Category: life

Getting Stuff Right

PLACE YOUR BETS: how long after I post this will my executive function completely shut down and leave me stranded?

I’ve been doing pretty good lately with keeping track of things. I’ve been remembering my meds every day, been keeping ahead of the cat litter, keeping the pet water fountain full and clean, and not having any emergencies like being out of coffee, or being out of filters.

I’m kinda screwing up the groceries though. I started getting them delivered in 2020 and it’s actually a lot more helpful for me than actually going to the store, but it’s still not something I enjoy or even remotely like. I’m really restricted as far as food and a lot of it is my own weirdness, but there are also multiple food allergies at play, so I tend to stick to about 10 things that I trust to always be safe (and “safe” as in the texture or whatever won’t bother me).

So shopping for groceries isn’t fun. I tend to buy the same bunch of things (Lactose-free milk, Saltines, coffee, plain yogurt, chicken nuggets) so going to the store is boring and long and waiting to pay for things is intolerable some days. Unfortunately shopping via app is also not that much fun. I put things in the basket and take things back out again because I’ve lost interest in it. I put all kinds of snacks and things in the cart and then take them back out again. Then I spend every evening whinging to my mom that I have no junk food in the house and what kind of monster is denying me cookies at 8:30 at night?!

Anyhow, I’ve been putting things in and taking things out of my cart since like last Thursday and it’s getting dire. I’m almost out of milk and I need toilet paper and latex gloves, so I’m going to have to be brave and click the checkout button. There are snacks in the cart right now, but will they still be there when I complete the purchase?!

Probably not, because I’m actually incredibly stupid and mean to myself.

Aren’t you glad I started blogging again? Deep, insightful stuff going on here.

Today’s music: Starting with Toad the Wet Sprocket’s album “Fear” straight through. I’d forgotten how good this album is.

No Ouch?

The Supermassive Black Hole of Pain I mentioned a few posts back, that was there just being all hot and weird and pulsing and squeezing and possibly emitting dark matter?

Stopped

Yesterday I woke up and it didn’t hurt and I thought “ok, it’s because I just woke up and I haven’t done anything risky like take a deep breath, or try to roll over” and then I did those things and it still didn’t hurt.

I went to the bathroom. I got dressed. I came downstairs. I made coffee.

Didn’t hurt

So I stood in the kitchen and leaned and twisted and reached and contorted in ways that are dangerous at the best of times and …

Nothin’ hurt

I’m used to pain receding. You know, how it goes away in stages, like each day it’s not as bad as the day before and eventually you realize it doesn’t hurt but you can’t specifically say what day it was when it stopped. Not this time. Went to sleep on Friday making “ooch” noises and trying to figure out the best position where the least number of things hurt, and when I woke up, it was gone.

So I’m assuming what I had was an alien probe of some sort? A little device monitoring me for the future of humanity I guess? The good news is I’m pretty much a harmless idiot, so if the aliens learned anything from me, it’s more than likely it’s things like “ouch bad, weed good, coffee best” so the good news is they’ll probably conquer us really easy, and there’ll be coffee and weed at the end.

You’re welcome

Not that anyone asked

Tom Stoppard died today, so naturally I thought of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. The whole Not On Boats thing and all. And while I was reading through the quotes (and trying to remember if I own this on DVD or not), I found this one that is an absolutely perfect example of what it’s like in my head at any given moment. Even if I’m doing something and probably even when I’m sleeping, I will have something almost exactly like this going on in another part of my brain. 

    Rosencrantz: So, we've got a letter that explains *everything*?
    Guildenstern: You've got it.
    Rosencrantz: I thought *you* had it?
    Guildenstern: I *do* have it.
    Rosencrantz: You have it?
    Guildenstern: You've got it.
    Rosencrantz: I don't get it.
    Guildenstern: You haven't got it.
    Rosencrantz: I just said that!
    Guildenstern: I've got it.
    Rosencrantz: Oh, I've got it!
    Guildenstern: Shut up!
    Rosencrantz: Right.

I am not kidding about it being constantly. Rosenstern and Guildencrantz are back there, Abbot-and-Costelloing it up. Shticking around. Getting into shenanigans while Work brain is trying to explain what data Data needs to do their little tasks, and of course continuing the hijinx when Work brain is attempting to do those tasks. And while Human brain is trying to do things like remember what things like “tired” and “hungry” feel like, or remember how to fix things like feeling hungry. It’s a wonder I can get anything done.

Well damn. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is available on streaming through Acorn, and I only have BritBox. Also, it turns out I didn’t have it on DVD, but it’ll be here in a few days.

The spelling check hates this post.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving

As is tradition, Mim and I will be going to that most gourmet of restaurants tomorrow for our Thanksgiving dinner. The biggest decision we’ll have to make is do we go to the Wawa on B- street, or the one on E- Avenue? Both are good. I feel like the one on E is a little nicer, because it’s closer to a major highway section, so it gets a lot more traffic. It could also be because it was the first Wawa in the neighborhood, so maybe I have a bias.

Anyhow, that’s the official plan. For the past… 5ish years or so that’s what we’ve done. Mim doesn’t eat turkey, neither of us really cooks, and honestly, the turkey bowl at Wawa is pretty good. It also prevents overeating and having too many leftovers to deal with.

If we’re lucky, we’ll also be able to get a couple of TastyKake pumpkin pies.

Like I said before. I have simple needs.

Christmas is coming up next and if anyone wants to get me anything, I’ve been really enjoying … uhm… this product. Ah… if you’re my coworker you might not want to click that.

I’m stuck on what to get Mim for Christmas. She’s already given me most of the stuff she’d bought, mostly because neither of us is good at waiting, and partly because I could be using some of the things she bought.

Like the Frankincense and Myrrh cream. Holy shit, y’all. Remember a couple of posts ago I was talking about the weird pain I was in? She gave me the Frankenmyrrh because it’s supposed to be good for soothing nerve pain and — again — Holy shit, y’all. It works. It’s just frankincense and myrrh and coconut oil as a carrier and it worked the first time I used it and has been continuing to help. I’m not sure what it smells like on me. I know in the container it’s a little bit … turpentine-y? It reminds me of something industrial, but not in a bad way. I also like the smell of gasoline, new tires, and ozone so your opinions may vary. I’ll ask Mim to sniff me tomorrow and let you know what she thinks.

I’m still writing. I have a new approach. I’m basically writing fanfic for a thing that doesn’t exist. Kinda want people to read it. Kinda don’t.

The Shrine

Killing time this morning waiting for coffee to brew and the dog to poo, I hit the Pluto TV app and the Stargate channel. The first thing I heard was Sheppard saying something about beer on the pier, and Rodney saying (in a very confused tone), “I drink beer?” and I shut that down so fast because there’s not much that absolutely upsets/terrifies/creeps me out, but that one thing is “genius loses their faculties” and the Stargate Atlantis episode “The Shrine” (streaming) is all about that.

It’s an amazing episode. It’s proof that David Hewlett is seriously underrated as an actor. But I’ve only been able to watch it twice because this really is the one thing that upsets me like nothing else.

I quit seeing a therapist when I tried to explain how terrifying the idea of losing your faculties was to me and she refused to get it. I don’t know if she thought she was leading me to some great breakthrough or she really couldn’t understand why losing my ability to think and forgetting who I am would be terrible, but if “If I can’t think or remember then who am I even?” didn’t explain it, I’m not really sure what else I could have said.

I’m also a little scared of “Locked-In” syndrome (that thing where your almost kinda in a coma, only just physically and your brain is still kicking around like normal) but not as scared as the losing thing, because most of my life has been spent not real sure how to interact in the physical world, and thinking things I couldn’t figure out how to communicate. Not being able to explain if/how I was in pain would be an issue, but again… I can’t really do that now.

Which is to say… my back really friggin hurts. It’s almost the same pain that sent me to the ER in September, but also not. It’s like a large chunk of my right abdomen was bitten by something and pulled off at the exact same time something kicked that same spot really hard and caved it in. It’s also simultaneously my ribs and not there at all. It’s nerves at the skin level and also somewhere floating inside.

Painkillers work, and I’m pretty sure a lot of it is just poor muscle tone and the fact that I did the recovery at a speed run because a) I am an idiot, b) they were never real clear about how long I shouldn’t do things, and c) I’m actually really just that much of an idiot (I wanted to drive myself home the day they discharged me). So like I’m not WORRIED about the pain, because it does get better and worse depending on how sensible I am, but it still HURTS and makes me cranky and distracted and tired and what I probably need is a few days off and someone else to deal with the dog, but what ya gonna do, right?

By the way, I’m aware of the irony of writing a blog about how I feel to complain about not being able to accurately explain how I feel. To quote Radiohead: This machine will not communicate / These thoughts and the strain I am under.

So look… I’ve been mentioning this blog more often to actual people, but I don’t know if you’re out there reading this. Mostly I don’t care, but today I’m using Edge on my backup computer to write this post and the site looks like absolute GARBAGE. If you ARE out there, drop a comment and let me know how things look for you. You can do it anonymously if you don’t want me to know who you are (because that would probably make me nervous if I knew who out there was actually reading (especially if you’re someone I might avoid eye contact with on a regular basis) — Take it up with my former therapist if you have a problem with that).