Chickens Being, and turkey butt

Turkey butt. I was netting fish on a claim I was clearing on server and looked up, cracked me up.

It wouldn't be the holiday slide without something throwing monkey wrenches like my bank being acquired into another bank and breaking my auto payments. What I thought was money working out beautifully was a major payment being missed, so on my birthday, when I finally get more money, I've got to make a final double payment and then that one is over.

I have 4 days to get my driver's license renewed. Don't let me forget that. I know one year I blogged about being happy I remembered it and then promptly forgot and missed it.

I'm otherwise doing really well with my xanax taper, weight is holding steady this month after dropping 6 pounds, switched to organic blue corn chips after nearly two weeks of no nachos at all (no more supporting the big corn companies), and nearly doubled my vegetable intake over what it used to be. ASTYM therapy on my hand was like a magical breakthrough, going up and down stairs on my knee without any problems now, did I mention I'm already talking Christmas tree? Basically, having one of the best Octobers I've had in many years. Allergies are ridiculous between the trees forgetting to turn and suddenly dropping dried leaves during a cold rainy spell, but no problems with ears and glands complications like I used to get regularly. I'm an antihistamine machine this year.

I'm thinking about pumpkin cake for my birthday. I haven't had really good cake in ages, and y'all know I can't use regular flour so cake is a big rare deal. People who blow off gluten free and wheat allergies, try using flour or baking mix that is nearly $10 a pound. I have to make sure the flour is processed in a nut and peanut free facility (you'd be surprised how much gluten free is cross contaminated in manufacturing), so that cuts the cheaper ones out. Also discovered lasagna is fantastic with cabbage in place of the noodles, so I really enjoyed some good old fashioned homemade comfort food lasagna this month. Going to make more this weekend.

My sleep schedule is topsy-turvy more than usual lately, so I'm just going with it. I'm up when I feel like it, sleep when I feel like it, and barely keeping up with anyone in real time. I have been more relaxed lately than I have been in years, so I guess my body has finally turned off alert mode that I used to constantly live in, with all those anxiety and panic attacks and constant self monitoring and powering through and whatnot. I'm actually feeling like I'm enjoying myself just living now. That's never really happened before. I think a lot of it is solid consistent pain control and finally getting much needed surgeries and recoveries out of the way. I'm physically able to just chill and veg now without anything nagging my system constantly. It's nice.

Ten years ago I wrote Chickens Being.

Had a dream about the chickens last night.  Somehow they were people, but not like us.  I don't remember any more.  I've been wondering for some time what the world view of a chicken is like, what it's like to live like that.  You really have to bend your brain around just to think about not having hands, having such a flexible neck and moving your head everywhere without being disoriented, having feathers projecting from every inch of your body.  I think that would be terribly cumbersome.

And then to think about never being able to say how you feel to someone, never having real contact like a hug, the only comfort you ever get is simply in being part of a group, being near each other and hearing each other when you're scared or feeling sick.  What would it be like to not know more, not understand the possibility of these things?

I've been trying to wrap my brain around the concept of 'being' since I was a small child.  I was terrified very early that I had bones in me (grew up on a farm), and that the bones weren't *me*.  They go everywhere I go, make it possible for me to do and feel things with my other tissues, but they are the sign of death in every culture.  I carry the sign of death around inside of me.  I think I was dealing with that before I was even 10.

I won't go over everything I've thought since then, I'm sure it would make a book.  But I still think about it a lot, about 'being'.  About the possibilities we can't imagine, about the limitations we take for granted, about the horrifying thought of seeing ourselves both from the inside and the outside with our perspectives.  I think a lot of people can't really do that very well, and I don't know if it's the Asperger's, but I can peel away perspective and put it back together in different shapes and forms, and wonder how in the world can we be stuck in our bodies this way?  It seems impossible.  Yet here we are, experiencing.

I was always intrigued by the old testament guys who got to 'see God', or at least come close.  They always fell to their faces and couldn't move, and had to be stood back up by someone else.  The experience of being able to see outside this dimension of thought and mind was enough to disable them, either from terror or being so overwhelmed that they couldn't respond to the new sensations and realizations flooding their minds.  Maybe being aspie gives me an edge on thinking about it, because so much has been so overwhelming for me in THIS body in THIS dimension of being.  I want very badly to be able to go beyond what we are and see all this for myself.  I'm sure someone will have to stand me back up.

lyrics

tip-toeing around regret or something

*weeks rip past me at the speed of Barry Allen*

Srsly, I try not to die a  little inside every time I miss TWD and Flash live tweets now.

Ok, so I wasn't really done with my thought organizing in the last post, due to time constraints, but let's jump back into that, shall we?

• I have finally titled a piece I'm working on about *entire brain stifles fingers and mouth*
• Still 6 pounds down from August. I'm hungry. Oh, yeah, I haven't had nachos in a week. I know everyone in the Force just felt my starvation pain. Thank you. I felt you feel that.
• Cut my coffee in half again this week. Officially down to exactly one measured cup. My big mugs look half empty now. The withdrawal headache is easing up a bit.
• The size 7-8 slippers I finally caved to picking up from Walmart this week feel like size 6. The disappointment is real. The saddest part is me having the smallest feet, so I can't gift them to anyone.
• Now that I've managed to establish a somewhat firm fuzzy boundary around my bedroom (extremely fuzzy), my entire brain of cells is chanting TAKEBACKTHEHOUSE TAKEBACKTHEHOUSE TAKEBACKTHEHOUSE and I'm doing my best to plug my ears and go lalalalala.

I met a woman in therapy today who has nearly 20 years on me. She was there after reconstruction on thumb because arthritis ate up a bone in her wrist. Even with the usual 'growing old' rhetoric, which I heartily agree with, the context was still so lopsided that I was glad when she had to leave so our convo could be over. I'm still having difficulty empathizing with people way older than me who have less difficulty than I do and think something is so hard when clearly they've been enjoying more capability far longer than I ever dreamed, although yes, a thumb reconstruction sounds horrid. (She was literally able to do way more than I was with the exercise putty, and I'm 7 weeks out from carpal tunnel release, so clearly something is still wrong with my hand.) It's not so much feeling self pity as ok, I already dealt with that, is there anything more interesting to talk about kind of thing. I mean, so many other drops and mentions about a real life, I wouldn't have minded hearing about what she assumed was boring, right. When I'm with a therapist, I generally try to talk about something we both find interesting since they must hear pain junk every single day and they're probably sick of it, I know I am, and I'm not there to find new friends to whine about the cold snap with. She suddenly blurted all the interesting stuff as she was walking out and I felt so gypped. Really? You just leave me dangling full of questions now...

I looked up scleroderma, since my therapist thinks I have it. I have follow up with primary the day before my birthday. I'll likely get a flu shot and now possibly donate blood to see how much worse my life might have been all this time behind my back. Meh. It could certainly explain a few things, but I'm already beyond my personal life expectancy, so it's not really bothering me, aside from it also explaining a lot of how my mom went down. One of my sisters has sjogrens, the other has I think 3 kinds of arthritis all over her body, and other things abound as well, so I'm just not terribly surprised. What did you get for your birthday? Scleroderma. Oh, sounds nice. I am really appreciating the wicked sense of humor a friend of mine on my street had before she moved away, and I'm missing it lately. It didn't matter how badly something sucked, she lived her life the way she wanted and always presented as having it all together, and that humor was a sort of mockery I didn't understand back then. Totally getting it now.

I'm the sort that pulls back into a corner making sure other people are doing ok first. That's a tough challenge, especially since I'm not at all mousy about how I feel. I shut up because I love them. Well, poor @bonenado hears it, and I do regret that more often than not, but I have so many memories of what I thought of people around me as a kid, and I know how ugly grown ups can be even when they think they are being kind. I'd like to think I'm living up to this life challenge, being a natural narcissist and definitely being territorial in a matriarchal way, meaning that my challenge is about learning to be sweet. It's hard. I wasn't born sweet.

But yeah, I'm all swimming around in a head full of where are we now kind of month because here comes my birthday, and *bam*, Google pulls the G+ rug out from under me, and inside a very dark room I don't generally share even with my psychologist, the swears I can hear inside are making even me cringe.

Our world revolves around the whims of the uber wealthy, you know that right. I should have gotten slippers from my local sheepskin guy. I should have stayed my course instead of following people on wayward ventures over the many years, and there have been several. I should have branded by now. I should be merchandising already. *quietly rests head on table because banging my head on a wall would only make it worse...*

My birthday number is fascinating me this year. I mentioned becoming this age in my #Pinkyblog post pink is the new dark, or, my life without any meth whatsoever.

Kinda got lost in this. Cue the video!

baby blob

I'm a big baby today so I got myself some ice cream. I last mentioned ice cream on this blog on June 2nd. That's right, I managed not to cave to ice cream for 109 days.

I brought up a few specifics I'm having trouble with regarding a couple things around my house while I was in physical therapy on my knee (4 weeks out from surgery, doing pretty good but still a long way to go), and UFFDA there we went into strength training on top of the tissue work. My two biggest challenges, between the arthritis in my lower back and this knee being weak and swollen from surgery, are a particular hamstring stretch (easy to solve with a different approach, thank goodess) and rising in a bathroom without special maneuvering on a fixture or a sink counter (because of my hand also still healing from surgery), which turns out to be the top number one challenge everyone in the world has anyway.

Seriously, the number one physical therapy work across the board is rising from a toilet, bar none. Doesn't matter the injury, the procedure, the arthritic condition, the age- we all get stuck on the pot. Suddenly makes sense that the top injuries in one's home, besides stairs, occur in bathrooms.

So now I'm doing extra work adding my other knee in, and of course it's been weak the entire time (my good knee, haha) because in the 7 years I've been in physical therapy, this knee arthroscopy recovery work is the first time we've done anything below lower core strength, basically waistline or hipline. Around 2015 everything shifted from core and balance to saving my arms, and now I'm finally being asked about my feet.

I first mentioned my feet in 2013 on my grandfortuna blog, but that post got pulled into private for a reason and this last year I missed my annual fee because paying off something else, so I can't go grab a quote from that or link it.

*live blogging* Just got a call from a number on Casady Dr. in Republic- Marcus, I can pull up your street on Zillow. Stop calling me.

Ok, where was I? Oh, hey, you wanna see that call / text messaging history from the 'publisher' I tweeted about today? Hang on while I get that.

Ok, there we go. Ridiculous for this day and age.

Anyway, I was talking about my feet. Back in 2013 I had posted pix of a nustep I was using because my feet were so bad I could barely walk, and physical therapy was working on getting me into a regular workout routine. I didn't know back then why my feet hurt so bad, just chalked it up to having blackened both my ankles with various nasty sprains through my life, right. Even broke a bone in my foot once. Turns out it's a combination of spinal stenosis (arthritis that narrows the area the nerve trunk runs through, compressing the nerves that go down to the feet), and real stuff that a podiatrist later discovered. I have too much bone in my feet. He called my heel spurs "spectacular" (thank you, 8 years of retail, hospital housekeeping, and hotel desk), and then added that the reason I get pain when I walk is because a bone is overgrown and compressing a nerve in a toe joint, and that is unrelated to anything in particular. It's been that way all my life. I just thought it was from running and jumping so much as a kid. As I've gotten older, the area has become arthritic, and no wonder it hurts to walk. Eventually that nerve is going to be crushed enough to just die off, and then I won't be able to walk at all. Add diabetes to all that, so faster nerve death if I carb out.

And I just ate ice cream for the first time in 109 days, so I'm not helping that.

Anyway, going back to the original original story, I happen to already have so much pain from preexisting conditions in my feet, my spine, and fibromyalgia in general that to throw a knee surgery on top of that is evidently considered pretty acute for self care therapy, so today I got slung over into leg strength training on top of the surgery recovery.

~~~~later~~~~

35 days till my birthday. I texted @bonenado a link to this purse, which I've had my eye on for a long time. I get a new purse about once in five or six years, if that often. I know I got my last purse before Batman and Bunny were both born, so that's over 5 years at the very least, and I'm kind of betting maybe 7. Anyway, what do you think? That clicks out so you can see it better.

The purse I have now came from the same place and has lasted forever, and it's very unique and got lots of compliments. I'm not seeing that style for sale any more, sorry, can't link it. Anyway, I grew up around out there, really love native southwestern fashion.

Don't worry, I've barely eaten about 3/4 cup of ice cream. Got a big salad coming for supper. Really getting tired of this being crippled s#*t. I refuse to go down like a whiny blob.

dang it, I hate it when I hit publish instead of save

click for pinterest

Getting back to meandering. That is the one consistency in my life. No matter what else is going on, I can meander.

Random memory from last week. I went in the medical supply shop to buy some little mask filters that medicare doesn't pay for, and two other older people were being helped. (It's weird saying that since I really can't tell any more if another woman might be my age or even younger.) One guy was being told he was due for all the things, like tubing, cushions, filters, water chamber, which he didn't understand because older people in the Ozarks are dense (it's true), and an unrelated woman on a different ticket chimed in about how she was still using the same tubing and water chamber from two years ago and never had a problem, and the poor assistant was just standing there in jaw drop.

A) You people thinking Medicare is sucking up your tax money, chill, half the world is refusing to even take advantage of completely 'free' stuff.

B) I felt physically ill at the thought of 2 year old tubing because it can grow mold in it, and I can imagine the assistant was dumbfounded how to explain respiratory hygiene to two stubborn older people who couldn't imagine anything microbial being a problem.

I am still almost freakishly obsessed with CPAP hygiene nearly 2 years in, so since these people are obviously getting along ok, maybe I can relax a little about that. I always make sure my tube is blown dry before I disconnect, though.

click for cpap memes on pinterest

In other randomness, since September has now been declared National Preparedness Month, I boiled some eggs, got brats out to cook up and refreeze, and got butter out to soften for oatmeal cookies to go back into the freezer. If power goes out anytime soon, I'll have food handy besides tuna and chips.

Crap, I missed National Lazy Moms Day.

So I'm 19 days out from surgery, and last night was the worst for pain. It's kind of been building back up, and I haven't been sleeping that well, but last night was pure suck, and I got up 3 different times for more pain med. This morning was better, thank goodness. I know there is a lot of stuff going on in my knee, like it can take up to 6 weeks to get the joint fluid properly built back up, and random swelling can cause pain here and there, but the ache was so strong in the entire leg that even my foot was aching. Could have been the cold front settling in, who knows.

When I jumped this blog over, I started a new tagging system. I don't like it. I should have just tagged whatever I wanted because now I can see it makes no sense. I might go through and retag. Trying to keep it too generalized bogs down the search.

click to buy art prints

More random. If you are kind of interested in what in the world is behind closed doors in 'child breaking', the fastest way to learn is by looking into the mind of the broken. I really like Saccstry. Once you see the emotional survival behind the symbolism, you can never unsee the possibilities of savagery upon the tiny human mind. Minds were made to be broken, remolded, controlled, according to some, and I've read that the best age to start is around 4, although that is up for debate. Child trafficking is the saddest weirdest art prompt you'll ever find on the webs, and if that doesn't scar your soul and get you off the 'faith in humanity restored' rescuing kittens memes, nothing will.

Click this for some actually cool memes

Ug, I just hit publish instead of save. I'm not done yet.

Anyway, that's basically how my life is going at the moment, and all my big cool ideas keep getting sideswiped by pain and medication and dragging my butt into therapy over and over. I'm very tired.

tuna wars

Different people are really good at different things. What one person is really good at, another person might not be, but they might be really good at something the first person is not, so it all kind of evens out.

Sometimes you wind up with two people in one house who are really good at things opposite of each other. For the most part, this works really well until it goes out of balance. Like when one of the people thinks they are better at the thing they suck at. Maybe like meal planning.

This is about a person who doesn't know how to plan ahead when it comes to meals. If that person isn't hungry at that moment, absolutely no thought is put into what if hunger shows up later.

That's where I come in, being really good at everything food. I've head cooked in a 450+ seater establishment. That takes unbelievable coordination and planning. That's only one of my food qualifications in a childhood of processing organically grown food and a lifetime of food prep in a dazzling array of circumstances.

For instance, while I'm recovering from a double surgery, I know I can get the nutrients I need for a week from a dozen eggs, a half gallon of milk, a block of cheese, a bag of potatoes, a head of broccoli, a cup of dry rice, you get the gist. I'm very good at simple, filling nutrition in a pinch. I easily turned some of that into a rice pilaf, a tossed potato salad with green beans, a protein shake, etc. I did this with minimal effort and easy clean up since it was for one person. It's the best way I know how to lighten the burden of caretaking on others since I'm allergic to so many things and cross contamination is a very scary thing in pre-prepared meals.

I told my family while I'm recovering during the first week, their job is to feed themselves. They are to use plasticware, paper plates, disposable cups, take out, whatever it takes to keep the kitchen clean. Keep it easy.

That sounds like a good plan, doesn't it? It's not hard to grab a Wendy's salad or a takeout pizza, right? How easy is it to buy a frozen dinner or bring home Chinese?

So I'm hobbling on a swollen knee with a high pain level, one of my hands completely useless, and one night- they cooked. ??? Um, hello? Pots and pans? Guess who washed those....

So tonight I fixed my own food and settled in, a person arrived home from work without any takeout, and said they didn't feel hungry yet, maybe open tuna later.

Context- I had offered a tuna melt once a week all summer and was turned down every single time. The one week I ask to keep it simple and easy, they want to drag out a tuna mess. This is a person who leaves dishes around and never, ever actually washes a dish.

I am really good at being a servant in my house. I'm super good at spoiling someone on a regular basis because I'm a really good cook. I'm so good at handling all the work this involves that consideration for my one wish to keep my kitchen clean on a week that sucks for me was airily dismissed with Meh, i wasn't hungry while i was driving past easy, ill drag out a mess later that wasnt good enough the rest of the summer. Because, of course, I'm good at making it look easy.

I'm beginning to understand why older women seem angry all the time.

I'm really good at thinking ahead about other people's needs and discomfort in given situations. He's really good at keeping bills paid on time. I know it all evens out, but when its his turn to hobble on a week off, I'll bet he won't feel like eating tuna. Or more, making it himself.

I didn't ask anyone to feed me or clean up after me this week, just themselves.

I'm suddenly in the mood to make a tuna casserole on Thanksgiving.

Some of you might be thinking how ironic this is, given my tuna history on twitter.

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.

finders keepers, losers weepers

I keep frying things, don't I? This is salmon. You guys know who Scott Conant is, right? He freaks out when people put cheese and fish together, to the point of you can't even be friends with the guy if you love tuna melts. CHEESE IS FORBIDDEN WITH FISH. Because of that, every time I make these salmon patties (or they could easily be shaped into croquettes), I think of Scott Conant, because my secret ingredients are grated parm and smoked paprika. Srsly, every. single. time. I will never not think of Scott Conant when I eat these because he is so vehement about it. I make really awesome salmon cakes. We inhale them.

Here you go, fish with cheese. Click for recipes.

I swear, the street addresses coming in on that last post. 😑😶😳 Can you srsly plz just look up how to be more discreet surfing the webs? It's fine when your location puts you vaguely out on a golf green somewhere, but when I'm staring down onto your actual house, I feel really awkward for you. I'm content with getting generalized areas so I can get a feel for how I'm driving internet traffic with social media links, really don't need to go all Sims on me.

Anonymous on the Web: The Basics- You might want to particularly check out Web Browsing With a Proxy Server a few paragraphs down. It's really not that much work. If you use a browser at all, you can easily go into browser settings and find an area that lets you decide how private you'd like your internet activity to be. Even if you don't use a browser proxy, your service provider probably also has proxy user IPs available for you. You don't have to become a computer specialist to keep me from seeing your house.

That being said, I easily got a screenshot of this one person's neighborhood and I could actually look up every house on the street if I wanted to and see floor plans, how much the houses are worth, who currently lives in them, what their income levels are... And that's just the basics. Anyone can do this. We are all very visible now. If you don't like that idea, put 'proxy' into your search bar, ok?

I'm a lurker, not a stalker. Big difference. I like hanging out incognito and people never know I'm here. That's lurking. If someone lets me know they're lurking my stuff, that's not lurking. Lurkers don't wave howdy. They don't say hey, it's me. Lurkers just quietly notice other people.

I once accidentally cease and desisted a friend over lurking because I had analytics and got creeped out. That person never bothered me at all, but since I could see the activity, I just got really creeped out, even though it was harmless. Looking back, I understand now that although we wanted to be friends, neither one of us was very good at it, and since she was more savvy online, she just kept an eye on me and watched me think out loud on my blogs. Now that I've gotten used to people doing that, it's no big deal. Back then being able to see blog stats was really new, and it was before proxies came into vogue. I saw loads of personal information coming in through my stats back then, but since hers was sort of hidden, it got weird for me.

Another 'friend' once showed up at my house from a fandom group and put my life online. THAT is stalking, especially since it was a 12-hour drive. Purposely gathering information on someone in order to take any kind of action, unless you are in a paid security position, is stalking. A lot of people do this without realizing that's what it is, even if all you are doing is calling someone up to complain about the person you're stalking because you're obsessed and upset about something. Stop that. Don't be a stalker. Don't get yourself worked up over things you'd otherwise never have known if you hadn't spent the time gathering intel.

But basically, don't make it easy for other people to get to know you that well. It's nobody's business. If I can easily find your house just because you read my blog, then you need to get smarter using the internet.

Anyway, I just think it's fun when people in higher socioeconomic and politically torn areas jump on a twitter hashtag. In a world saturated with click bait, it's nice that my thoughts got shared into a few extra brains that were actually interested in that kind of content.

I'm so rambly, I've gotta get back off here. On my way out, may as well mention that when you listen to various popular songs while you're thinking about Illuminati running the industry, the lyrics make way more sense. I've been really surprised how many celebs and music artists linked to 'suicides' and reclusive behaviors (those paintings are amazing) last few years I'm finding out are really into spiritualism, even big Jesus fans, and they are coming from the heart of an industry that vehemently is anti (against) Christ. If you pay attention, it's common to see decor in some homes that depict this as a lifestyle (human sacrifice on the wall?), and yet these artists keep showing up with lives that belie that imagery with sincere devotion to spiritual living. I personally think they are trapped, unable to spill without fear of very real damage or pain of death, and keenly appreciate what overturning the money changers in front of the temple really meant. I personally don't care for modern music for its own sake, I'm more an instrumentalist fan, but fans continually pairing lyrics up with visuals is very compelling, and once you get the hang of what keeps being repeated in these mediums, the questions naturally start asking themselves. What are they putting into all our heads?
Understanding Groupthink- How to Recognize and Avoid It

dotcomming, like you do

Power point.

• I've decided to keep this dotcom. Got the pointer changed yesterday, so pinkyguerrero.com points to this new blog now. Still fixing up the old one to be the archive for this one, will be making a crossover section.
• Made my personal facebook more public again, except you still can't see entire friend list even if you are friended. Public will be able to see nearly everything friends can, except the archived posts going back to 2012. All the notes are public again. Yes, Kevin Sorbo really did connect to me on LinkedIn for awhile, per one of the notes. I'm not holding a grudge any more about the disconnect. I'm sure it was an unfathomable misunderstanding.
• My twitter is so squeaky clean that the big purge didn't even phase my follower list. Was so happy about it that I brought most of my lists back out to public.
• The self pay part of my 'extraneous' BRCA cancer testing (solidly based on family history) will be over just before Christmas this year. I can't even begin to tell you how hard it's been meeting that monthly payment for nearly two years now on such limited cash availability. It was important, though.
• That means I can start saving up for new glasses, which I hope to have by 2020. Get it? 2020. lol
• Toying with whether to review the Farscape marathon I have planned for vacation. Would be a pretty big project.
• Need to get all my dotcoms synced and info updated.
• My youtube needs a refurbish quite badly.
• Lexx. Ah, where to even begin. I have sooooo much work to do...

I know right, used to share a lot more real life pix and stuff. That's another thing I need to get back on.

I can tell I'm feeling better. Like, waaaay better. Maybe I was needing that doxycycline for more than just a tick bite or something. And maybe scrubbing out the germs helped my blood pressure stabilize again or something. I just know it's feeling so much easier now to THINK.

This guy captures more about how I feel about this entire series than anything else I've ever seen or heard or read. I still have my own thoughts about the reflections in the car windows from the very first episode, and maybe I'll get to that write up one day, too.

how does this even all mix together

Started yesterday.

 😂 omg, got to this part of the vid and rolled, I was doing this crap back in the late 70s whenever I'd get ticked off at someone in high school.

And what made it even funnier was no one ever expected it was me. I did stuff all year long to so many people and never once got caught. I can't say what all I did yet, but this is one reason why I derailed all over that school, staff and students alike. Don't tell me I'm in a triple A school and make me watch a kid OD in a hallway after a teacher supplies him, one of many things not kept terribly secret, yet never coming up in question.

I'm still waiting on a test that'll say whether or not a tick bite next to my swollen knee is the cause of this problem I've had for the last week. Today I had to very strategically park within a few steps of a shuttle pick up, 'walk' a few steps to a desk to ask for wheelchair transport assistance across and up 3 floors of a very big building, that kind of stuff. I can barely walk at all. I've had bad knee problems, but never like this. The x-ray turned out fine, still hafta schedule an MRI. I can't think of a single thing I did that might've fried my knee out. It started clicking with every step one day, then swelled the next, then my entire leg went rigid, and of course then I had no control over balance without a very complex overcompensation maneuver with every step, and finally last night I just flat couldn't even sleep any more. I finally saw and removed a teensy seed tick near the swelling area, couldn't even tell it was a tick at all because such a little dot and nearly left it there. Didn't itch or anything. After I removed it the rigidity in my leg has eased up a bit, but my knee is feeling a bit destroyed after having to walk all over a clinic to lab and imaging and back and forth from the car. No shuttle or transport service at the clinic, as it were.

At any rate, I'm cautiously on doxycycline just in case. I already carry a positive marker for Lyme from when I was younger, but there are others so the doctor ordered a full tick panel.

6 Tick-Borne Diseases That Are on the Rise

Tick-Borne Diseases Are On The Rise. Which Ones Should You Watch Out For?

Moving on to another vid.

Now it's today.

Finally braced myself and watched the second ep of Patrick Melrose this afternoon and triggered so badly that I hated the whole world for a solid hour after it was over. I had to keep reminding myself I choose not to hate now. I couldn't believe how easily triggered I was by stuff in the show completely unrelated to my own experiences, but I think the common blaring point was how much I identified with being utterly alone with so many adults around who could not only see the truth of what was happening, but literally made it worse by pushing all the wrong buttons and then abandoning the circumstances any way they could. Avoidance, passive aggressive displaced blame, anger and lashing out on a child, and the undercurrent of fear if anyone started even attempting to talk about it. All that I know very well.

Personally, I learned at a much younger age that I couldn't trust ANY adults, because they were either all stupid about playing the head games or they were manipulating with their own agendas. To see the world that way from such a young age, to never actually feel safe and comfortable with people who were automatically understood to love me, to lay awake so often at night throughout my life simply just thinking about the actions we all go through compared to the words we say and the meanings those words are supposed to have...

Right now I smell hamburgers and french fries because I cooked them, and then I retreated away into my room while the others are eating. I haven't eaten a hamburger on a bun in nearly 4 years now, and I can't even remember how long it's been since I've had french fries, 6 or 7 years maybe. Sometimes it's hard being allergic, sometimes I don't care and it doesn't bother me. This year has seemed harder for some reason.

I'm trying not to feel negative and failing a bit this week. It's one thing to share information or compose thoughts about feelings, it another thing to dump and be toxic because that's a self pity mode. I think my swollen knee is wearing me down. I feel like I'm grinding around on it trying to keep up. The laundry and dishes are still caught up. The bathrooms are clean. I'm hiding in a corner on doxycycline hoping this isn't a real tick disease. Life has sucked enough being a lyme carrier for years.

I'm too tired to cry. Even if I'm not really sick with something, I feel so tired. I know a lot of people are having problems with the heat and humidity and too much rain or not enough rain, bugs and allergies, and that's not even getting into money problems and world junk grinding us all down. I know I wasn't feeling this glum until I watched that show today though. I wonder how many people really go through that kind of hell as kids. I can't help thinking what a dirty, rotten world we live in, and yet when you look around, it's so beautiful. Humanity is the saddest story in the universe, and yet we find ways through the sad and some of us huddle together for spare bits of happy floating around on the webs. I am so, so glad we don't live on a gross, ugly planet. Can you imagine how even more depressing that would be? Did you notice today that it's pretty out there? Maybe see pix float by on your devices? I feel like we're really lucky that we're on this world, even though so much of it seems like a drag on our souls.

Doxy gives me headaches, and that is definitely being a drag right now. It usually lets up a little after a couple hours. I'll be ok. I just hope I'm not a drag on anyone while I'm like this.

One thing I've noticed is that I definitely got past that doorway I was stuck in so long. And I look back at how real I was the entire time. I really was. I never once lost my way, my focus, my drive. And I can see it's all still here, and it makes me laugh to myself. I do feel good inside, I really do. All this stuff on the outside is just distraction bummer. On the inside...?

This is me. All I have to do is remember to look in once in awhile and see myself.

spare parts

I was looking for a Spongebob "4 Days Later" time card on youtube and ran into this and decided it's the best ever.

It's time to admit I may or may not have destroyed that knee. Walking is touch and go, and trying to stay off my leg is ridiculously challenging. Not in the mood to discuss it further except to say I really miss fly. Life is not minecraft enough.

So out of all those seeds Bunny and I planted, this is the lone survivor and thriver.

We went from a very late 25 degree hard frost to a very hot 80 degree drought in two weekends flat, and after that it rained so much and so hard that everything just drowned, including a pot of petunias. I've never seen petunias drown before. But this guy said life is awesome and surged forth.

And those turned into zucchinis and not the cantaloupe I could have sworn it was, and today we ate the biggest one, which we nearly didn't see at all because zucchinis are sneaky.

And of course we got sneaky back and picked the nice small one hiding near it before it could go all Jurassic on us.

Here's a splat of joy. You're welcome.

I feel like I'm getting an insane amount of work done both online and off, but it's not the kind of work that people generally notice, and my knee is threatening abdication so it's clearly an insane amount of work. I've been laughing back with HA, what you fail to understand is that I have a spare knee! Your threats are useless! And my other knee goes *wut*...

The list grows. The work patiently waits. I get a little distracted here and there, but it's all good.