57th

august

click pic if you'd like to download full size

A lot of people think stuff like that field across the road from my house looks messy. I think it looks beautiful. It's not exactly native prairie, but at least it's fairly indigenous nowadays since it's been neglected so long.

I finally wrapped my head around school shopping. I've decided that this year I need to fix up my bug out bag with a mobile med kit in one of those plastic pencil boxes (I'm always needing alcohol wipes and latex free bandaids or a nail clipper), a mobile post office (cards, stamps, address labels, birthday confetti, address book, colored pens), and possibly several other organized kits. It's silly being caught flatfooted so often. I thought about mailing out a birthday card to my sister 3 different times, and I finally sent it off today and it's going to be late. Anyway, I've also been anxiously checking for my college to show up in the back to school stuff, and there we go, today there was suddenly a whole bunch. And of course, Bunny has corrupted me, I found adult sized Shopkins sox, so I'm ready for back to school now.

I saw my neurologist today for 6 month follow up. I've been going every 6 months for several years. I've had 2 full needle workups making sure my nervous system is still working ok, and he coaches me into physical therapy and meds here and there. He's rather insisting that I try to ramp back up and hold at 300 mg of gabapentin 3x a day again. (I've tried it 3 times now, I keep coming back down to 200 3x.) The ultimate goal is to keep me moving as much as possible, particularly now that I have 'frozen shoulder' coming on, which is when the entire shoulder area gets so difficult to lift that you finally just can't, and the muscles 'freeze' up as they harden with scar tissue. Between the ancient car accident and subsequent years of fibromyalgia, and now arthritis starting to show up with the documented nerve impingement, I'm on my way to losing that arm if I don't keep using it as much as I possibly can. The last round of therapy last spring was brutal, but I am still retaining full range of motion even though the pain is pretty sharp and it's hard to keep moving through it. And by sharp I mean like someone stabbing me hard with a long needle into the nerve that runs over the top of my shoulder. I've been working on this arm since 2015. It was so bad in 2015 that I could barely use that arm at all, and I was close to losing the use of my fingers. I remember my mom's arms and hands finally just curling up until her hands were just fists. Aging doesn't have to be that horrible, but it takes a bit of effort to slow that down if you've got aggressive illnesses like diabetes and/or arthritis.

I'm already hearing stories about knee surgeries, lol. Scott's coworker said whatever I do, do NOT skip the pain med coming off the anesthesia. He said that was about the worst pain he ever went through till the med could kick in again. Personally, I've been through so much pain I kinda doubt I would think it's the worst, but I sincerely don't want to feel it, no.

Today's blood pressure in the office was 151/94, so it's going up again, and obviously both pain and diet related. Even with cutting calories, I'm still getting too much salt. I totally felt that yesterday. I ate an ounce of Cabot seriously sharp cheddar with a normal portion of bite sized Tostitos corn chips and wowzers, talk about a nasty headache. I'm getting so salt sensitive it's unbelievable. I started looking up diets for hypertension and ran into the DASH diet, which is part monitored fasting and mostly very restricted processed animal proteins and lots more fruits and veg. Since my diabetes is already well controlled through diet, now I've gotta control sodium. I obviously can't eat the amount of grains that DASH recommends (too carby), and I can't do the nuts and legumes (allergies), but I can definitely eat more veggies and substitute yogurt for cheese. I'm also going to cautiously try some fasting, but more like how you calorie restrict before a digestive system procedure and you have to empty your whole gut. They make sure you still get 500 calories of clear liquid, but if I do that I'll have to be smart about it, because it can get dangerous on a busy day. I'm not very good at powering through a headache, and I tend to get goofy and make poor decisions anyway, so I'll save that for days nothing is going on.

Oopsie, got lost in youtube. Time to move along.

pinky's brain crammed into one post

click for more

~started yesterday~

So I'm doing this 1500 calorie thing again because it worked in 2011, but the main difference now is every time I start keeping track, my day/week winds up remapping into a whole new set of objectives, like lose 4 pounds, drop everything for crisis, put two pounds back on dealing with it, and it's just not a smooth one direction thing like last time. In the last 4 months I've rescheduled several things 2-3 times each until I finally just gave up and said ok, not happening, just toss it way out there a few months ahead and hopefully everything will be settled back down when we come back around to them. Everything from dental cleaning to surgery has gotten tossed around the calendar like I'm rolling dice. I've had some pretty out of control years, but this one feels like I'm hanging on in a rodeo.

Meanwhile I can feel that bone chip sliding around my knee, now that I know what that is, and it's weird how nauseated it makes me feel now thinking about it, so I just try not to. It slipped into a bad spot a few times today, and finally feeling it slide out and get squished to the back behind my knee about made me sick. All these years I've been mentally blocking that pain, and now that I can visualize it (thank you, MRI), I'm so grossed out I can hardly stand it.

These things took precedence on my silver anniversary-

• A loud argument next door that bonenado had to go break up
• A rescheduled birthday party displaced twice between a vacation and then a broken arm
• Someone I don't even know dying but wound up getting texts over
• Another person's cancer announcement from a church I don't even go to any more
•  A few other things but those are the biggies.

I guess the rest of my life will be like that. I guess that's what getting older is like. Everything from now on is all bad news and other people's problems. There's no escape unless I literally go live alone completely off the grid.

I'm getting better at not caring any more. It used to upset me that every time I had *one* day for myself, after maybe months of not having any, that day would be slammed with so much other people's stuff. It took me awhile to realize it's always been that way, and it's like that for everybody. Several people have noticed, though, that it does seem awfully coincidental with me for some reason, like the second it's finally my turn for something, 4 people slam me immediately with bad news or crisis or something. I have literally gotten back to back phone calls of pure meltdown from several unrelated people/situations within seconds of thinking "I feel pretty good today."

So my silver anniversary going by unnoticed was fine with me. I mean, bonenado got me a nice card and even handed me some extra cash to toss into my account, and I joked that I got a good wife bonus, but other than that, it was just another day. If I had spent one second thinking about how it should be special, I'm pretty sure someone would have died just to jinx it, so it's better that it stayed low key so no one would die from the cosmos making a joke about it.

What am I saying. I just said up there someone died. *slaps forehead*

~now it's today~

I know that list up there looked really selfish. That is my narcissist-autism diagnosis. How the universe rebounds off of me and my existence is the first instinctual reaction, which is kinda like being stuck in that 5 year old ego phase. I openly admit this has been one of my biggest challenges all my life. I'm not a naturally forgiving and empathetic person. Of course I feel bad for other people having worse days, good lord. But part of transparency in my personal blogging is allowing public to get a glimpse of how my head works, because I know it's hard being around people like me not understanding what makes us tick.

Every day naturally revolves around me because I am in this body living these moments head on. This is the animal level of our existence. But I have this wonderful mind that can think outside the box, and over the years I've evolved through a whole journey of complex thinking that started with 'everyone is so stupid' to 'why can't they see and fix their own stuff' to 'aw, all our heads are unique' to 'it's actually easy to forgive other people for being unique, kind of like how pets are unique' to 'God, please help all my people have a good day because life is hard and we're having a hard time'. I really do pray that. If I listed all the people I think about every single day, everyone who crosses my mind while I get through my own stuff, you would likely find yourself on this list, unless you're one of the darker lurkers who has never surfaced on the webs in front of me.

I dealt with a lot of autism and narcissism related things on my last Pinky blog before I migrated here, so if you are new and want more, there's your links. I might eventually organize a few pages here like a library system, group up links kind of thing.

I have been crazy 'bizzy' (Bunny says she gets bizzy when she twirls in circles), so I haven't been focus blogging here that much yet. I'll get some specific tags going with this post so that can start happening again.

Months ago I said I need to get back to sharing real life pix again. Time slid crazily by. I've been trying to get back to my Lexxperience work. I feel like I'm hanging on by fingertips to the edge of a tipping iceberg. Lists? HA. Every time I even make a list now my life explodes in 19 different directions.

And yet, things keep getting done...

I have about 6 hours to catch up on a big pile of chores around my house. I'm not sure what happened, but my family suddenly dove in and purged the livingroom and it's looking really nice, so it's my turn to dive back in and keep my regular chores caught up. They don't know I was up nearly all night because pain, but it's all good and I'm functional today and I can totally do this. Just need to wrap my head around and get started.

**********

2 hours just slid by. Dark and raining outside, house is so quiet, cool mood. I just need peace, you know? The world is such a rat race. In my house alone we have 2 1/2 incomes (not counting my meager SSI) and still live check to check. We live on bare basics, nothing fancy, more in the lower end of middle class. It wouldn't take much to cripple us into another bankruptcy. And that's the way the world works now, isn't it? That's just the way it's going to be now. Unless something happens and the world flips. I was halfway joking years ago that all it would take is the grids going down to automatically throw our nation into debt forgiveness. I mean, if you can't access digital debt, it's just gone, right? And then we'd have to start from scratch because our grid system is such a crazy cobbled mess of really old machinery plugged into new tech. Seriously, our national grid system is barely functional as a systemic failsafe for our population. 5G is going up everywhere, and it would be a cinch to knock it all back offline just because our grid system is a mess.

Aging And Unstable, The Nation's Electrical Grid Is 'The Weakest Link'

How Power Grid Hacks Work, and When You Should Panic

The 9 Worst Designed Cities in the US

Iraq Power Grid Shows U.S. Flaws

Energy | ASCE's 2017 Infrastructure Report Card

And that's just the top of a long list in google search looking for flaws in the U.S. grid system.

Ok, back to whatever my in the moment is. THIS IS IMPORTANT. Check out the coolest kickstarter ever.

And if you want something with some crazy cosmic intellectual meat in it, click this next for another youtube that can fill up the void around you while you get through another day. Dismiss how weird it is, just let go and float into the possibilities. It's like real life scifi opening new doors.

For those of you who immediately scrolled down for the walk-off vid, first, this teaser.

Which makes us happyhappyhappy. I can walk away now.

I might be in for some deja vu here in a bit, lol

I've lately had the luxury of doing some comparison thinking, experimenting with projecting possibilities on my own brain and trying reactions on for size.

For example, after the things I've already lived through, the traumas and illnesses that have taken me down into shards that I've spent years cobbling back together, what would be more shocking to find out I must live through next, and whether there is a comparison at all between something like rocky mountain spotted fever vs something like cancer in any of its various stages.

I'm lucky. I accidentally discovered a tick, accidentally wound up at a doctor follow up for something else within a decent range of finding that tick, and quite accidentally wound up on immediate treatment for something I wouldn't have suspected in the slightest even though I was obviously being affected.

And then to find out up to 70% death rate before this particular antibiotic was invented, and in the short time up to morbidity, a very miserable slide into the depths of hell that include inflammation in the brain, along with capillary fail all over the body and particularly lungs and other organs being damaged along the way.

People finding out they are in the first stages of cancer would live longer than I would without treatment.

Given my health and genetic history and my age, I'm lucky I'm alive right now as it is. So far I'm not terribly sick, no. So far I'm not suffering horribly like I could be without treatment. I'm very blessed and very lucky. But this is nothing to blow off like it's a piece of cake. Yes, I'll be fine, but, as with any length of cold or flu, yes, I will be a bit worn out and apprehensive, and I think I deserve that appreciation of circumstance. I've been very thankful for the handful of people who have actually understood the weight of this new challenge. There is no cheating on this life test.

Several long time agos, a friend here or there fussed about not being told something after finding out, like their feelings were hurt not to be on some kind of contact list about something important. If I contact someone personally about something scary and feel blown off, I don't waste my time on my feelings over that. I simply pare down the list. Apart from that, all my stuff is public, and anyone can check on me at any time. I understand that all our plates are full and sometimes we can't deal. It's ok.

If you're checking in to see how I'm doing, though, thank you, I've been having chills for about 24 hours along with the usual pain of aching all over that comes with any germ warfare. My knee is bendier and easier to walk on now, but still a bit gooshy with fluid near the tick bite. MRI today will let my doctor know whether any real damage has been done. My understanding is that doxy, while an excellent treatment, can't work miracles against some of the damage that can happen very quickly. That I have to do on my own over time as I heal.

I keep asking why we chose this planet, it's so toxic out there... lol. Guess it's really pretty, though. Hope you guys are having a great week. 💖