Cisgender but not Femme enough.

I've been sitting on this topic for years struggling with the question if I should even write this. I've written about it in my journals. It's been a struggle for me since I was in elementary school. Socially, I didn't fit the roles expected of me as a girl.I was branded a tomboy with the expectation that I'd grow out of it. I tried to fit in with my peers but severe bullying made it difficult. It didn't help that there was a lot of blatant misogyny in my parents' household that just got worse over the years.

As I came of the age of menarche, the bullying became far worse. With the onset of my period being terribly unpredictable due to my having polycycstic ovarian syndrome, I had several instances where my period began with out warning at school. Pretty much immediately after that I was shunned and treated as though I was the most disgusting and reviled of creatures by my peers. They threw ketchup on me, laughing. They spat on me and told me that I was little better than a dog because I couldn't control my period. At the same time, my mother was harassing me over the fact that she felt that I was being lazy about tracking my period and being excessive in my use of menstrual products. At one point, she and I had a 'discussion' about how if I was going to continue to be 'irresponsible' about keeping track of my menstrual cycle, I was going to have to pay for my own menstrual products. I was nine, living functionally in the middle of no where and I didn't even get allowance or some pittance for performing chores around the house so I could theoretically have money to pay for my menstrual products.

At the same time as all of this was going on, my body began to develop body hair and other secondary feminine sex characteristics. I was harassed about my breasts being small by other girls who were developing at a different rate. I was harassed mercilessly about my facial hair. The fact that my voice actually dropped in pitch netted me harassment as well. So, the message from my peers was that I wasn't as femme as they and I had no hope of ever 'catching up'. It was brutal. Because it wasn't just quirks of anatomy that didn't make me fit in well either. As I mentioned at the beginning, I wasn't good at performing the typical 'girl' behaviors. I was socially awkward and sensitive, perhaps a bit more than others. I didn't know how to shave my legs, so changing in the locker room for gym got me more harassment. (One person called me a hairy ape because I had not shave my legs, armpits, or my face before that day's swimming lesson. They went on a long tirade about how I was disgusting and an 'evolutionary throwback' because of my body hair) I didn't really know about how to apply make up.

One would theorize that my mother would have been willing to somehow assist in this. She consistently mocked my efforts to learn on my own. She declared me to look like a cheap harlot, a circus clown, and a bad mockery of a drag queen at various times. When I attempted to develop my own sense of clothing style, I leaned towards femme looks and my mother berated me for it. The conservative looks got the accusation of being a prude. The more modern looks got me the accusation of looking like a cheap whore or an attention seeking slut. (Just a few more lines and you'll see the bitter, bitter irony of these accusations.) The times where I ignored convention and attempted to come up with my completely own style of dress netted demands that I change into more 'normal' clothes because I looked like an embarrassment to the family.

My parents made it very clear that they were disappointed that I was born female. They weren't quite as beligerant about it until I hit that magical age of puberty. Then my father became distant. Then my mother all but accused me of trying to sleep with every boy in town, except for the fact that I didn't do anything other than go to school and come home. That didn't stop her from calling me things like a 'prick tease' and telling me that I was acting like a tramp. So, I defaulted to jeans and a t-shirt, the most gender neutral clothing I owned, for a long time. It still got me comments but it wasn't as frequent as when I decided to dress up for school.

When I got my first boyfriend, my mother basically treated me like a living doll. I was getting ready for my first date and she told me I was doing everything wrong. At which point she painted my face with vivid makeup and had me change my outfit to something more revealing. I was extremely uncomfortable with this, but it was the first semi-normal 'mother-daughter' interaction we had in a very long time. As that relationship persisted, my mother was invested in my appearance. She bought me clothes that were revealing. She bought me my first pair of high heels and taught me to walk in them (which was a highly unpleasant experience because she made me balance a book on my head as I did so and swatted me with a fly swatter when my posture wasn't proper). It's funny, in a dark way, that my mother's overboard jump into 'we're going to make you a proper femme' pushed so hard into the territory where I looked like I was older and made me a target for more sexual harassment.

At the same time as this push to make me more femme in the way that my mother felt I should look femme, I developed a mild eating disorder. Mom praised me for being so thin. She made noises about how if I could just get myself to 'look and behave properly' I could have a career in modeling. I knew that she was trying to live vicariously through me. I also knew that she was trying to make me into wife material at fourteen. I think she knew that N- was older than what he told me his age was. My parents had the infamous 'What are your intentions regarding my daughter?' conversation with him shortly after our first date. N- must have fed them a line that they approved of because my mother's initial rejection of the concept of my having a boyfriend turned into her trying to mold me into the perfect girlfriend material.

I also knew that I wasn't good enough in her eyes no matter how much I played along with her efforts to make me more femme. I knew that the lifetime of being told I had to be more masc to be approved of by my parents undercut the 'be more femme' and lead to Mom making sharp commentary about how I was terrible at being femme and that I really needed to care more about my appearances. In the midst of all this, I was enduring an abusive relationship where my boyfriend regularly sexually assaulted me and hurt me in other ways. But, I had the pressure to fit in as femme take off my shoulders briefly because I had a boyfriend, which didn't make me a complete freak in the eyes of my peers who were cycling through boyfriends like nobody's business. Instead, I had the pressure to maintain this relationship that made me automatically fit into the femme category.

It was one of the worst periods of my life. I lead this life where I hid so much of myself because I knew that it wasn't going to be approved or accepted. Additionally, I struggled because I realized I was bisexual and the entire situation was hostile against that. My boyfriend of the time at one point made a comment about how 'gays' should be beaten for existing. He looked to me for some kind of fawning agreement with his comment.What he got was horror and silence. He punished me for that later, declaring that it was my job to laugh when he was 'funny' and to agree with him when he was 'right'. 

When I broke up with N-, he was stationed overseas. N- had gone into the Navy upon graduating high school with the promise that he was going to marry me when he finished his first tour of duty. When I broke up with N-, the harassment got going again. I was despondent over so many things. I felt like I was a failure because the relationship between N- and I was so horrible. I blamed myself for the fact that he raped me. I blamed myself for the fact that he battered me and emotionally abused me. I said to myself that if I were more of a 'normal' girl then those things wouldn't have happened.

So, I gave up on trying to be a 'proper' girl. I did my make up in the minimalist way that I could figure out on my own. I wore clothes that tended towards gender neutral most of the time. Being hurt from presenting as more femme made me gun shy of the concept though I dearly wanted to do it. I went off to a women's college concerned that I wasn't going to fit in. Fortunately, the anonymity of being one person on a large campus and the fact that most of the other people were too busy with their own shit to give a damn about me helped me adjust to being in that environment. My anxiety about not being femme enough was put on hold except for when some kind of event requiring fancy dress came up. Then my friends came to the rescue to help me figure out how to do up my hair and such. It felt like wearing a mask but I could do that all day long thanks to my experiences.

It was in my mid to late 20s that the anxiety hit me again full force. I had graduated the safe haven of college and found myself interacting again with a mixed population of genders on a regular basis. At one point, I found myself seriously questioning my gender. All of the pressure that my parents had put on me to perform as masc left me ill quipped to deal with the social pressures of being femme. It was an agonizing half year. I feared that my Beloved would leave me if I weren't femme enough. He told me something that blew my mind. He would have loved me the same if I were a man, transgender, or agender. When I revealed that I was bisexual, he laughed and said that he was as well and clearly that was the reason why we got along together so well.

I don't know where I fall on the gender spectrum. It causes me some anxiety. I am a woman but with strong masc traits. I struggle with the typical femme behaviors, even now. My education in womanly behavior is based in a weird place that is almost cultish in its nature. I struggle with a good deal of internalized misogyny. I've gotten better about it, but it is still a struggle due to how long I had to live with it. I still worry that I'm not femme enough despite the fact that I have birthed children and I dress more femme than I did in the past.

I see my transgender friends and I see their struggle. I open my heart in solidarity. As someone who was raised with the expectation that they were supposed to be male up until puberty hit and then they were denigrated for being female, I can see some parallels between our journeys. I see you. I acknowledge you and respect you. You are enough just as you are. My mistake is sometimes I let other people's definition of being femme override what I have known about myself for my whole life. Don't let other people define you. Only you know yourself well enough to define and apply labels. ♥

Fuck C-PTSD with a chainsaw.

I am not happy right now. I've been having emotional flashbacks over the last little while. I have had a great deal of anxiety. It's been crap-tacular. I'm still trying to nail down what has been triggering the flashbacks. I figured out one trigger and it really sucks. It is the sound of really small children. It is not one that I get to hear all the time. But, when we're at the park it happens. Also, my dear boys have decided that playing pretend is more effective with sound effects off of Amazon. Snuggle Bug has been on a kick to pretend that he is a father and he found a play list of baby babbling and crying. The net result is I come away from it all feeling afraid and profoundly grief stricken. I have to leave the room or I risk bursting into tears for no apparent reason.

Now, one may ask, why would such a sound evoke this response. Well, when Snuggle Bug was still an infant, my life was put into tumult by mental illness and the ... official response to my cry for help. It traumatized me deeply. I'm realizing that there are other triggers that I'm still trying to uncover that provoke the terror that I'm going to be locked away from my family never to return home. It's been a really rough couple of months as my c-ptsd has been acting up.

My psychiatrist is of the opinion that one of my anti-anxiety medications isn't working properly. Rather than trying a random medication, he's ordered a genetic test that tests a battery of psychiatric medications against my genes to figure out what processes correctly and what doesn't work worth a damn. I'm anxious about this test. I am struggling with the feeling that I have some how failed because my medication isn't working right.

It's all just pretty shitty, to be honest.

Ramblings

I posted it on my other blog. I may have said a bit about it on Facebook or Twitter. I'm pretty sure I mentioned it on Tumblr. I've been depressed over the last month. As a result of that, I have been sorely tempted to give up writing. I feel as though I'm just no good and that I'm not a 'real' author because I don't have a book contract or an agent. I've been forcing myself to write in my therapy journals and I've been trying to keep up with my daily journal. It's been hard. Even the short form entry in my daily planner where I summarize my day in a few lines have been difficult to write.

I sat down and looked at things seriously today. I realized that I needed to be more realistic in my writing expectations. I can't expect myself to be at production levels all the time. No one is a writing machine. I can't expect myself to be at the same level as authors like Neil Gaiman, who is well established in the industry and still has a hard time pitching novels. I also need to stop trying to expect myself to write in every genre to find my audience. Some genres I'm just not that strong in and I have to accept that. I am, for example, not an author of children's books.

I suppose I'm having something of a midlife crisis. I've been struggling to write the blurb for book four of the Umbrel Chronicles of Evandar for the last three months. I've been struggling to finish book seven of the same series for the last year. It has me questioning if I still have the energy to write this series. It has me questioning everything about my writing. I haven't given up but I have been very tempted to do it.

I realize the reason why these self-defeating and self-denying thoughts have been coming up are because scumbag brain is the repository of all the lies that were told to me as I was growing up. And in those lies, I was told that I couldn't do this. I was told that there was no way I'd be successful. And that success meant a big fat paycheck and lots of book sales. That success was supposed to be their retirement because once they figured out that I actually could write a novel at seventeen, they suddenly were onboard and trying to control what I was doing.

Lots of old programming has been hitting me hard over the last month. I didn't really comprehend it until last night when I wrote an 'eviction notice' to the haters living rent free in my head. Writing that flipped some kind of switch. Now, the words are flowing. I have no idea what direction they're going in. I don't know if this means that the Umbrel Chronicles of Evandar is going to be on hold for a while. I hope not. I have six and a half books that I want to release into the wild. But, right now, I'm going to do my best to just write what I have and let the gods sort it out.

Monday Menu Week of July 22, 2019

This menu is a bit of a cheat. We had this same menu last week. It worked out fairly well, despite the heat, so we're doing it again. On Friday, Snuggle Bug doesn't have summer school but Cuddle Bear does. So, Snuggle Bug is getting his favorite flavor of poptarts (strawberry) for breakfast and we're both having sandwiches. Did I mention that diet bread tastes of stale cardboard, expired air, and sadness? At least it's low carb and I can pretend I'm having a 'normal' sandwich.

Date	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Sun	Donuts	sandwiches / leftovers	Pizza
Mon	kids: Donuts me: english muffin egg, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: pork chop sandwich & chips Me: pizza & chicken	hamburgers carrot salad & cheeseburger salad
Tues	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: turkey sandwiches & eggs Me: salad	tacos & taco salad
Wed	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: burrito bowl Me: leftovers	Pork chops pad thai
Thurs	kids: school me: coffee oatmeal & berries	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	Pepper steak Lo mein
Fri	kids: school me: veggie omelet & toast & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	Pork tenderloin mash cauliflower pasta salad
Sat	eggs, bacon & fruit	leftovers / sandwiches	crock pot meatloaf w/ bread sticks

New Haircut and blabberings

I got my hair done last weekend. It's a cross between mad scientist and 'I'd like to talk to the manager.' looks and I think I kinda like it. It's been hot and humid over the last several days, which does not lend it self well to spinning. I'm frustrated with my health situation because the heat is making my blood sugar do stupid things. I did not anticipate this. In trying to compensate for things like random blood sugar drops for no apparent reason, I have had my blood sugar running a bit high today. As a result, I feel like I'm starving all day. I've been eating low carb snacks like cheese and chicken. It's still a miserable feeling.

I'm exasperated with how the heat makes my face go red. I'm exasperated with how if I get even slightly dehydrated, due to one of my psych meds, my face goes red. And I am exasperated with the fact that it seems like I can drink nothing but water right now with out this being aggrivated. I'd like to have something with flavor in it but that has carbs.

I could be drinking diet soda but I've been working on cutting back if not eliminating soda from my diet. Mainly because my dentist says I have weak teeth. I know that the diet soda doesn't have the sugar in it but the carbonic acid that makes the soda bubbly isn't helping my teeth either. So, I can drink water, tea, or coffee. It's been a frustrating day. I've been craving a glass of apple juice for the last two days and we have none in the apartment (nor will I be getting any because of all the carbs in a single serving equals a full meal's worth of carbs, it sucks).

So far this year, I have donated around 25 preemie hats. I have also donated 6 scarves. You can guess which work up faster. I'm currently working on a scarf that's done up with a ball of white acrylic and a ball of 'my favorite stripe' acrylic yarn from Red Heart. The pattern is super simple. Holding both yarns together, cast on 16. Knit until 55 inches long (approximately). Drop every third stitch. Cast off knit-wise. I call it PennyCandy because it looks a lot like the old time striped candy you can pick up at the pharmacy up the road (that would have cost a penny in the old days). I'll post a picture of the work in progress tomorrow. So far, I have 12 inches knit, which isn't too bad for starting it yesterday.

Monday Menu, week of June 17, 2019

My life has been topsy turvy over the last few weeks. This has made me forget things like posting my weekly menu and such. Here's this week's menu. I'm going to post a few recipes later this week that are used in the menu. The school year is almost done. I'm trying to get ready for summer break and failing because I'm still trying to catch up on things from the last few months that I didn't get done due to the last depressive episode. I'm honestly feeling frustrated with it all.

At least I'm beginning to see progress again on getting my blood sugar numbers back under control. A little more discipline in how I am eating and a change in how I take my medication has made an immediate improvement. Now I just need to get used to this change.

Date	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Sun	Donuts	sandwiches / leftovers	Pizza
Mon	kids: Donuts me: english muffin egg, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: ham salad sandwich & chips Me: pizza & chicken	hamburgers carrot salad & cheeseburger salad
Tues	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: ham salad sandwiches & eggs Me: salad	tacos & taco salad
Wed	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: burrito bowl Me: leftovers	chef salad / sandwiches
Thurs	kids: school me: coffee oatmeal & berries	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	slow cooker pork roast
Fri	kids: school me: veggie omelet & toast & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	slow cooker orange chicken with rice
Sat	eggs, bacon & fruit	leftovers / sandwiches	meatball sandwiches

Fiber fluff: Cold processing fleece

Dear friends,

I am way behind on the spinning guild's sheep study program. I have a laundry basket full of sample fleeces waiting to be washed. Today, I just tossed two samples of fiber (that just happened to be unlabeled) into buckets of water. Now I'm going to let them sit in a place that's a bit sheltered on the back deck (under a table) for a little while to see if this suint fermentation method actually works to clean it.

I have two samples I need to prep for spinning. One is Dorset and one is Finn. The Dorset is a white fiber and the Finn is a rich brown color. I'm going to spin them on my Ashford student spindle, as I did the other samples. When I'm done spinning them, I'm going to ply them with white size 10 crochet cotton. This way I have a standard to gauge how the ply for each sample is different.  I'm going to try to make some time to borrow the drum carder that my mother-in-law has to get this stuff prepped.

I'm tempted to try spinning one of the other fleece samples in the grease. Before I do that, however, I have a ball of Icelandic roving to finish spinning. I need to ply the remaining yardage of the 4 oz of merino/bamboo/silk top that I finished spinning earlier this week. Approximately 2 oz of this has been spun and plyed together. It has to be wetted and hung to dry to set the twist in it. When I do this, I will measure how much I have. The second 2 oz is going to be plyed with silver sewing thread. The stuff that I just finished spinning singles of is in a dark grey, black, white color way. I think that the silver thread is going to look really cool with it.

I have a finished yarn where I first attempted the plying with the thread. It worked up pretty cool. I wasn't in love with the colorway of the fiber. The fiber was some random dyed fleece in a colorway that I wasn't thrilled with. I gave most of it away. The small bit I had left I spun up to relive stress at some point last summer. Plyed with the thread, the colorway is much improved. The murky grey came out looking like steel and the rest of it has a sparkly shine that pops up and makes the colors look less haphazard and muddled.

Total yardage spun/plied: 119 yds
Goal for the year: 1 mile / 1760 yds

First sampler of the year: All you need is love.

The lettering is simple back stitching. The big heart is needle weaving. The little hearts are each padded satin stitch. The tulip is outlined in stem stitch for each part and filled with long and short stitch. The lower half of each leaf is satin stitch. The upper half of each leaf is tied satin stitch.

This was something that I drew up free hand. Hence things being a little off center and such. Still, first one of the year is finished.

I've picked up a cross stitch pillow cover that my grandmother Barb was going to make before she passed away. It's going to be my next needle point project for a little while. I also am going to finish the cushion she started. It's just missing the final set of french knots. The problem is I have to figure out what color it is supposed to be because the paperwork for these pattern sets was missing. The tulip pillow case appears to be in pinks. But the cushion cover I can only guess what the final set of stitching was supposed to be.

I'll post pictures of this as I get going and make some progress on it. Fortunately, it isn't counted cross stitch, because I find that maddening. The printed is a bit easier, and this is fairly large so I don't need my glasses to do it.

1112

Some how, I hit 1111 posts and didn't realize it until today. I would have made my most more meaningful if I had realized it was a nifty number like that. I am eyeballs deep in line edits on book four of the fantasy series that I've been working on. I am thankful that I have caught spelling errors and such. At the same time, this is a lot of work and I kinda wish I had the budget to do something like hire and editor and a marketing team.

My mother in law suggested I find a literary agent. I am thinking about it. I don't know where to begin or how to go about it. I find myself anxious about the idea of having an agent walk off with a manuscript. At one point, I entered into a competition that was supposed to have the winner getting a book contract. I had to fight with them and threaten legal measures to get my manuscript back. Since then, I am uneasy with the prospect of a third party handling my work.

I'm also highly annoyed that one of my digital works has been ripped off and is floating around as a pirated pdf. I'm angry but I don't know if there is anything I can do about it.

Oh, hello there cold, long time no see.

So, we get past the 'fun' of the norovirus. Everybody's finally healthy for a few days. And then I come down with a cold. I was wondering why my blood sugar was running high. Our stress levels in the household at large have been coming down as some very important things are settling out. I was finding my fasting numbers coming back into range. Then they started running high over the last few days.

Apparently having a cold makes my numbers go up. I am not thrilled with this fact. I'm kinda glad that I've got an answer. But I hate the fact that my sinuses feel awful. And I'm exhausted. I haven't been sleeping well over the last several days. I've been having surreal nightmares that make no sense when I wake up.

Like the nightmare that I was in a warehouse with mislabeled packages and I had to correct the labels with out getting caught. Or the one that all of my son's teeth fell out and were replaced with shark teeth. I'd understand that one if I was still nursing or something, but that was just weird because we're long past that stage of development. I've just been having surreal dreams that are terrifying in the dream world and when I wake up just confusing as hell.

I don't think my subconscious mind is trying to tell me something but who knows. Maybe it is and it is that I should be afraid of mislabled food packages or something.

Not enough coffee in the world

The past few weeks have been less than stellar. We've been passing this norovirus back and forth. I don't think the in-laws caught it when we visited. But for the last few weeks somebody in this household has had some stomach complaints. It's lead to the kids taking turns having a bucket as a bedside companion. I am glad that I'm on medication to control the random vomiting symptoms that come with one of my other medications, because I didn't need that bucket when I had it.

Along with the stomach issues, I haven't been sleeping well. I've been having nightmares. This is not a new development because I have chronic trauma related nightmares. I'm not sure exactly why I am having nightmares about losing the children. It has been exceedingly unpleasant. I woke up in the wee hours of the morning on the verge of a panic attack because of my nightmares. It sucked.

Because of life being a pain in the ass, I have had to push back the release of book four of the fantasy series I've written. There's some stuff that I just haven't had time or the spoons to do that absolutely needs to happen before it is ready to be released.

Deb's KAL & CAL for Charity

I'm making scarves for the homeless as one of my charity projects this year. I have two patterns I am working from right now. The first one is knitting with funfur yarn held with same colored sport weight yarn. The second one is crochet with sport weight yarn in two colors.

For the knitted scarf:
Cast on 20 stitches.
Row 1: Knit 4, purl 4, K4, P4, K4, P4, K4, P4, K4, P4
Row 2: P4, K4, P4,K4, P4,K4, P4,K4, P4,K4
Row 3: repeat R1
Row 4: Repeat R2

Row 5: Repeat R2
Row 6: Repeat R1
Row 7: Repeat R2
Row 8: Repeat R1

Continue the pattern until your scarf is of desired length. (I'm aiming for around 55 inches.)


For the crochet scarf:
With color one, chain 30 + 2

Moss stitch

Moss stitch for three inches with color one. Moss stitch for three inches with color two. Repeat the alternating color pattern until this scarf is long as you desire. (Again, I'm aiming for around 55 inches.)

ETA: I forgot to mention, I'm also making a few scarves for needy students at my kids's school. The school colors are blue and orange so that is what I'm using.

I'm half way to zombie. Brainz?

This has been one hell of a week. It started out with food poisoning. It was a mild enough case that I was able to power through and get Cuddle Bear to his orthodontist appointment where he got his braces off. The boy has been sixteen different kinds of excited because now he can eat his favorite candy again.

The weather's been flipping back and forth between wet and miserable and tolerable. As such my mood has been flipping back and forth between depressed and ok. I did not realize that rainy days were a depression trigger. A theory that Beloved and I have is that there is some kind of trauma memory attached to this kind of weather. Gods only knows what that is, but I'm sure it will reveal itself eventually. They always do.

Had a migraine start the day before yesterday and go until almost halfway through yesterday. That sucked royally. Fortunately, the migraine didn't start until after Snuggle Bug's doctor's appointment. The boy's got some miserable allergies and our family doctor was awesome enough to put him on something that actually helps. First dose and the kid wasn't having sinus problems or itchy eyes all day.

I have a new book out. I have no idea how to make it sell, but I'm going to try. I would prefer to just sit here and crank out books but I don't have a marketing team to sell them for me. I feel like I have zero clue what I am doing here. It's a bit demoralizing to look and see that I've made no sales.

I'm going to try to follow the example set out by some other indie authors and just plug my book as often as I can until I get some reviews and then plug the book with the reviews. I'm not sure how to go about getting reviews, but I'll figure it out somehow.

In other news, I am working on the Kindle version of this book which is going to require entirely different format stuff and new exercises. This thing was originally designed as a workbook. But I recognize that there are people who are going to want this information and not be able to get their hands on the workbook.

I wish that Lulu and KDP played nicely together. Then I could have put this thing together on Lulu and not have Amazon throw a fit over it. They still haven't ironed out what ever technical issue is there which is why I have been doing more on KDP because that goes out to a larger audience than Lulu right now. It is frustrating.

Fiber fluff: Preemie hats!

The spinning guild has found a hospital in Elmira, NY that is in need of preemie hats. So, I have been making those instead of washcloths. I have a half duffel bag full of washcloths that I'm trying to get rid of. I keep bringing it with me to spinning guild telling people they can take one if they want one. I'm debating putting them up on Etsy and selling them. I have a lot of them and I don't know if selling them at $2.00 is worth the cost of shipping.

I'm making preemie hats. I have been using my doll Annie as a guide. Annie is the name I gave the doll that my parents bought to get me clothes to wear when I was born, as I was a preemie. I am also using a darning egg as a guide for the micro preemie sized hats.  Pictured to the right is the pile that I donated at the last guild meeting.

Also pictured are the three scarves I made for the homeless. I have started working my way through my yarn stash between these hats and the scarves. My goal is that by the end of the year, I will be down to one laundry basket worth of yarn.

Only part of my efforts is going to include making stuff for charity. I have a shawl project that I have been meaning to make for ages. I'm finally going to work on it as soon as I get this green one that I'm designing as I go along done. I'm a quarter of the way through that.

Spinning goals are stalled because I have been doing more knitting and crochet of late. Next month, however, I'm going to start spinning in earnest. Got to get ready for Tour de Fleece.

Menu for the Week of 4/29/19

So, in my quest to get my fasting blood sugar numbers not to look high, I'm trying to negotiate changes to my diet and getting in more exercise in the day. I don't know what I can do to lower my stress levels, because that is the primary reason why my numbers are high. But I have been trying things like eating my bed time snack earlier and having a smaller snack. It hasn't been working that great. So I don't know what to do. I'm half tempted to go the keto route but I have been warned by my doctor that it is a terrible idea, so I'm not going to. I'm just not sure how to fix this.

Date	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Sun	Donuts	sandwiches / leftovers	Pizza
Mon	kids: school me: english muffin ham, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: pizza & chips Me: pizza & chicken	steak, salad mashed potatoes
Tues	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: ham salad sandwiches & eggs Me: salad	tacos & taco salad
Wed	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: burrito bowl Me: leftovers	pizza meat pie salad bread sticks
Thurs	kids: school me: coffee oatmeal & berries	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	pasta & meatballs w/ salad
Fri	kids: school me: veggie omelet & toast & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	cashew chicken & 'rice'
Sat	eggs, bacon & fruit	leftovers / sandwiches	sandwiches

Menu for the week of 4/22/19

I'm finally getting organized enough to start posting menus again. Yay!

Date	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Sun	Donuts	sandwiches / leftovers	Pizza
Mon	kids: Donuts me: english muffin ham, coffee	Kids: mac & cheese Hubby: pizza & chips Me: pizza & chicken	hamburgers & cheese burger salad
Tues	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: ham salad sandwiches & eggs Me: salad	tacos & taco salad
Wed	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: burrito bowl Me: leftovers	pizza meat pie salad bread sticks
Thurs	kids: school me: coffee oatmeal & berries	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	pulled pork coleslaw
Fri	kids: school me: veggie omelet & toast & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	breakfast for dinner
Sat	eggs, bacon & fruit	leftovers / sandwiches	steak, mixed veggies & mashed potatoes

Wait, wut?

I must be going places because someone ripped off a copy of an earlier version of Rose Petals that I put up in PDF format and has it posted on a book piracy site. I am annoyed with this development. At first I was amused, but now I am irritated. I've been telling my readers that they don't want to go with the pirated copy because it may be missing things and have malware attached to it. Because some piracy sites do shady shit.

It's been a hell of a week. The kids have been on spring break and bouncing around like chipmunks on crack. When ever the weather was decent enough for them to be outside, they were and they ran around a lot. I took them to the park twice. It's been busy. I haven't had much time for my stuff like blogging. Camp NaNoWriMo is stalled because I haven't had time to write. I'm at 25k on a project that I have come to detest but I am going to continue to work on until it is finished this way I have the satisfaction of burning the damn thing when it is completed. (Ok, maybe I won't burn it. But I'm not happy with it right now which is making working on it harder.)

The local-ish pagan group that I associate with are holding an Ostara celebration. I wish I could go but it is Sunday night and I'd have to be driving after dark to get home so that Beloved could have the car to get to work Monday. Never mind the fact that the kids are still on break from school Monday and will probably be up at the crack of dawn despite the blackout curtains on their window.

I wanted to do something special for Ostara but things keep falling through. I wanted to do a little ritual with the kids for the full moon tonight and that didn't happen because tonight was just a wee bit chaotic. I feel like things are just stacked against me on trying to educate my kids in the pagan ways. We've got people at school talking about Jesus and such. I can't make out if it is kids or teachers. It's just frustrating because I don't want them to be ignorant about the over culture but I want them to have a broader base to grow from in a spiritual sense.

I don't know what the hell I'm doing and I haven't much local support for it because I live two hours away from my pagan friends with families. The nearest Unitarian Universalist Church is twenty minutes away in a town that I am not familiar with or an hour away in the heart of the city. Either way puts me into a bit of anxiety because I'm getting worse about going to unfamiliar places alone. And even though they're UU churches, that doesn't mean they're necessarily going to be pagan friendly. Especially the weird brand of paganism that I've got going on.

Diabetic friendly pizza meatloaf (gluten free)

I admit, this was inspired by the South Beach Diet's 'Pizza meat pie' recipe. It had elements to it that were just not going to work in my household. Stuff like mushrooms that I can't get my kids to eat at all, because they're a vegetable.

Ingredients:

1 lb ground beef
2 eggs
1 c almond flour
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp italian seasoning
1/4 c pizza sauce divided in half
1/2 c shredded mozzarella

Step one, mix together beef, eggs, almond flour, garlic, and italian seasoning until uniform. Add 1/2 of the pizza sauce and continue to mix until uniform. Pat into a loaf shape and place on a jelly roll pan. Carefully coat the top with the other half of the pizza sauce. Then top with the shredded mozzarella. Bake at 350 deg F for 45 minutes or until it reads as well done for beef with a meat thermometer.

Serves 4. Goes well with a nice green salad. The carb load in the original recipe that used breadcrumbs was 18 carbs per slice. I think this comes out closer to fifteen.

How do I 'girl' properly?

My face was really itchy. So, I decided I was going to scrub it and make it really clean, followed by moisturizing everything. Now my face is bright red and even more itchy. I don't think I had a reaction to anything. But maybe I am wrong. The soap I used was a gentle soap for babies. The scrub I used is one that I've never had a reaction to before. And the lotion is one that I have never had a reaction to.

I don't know if this is just my skin is mad at me for the fact that I scrubbed it or if I'm having a reaction to something. I don't know much about skincare. Honestly, I'm really ignorant about it. I'm even more ignorant about makeup. Because my skin reacts to just about everything, I can't use most products. So, I never really learned how to do this stuff.

Here I am trying to figure it out on my own and I think I just made a mess of it all. At least I am not breaking out into hives or anything. Maybe the itchy feeling is the same one that I get when my skin is really dry and I put moisturizer on it. I'm going to go with that thought for now. Because anything else is just going to be upsetting on some level because I feel like I failed at basic 'girl' behavior.

Insert title here.

I am moderately depressed. This is an improvement over where I was at a few weeks ago. I am displeased with the fact that my doctor confirmed that my symptoms are perimenopause. I just turned 40 in November. I am early for this to be happening. I thought I had a little more time before it happened. I have somewhere around seven years of this crap to look forward to. I feel generally miserable and moody. Because hormones.

I am hoping that this will improve. According to my doctor, these things go in something of a cycle. Because I don't have enough shit with cycles going on in my life. I've been told to track my symptoms. I'm just tired of logging everything. I do a lot of mood tracking because of my bipolar. I log my food and my blood sugar levels because of the diabetes. I log my exercise habits because of the diabetes. I keep a daily journal of things to do and things that need to be done because I have kids with stuff going on in their lives.

I'm exhausted from this. And now I have something new to log and track. I'm so tired of this. But I can't stop because if I do, bad things will happen. I'll forget something important and things will go sideways. I'll have no idea why my blood sugar is high or forget to monitor it. So, I have to keep logging every damn thing.

I'd prefer to be filling up notebooks with stories and poems. It's been hard to write because I feel so down about it all. And I feel like I'm a fraud when it comes to writing. Because I haven't had the spoons to push marketing my work. Because I have been struggling to have the spoons to blog about anything at all. Because all it seems to be is my doing therapy oriented writing all the time.

I know someone somewhere will read this and feel a burst of triumphant whatever. They'll be happy that I'm miserable right now. To that person, go fuck yourself with a chainsaw.