Here and There – Page 7

If You Build it, They Will Come

Daily writing prompt

How are you creative?

That is a good question I’m unsure how to answer. I can get very creative when something breaks or I want to do something but don’t have the correct tools or instruments. Helping Phin (the blind one) around the house has brought out my creative side because I have to make sure he can get up where he wants to go and get down without hurting himself. One place he likes to go is on the refrigerator, and he has jumped down from it before, but I’m so afraid he is going to hit the table or chair if he miscalculates his jump.

I’ve been taking apart furniture I want to get rid of and saving the wood in case I want to make something, so I took some shelves from an old bookshelf and got some brackets and Adam fashioned some shelves that go from the fridge around the wall and onto a cupboard. Theo loves them and gets on the fridge now, but Phin won’t use them even though we’ve spent time helping him find a safe way down using the shelves🙄. Now, when he wants down, he meows and Adams gets him. I can’t reach the top of the fridge so Phin’s stuck until his daddy comes.

Another thing I came up with was a sling for the babies when they were tiny because they wanted held a lot, and mostly when I was working. I took a couple of Adam’s crew socks and a COVID face mask and sewed the mask to the socks. The babies loved it and I was able to work. Theo still likes to be held from time to time so I bought an actual sling for small animals, but he loved the one I made until he outgrew it.

A great solution unless both babies wanted held at the same time

Otherwise, my creativity comes out through words. Words, spelling, and grammar make up my special interest, so it’s not a big surprise. I’ve been writing stories and poetry since I was very young and I’m definitely the writer in the family. I can draw if I’m looking at something (like the AristoCats below), but writing comes easily to me and is what I’m most passionate about.

When I decided to return to college, I tried to major in something that would benefit work or lay the foundation for a new career path, but that just resulted in me switching majors four times. After my brother died and I started school again, I decided to stop denying myself and go with my passion. My studies in poetry class reignited my love for poetry, which I was hoping for, so I chose poetry as my concentration under an English creative writing major. I didn’t care for screenplay writing at all 😝. Oddly enough, I don’t really like reading poetry, especially modern poetry like Frost, Whitman, and Dickinson. I’m extremely unrefined. Dr. Seuss hits the spot for me, and I’ve only recently been learning how to forego the rhyming and do some free verse. I did discover Rupi Kaur and like her poetry very much.

Speaking of, my book of poetry will be coming out in 2024!! I am so excited, scared, and proud, and kind of sad. Mom really wanted to see me published and I hate that she is missing the chance, but she is my driving force and I know she would be proud of me. I gave myself until December 2024 with the Library of Congress because I want to take more poetry classes and get some more poems written. I have a bad habit of throwing stuff away, and that includes poems I’ve written over the years, so my collection sits at around 50 poems.

I would love to be the poetic JK Rowling, but I don’t have those expectations and am wanting to do this for myself and Mom. I keep telling Adam that my writing won’t get recognized until after I die, which is shockingly common with poets. Sometimes it feels like poetry is a lost art, but I see such great work online and really love that it’s alive and well.

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So Gratifying

Day 4: Gratitude

What Can You Do Today to Instantly Lift Your Mood?

Okay, so this is an easy one. All of my kiddies instantly lift my mood, unless they are the reason I am Captain Cranky Pants. I mean, look at Willow! When she is not on my keyboard, she is a total sweetheart. She is a Daddy’s Girl, but fortunately, all our kiddies love both of us; they just have their preferences. For some reason, my boy, Phin, has been spending a lot of time with Adam. I don’t know if it’s because I keep moving things around and making it difficult for him to navigate the home or what. He makes himself right at home on Adam’s chest after Adam gets up and wants to stay there all day. He became super attached to us after Merlin died, who was his bestest buddy.

My baby boy with his lone white whisker.

Unless Adam is the reason I’m in a bad mood, he can instantly lift my mood. He hates when I am sad, upset, overwhelmed, etc., so he tries to cheer me up, usually by being funny. One time, when we hadn’t been dating very long, he was performing “surgery” on my toe and it hurt to the point that I was crying. He got up near my face and said or did something that made me laugh and I accidentally spit tears and snot right in his face. It was so embarrassing!

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Gratatouille

Okay, so I didn’t know the 30-Day Mindset Journal Challenge was going to focus on one theme a week at a time. I don’t know if my ADHD self has it in me to wax poetic about the same subject for seven days. Needless to say, we’re still talking about gratitude, and I’m all gratituded out. Also, I am incredibly tired of waiting for the exciting thing that is coming up and I just want it to be now. I’m failing my challenge spectacularly and not writing every day, but I am working and going to school full-time, so I expected as much. My 30-day challenge may take me 60 days but I’m cool with that 😂.

Day 3: Gratitude

What Makes You Happy?

I’m not really a happy person but some things do make me happy. Water makes me very happy. When I went to Niagara Falls with my ex when he was an OTR truck driver, it was the most awesome, peaceful experience I had ever encountered. Just standing there watching the water was crazy soothing for me. I’ve always loved water; seeing it and being in it.

Oddly, I cannot swim on top of water, like Michael Phelps, but I have been swimming underwater since my dad threw me off the diving board before I could walk. I didn’t ask him to do that but it worked 🤷‍♀️. I love watching the little waterfalls on the side of the mountains in my state when it rains, I love rivers and streams and ponds. I love the sound of water. I think I should have been a fish.

I’m not sure if it was the happiest I’ve been, but the most peaceful and exhilarating thing I’ve done was riding the Slotzilla Super-Hero Zoom Zoomline in Las Vegas. This was after Mom died and I decided to book us for the zoomline on a whim when I was planning our vacation. It’s quite odd because I don’t do well with heights at all. I get dizzy and nauseated standing on a chair or stool. Adam had to come help me off the side of Mom’s garden tub when I was painting and could not put my hand on the wall for support because I had just painted it. I hated going up in the arch in Missouri and had to go back down almost immediately after getting up there. It’s bad.

I was feeling a bit reckless after Mom died, and I was excited about the zoomline until we were halfway to the loading platform. We got strapped in, Adam was in his harness across from me, and I made the mistake of looking down while lying on my harness. (Shrek? I’m looking down!) Instant tummy rumbles and vertigo. Adam or the guy fastening me in noticed my anxiety and told me to look out in front of me and not below me, so I did and the vertigo ceased. Then, we were off!

It. Was. Amazing!! It was so freeing and calming, and I’ve not experienced anything like it before or since. I could have spent the week doing nothing else but flying over Fremont Street. I was able to look down while I was in motion and could see people waving up at us but even briefly closing my eyes and taking in the feeling of flying was so cool. That was in 2015 and I still remember how it felt. I don’t know if the zipline, which is another option, would have been the same for me and I’m glad I chose the former.

The worst thing about our vacation aside from us both getting sick halfway through was flying. We flew with Spirit, and the plane was much smaller than what I had been on prior (I didn’t like that flight, either, and was wrapped around my mom’s arm until we landed) and the turbulence was worse in a smaller plane. The Spirit flights were only 4 hours each way and felt like forever. It was Adam’s first time flying and he wasn’t phased.

Other things that make me happy are Adam, the kiddies, my cousins, concerts, reading, pink, music, the smell of Febreze, and more that I can’t think of at the moment. I think falling in love is a pretty awesome feeling and it’s something people in long-term relationships kind of miss. I mean, I’m totally in love with my husband, but it will never be like it was in the beginning with the anticipation and butterflies and missing him five seconds after he leaves. It’s a different kind of happiness now.

The Taylor Swift concert movie is coming up and I haven’t started on my friendship bracelets yet! I’ve never made those before but Adam is going to make some with me and I told him he would be tying mine 😂. The kit came with fishing-line-looking line that you tie or put clasps on and it’s so slick, I don’t know how it will stay tied. I guess I should get cracking on those and not wait until the last minute. Our friend who just took us to see Blue October again is going with us. I will be pretty upset if we are the only ones with bracelets to hand out.

It seems like an unspoken rule that only concert-goers trade bracelets, but there are so many of us who couldn’t afford tickets or transportation to the closest venues. I’ve never been able to afford going to a concert because it’s not just the tickets that cost money. Our closest stadiums or amphitheaters are hours away, so there is the cost of gas, hotel rooms, any concessions, and unplanned expenses. I’ve attended concerts with my aunt since we like the same music and they were fun but she paid for me. We were lucky with Blue October because they performed very close to us both times we got to see them, and even then our friend paid our way as a wedding gift and then an anniversary gift.

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You Need a Gratitude Adjustment

Day 2 of the 30-Day Mindset Journal Challenge from Seeking Serotonin focuses on gratitude, like Day 1. I don’t know what more I can say about gratitude but I guess that’s why it’s called a challenge! I’ve always been a Negative Nancy but that doesn’t mean I’ve never been grateful for anything. Sadly, I became more grateful for my mom after she died, but I don’t think that’s uncommon. I did learn to appreciate her once I became an adult, but the guilt and regret I feel for being a kid are still there. I know it’s irrational, I was a kid, but I still feel bad for how I treated her while growing up. I think that is a big part of why I never wanted kids. I knew how I acted and I know I couldn’t and wouldn’t tolerate a child who behaved like I did. Well, I couldn’t tolerate any children regardless of how they behaved. I don’t have the maternal chip, which I am totally okay with. Let’s get on with Day 2.

Day 2: Gratitude

What does gratitude mean to you?

Gratitude is a pretty straightforward concept. Having/showing gratitude means you are grateful for something or someone and you feel blessed to have that something or someone. It can be as simple as someone helping you up from a fall, giving you something you need, helping you out financially, giving you a compliment when you’re feeling down, and on and on. In my last post, I mentioned being grateful for my mom and my husband, but I’m grateful for many things and people.

I’m grateful for my psychiatrist for working with me and trying different medications until I no longer felt overwhelmingly suicidal. I am grateful for the medications that keep me alive and the insurance that keeps those medications free for me. I’m grateful for my professors who teach me even though they get terrible pay. I’m grateful for SNHU allowing me to continue school after I had to take breaks due to my brother dying and my depression. I’m grateful for my three jobs. I’m grateful for each and every kiddie that chose Adam and me to be their parents. I’m grateful for my family. I have had a hard go of it since Mom died but I’m grateful to still be here to fight through another day.

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The Great Fool

I saw something called shadow work journaling online (I have no idea what I was searching for) and decided to give it a shot. I used to have a therapist whom I loved, but she dropped me after I missed three appointments, which kind of irked me because I was seeing her for major depressive disorder and ADHD. Missing/forgetting/canceling appointments tends to happen with those disorders. It was right after my brother died, too, so that was really helpful 😒.

Anyway, I want to try the journaling here so I can pretend there is an audience and maybe stick to doing it. No promises! I’ll be using some prompts I found online, although I have the worst memory and the prompts concentrate on the past and memories, so I don’t know how that will go. Seeking Serotonin seems like a great resource and I’m going to start with the 30-day Mindset Journal Challenge. That being said, I started this post two weeks ago 😂.

Day 1: Gratitude

What am I grateful for today?

Today’s prompt is an easy one. I am overwhelmingly grateful for my husband. This guy survived a nightmare of a childhood full of violence and neglect, and he is one of the sweetest, most caring people I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. Mom was not wrong when she called him a Godsend. He has always said that it was love at first sight when he saw me. I challenged this claim because I’ve never really believed in such a thing, but we dug my senior yearbook out, and in his note he left in the back pages, he wrote, “I will always love you.” Well, color me wrong!

We knew each other for a school year of lunch periods — I was a senior when he was a freshman — and then reconnected nine years later on MySpace (I wasn’t a fan of Facebook). In school, he was just my friend’s dorky little brother; I was the same age as my friend, whom I had a bit of a crush on. Mom was thrilled when Adam started coming around in 2009 because he made me happy and made me laugh so much, which Mom said she had not heard in a long time. For four-and-a-half years, I was Adam’s and Mom’s world, which was pretty awesome.

Now, I can walk through the living room with a basket of clothes or a package that was delivered and this man won’t notice me walking by him. However, just today, I was getting ready to take a shower, so I turned the exhaust fan on in the bathroom, then left the bathroom to get towels, and Adam was walking through the living room with towels for me because he heard me turn the fan on. He turns the air on when he hears me get in the shower because I don’t like getting sweaty after I get out of the shower, which I tend to do.

Due to my AuDHD, shows and movies can confuse me, and I don’t want to get invested if I know I won’t understand what’s going on. Since Adam knows me better than I know myself, I ask him to watch it first to see if it’s too complicated. It may not be his cup of tea, but he will watch it and tell me his opinion. The same goes with comedies. I don’t like the F-word or movies that are too raunchy. He’ll watch them and let me know how “bad” they are. Just recently, I asked him to watch No Hard Feelings, as I really like Jennifer Lawrence but the movie was marketed as a raunchy comedy.

I could go on forever, but I suppose I won’t. I don’t know how I got so lucky. He’s a wonderful father to our kiddies and I love seeing this self-professed dog person being so sweet and loving towards our cats. Our youngest, Willow, is his girl, and she recently got in trouble for lying on my keyboard and hitting the keys on purpose even though I moved the keyboard out of the way like I always do with them. He lightly swatted her butt and told her “no” because I couldn’t get her to listen, and tears were in his eyes after he scolded her and she ran away. I mean, come on!

As always, I’m grateful for my mom. Thanks to her planning and always thinking of her children, I have a home and an acre of land that are paid off. The house taxes suck, but I would rather have those than a rent or mortgage payment each month. Considering I can barely work, my income is a joke and I would be homeless without Mom’s house. We had her car, too, until some jerkface mechanic broke it. I will be forever grateful for her and Adam.

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Behind the Mask

Oh, how’s school going, you ask? Well, it’s going. Now, I can sound professional, sophisticated, and scholarly easily. I’ve loved reading since I was old enough to do it, so I am articulate and have a large vocabulary. However, it is draining. There is a lot of masking going on (even with writing), and I just sit and stare at the screen when trying to write my papers and make myself come across as educated. It is really hard to unmask when you’re just used to the constant anxiety of trying to be “normal.” Mom was the only person I didn’t have to do that around. I miss that.

When I drop the act and start writing what comes to mind, I fly through my homework. I think it took me about 30 minutes to bang out a 5-page paper (which was supposed to be 3) after I started writing what came to me naturally. Sure, I sound simplistic and “young,” but that does not mean I don’t know what I’m talking about, and more importantly, people who read my papers will know what I’m talking about without needing to be familiar with the topic. That is important with essays. I have been told by several students that they enjoy reading my discussion posts, so that makes me smile 😊.

In my discussion post that asked me how Walt Whitman constructed images to express the nature of America, I wrote (in part): “I think Walt Whitman was a hippie before hippies existed. At the very least, he had paganistic and naturalistic views and approaches to the world around him. From his writings, he seemed to very much be a dancing-naked-under-the-full-moon type of guy.” Not exactly sophisticated, but that’s the first thing I thought of when reading Song of Myself, which is 52 pages/stanzas long and does not rhyme or make much sense (to me), btw. I’m glad we’re done with him and Dickinson. Frost, Pound, and Thomas are much more interesting to me. Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night reminds me too much of my brother, though.

I think that is why so many people think autistic people are slow and have learning disabilities. Just because we think differently and arrive at the same conclusion via another path does not mean we are slow or uneducated. On the other hand, being autistic doesn’t mean we are like Rain Man. Most of us are bright with a higher score in a particular subject/topic, though the latter is not always the case. Not surprisingly, my highest score on the IQ portion of my eval was in reading and language. My ACTs reflected the same thing when I was a junior in high school.

I do have something coming up that I’m excited about and can’t wait to share here! Actually, I have three things coming up. First, we’re going to see Blue October again as an anniversary gift from a friend. The first time we saw them, I got autographs and cried in front of Justin, so he stood up and gave me a hug 🥰🥰. The second thing is the Eras Tour concert movie, complete with friendship bracelets Adam and I make! I hope the theater isn’t full of a bunch of stuck-up people who are above swapping bracelets because it’s not a “real concert.” Then, comes the “something coming up” 😊. Unfortunately, I have to wait more than a month for the last thing, and I am not a happy camper about that. With the strings being pulled for me, I can’t complain, really.

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Look What You Made Me Do

I restarted school this week, and jumped into full time, because…why not? Being a glutton for punishment, I chose Studies in Poetry and Intro to Philosophy. I like writing poetry, but I don’t like reading poetry, especially ones written by “the greats.” Why are they great? Emily Dickinson was a miserable, lovelorn woman who left her room only for social occasions (which is more than I can say for myself). I don’t know what she is writing about at any time. Robert Frost…I’m not sure I’ve read any of his work. The same goes for Walt Whitman. I think of chocolate when I think of Whitman.

I know the names but that is about it. I do like Poe’s work, but I don’t read it much because of the language barrier. I need things spelled out for me 95% of the time. I’m not a fan of non-rhyming poetry, which is apparently what my class is going to focus on. How is that a poem and not an essay or stream of consciousness? I can string words together as I think of them but I’m certainly not a poet. I was very drawn to Jewel’s poetry, and I don’t think she received the attention and notoriety that she deserved. I don’t know why I liked her stuff, but it’s possible that it was because she was new on the scene and I adored her debut album. I think her work is the only thing I have liked and related to that did not rhyme.

I’m pretty much kicking myself over choosing philosophy as an elective. I don’t understand a lot of things, philosophy included. I do have questions about everything and wonder about the same things philosophers wonder about, but I never know any answers. I ask Adam questions all the time about life and events and human behavior (the latter is more a sociology thing) but those questions stay between us for the most part. When I ask someone on the outside something, I get blank looks or laughter. Adam and Mom both get/got me and how my mind works. I hate looking and feeling stupid, which I’m sure most people do, so I keep things to myself or between my husband and me.

I am a junior in college now and am on my fourth major. I was doing great in school with a 4.0 GPA until my brother died unexpectedly a couple of weeks into a semester. I could not deal with his death, work, and school; it was just too much. Foolishly, I just left the classes without dropping them officially or talking to my student advisor or professors. Because of that dumb move, I received Fs for those classes instead of incompletes or withdrawals. I tried returning to school before I got my medications adjusted and ended up dropping out again because I did not like the classes I was taking and I didn’t like the major I switched to (marketing). More Fs. I’ve ruined my GPA by doing that, which I really hate and regret. It’s a B average, but I was previously making the Dean’s list every term.

I’ve always loved reading and writing, and everyone thought I would become an author, but I’ve not had the desire or motivation to write for years. I don’t know what happened, but it’s just not there. I have nothing simmering in my brain; no poems, no stories, no essays…nada. I am hoping the poetry class will ignite something since I’ve wanted to be an author since I was very, very young.

Not to say that my head is empty. I’m always thinking of things constantly, even when I don’t want to, like when trying to sleep or read or figure something out. It’s terrible thinking about stuff when I’m trying to read or do homework or work work! I just space out and completely gloss over what I’m reading or watching and I have to back up or stay lost.

People have no idea what it’s like to have ADHD, and for them to be so dismissive of it, to the point of some stating it doesn’t exist, is infuriating to me. It is not a lack of willpower and/or discipline; it is a very real disorder with very real chemical imbalances, and my husband could certainly attest to it. Oddly enough, I have the inattentive type and my brother had the hyperactivity type with some inattentiveness thrown in for good measure. We must have been hell on Mom growing up!

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Just a Stinky Yay Day with Some Weight

Well, yesterday was a yay and stinky day. I bought an under-the-counter water filter for the kitchen sink, which I only recently found out existed, and since I was getting that, I got a kitchen faucet with one handle because the last one I got had two handles, and the hot and cold were backward and couldn’t be switched. (US standard is hot is left, cold is right.) You would think that would be something I got used to but I constantly filled up the cats’ water jug with hot water, which is a bad thing for a PUR water filter. I don’t know why that is the case, but the filter would start squealing so I assumed it didn’t like it. Anyway, I was super excited to be able to do away with the faucet filters and have a normal-looking faucet that tall containers would actually fit under.

Look how cute my little sink drain bucket is! (left)

Arched faucets with a pullout sprayer in the faucet are a big thing now, and I had a hard time finding any without the sprayer under $100 to boot. I thought it would be convenient to have the faucet pullout and my awesome regular sprayer. NBD, I could use whichever sprayer I wanted at the time. That was not the case. Firstly, this faucet is so much bigger than my old one 😂. I was quite impressed with the quality since it was under $40, and it’s quite hefty. Secondly, Adam informed me that I could not have my regular sprayer and the faucet hooked up together because of how it is configured. Of course, that change in my plan automatically triggered a shutdown and I didn’t want anything else to do with the faucet at that moment.

I left the kitchen to deal with this unexpected change, and Adam finished installing the faucet and filter. With this faucet, the nozzle points out slightly and gets the small piece of counter in front of the sink, and me, wet. I keep forgetting the sprayer is part of the faucet and when I pull it out to spray something, I shoot water across the room. That’s not the first or second time I’ve ever done that, but I was already cranky, so I didn’t like that, either. Never one to be thwarted, I put an elastic hair thing around the faucet above the nozzle, which you can see in the picture. I have it bunched up more in the front than the back, and that makes the nozzle point down more toward the sink, thus not getting the counter and me wet. I was very proud of that idea. So that was the stinky part of my day.

As Adam and I sat down to lunch, his mom calls to say they were waiting for us outside. I had an endocrinology appointment in 30 minutes. Oops!! That was further frazzling for me since I was not prepared to be amongst people. The yay part of my day was that I found out my hemoglobin A1c was 5.7!! I’m a type 1.5 (LADA) diabetic and completely ignored that fact since 2014 when I was diagnosed. Mom’s death is what pushed me into LADA, which is an autoimmune disorder. I started out trying to keep my sugar under control, but every time it would get up, I would get mad and stop. I take a very all-or-nothing approach to everything.

My last A1c was in December and was 11 or 12, which is super bad. At that percentage, my average sugars were around 300, with normal being around 80 to 90 for non-diabetics and slightly higher for diabetics. The 5.7 A1c means my average is dancing around 120, which is really good for a diabetic. I was very shocked and pleased with this result. I’ve been trying to manage my sugars since April after my eye appointment when I found out I was starting to lose my vision, and that was the kick in the pants I needed to work on my health.

It is widely and falsely thought to be fact that being overweight causes diabetes when that is not the case at all. That’s nothing but complete ignorance and fatphobia. Most T2 diabetics I am acquainted with have healthy BMIs. Obesity certainly increases the risk of developing T2 diabetes, especially belly fat, but not all overweight people are diabetic and not all diabetics are overweight. Weight gain is a symptom of T2 diabetes due to insulin resistance, which can be a precursor to diabetes if no lifestyle changes are made.

Uncontrolled diabetes actually causes unintended weight loss because the body begins to burn fat and muscle for energy instead of glucose. An unhealthy diet (for people of all weights and body types, especially in the US), sedentary lifestyle, and high stress are three red flags for potentially developing T2 diabetes. Of course, trying to explain that to people is like preaching to the choir.

The public’s obsession with other people’s bodies absolutely infuriates me because it has zero to do with people’s health and everything to do with appearance. Most try to disguise their disgust of the overweight as concern, but that is hardly ever the case. Long-term studies (those that run for multiple years) have shown that being underweight increases one’s mortality rate and poor health more than being overweight, yet we as a society promote and encourage extreme thinness to the point of insanity.

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When Special Interests Attack

I was just recently traumatized by a new special interest/hyperfixation. About a week and a half ago, I was looking for live streams so I could watch the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) since I don’t live in an area where I could see them for real. The lights were supposed to be most visible for Canada and the northwestern US states on July 11 and 12. This search opened me up to the world of live cams (why didn’t I know about this sooner?!), specifically explore.org and Earth Cam. Sadly, in my excitement, I totally forgot to find a stream of the Northern Lights on the aforementioned dates. I did find tons of animal cams and water cams (two of my obsessions), and I have been popping different cams out of the browser and putting them above my work so I can look up at them while working or reading.

African Wildlife and Africam (how cute and punny is that?) became two of my favorite channels, and I had a favorite watering hole I would play. Most of the time, the waterhole cam would be live, but on occasion, it would have highlights playing, which are great because nothing can happen for hours and you’re left watching the desert or waterhole and nothing else. My routine became checking out various animal cams, going to my favorite waterhole, placing it just so, and then going to work. My monitor is a 65″ 4k TV, so I have plenty of room for work and streams. If I am particularly antsy, I will put the Great White cam highlights up as well so I can see the sharks. The waterholes amaze me because all these animals have to be in the same area to get water, though not always at the same time.

There are all kinds of birds (yea! Not.), alligators, wildebeests, jackals, lions, leopards, zebras, African wild dogs (AKA painted dogs), elephants (my favorite to watch), the horned and hooved, and more. They all get along out of necessity. The alligators won’t even flinch when animals walk by them or stand by them drinking. I do believe one of the genets I had seen walking around at night once was caught and killed and the lions were eating it. It was dark, and I really didn’t want to know what their dinner was. I’m sure some of you can see where this is going.

Yesterday, I did my thing and went to my watering hole, which was playing highlights, and had some laughs at the baby elephants and the cute little baby zebra with his/her mama and some antelopes. All the antelope and zebras took off running left, but the baby zebra ran right, so the mama had to go get him/her, which I thought was funny because it reminded me of a person running in the wrong direction in football and scoring for the other team. Suddenly, the video cuts to two lionesses in the field with one of them (this is so hard to type) holding down the now faintly bloody baby zebra with her paw. I cover my eyes until I can see only the bottom of the screen so I know when the video changes. I try to convince myself about the whole food chain and survival of the fittest crap, but I’m not buying it. The video finally switches to elephants.

While I’m watching the elephants, which makes me feel a little better, the video again cuts to the lionesses, and this time the baby zebra tries to get up so he/she can run away, and the lioness pushes it back down, and then proceeds to bite its neck. Fortunately, I didn’t have the sound on, although I don’t think I could feel any worse. The video cuts away again, but it returns to the lionesses, so I’m done with my waterhole. By now, I’m crying, can’t get a deep breath, am irrationally mad at lions, and am just all-around upset. This is literally the reason I don’t watch National Geographic.

Everyone apparently got the memo that it was feeding time because several other cams showed animals being eaten or hunted. By this time, I had been watching these cams for a week and a half and hadn’t seen animal violence. I watched the tigers at feeding time, but they are given meat by people because they are at a reserve or sanctuary. I already wasn’t happy about the genet getting caught, but when I saw it, it was most definitely dead and missing most of its body, so I wasn’t as traumatized. The highlights video was on all day and night and every time I checked, it started playing at the moment the baby zebra tried to get up and get away. Every. Time.

When I have a new hyperfixation, it becomes my comfort thing until I move on to something else. Because of this particular video, my comfort thing is the thing that is stressing me out. I’ve tried watching other channels but I’m filled with anxiety and mistrust since I don’t know if or when the video will randomly cut to someone’s (live) dinner. I’m still upset with the lions, and that will probably last. I’m not a fan of otters anymore after reading about how they hunt and kill baby seals. I feel stupid and silly, even more so after Adam came in and saw I was crying, but he said he understood. I won’t even tolerate animal violence in movies, and I know that is fake.

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You’re Getting on My Last Nerve!

Gah!! It finally happened. I broke my very last Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard. Definitely Microsoft’s best ergonomic keyboard, and loved by many, especially those in my line of work, which is how I found out about it nearly 20 years ago. Like most out-of-touch companies, i.e., the majority of them, Microsoft took something that worked and was well-loved and made it disappear. Used ones can be found online for $400 to $700 (new ones were originally $76; got down to $39) God Bless Greed 🙄🙄. I’ve owned way more than my fair share of the 4000s because I kept breaking them. They are 100% not waterproof or liquid resistant, btw.

I bought two replacement keyboards a while back, which are the “upgraded” Microsoft ergonomic keyboards, hoping I wouldn’t have to use them. It is awful to type on. The only thing I like about it is the emoji key they added. They stuck a stupid Office key by the Alt key, and it brings up Office 365, which I can’t even use for work as I have to have Office 2019/non-subscription versions. This new addition made the Alt key smaller, which I use for work all the time, and I keep hitting that darn Office key 😡😡. Adam figured out how to disable it so Office doesn’t pop up each time, but I am still hitting the key. I’m slowly adding things in my text expander so the stupid key works like the Alt key. The amazing reverse tilt that made the 4000 awesome is minimal on the new one, so I added little rubber pads to elevate it. Every company keeps making the tilt in the back and it’s not good for your wrists because they are supposed to be straight when typing, not with your knuckles pointing toward your chest!! Do better, companies!

This whole significant change has been very hard on me, and I have developed a new, fun symptom of stress and overload over the past few weeks. Instead of sore, tense shoulders, I now get occipital neuralgia flares, which are super painful. It’s nerve pain at the base of the skull that basically follows the hairline up over the ears and into the temples. I tried to describe the location to Adam as where the cotton goes when getting a perm, but he had no idea what I was talking about. It’s a shooting, shocking pain and not an ache, and the shooting part happens when I turn my head too far/fast or bend over with my head pointing down. I always get a bit worried when I have unusual head pain since I have Dandy Walker and hydrocephalus is common with that. I’ve had some CT scans and have been told there is some fluid but not enough for a shunt. I haven’t had a head CT in a couple of years, though.

I was in the kitchen the other day and thought I was having a stroke. Adam was sleeping, and all of a sudden while I was getting something out of the cupboard above my head, my neck started hurting on either side of my trachea. I grabbed my neck with one hand like the bad guys do in the movies when they pick someone up by the neck, and squeezing my neck helped, but it happened twice more right after it briefly went away. I googled the symptom and pretty much came up with tension and stress. I’ve been having trouble breathing for the past few weeks, and I am wondering if the new non-stimulant ADHD medications are causing increased stress and anxiety. I’m not lacking in that department; I don’t need more. I was on Strattera and then switched to Intuniv. Otherwise, I’m hunky dory.

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