow to ask when that got set up for. If I had forgotten to set it up, I'll be scheduling it.

According to my diabetes educator, meals should be 30 to 45 carbs and snacks can be 10 to 15 carbs. I have been eating meals of 18 to 25 carbs and snacks of 6 to 12 carbs. I'm just skating over going to the Keto diet. My doctor has firmly admonished me not to attempt the keto diet because ketosis is fatal for diabetics. I honestly don't know what to do. My last A1C check had it down to 6.5, still within the diabetic arena but not as high as it was at my highest. I'm still on my medications, if my A1C comes down farther, I don't anticipate the doctor taking me off of my medications because I know with out them my blood sugar number would be much higher.

I worry about my diabetes eventually killing me. It is a recurring nightmare of mine since I got the diagnosis. I worry about falling back into my old anorexic eating patterns from when I was a kid because of this business of limiting carb intake to control my blood sugar. This is stuff I should likely bring up with my doctor. It is going to be difficult to have that conversation. That, however, seems to be the theme of my health stuff. I am somewhat resigned to this fate.

You're tired of Covid-19 and all the restrictions, I get it.

 I'll state it again. I get that you're tired of Covid-19 and all the restrictions. I get that you want to go back to life like it was before Covid-19 showed up. I get that you feel stifled with the mask rules and the social distancing. It's restrictive and unpleasant. I can empathize with your discontent and ire.

You do understand, however, that these rules, restrictions, and such like are keeping people like me safe? I'm not the only immuno-compromised person out there. There's a lot of us. The ages range from tiny little newborn babies to elderly nursing home residents. You may think only of the extremes for whom these restrictions are keeping safe but there's plenty of us who are in that in between age group who appreciate your keeping us safe as well.

There's talk of a vaccine. Rumors are its going to go to the most vulnerable populations first. I don't believe our government is that effective. I think it's going to go to the people that it is most profitable to send it to first. I mean, let's look at how testing kits went out way back at the beginning of this. If we're lucky and we keep playing ball, we might see the vaccine available to 70 to 80 percent of the population by next JUNE. 

The trick here is to hold the line. It's not the doctors and hospital workers who are on the front line of keeping this pandemic under control in our individual towns and homes. It is us, the famous We the People. I know you're tired and this is very stressful. It's been very tiring and stressful for those of us who have been trapped in our homes since this began. It's been very tiring and stressful for everyone. We, however, are strong enough together when we work together to survive this.

Please, work together. Please stick with the mask rules, social distancing, and other rules that come along so that we can get through this mess faster. Because the more we work together, the quicker we can find our way out of this mess.

Keep your shield up and push forward. In this case, your shield is your mask. We can do this.

Holiday To Do List

 Just a post as a reminder of the stuff I have to get done over the next few weeks:

• Finish Snuggle Bug's Socks
• Make Cuddle Bear's Bells
  
• Fix Beloved's satchel
• Make soap to go with MiL's wash cloth
  
• Bake or acquire cookies for FiL
• Clean up living room to decorate
• Put up yule tree
• Put up stockings for kids
• Fill the 12 days of Yule gift boxs w/ trinkets & goodies for kids
• Pick out Yule projects to do for 13 days of yule
• Repot african violet
• Repot rando orchid
• Make Apple Pie Moonshine
  
• Get picture frames for school pics
• Finish NaNoWriMo project no. 3

Ramblings

 Last night was another bad night. I was barely functional when I woke up this morning. I stumbled around trying to do things for a few hours and then I took a nap. Now I sit here feeling a profound sense of ennui and questioning the point to existence. To say the least, the nap wasn't very helpful. I'm trying to find some spark of the 'holiday' spirit or something that could be mistaken for it by the unaware. I've got nothing. 

I hate the christmas music. I hate christmas. I hate the forced cheerfulness of this damn time of year. I hate the fact that I have a big ol' stack of trauma memories that pop up between now and the middle of February. I feel guilty for being like this. I feel like there's something wrong with me because of my loathing of this season. 

Maybe it's because during the holidays, money was tighter than usual and my parents were more prone to lash out due to it. Maybe it's because during the holidays, I was always hoping for that 'holiday miracle' which turned a dysfunctional family into a 'normal' family for at least one day. It doesn't work that way, Hallmark lies. Maybe it's because when I was brought to see Santa (which happened once), I asked that my family be nice to each other for christmas. I'm pretty sure that was the reason why we went only once, because it raised some eyebrows. 

Maybe it's because during the holidays, my brothers and I watched my mom prepare tons of food for other people but we got berated for being greedy when we asked for some, mind you there wasn't much to go around for a while but mom did her army of cookies for the rest of the family instead of baking bread or something for our own household when we were short on food. I asked her why she did it and she answered that it was because we didn't have the money to give gifts to people outside of our household so we HAD to make the cookies. If she decided that we were particularly well behaved as she was cooking up those heaps of cookies, we were allowed a few.

It was torture to see her making all that food for everybody else and we were waiting on a food basket from one of the local churches, trying to stretch the remains of the last one out a little farther. It's a wonder that I can still eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Oh, wait, because of the diabetes, its just peanut butter now. Home canned tomatoes, rice, and ground beef was a regular dinner during the lean times. I hated it. I will never eat it again if I can avoid it. But, this time of year, the memory of it is so strong I can nearly taste it at times.

I have so many bad memories attached to this time of year. I try to put them out of mind and act like they didn't happen. I try to build new ones. But the old ones echo and haunt me. This business of being sick or super stressed out or whatever it is that's got my blood sugar bouncing around is only making the situation worse. I get hungry and I want to eat but I can't because I don't want my blood sugar to spike. I drink copious amounts of water and coffee in an effort to pad my stomach and sooth away some of these feelings (because coffee is one of my few comfort foods that I can still have).

I feel like I would kill someone to be able to sit down and have a bite of Grandma's apple crisp. I have the recipe. I have all the ingredients. But I wouldn't be able to eat it because of my diabetes. things like this seem to be the theme right now. Add to that the fact that I randomly get seized with terror that my parents are going to show up on my door step and drag me back to the farm to be a serf (because there's no other way to describe that dynamic) or I find myself on the verge of tears for no apparent reason ... I'm not doing well right now.

I hate CPTSD.

 I'm on a cocktail of medications that do a pretty good job of knocking me out when its bed time. Some of them wear off around 4 am. That's when the nightmares have been hitting me for the last few weeks. I didn't really get that I was having nightmares because I wasn't quite fully awake at 4 am. But last night was awful. I got to relive verbal abuse and harassment in full detail. I got to relive gaslighting. It was awful. I woke up so upset that I had to walk around my home to reassure myself that my waking reality was real.

All day today, I have felt disconnected from reality. It doesn't help that my blood sugar is out of whack. It doesn't help that I am exhausted. But the persistent low level dissociation that makes things feel unreal is really maddening. The worry that I am actually 16 and cowering in my room for fear of my parents' wrath and that this life I have is fantasy just won't go away. I confess, I used checking my blood as a way to focus myself on the present via the pain of the finger stick. It didn't work for very long. I just want to sleep. But if I sleep, I will have nightmares (daymares?) and sleep poorly.

Every time a vehicle pulls up in the drive way, I look out, afraid that I'll see my parents getting out of it and coming to drag me back to the farm. I have music playing fairly loud right now in an attempt to drown out the racing thoughts of anxiety. I don't know what made last night and today so bad. But I am in a state and struggling to get a handle on it before the kids get home from school.

Can I launch them into the sun?

 Rocker Chick was in a hard spot recently. I called on some people I knew to help her out and gave her some of the extras we had in the pantry so that they had food. She's about to hit her second trimester. Rather than being excited about this, she's filled with anxiety because she and her husband are having a hard time financially. (Thanks Covid-19 and 2020! /sarcasm) We've helped them a bit in the past and didn't think anything of it.

The extended family ... Well, I'm angry at them all over again. She called them to ask for some help and what she got told was pull herself up by her bootstraps, ignored, and to be the dumping ground of one of the more toxic members of the family's emotional garbage. The poor woman was in tears when she got ahold of me and feeling like she was a failure because she was broke.

To say the least, I rallied my allies and got them enough food to last until the food basket from one of the local churches arrives. I informed her about that program and exhorted her not to give up on getting financial assistance from the county (who kept dropping the ball and putting her off because my county is run by idiots). By the end of the day, Rocker Chick and her hubby had what they needed as well as a good start on getting that financial assistance. 

Here's what I am furious about. My late grandparents set up a family trust fund. There are members of the extended family pissing it away on frivolous crap when they should be using it to help Rocker Chick and other members of the family who are experiencing hardship. There are emotionally abusive members of the family who are taking every opportunity to be toxic and harmful emotionally to Rocker Chick when ever she makes contact (which is rarely because of their behavior). I want to launch them all into the sun.

This kind of crap is why I generally disowned them. The total number of family members from the extended family that I still have contact with that are of my parents' generation can be counted on one hand with fingers leftover. Why? Because the others would demand that I make 'nice' with my parents and resume my role of being the emotional punching bag for them. Fuck that noise. Rocker Chick is increasingly of the same mind on this because of their behavior.

Sick again? Fuck.

 I don't know what I have. I only know that my blood sugar is running absurdly high, which means I am sick. My anxiety is saying that it's Covid-19, the rest of me is saying it's likely to be another stupid cold. I don't really have any symptoms yet aside from high blood sugar readings. My morning fasting number was 180 something. I said to myself, "Ok, I can't have that bowl of oatmeal that I've been wanting. I'll do the 3 carb yogurt and the 21 carb meal bar. That shouldn't be too many carbs." In about 20 minutes, I was taking a nap on the couch instead of doing stuff like packing Beloved's lunch for work. Because I felt exhausted. I passed it off because I slept poorly last night.

Last night, I had a bunch of nightmares. They were sufficient in volume that they broke through the barrier that one of my medications causes by lowering my blood pressure. Basically, my bed time medication cocktail is one that pretty heavily sedates me and I usually sleep through the night. This time, I was up in the middle of the night in deep anxiety after having a nightmare of a screaming fight with my parents. I tried to sleep for the rest of the night but I kept having nightmares of fights. These are not memories but nightmares of the fights that I rehearse in my head when my anxiety peaks. So, basically, the rehearsing of fights is nonstop when my anxiety is bad. 

Looking at my log of where my mood has been for the last month, it's been moderately depressed and mildly anxious. I'm now wondering if I am dissociating and I'm actually far more anxious than I realize. It makes me wonder if I have been dissociating to some extent for months and that I'm not 'ok' as I seem to be to other people. It doesn't help that it's the holiday season. It doesn't help that I'm still mourning my grandparents. It doesn't help that I can't go interact with my side of the family because 90% of them are toxic and harmful for me to be around (or at least the ones who are local).

I don't know what's going on with me. That's terrifying for me. The last time I had no clear idea what was going on with me, only that I wasn't well, I got my diabetes diagnosis. The time before that, I got my bipolar diagnosis. Now, I find myself waiting for the other shoe to drop and for it to be one more serious problem to juggle. One more serious thing that people around me dismiss because I don't look sick. (Beloved always takes it seriously, but there's a good number of other people who just don't.)

Yay, it's the holiday season.

 I've just finished the first three of the projects on my list. I'm not at a good headspace because I'm depressed and Thanksgiving took a toll on me. It wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for the fact that the meal was two hours late (thank goodness I had enough sense to bring an emergency snack in case that happened) and the fact that politics came up. 

Once they started on the topic, they didn't stop. It just got progressively worse to sit and listen to them downplay my concerns about Covid-19. The people at dinner were vehemently anti-mask. They decried the Governor as a "medical tyrant" and compared the Covid-19 pandemic to the flu, making a point of saying it was nothing like the Spanish Flu pandemic. The real burn came when someone talked piteously about an associate they knew with type 1 diabetes and asthma, describing them as "medically fragile" and how they were stuck in their house for months because of this business.

Most everyone in the room was somehow aware that I have diabetes and asthma. But they conveniently forgot it for the sake of their ranting. And then were baffled by the fact that I was upset with the entire conversation. At least no one said anything funny about the fact that I was limited in what I could eat. They've just decided that I am on a diet or something. Because I don't look sick.

This was also the second Thanksgiving with out my paternal grandparents around. The only reason why I'd have considered going back to the farm. But, I think conversation would have been the same. The FB posts of relatives have been along those lines and calling people who mask up cowards. These are the same people who say that instead of psychiatric care, I need a pair of running shoes and a daily routine of exercise to cure my bipolar. They're the same people who would say emotionally harmful stuff and then gaslight me about it. So, as per the last decade or so, I did not bring my family to the farm.

I'm seriously tempted to say fuck the holidays. But the kids are looking forward to the 13 days of Yule that I've done just about every year. They want to decorate. They want to make cookies. They want to have holiday fun. I just want to disappear into a black hole and not come out until it's spring.

NaBloPoMo 15: I surrender.

 There's no way that I am going to make up the missing posts for the remainder of this month. Being sick for two weeks with that sinus infection threw everything off. Then I got hyper-focused on writing books. Add to that the chaos of a few days of distance learning, the kids being off from school for a few days, and the typical afternoon/evening chaos when they get home from school ... Well, you can see why I made it to fifteen posts before I hung up my hat on this front.

NaBloPoMo 14? It's been chaos.

 I wrote two books in two weeks. One of those weeks, I was half out of it because I was still sick with that sinus infection. Fortunately, it did clear up. I'm exhausted because I haven't slept well for about a month now. I keep waking up in the middle of the night. Some nights, it is because I'm thirsty. Most nights, it is because I am anxious. 

For my birthday, my maternal grandmother sent me a very passive aggressive card that just served to reconfirm my decision to distance myself from her. When the card says 'I keep losing friends, don't know if they're dead or just missing' it makes me want to send back a 'Sorry for your bereavement' card and a bunch of lilies. Bonus points if the lilies are withered when they arrive. I am not going to waste the time or the money to do it, but the thought crossed my mind.

I find that as it draws closer to Thanksgiving my anxiety is creeping up higher and I'm anticipating a fight. According to Beloved, I get like this every year around Thanksgiving. I don't like rehearsing arguments in my head. I am still angry with comments that have been dropped out of ignorance. I don't know if I am going to be able to hold back if more comments like that come out over things like my using measuring cups to make sure that I am getting a safe carb load out of my meal.

It's been worse over the last few years because of the diabetes. I get afraid that my carbs are going to make my blood sugar spike and I'll get very sick. Beloved seems to be the one who understands that fear. Everyone else around me just doesn't seem to get it. So they keep offering me cookies and shit. I get the side eye when I say "I can't eat that." and I hate it.

NaBloPoMo 13: Forgot to add a song.

 I've been listening on repeat to Lawless's version of Dear God. It's been something that just goes with the election bullshit. I've also been listening to Les Friction's Louder than Words.

NaBloPoMo 12: Books? oh yeah, I write books.

 Still doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Somehow, I'm at 41k. If I have a good day writing, I'll be caught up on my blog posts across all my blogs and get to 45k words. This project is going well and hasn't gone off the rails plot wise. This is a relief because I was writing most of it while feverish. Who knows, maybe I'll even fire off a short story or something in the course of today.

In other news, Les Friction is AMAZING. It made me really happy to see that the other half of E.S. Posthumus didn't give up on music after his brother died. If you enjoy cinematic/orchestral music, check both of them out. Also, I think you'll really like Really Slow Motion. 

NaBloPoMo 11: Desk Whiskey.

 I need desk whiskey.

NaBloPoMo 10: Behind again.

 I'm not juggling too many things right now, really. I'm just processing life at about half speed and forgetting about the blogging portion of this challenge. That is because I'm still sick. Ugh, it took me three tries to write the word 'sick'. That's annoying. I am probably going to re-write the saga of the fall of Mysticwicks. I've written it out a few times now. It's ridiculous, tragic, and insane. It carried out like a tragedy in three acts. I've been considering how to write it down and I keep leaning to something in the style of the Eddas. There was a lot of flyting going on. I don't remember exactly what everyone said back and forth but it was brutal.

This was the time where Beloved came up with one of the worst insults I had ever heard: sand blasted vaginal train wreck. It was hilarious in a really dark way the way he said it before typing it down. People act all surprised by the pettiness in the pagan community at large, but, honestly, it's been there from the beginning. They want their power games and to feel important at the expense of others. It's part of the reason why I tend to avoid large groups.

I used to enjoy big online groups of pagans because I got to interact with a bunch of diverse people. Now ... Well, now I don't have the spoons for calling out bullshit on a daily basis like I did before. I have this bad habit of not recognizing authority that is self declared but not demonstrated. Just because you claim you have all the details on ancient history doesn't mean that you get to dictate to me how I'm doing everything wrong in my worship practices, for example. And when you post propaganda as 'historical fact' when all the evidence from the archeologists out in the field point otherwise, I'm going to be that person going 'citation needed'.

When you decide that someone else's relationship dynamic is 'abusive' because they don't share the same faith and begin slandering the 'abuser' with baseless claims of psychological abuse, you can bet your ass that I'm going to walk into that fight wielding a baseball bat. When you engage in harassment of people and attempt to black mail them, I'm going to be there for that fight too. It's just part of my sense of justice.

It's a Loki's person thing, it seems, to be the person who speaks truth to power and be willing to square off against them. I know other Loki's folk who do the same stuff. We are the speakers of the unwanted truth. We are the ones who will utterly destroy you with words because you broke frith with one of our own or because you broke frith and we're offended by it. I've been feeling the pull to re-engage the FB Lokean community. It's a lot like the pull I had back before I got sick and I waded in to the fray with people who were talking smack and harassing a Lokean who wasn't practicing like a 'proper heathen'. I don't know if I have the spoons to answer that call, but it feels like the call of the dead when my Grandfather was dying and they were telling me that the family needed me.

So, I may be swinging my proverbial baseball bat with a railroad spike in it again. People hate it when you sit there and go 'prove it' when they're trying to present UPG as actual history. People hate it when you refuse to bow down to them despite the fact that they're an authority on some given subject. I don't care about how big your name is in the community. We all sit down and take our britches off when we have to shit. It's how you act that I care about. If you can be decent with people, I don't care what you do. Start being and asshole and I get angry. Doesn't matter if it's a religious group or a political one. 

I've been booted out of them too. I just can't abide bullies. It makes me so angry that I could spit.

NaBloPoMo 9: Yet more Ramblings.

 I'm not feeling great. This sinus infection / head cold is still kicking me in the teeth. I've begun to get to where I am not dizzy when I'm upright and mobile. But I am in no condition to go visit anyone and I don't want to because I don't want to make them come down with this rotten thing. I'm on week two of this hellscape and I do not enjoy it.

Because I'm sick, I am having emotional flashbacks to being sick as a kid. It was a psychologically traumatic experience pretty much every time. As a result, I have massive guilt for not doing things like cleaning the apartment, being immaculately groomed, and doing the low impact stuff that doesn't suck up all my spoons (like writing this post). When I got sick as a kid, my parents kept telling me things like I wasn't really that sick and I was just trying to skip school. While school was a hellscape in its own way, it was my escape from the hellscape of home. I could do things like sit in study hall and play cards with a friend while being completely ignored by the study hall monitor. At home, if I wasn't doing school work then I had to be working on keeping the house clean. If I wasn't working on keeping the house clean, I was being lazy and that got verbal abuse heaped on me.

If I took medication for being sick, I was accused of abusing it to get high. Never mind the fact that I could have a sinus infection and be taking the minimal dose of Sudafed just so that I could breathe properly, my parents would still insist that I was trying to get high. That rhetoric as the constant background noise whenever I got sick instituted in me a deep sense of anxiety over my taking medications for any reason. When I was in college and I got put on birth control to keep me from developing ovarian cysts, my mother all but called me a slut and declared that I was going to be the most promiscuous woman on campus where I went to college. When I got put on antidepressants, my parents took it as a personal insult and told me to toughen up. 

When I got bronchitus so bad that it was nearly penumonia, my parents made a point of making a long distance call to the college to bitch at me about being so irresponsible with my health and not coughing properly.  Gods bless Stargazer, where ever she is now, she told them I was too sick to talk and hung up the phone. She convinced me that when I had a chance to get off my parents health insurance, I should do so as quickly as possible. She also convinced me to give my parents as little information about my health as necessary. Gods only know how my parents would have taken the information that I was in therapy through out college and for several years there after.

The only had a vague impression that I was seriously ill after college. I lost a job because I was having bad asthma attacks at work. They were so bad that I was taken by ambulance to the hospital at one point. I texted Beloved to let him know where I was going. The hospital still had my parents down as next of kin emergency contacts. So they called my parents. The three of them showed up at about the same time. My father looked distinctly annoyed. My mother was insisting that I had to will myself into breathing properly. Beloved was insisting that I focus on him instead of them and take my nebulizer treatment. Then a staff member of the hospital wheeled into the room with a mop and bucket of cleaner. 

The fumes of the cleaner set off another asthma attack, the cleaner retreated asap to get a nurse. Mom kept telling me to treat it like I was back at their house when she and Grandma were processing pickles. If I had the breath, I would have screamed at her to get out of the room as the nurse set me up with a second nebulizer treatment. When it was time for the hospital to release me, Beloved firmly insisted he was going to bring me home and said that my parents should get my car from work. There was something about him that kept my parents from arguing. I think it was because he was furious and was holding back by force of will the urge to tear my parents heads off for their treating my asthma as theatrics while I was in the hospital being treated for it.

Two months later, I was looking for work and trying to maintain my health. And my parents kicked me out of the house. I was still having bad asthma problems. The following year was hellish but not as bad as it could have been because I wasn't under my parents' roof getting harassed for going to so many doctors to get answers as to why I wasn't breathing properly. I was finally off their health insurance and seeing someone other than the family doctor whose secretary was the biggest gossip in town. I wasn't in a good place financially. But because of it, I had medicaid and access to specialists that my parents would have refused to pay for. And the multiple trips to the ER because of asthma attacks were covered by the insurance. And I started therapy again to cope with all of the garbage going on in my brain at that time.

By the time I was moved back into my parents house, my lungs were stronger because I was on a medicine regime that helped open up the bronchial passages and I had been singing as physical therapy for my lungs. My parents accused me of being irresponsible again when they saw this medication. They tried to come up with excuses to take control of it. I told them that if they took my medication, that I needed to function, away, I was going to walk out of that house and they'd never see me again. So, it was just verbal harassment.

Here I am, shy of 20 years after that last altercation over my use of medication, and I still get anxious and suffer from emotional flashbacks over taking medication and being sick. I take around 12 pills a day to be upright and functional between the vitamins and the medications. I get so upset over it that Beloved has taken over the task of filling the pill sorter at the end of the week. I was just about crying over the fact that I have so many pills to take. I felt subhuman for it. Some days I still do. I hate being sick. I hate having multiple chronic illnesses. Just looking at the pills, I can hear my parents accusations and threats at the back of my head echoing. Nothing like being sick with the flu and having your parents threatening to institutionalize you for taking Theraflu more than once per day and you're a minor, so they could possibly do it.

NaBloPoMo 8: Ramblings.

 So, I am wearing my reading glasses right now to type this. I'd be using my regular glasses but they're filthy and I misplaced my lens wipes that I had on the desk for just this reason. I'm currently listening to Delerium's album Karma. Specifically the track that has their rendition of Sarah McLachlan's song Silence is what I'm listening to. It's like a cross between Engima and Sarah McLachlan's music. It's pretty cool.

I had a conversation yesterday that left me angry. I get that the person was trying to emphasize their point that they wanted to do something special for my family and I for the holidays. But they came off as patronizing. It was the "what do you NEED" that kept getting hammered on that made me angry. The things I need you can't buy at a store. I need my brain chemistry not to be fucked up. I need my body to stop hating me. I need my trauma issues to be resolved. I need to not be depressed most of the time. But, for some reason, this person thinks that throwing money and stuff at a situation is going to fix it. At the same time, they don't have the money for it. At the same time, their approach is not focused on the person they are trying to do something for but on making themselves look virtuous when they talk about what they've done. I damn near ended the conversation with "I don't need your pity or your charity."

I didn't. They don't know me. They like to think they know me. They have a picture in their head of who and what I am like. It is just about the complete polar opposite of who I am. They do the same thing with Beloved and the kids. It's been making me angry. They talk down to the kids because they're on the autism spectrum. They ignore us when we tell us what the kids interests are and go off half cocked to get what they think would be 'cool'. Regardless if it is at their level of ability or not.

I'm furious. I'm trying not to be furious because it's like being angry with the weather when it's raining. They're just acting according to their nature. But I keep expecting better from them. Every so often, they show genuine compassion and do acts of genuine good. It raises my hopes and then they turn around and let me down. I just have to stop expecting this person to think about someone else and accept that they're focused on making themselves look good at the expense of people around them. 

NaBloPoMo 7: I made it through another year.

 Yesterday was my birthday. I'm officially 42. Beloved got me a lovely bouquet of flowers that matches the color of the autumn leaves. The kids were kinda bewildered but they didn't really know it was my birthday because we didn't really do anything special for it. I tried to spend some time writing but I didn't get that far just because I was tired. I did add more to my NaNoWriMo playlist for this year. It's disorganized but so is pretty much everything about my writing right now.

I spent about an hour this morning working on my planner. I still have more to do. Beloved was so kind as to design new planner pages for my notebook. It is like what I was originally using. Front side for bullet points and back side of the page for notes. He had the gal who runs Copy Town, the print shop a few towns over where he works, take a full ream of paper and print and cut to size pages for my day planner. It takes a big amount of the stress out of my planning for the week or the month. I'm not drawing tons of little boxes on pages. It helps a lot.

Apparently yesterday was national fountain pen day. I did not do any writing with any of my fountain pens. Now that my planner is done up in heavier paper stock, I might start using my beautiful steel fountain pen that Beloved gave me for yule last year.

NaBloPoMo 6: I am a zombie.

 Well, I just got off the phone with the doctor's office. They said that the antibiotics sound like they're working. It sure doesn't feel like it but I was told to be patient and give it until Monday. In the meantime, I have a killer headache and congestion that is making me miserable. I'm frustrated because I actually ate a real salad for dinner last night and my fasting blood sugar was 200. I felt rotten and debated skipping breakfast. I didn't. I forced myself to eat a meal bar (21 carbs) and a pot of diet yogurt (3 carbs). I drank water with it because I was too blurry headed to make coffee.

After I got the kids through their morning routine and off to school, I laid down. I planned to sleep for a half hour and then get up and start doing stuff. I did not. I slept for an hour and a half. What woke me up wasn't the alarm on my phone but the sound of my husband getting ready for work. Beloved all but ordered me to go lay back down. Apparently, I looked about as miserable as I felt. So, he headed out to work, I locked the door, and then I fell asleep for another hour or so. I guess it was about 11:30 when I was waking up. I had enough brainz to make coffee. Then I sat down and stared at my NaNoWriMo project too mentally toast to write anything. So, I played around on Spotify and started a playlist for this project. It's completely disorganized, but the tracks are great for various scenes and characters. Also, it's got the coolest version of Seven Nation Army on there from Skáld. 

Now I am trying to get caught up on my blogging and then I am going to work on my planner. Yesterday was sucked up by writing because I felt too woozy to do anything else. My fever has come down some today. I'm not quite as woozy but I don't feel great. I don't trust myself with stuff that's sharp because I'm operating with half a brain and I'd likely poke myself if I tried to do embroidery if not possibly sew myself to the project. I may do some crochet later. Either way, I am going to have to do something to keep me awake that isn't to taxing on my mental capacity. Stupid sinus infection and cold. I was hoping to be over this thing by now.

NaBloPoMo 5: Huzzah, the kids are at school!

 They're finally over this stupid cold. They tested negative for Covid-19 last week and I received the letter from the doctor giving them the ok to go back to school yesterday. Now, maybe, I can get some stuff done with out playing referee or constantly reminding them to be focusing on their school work instead of cat pictures. A part of me says I should lie down and take a nap, but that's because I've been up since 4 am. 

I forgot, somehow, to take my ton of bedtime medications. I was just feeling rotten last night. I think in my brain fog, I was sure I did take them. I woke up early this morning partly because of my lack of medications and partly because I coughed myself awake. I was practically choking on congestion at first, it was pretty awful. Fortunately, this sinus infection/head cold hasn't dropped into my chest like I was thinking was happening at first. This morning I realized that the ache in my ribs was right where I fell and landed on a shovel a few years back and fractured a rib. It was my arthritis complaining about the weather, not the beginnings of something nefarious.

Speaking of weather, the weather we've been having has been strange. It's been swinging between unseasonably mild and the seasonably cold and wet weather. The mild stretches, I am less achey but I am suspicious that we're going to get nailed with a blizzard or something when this breaks. I haven't been out walking or doing much outside. I still have that mess on the back deck to clean up from a few months ago. Being sick just has been taking the life right out of me for the last week. Meanwhile, the kids have bounced back and Beloved just has the sniffles. I don't know if that means their immune systems are better than mine or if I am just more susceptible to getting sick. I've kind always been that way. And the weather swinging back and forth is not helping. At least I haven't had a migraine in a little while. Of course, I probably just jinxed myself on that one.

NaBloPoMo 4: Where does the time go?

 I'm typing this during a stolen moment. The kids are playing math games on their chromebooks from school as they wait for their next Zoom class session (which is in a half hour). I feel rotten but I'm trying to persevere. My blood sugar keeps running high when I eat anything close to 30 carbs. It seems to be tied to my having this lovely cold and sinus infection. The doctor put me on an antibiotic that I can't spell, but it's fairly strong and should take care of the infection quickly.

I have been trying to find time to do things like type up blog posts, work on my manuscript, and fold laundry at the same time I have to ride herd on the kids to make sure they're not playing video games when they're supposed to be doing school work. It's been an exasperating morning on that front because Snuggle Bug desperately wants to show off the fire truck his big brother gave him yesterday. As such, he kept interrupting the other Zoom class sessions with requests to show everybody something cool. It got to the point where the teacher put his camera on mute and turned off the video feed. He could still hear what was going on and see what the teacher was presenting but he couldn't keep disrupting class like that.

He's been complaining all day about how he doesn't want people telling him what to do. I said to him that he had to get used to it because that was going to be at least the next six years of his life. He wasn't pleased. So, I have a grumpy pre-teen who is begrudgingly doing his school work right now. His big brother is focused on getting as much of his work done as possible. He's expressed that he really wants to go back to school. 

We were waiting on the letters from our family doctor stating that the boys were Covid-19 free and cleared to go back to school. They arrived today. The kids are mostly over their colds. So, I'm giving them a bit of OTC cold medicine that lasts 12 hours and shipping them off to school. I figure with the medicine cutting down on the slight cough that remains and them wearing their masks, everything should go ok. Tomorrow is going to be exhausting because I have things like laundry and dishes to catch up on. I'm still feeling pretty run down from being sick myself, so getting those done is going to be a bit of a challenge.

I swear, there is simply not enough time in the day.

NaBloPoMo 3: Welp, I'm doing NaNoWriMo.

 Last night, about a half hour before I went to bed, I was struck with an idea for a novella. I'm not sure what my word count is. I'm not going to worry about the word count. I'm just going to focus on getting the story down. If I am lucky, I won't run out of spoons half way through. I may post random snippets here or something.

NaBloPoMo 2: Can't decide if I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year.

 I want to do NaNoWriMo, but I feel like I don't have the time or the spoons to do it. I'm filled with dread that we're going to go to remote learning when the cold and flu season hits full time. Right now, I'm trying to get my writing this post in quick as the kids are doing their assigned journal entry for today. We've been having some glitches with the assignments posted today. So, I did the sensible thing and cycled the power on the chromebooks for fifteen minutes before having the boys get back on to do their work. As the chromebooks were powered down, they were doing some reading work. I currently am struggling to get writing in while the kids are on their breaks from classes, it's not working so great.

I don't know how I'm going to do this.

NaBloPoMo1: So, it's not Covid-19, but it still sucks.

I, well, we all in this household, have an upper respiratory virus. It's pretty nasty. Last week, our family doctor had the kids tested for Covid-19 (because they were the only ones sick at the time). The test came back negative. That was great. No, seriously, it was a huge relief. In the span of time from the test to when the results showed up, Beloved caught it and then I caught it.

Where the guys have had a wicked head cold, I have developed a sinus infection. I have a telemedicine appointment with the family doctor at 1:30pm. We tried having a Zoom appointment with the kids last week and Zoom did not get on well with my computer. We wound up discussing things over the phone. Because my computer is still having issues, I am not doing a Zoom appointment this afternoon. 

This virus has a wicked sore throat, lots of sinus drainage, and coughing. To say the least, the doctor was concerned, especially with the kids having a fever spike in the range of 101.7 (all hail ibuprofen that miracle drug that brought the fever down). Of course, because I am sick, my blood sugar has been stupid.

I am eating 'large snacks' for meals (approximately 20 carbs) and having one meal that is 30 carbs. After the 30 carb meal, I pass out about 30 minutes later. This has been messing with my brain. My latent eating disorder is beginning to make itself known again. Intense feelings of disgust towards eating and being seen eating have been rolling over me. I have been struggling with the urge to make it less carbs. I have been finding myself struggling with the urge to sneak eat, that's where I basically hide and eat a snack. It's distressing to find myself on one hand encouraged to reengage in the anorexic eating behaviors I had as a kid and on the other hand painfully aware that those eating habits are going to have disasterous long term consequences.

This business with my having issues with carbs seems to be coming from my being sick. But I've been struggling with elevated fasting carb levels since the switch from the metformin-algolpotin combo pill to two separate pills. It's just been a problem and I go to get my 3 month fasting A1C measured later this week (provided I am over this stupid cold). A part of me is hoping that it will be 7 this way they'll take my concerns seriously. Another part of me is hoping that it will remain at 6.9 because if it goes up to 7, they have to take other steps to medically intervene. I don't know what I'm going to do if this ends up with me on insulin. I'm not good with needles. I don't think the insurance company will spring for an insulin pump.