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When one blog is filled, another one must open. |
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Coming soon: more work from someone creative, ambitious, and determined - often called a variant of insane/crazy. Notes: Genderfluid. Preferred pronouns (they/them) [& denotes married couples] Immediate Family: soon-to-be-ex-Dilbert, Tempest, Dogbert My Extended Family: (s)Dad, cousins (K, D, G, J, F, N) I guess it's good to be on speaking terms with someone. Voluntarily. AuntS Dilbert's Extended Family: SIL (+5 kids)& BIL, FIL's gf (only for holidays, mostly) Important People I Don't See Enough: Owl + Partner, Paradise ICON crew (which owl is a part of) People I've Known a Long Time/Long Distance: Doc & [husband], Sheer & DocSheer, Mrs. Light & [husband], Trillium & Diego (not married but close enough), Steph Local People: MotherDroid, Owl&Partner ... There are about to be new people on this list, because, well, I'm evolving. And it hurts. DnD: used letters, S (DM), D(doctor), Y(because I like him!), K(old RPGer friend who also attends church), P(church guy who does game night and is local and our families are also friends), A (went to church but moved back to Chicago, moved back locally then i moved) Tempest's friends: I don't know very many of her local friends. She's got an internet buddy who also talks to CousinK's younger daughter. the younger daughter is DRAMA. Dogbert's friends: Has a new group of friends based on a Pokemon thing and they have a DnD club at school and outside of school. Lucky kid! |
| I need to find my to-do list again. There's a lot of stuff I should be doing, and it isn't getting done. I'm healing, though it seems to take forever. https://www.patreon.com/RansomNoble This was scary, but I did it. I'm glad. Figuring out how all the things are going together at this point. Trying to seek out the resistance to finishing the things and push through. I went to DemiCon last weekend with my friend Owl. I consider us buddies, friends, but apparently I'm entering her inner circle of besties, so I'm working to find my path with that. We had a good time, and she was around doing family stuff while I did the con stuff with a few other writers. One of the authors who isn't in my cohort but is on her way to being a bigger deal was doing several panels, not just on her speculative fiction writing, but also on metaphysical topics. Lucid Dreaming and Past Lives. That makes me wonder, though, about how to get other people into a different mindset about that. L Ron Hubbard and Robert Heinlein created religions on a bet, and people followed them. While this author is using a pen name for these other books - I'm not sure she knows what she's getting into with a pen name. A lot of people don't. She's also very stuck on traditional publishing, and won't go any other path. But I'm starting to wonder about things. So I'm using part of her Past Lives game as a way to rally my Present Life into some ideas. We didn't get to finish the game, but its' an interesting concept, and I think it has other applications besides what she thinks it is. Past lives are one idea, but I asked Owl on the way home and it could lead to appropriation. I don't think a lot of people understand that obsession with a race or culture is not very far from racism. Yet I could put different pieces together and understand some ideas about myself better in the present tense. The priest's wife helped me with my meanderings to bringing in ministry of presence, and that is very much something I need to explore more. My writer friends believe my superpower is that I can talk to anyone - and they're not wrong. So what are the past lives to teach me, if I can use the same basis to learn about my present self and my path? Anyway. I have a lot to do, so back to the writing I go. Wish me luck. |
| I need to find my to-do list again. There's a lot of stuff I should be doing, and it isn't getting done. I'm healing, though it seems to take forever. https://www.patreon.com/RansomNoble This was scary, but I did it. I'm glad. Figuring out how all the things are going together at this point. Trying to seek out the resistance to finishing the things and push through. I went to DemiCon last weekend with my friend Owl. I consider us buddies, friends, but apparently I'm entering her inner circle of besties, so I'm working to find my path with that. We had a good time, and she was around doing family stuff while I did the con stuff with a few other writers. One of the authors who isn't in my cohort but is on her way to being a bigger deal was doing several panels, not just on her speculative fiction writing, but also on metaphysical topics. Lucid Dreaming and Past Lives. That makes me wonder, though, about how to get other people into a different mindset about that. L Ron Hubbard and Robert Heinlein created religions on a bet, and people followed them. While this author is using a pen name for these other books - I'm not sure she knows what she's getting into with a pen name. A lot of people don't. She's also very stuck on traditional publishing, and won't go any other path. But I'm starting to wonder about things. So I'm using part of her Past Lives game as a way to rally my Present Life into some ideas. We didn't get to finish the game, but its' an interesting concept, and I think it has other applications besides what she thinks it is. Past lives are one idea, but I asked Owl on the way home and it could lead to appropriation. I don't think a lot of people understand that obsession with a race or culture is not very far from racism. Yet I could put different pieces together and understand some ideas about myself better in the present tense. The priest's wife helped me with my meanderings to bringing in ministry of presence, and that is very much something I need to explore more. My writer friends believe my superpower is that I can talk to anyone - and they're not wrong. So what are the past lives to teach me, if I can use the same basis to learn about my present self and my path? Anyway. I have a lot to do, so back to the writing I go. Wish me luck. |
| If you've friended me on the book of evil faces, you may have seen pictures of my injury. About two weeks ago, I partially tore my gastrocnemius, then complicated the matter with acute compartment syndrome. The bruises have been so fantabulous, it's hard to think straight. Also, ACS hurts like it might actually be better to cut the leg off. Last week when I saw the PT, he was talking about how you go from two crutches to one, to none... Well, I pushed through something, likely mental and physical, last week. My best guess is I got the hematoma in my leg to move. Sunday it was excruciating to walk with two crutches on the floor (despite trying since Tuesday when the PT said that). Monday I could do it. Yesterday I walked a bit with a single crutch, though more often with two. Today I'm walking with none. I'm still limping to a degree; my left foot does not want to be behind my body yet. I'm not sure he's going to expect me to be this far. The bruises change daily, and this week seem to be moving upward on my leg (and also downward into my foot). I'm excited to be moving better with less pain. But occasionally have also been worried I made it worse. In news of the kids- Tempest got asked out by a boy but said she thinks she likes girls. I told her it was okay not to know yet and that's it's all right not to be ready for anything like that. Dogbert got an evaluation for dancing and they think he can do better than he's doing... Sigh. He's just having a rough time with something with the headaches. If only I could get my headache to disappear. It's probably time for more painkillers. I've had a lot on my mind, and I'm not achieving my goals at the moment. Time to shake something up and get back on the track to getting something accomplished. |
| If you know me, you know I don't choose to watch TV much. Today I chose Dead Poet's Society. Honestly, tricky choice bc while they said it was on Disney+, I couldn't find it there. Lucky vimeo allowed it. Dilb said he didn't like it. I said that's one reason I'm watching it in here, to not inflict it on anyone else. It's the only really depressing movie I like. I dunno, maybe, there are probably others. It's also the one I really, really understand. Supposedly it's set in 1959, and those boys in prep school are off to the ivy leagues to be bigwigs. And I felt that pressure so much - I had to go to engineering, I had to do things (especially step-dad thought was good for me) rather than what made me happy. I understood Neil too well, perhaps, since I wanted to be a writer despite all the other stuff I did. He also wanted me to marry a white, anglo-saxon Protestant -caveat, had to be methodist, lutheran, or presbyterian- (man) who made as much money as i did (as an engineer). It took me too many years to realize that list had nothing to do with happiness or fun or love. It was much more about security and control and protection. I tell my kids differently. I let them explore stuff they enjoy. (not EVERYTHING because you can't do it all at once, but yeah, try it, do it, learn it.) Tempest struggles with depression already, and anxiety is awful, but she says it isn't home that's the problem. I can understand that, middle school sucks. Next year she's in high school and Dogbert has to navigate it. Ugh the headache is returning. Back to resting and no screens. |
| So, breakthrough in communication sometime last week between Dilbert and I. Like, amazing breakthrough. I wish we'd done that years ago, but still, I'll take it now. He got a follow-up to his blood pressure, and it is better, and they're waiting for him to start exercising (biking season needs to start soon). I have COVID, and I got it from Tempest. Dogbert may not have registered on the test, and Dilbert doesn't seem to have succumbed to it, oddly. Yet. I changed my cast above. It's been really difficult since the move and Mom. I miss her terribly. It's a year this weekend, and I hate everything about that. We were going to go on vacation, and then COVID. It sucks. It would have helped to be gone. I woke at 530 today. Or so. Finished listening to an audiobook (reading novellas for the Nebulas with a friend) and it's been fun. Nearly finished my tarot card readings for the certification. I'm about to go back to sleep, though. Quarantine doesn't suit me very well. I was starving and I actually didn't sneak out to get myself food, but it took forever to get people to bring me stuff. *sigh* Tempest is out of quarantine today. She still comes in now that she can. I missed her. I miss Dogbert, too, but he did bring me a clean towel so I could shower. I asked him for something he could bring me for breakfast, but it was the last chocolate muffin so i let him eat it. It's hard not having a lot of local friends here. I talk to Trillium and Steph a lot. Less Diego and Mrs Light, but most of Mrs. Light is scheduling difficulties. MotherDroid is a star wars fan, obviously, and she works at gymnastics with me, too. She's a single mom of 4 kids and i find her pretty impressive. Owl is in my ParadiseICON group, and it's exciting to be closer to her to hang out sometimes. We might go to anoher Con together in the twin cities this year. I've been crocheting stuff like mad, heightening my skills and also just letting my emotional craziness take form in yarn and thread. The writing is going nowhere at the moment. Maybe soon that will turn around. |
| Yesterday marked one month since the hypertensive crisis. He says he still has some Rx left and doesn't need more yet. He says he's made healthier food choices and seems upset I didn't notice faster. (It had been about a week since our talk that he needs to take care of himself. I mentioned doctors specifically, especially a therapist.) I feel like I need to have healthy boundaries. I do not have them here. It's really hard to admit that it just isn't going to work. Even though I know it won't. He's not going to change, he's going to tell me what he thinks I want to hear, and he's not going to do simple things like get fucking groceries (for him and the kid that's home) if he runs out of something when I'm out of town. (that happened a week ago) I feel like he's just going to hold me down here until he is fine to do what he wishes. But I do not see myself staying permanently. I try to. I try not to think of time with him as wasted. It just isn't working, and everything around me points to that and somehow I still want to not listen. This, too, hurts. Tempest has issues and doesn't want to share them with Dilbert. Dogbert always phones me instead of talking to Dilbert about anything when I'm gone. Sometimes Dogbert calls me just to talk (when I'm at gymnastics but finished with work). I can tell when his tablet has shut down, but only if Tempest is with me. Yet if what i started asking was to take care of himself (because he's an adult) = Regular doc appt, his overdue colonoscopy, a therapist, taking his meds and refilling them... He's sick today and I'm pretty sure it's from brooding over our issues because I'm starting to talk about them. *whispers* I haven't spoken about the genderfluid part yet. It's like this scary thing to bring up. I can't even say why. He's always known I was bisexual (or whatever inclusive term to mean I'm not selective of only one gender for intimate relationships). Why does gender feel so much harder? |
| I'm not the asshole. I'm not the narcissist. I feel like I'm standing on shifting sands. On one hand, Dilb agreed he needs to change his health. I still don't think he gets how close he was to a heart attack. He's blaming me for the reasons he is not home. He blames me because I take the kids everywhere, and 4 nights a week I am gone between kids' activities and my own. He worked late before I did this. And he will work late again, whether I'm home or not. I refused to wait for him, and I did things to make myself happier. He's complained in small or large ways since, that I'm not home. He could choose to work out in that time. Or to cook himself something healthy to eat. Or a number of other things LIKE HANGING OUT WITH HIS FUCKING CHILDREN. He chooses to work late, over and over and over again. I feel like I'm getting gaslit. And I am. Whether or not it's because of his neurodivergence or his narcissism that won't let him see him the way the kids and I see him. I'm not changing for him. I deserve better. I'm slowly processing through the things he said last night. Like he refuses to go to therapy because he's "fine". He's not. This isn't going to work. It's just him saying what he thinks I need to hear so I don't do anything drastic. Meanwhile, it's time to update my damn resume. |
| So, Sheer and DocSheer - had a lovely but weird convo last night about my struggles. It started tangentiallly but then went deep into the rift between Dilbert and me. Somehow it all kept falling out, because Dilbert has been sick and mostly a lump on the couch for two weeks (when he isn't parked in front of the tv he's in my office in a meeting pretending to work), or he has casually exerted himself going up the stairs and having a mild argument and suddenly he's hack/vomiting up a lung in the kitchen sink. I'm fed up with him on several levels, but bc DocSheer is no longer his doctor (nor the kids') she could tell me she may suspect he's on the spectrum. Which really throws me for a loop, because I was on the narcissism and OCD route, but he's not like my friend with OCD (though OCD takes different forms) bc my friend talks about his OCD support group, and how they're different. I would still say some narcissism in there, but ASD takes a different turn and actually does support several things I know about him growing up and being an adult (can you believe I've known him 27 years this fall?) and a few of the pieces might fit better.  I did ask Dilb to go to therapy this year, for himself. Our insurance doesn't really cover couple's therapy unless it relates to the mental health of one of the participants (usually they look at me as the diagnosed and in-therapy one). The biggest problem with being the one in therapy, taking meds, is that all fault is generally assumed to be mine, by both of us. Yes, I'm working to turn that around. It is a very long road when you cannot trust your brain, and figuring out you also can't trust your partner's brain that you had trusted so much when you were younger? Except somewhere I knew i couldn't trust him. It's been more and more apparent over the years, which is one reason I do not confide so many things in him that I should if he were a partner, but he has demonstrated many times he prefers to act as manager of the house and not a partner or even a participant in most ways. My head is still exploding but I'm going to get through this. I'm so overwhelmed I can't even write this week. This cannot pass soon enough. Tempest gets braces next week, and the kids and I all have eye doc appointments within the first week of March. I have left Dilbert to take care of himself for so many things, and he proves again and again that he just cannot. Can't even drive 15 min to pick up Dogbert from dance to save me an hour of driving. Two days in a row. Expects me to bring him food. Can't run the snowblower and also doesn't tell me how to do it. So many little things are just too damn much. |
| The StruggleBus is stuck catecorner in the middle of an intersection, as far as I'm concerned. The kids both had strep last week, and one of them had something else which she may have given to her father, who isn't dealing well with whatever he has (he's been a lump on the couch in the dungeon basement for days, not bothering to do anything that isn't for himself. I had to take him to the doc yesterday, and call for the appointment. His first blood pressure was in hypertensive crisis. HOLY FUCK IT WAS IN CRISIS MODE. Turns out he admits to having two blood pressure medications that he hasn't refilled or gotten a doctor to see him about since the moves in '21. He says his blood pressure isn't an issue when he isn't sick. When I say he's a workaholic running toward an early grave - it's this kind of behavior that makes me think this. (Don't forget my father died one day because he was morbidly obese, didn't see doctors, and one day the blood pressure bomb went off. He was 53. Dilb is currently 46. I hate BMI as a measure, but his is 38.7 if that helps you visualize. I know my father was worse, but... this is still triggering to me.) I realized the writer's course I signed up for was a social justice writing class - and while that is a good thing to push beyond the boundaries, to look through the eyes of other minorities and embrace that - because they are correct. All writing is political, and it is only the privileged writing other privileged that ignores the politicalness of their stories. Or maybe the privileged reading the privileged writing privileged characters. In most cases I think this is actually pretty great for me to see and learn from all these other great writers. OTOH, I have a past that likes to creep into their stories. It's little things that they're trying to have be known, like how white people differentiate in their groups for being Irish or German or British, yet expect entire swaths of brown or black people to be single-cultured "african" or "asian" or the like. And I hear things whispered again that both make more sense and become more layered in what they meant. Also, sadly, it brings up times when I was the excluded one for reasons I maybe didn't know or understand. It's a problem in the Midwest, for sure, especially among the white bread (read white, cishet males) who overwhelmingly populate engineering jobs. To them, I never fit in, I was an affirmative action choice, and never worth what the rest of them were, and yes, one of them even told me I was an affirmative action choice. He wasn't my boss, but no matter what my other strengths - that stung. Sometimes I have to take time off of that class. I think this week is one of them. I feel fragile. Usually one of my best times is going to coach gymnastics, and in the first class I just had the hardest kids (because my coaching partner was out, and I gave the sub my easier class). On the second class, two girl -one fairly new, one who has been incredibly sweet in the past- came up to me. New girl: I want to rip your head off. Second: With a knife. Whatever it is in my brain, I don't process this kind of information quickly. I simply looked at them: If you say things like that, I'm going to think you don't like me. The girls: We like you! It's hard to look for support in my co-coach who is 19. I finished the class (only 10 more minutes) and we went home. Tempest had practice, so I was there with time to think about that, and I felt completely done peopling, but I did mention it to the manager before I left. She's usually not there that late, but I shouldn't have to deal with that, too. I know I'm not an easy coach but I am working to make them better. I've noticed with all of those things in my head, I dive deep into crochet. If you're on my facebook you've seen the different projects. I've also been reading books and finding patterns. Repetitive motion is soothing, especially when my brain is reeling with all of these things. I'm also feeling alone in the writing class. The facebook group is a little dead? I haven't connected with anyone there. I thought about reaching out to the teacher, but I'm not sure how to say that. I'm ready to wave a white flag and I have at least one thing be easier- even if it is just to get the family feeling less sick and able to do what they normally do. |
| Yesterday I started bk 2. This morning I woke with a migraine. These two events are unrelated, since Dogbert is a bed hog and I blame him completely. Trying to get creative with my current stash of yarn to make things I want to wear and that suit me. I've been going through a wardrobe clear-out and change-up, and it's very involved. Dilbert just likes seeing the huge pile of stuff I'm getting rid of, so that's something. |
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