Brain currently booting in Safe Mode

The menstrual nonsense seems to be nearing the end. My body, it seems, decided that doubling (the jury is out on trebling) the length/intensity was amusing. You know, for funsies. NOT FUN AND YOU CAN FUCK ALL THE WAY OFF. Parts of me feel bruised and I am not amused.

I have also been avoiding the news. It's a half-hearted kind of active. If it's on or in front of me, I will pay attention, but I'm not seeking it out. The world is quite literally on fire AGAIN and it's a lot. I can handle it, sure, but I also know that it's not good for me to handle it. There's no need to spiral out into the dark morass of my shitty brain chemistry if I can stake steps to mitigate some of it. The hamsters are already coked out and itching to run the wrong way on the wheel. I have no interest in giving them any assistance to do so.

Donuts:

Declan's been sick this week. Again. I tested him using a rapid test and it came back negative, but that doesn't mean much of anything. Wednesday, there was more life in a wet dishrag than there was in my kid. He's been bouncing back, but isn't anywhere near school-healthy as of yet. His appetite has somewhat returned, so that's a relief.

On Tuesday, we went out thrifting. Shocking no one, I bought yarn, BUT I also found a couple of things that I had been looking for first try. I found a new cotton blanket for our bed (ours was quite old and was starting to disintegrate) as well as a nice bedspread. Laundry happened, and the blanket went onto the bed, and the bedspread got a little adjusting into a new futon cover. My only complaint is that it is a crumb-magnet, but I suspect that it's also a naptrap and I'm okay with that trade off.

Pilling the cat is an ADVENTURE. I think I have to cut Sunny's claws again, since I'm starting to wear his protestations on my hand. It's getting easier, though slow going.

I made another blanket, all from thrifted yarn. It's hideous and I love it. It still needs finishing (ends woven in, blocked) and I will post pictures when that's done.

Compression socks still suck. They bunch in the same spot, the dip between my ankle and shin, and I am not impressed. *grumble*

I had a mammogram yesterday. I know it's important and all that and yes, I'm grateful that I can get the requisition, book an appointment and go, with no cost to myself. And yet. There is a certain amount of indignity and discomfort that goes with it. So no, I do not like them, but I like cancer even less, so there's that.

Periods suck. Can I be done with them now?

I'm still trying to make a dent in my physical TBR. It's slow going, but it's going. Reading hasn't been a thing for me lately, my head just isn't in it. Maybe today I will have some time to just sit and read and rest.

My life is pretty fucking boring. I need to get outside more, but it's so easy to stay in and hermit. Thanks inertia!

Back from the vet. That was an expensive visit. At least now we have a diagnosis. Sunny has something called Idiopathic Cystitis, which is basically a stress reaction that manifests in the bladder in cats. (In people, it would be stress-induced stomach upset.)

The only thing we can do for him is put him on the good painkillers for a couple of weeks and then keep an eye out for any kind of warning behaviour that indicates he's starting to get really stressed out again. When that happens, it's another bout of pain management, and that's all that can be done for him.

Dudes, my cat has anxiety.

That's it. That's the take-away. I have an anxious cat, and between the people being home all the time (which is a change in routine) and the construction literally right outside our windows, his brain made himself sick.

Welcome to the club, Sunny. Having ye olde hamsters run the wrong way on the wheel is something of a tradition around here. Here's your good drugs and some scritches.

He did, though, already pee in the litterbox and not on the floor (after I dosed him), so now I can actually use the enzyme cleaner I bought last week. Hurray for me? Because I love to clean. *rolls eyes*

I have a gum boil. It's as gross as it sounds.

They usually come about for two reasons: 1) poor oral hygiene, or 2) dying tooth. As I have a dying tooth that I'm already planning to get pulled (a cracked tooth that can't be saved), I'm not too worried about it. It doesn't hurt, at least, so that's something. It is, though, leaving a weird taste in my mouth that I could live without, so I'm going to start salt water rinses to deal with it.

Also, the weather has been pretty fucking glorious lately. Paul and I got out for a walk on Thursday because we are both in desperate need of more exercise. We went to a local trail and there were butterflies (possibly mourning cloaks) and a woodpecker (looked to be a female downy) and very few people. It was lovely, actually.

My knitting continues apace. It's slow. I'm still on the same sock, but I'm working on the tube part and continental knitting feels really natural to me. The pattern I'm using is supposed to yield two socks from 100g of wool. I'm not halfway through the tube section and I've already knitted ~25g. ON ONE SOCK. Yes, I did have to scale up the pattern into something that would fit my foot/ankle, but it should not have made that huge of a difference. At least I was mistakenly sent another skein of the same colourway, so I'm not completely fucking screwed.

Not much else of note has been happening. Pandemic is still pandemicking on. I've had my first dose of the vaccine, with the second already booked for late July. My only real 'side effect' was my anxiety being a complete butt, which is a total 'me' problem. Ugh.

Paul is now officially working from home. He got his kit last week, which consisted of the same set up as his workstation in the office. He was expecting a laptop, but no: two all-in-one desktops, mouse, keyboard, workstation hub. That necessitated some thinking. And some rearranging. And some buying. So, about $100 (cable, moveable 'workstation' - aka a kitchen cart at a steep discount) and a lot of frustration later, here we are.

In some ways, this is good. I am forced to get out of bed, showered and dressed before he starts his shift at 10am. Before, I was getting into the shower at noon or 1pm, getting up at 9 or 10, and staying up WAY past my bedtime. So, I was ostensibly getting enough sleep, but I wasn't getting it at the right time and it was really fucking up my circadian rhythm and doubling down on my depression. My medication is already working overtime as it is; I don't need to make it worse.

(I was up too late last night, but I was part of the Bad Decisions Book Club. We don't meet or hang out, we just want to read One More Page. I started and finished Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher yesterday. So. Good. The hero is a paladin of a dead god who knits socks to keep his depressive thoughts from being intrusive and the heroine is a perfumer who has had kind of a shitty life but doesn't stop moving forward, however she can. They are awkward and adorable together. And the secondary characters are fantastic. I adore Bishop Beartongue, head of the Temple of the White Rat. She reminds me strongly of Granny Weatherwax, which is never a bad thing, in my not-so-humble opinion. I laughed out loud at a couple of points and now I want to read the other three books set in the same universe.)

Today, I have already started some laundry, and plan on making a pie. I want to do things at the moment, so I'm going to capitalize on that for as long as I can. :)

Wounds successfully licked. That sounds weird in both my head and when I write it here. *shrugs*

I am, though, feeling better, even if I am suffering from a lack of alone time because of things outside of my control. I'm pretty pissed at the provincial government right now for being obstinate asses who are more interested in shifting blame than they are in trying to fix the problem. And who suffers? The kids who aren't in school. Those very kids that they swore up and down weren't going to be used as political pawns. *rolls eyes*

Hypocrisy, let me show you it.

Welp, I'm gonna go make some lunch for me and the boy, then clean the apartment, because it really needs it and I've been slacking (even for me). I might be GenX, the Slacker Generation, but I don't have to embody it all the time.

Plus my carpet is crunchy. Ew. :P

I haven't been posting much because...well, I haven't felt like I've had much to post about.

November, thus far, has not been an easy month for me, brain wise. I don't know if it's the gloom or the fact that Shannon would have turned 14 yesterday or just my brain being a screaming bag of dicks because it can.

I turned 44 this week. It feels remarkably like 43 (and 42 and 41), although my hair is longer.

Today, I got woken up out of a dream at around 4:30 when Sheldon decided to put his claws into my areola. So that was fun. I really enjoyed the getting up, using the facilities and washing my hands, before dousing a cotton ball in isopropyl alcohol and cleaning the wound. It might explain why I am tired and out of sorts today.

So, in retaliation, I clipped his claws and Sunny's. That was...not fun and earned me a couple more scratches and another go round with an alcoholic cotton ball. Ugh.

I did get Declan outside for some sledding, but had to cut it short because A) I was cold and B) I am still trying to get over this cold that keeps on keepin' on. There is definitely a nap in my very near future.

I'm going to end with a little bit of good news from this week: the post fused to the bone (aka, I did not roll a 1 on my dental surgery). Now I wait to hear back from my dentist and get to spend another obscene amount of money for a fancy mouth crown.

The hunt ended Saturday night. I survived! I do have some thoughts on GISH that might/might not spur a few of you on to do the thing.

First, the inevitable question of what is GISH? It's part be the weird you want to see in the world, part random acts of kindness, part make good art, part personal challenge. How this breaks down for you depends ON YOU. I won't lie, though; it is fun and creative, yes, but also stressful and overwhelming, too.

I participated in the ultimate GISHWHES last year and the inaugural GISH this year. This year, I knew what to expect, so had a much easier time judging my own capabilities and time constraints. That said, I did overdo it this year and did more than I probably should have done. Whoops. :)

Am I proud of what I did this year? Heck yeah! Did I exceed my expectations and do more than last year? Heck yeah! Will I repeat this crazysauce experience and do it next year? *crickets*

GISH is 8 frenetic days and 7 sleepless nights. You are pushed out of your comfort zone more than once. Hell, you PAY to be pushed out of your comfort zone (there's a nominal fee of $21.08USD to take part). It's part of the creative wacky weirdness to change not just your life, but the lives of others, too. GISH has a pretty big inclusive component and pretty strict zero tolerance policy for harassment and bullies. They don't have Rules and Regulations, but Commandments. And while they might be amusingly written, the intent behind them is pretty damned clear: do the thing as written or risk disqualification.

So, you have 8 days to collaborate with your team or whomever else you can rope into your shenanigans. Or not. A lot of the items can be done alone. You do what you can and don't worry about how much someone else on your team is doing. You can play for fun or play to win. Top prize is a trip with Misha Collins (aka Castiel, aka The Head Sock Monkey) somewhere in the world. This year, the trip is to New Zealand, hence the fee. Can't afford it? There are people who donate the entrance so that more people can play. It's called a GISHScholarship, and I think that's pretty damned nifty.

Now that you have some background on GISH and maybe a few reasons WHY you might want to play, I need to reason out why I am giving serious thought to giving GISH a pass next year.

I pushed myself this year. Really pushed myself. Normally, that's not a bad thing, but I started to have a depressive downswing in the middle of GISH because I was stressed out and starting to feel overwhelmed. So yeah, I overdid it.

About halfway through the hunt, I started passing out on the couch in the middle of the day. Not falling asleep for a cat nap, actual passing out from exhaustion. Creativity is tiring, yo. It's one thing to participate in NaNoWriMo, and another to get GISHed. The former is a month-long race to the 50 000 words, where you stay in your lane. The latter is about a week of sprinting in different directions at the same time. Whilst the creativity is amazing in both cases, one is a hell of a lot more draining because you are giving more of yourself in a lot less time.

I also found my team to be a lot less...supportive this time around. I'm not blaming anyone for fucking up my GISHy experience because it was awesome, but the other members seemed a little distant compared to last year. It might just be a combination of their circumstances and my perceptions of it, so take that with as much salt as you need.

I know it sounds like I'm complaining a bit here, but I'm really not. These are observations of my own experiences. The creativity and the process and the putting yourself out there is both terrifying and exhilarating and silly, and the things that you do and make are weird and wonderful. GISH is not dull, not by any stretch, but I think I've had my fill for a while.

(And for the curious, you can see what I did this year in Part 1 and Part 2.)

I hate when my brain is like this. The weather is gorgeous and I feel... Ennui? Sad? Apathetic? It doesn't matter what it's called; I have it and I don't like it. I'm caught in the doldrums (?) and it fucking sucks.

I can function and get things done, so that's something, right?

I am trying to overcome my own inertia. I don't know if it's depression-related apathy or the dreary weather or what. I have managed to get two loads of laundry mostly done. Now I need to fold it and put it away. AND I have done the majority of my physiNO. I keep adding to the work I have to do because I want my knee sorted, not because I've been tasked with doing it. I don't have another appointment for three weeks (it's how things shook out) and that's fine with me.

Declan has been insisting that he give me plants instead of cut flowers. A couple of weeks ago, it was daffodils. For Mother's Day, it's hydrangeas, which are lovely and blue. I must remember to call my own mom tomorrow before I leave for game and wish her a Happy Mother's Day. I don't bother asking what she wants anymore, because the answer is always nothing. Which is great for my wallet, but kind of hell on the guilt. :P

Now that the daffodils have finished, I need to figure out what to do with the bulbs. Maybe I will give my mom the daffodil bulbs so that she can plant them in her garden to come up next year. I don't want to throw them out, and I don't have a place to put them, so it seems like a logical solution.