Be the change you want to see.

I was so productive today and I'm so proud of myself!

*Dumped the cardboard at the recycle center
*Did the grocery run for my friends and dropped it off to their house
*Did a mail run from my other friend which also included a fax I needed to make
* Got my blood drawn for the blood test I need to have done regularly
*Did a goodwill drop off that I've been meaning to do for literally weeks! Boy they were busy!
*AND, and I wrote another 500 words
They were GOOD words AND I finished and posted a new chapter.

HELL YEAH I'm patting myself on the back!

Today there was a super cute moment where one of the local birds flew up and perched on the front porch railing.

Flew away, came back with a friend, they were clearly chirping. I could see it through the window, it was obvious that they were, but between the constant tinnitus, the dryer running, and the window between us,

I couldn't hear them.

I mention this to Jeff. He's surprised. "I don't have my ears in" "no but you really CAN'T hear that?"

The bird, still being cute, obligingly chirps again >o

And I pay attention, but nope. Can't hear it.

This is the baseline now.

Like my vision is good enough for most things but I can't read without the glasses unless the font is pretty big and distinct.

(I have actually stopped myself from "zooming in" with my fingers on printed menus.)

This is what 51.75 looks like.

Hearing damage, wrinkly skin, some visual deterioration, some scars inside and out, emotional and physical.

New competencies.
New self knowledge.
New understanding.

It is what it is. And that's okay.

Getting older is still so much better than the alternative.

Just as I was posting the previous, Jeff came to find me and ask if I wanted to be a third person to play a game called Wizards. So I spent the last half hour of Gem's visit learning a new game with them.

Disappointment mitigated somewhat, as the game and social time were fun. IDK when I'll get another time to have the house to myself though, I do want to have a me-date soon, before the hormone cycle tips again and has me uninterested in sexy times.

Time to get out the calendar with the spouse and the new sweetie and find a good time this next week!

Last night I dreamed that I cut off hair on one side of my face.

I did it badly, it was ugly, and a shocking change after growing it out for 18 months without a haircut.

There wasn't a reason for it as far as I can recall. Not in the dream anyway. Though I did just read some evocative pieces about women reclaiming themselves as they cut their hair short, to THEIR liking, not because parents or friends or lovers like their hair long...

But then in the dream, I was okay with it. I'd done something I wasn't entirely happy with, but I knew it could be made better, that I knew someone who'd help me make it better (Tysa's a hairdresser and really good), but most importantly:

It's only a CHANGE. A change isn't always a Mistake, and if it were, well.
MISTAKES ARE FIXABLE.

Why I have to keep learning this, I don't know, but I know that I do.

In possibly related news, I spent yesterday with Jeff doing a massive overhaul of my art, jewelry, sewing, and witchy storage and workspace. It was uncomfortable and poked my buttons and insecurities. Jeff was kind and very patient and I tried to be very transparent about feeling things. Once I took a minute to put my head down on my arms on the kitchen table to breathe and feel, and he rubbed my back, and when he stopped I grabbed his hand and he came back and rubbed my back comfortingly some more.

It's been a bit like breaking up scar tissue, but on my feelings instead of my body, for a change.

My stuff isn't ME. My IDEAS aren't me, though it often feels like they are.

It was also a little bit like when you move house and have to figure out what to keep and what is throw out, and where things can go now.

There's a lot of Work, and feeling Feelings about your literal Things, but once you have made all the decisions and put stuff where it goes, it feels GOOD. Satisfying.

There's a good bit more to get done, but I'm feeling better now that I've written.

Just shower thoughts... I was thinking today just looking around the items in the shower, that there are a lot of things that I experience what you've been cultivated to make me feel guilt there are a lot of things that I live with because I feel guilt and one of the issues that I want to try and nail down, is the degree to which us the people, we the people or whatever, have been encouraged to feel guilty about more or less neutral actions, actually serve corporate interests.

Item the first: When I feel guilty about not recycling my plastic, or not doing it right. Like, feeling bad about my shower scrubby shredding and letting little pieces of plastic into the waterways. That's a little thing right? Like, a little thing to feel guilty about. And yet so many of us do.

The thing about feeling guilty about doing something, is that then we generally don't call somebody else out for the thing that we feel guilty about right? So if I'm feeling guilty about the fact that I'm not recycling enough, I'm not going to believe maybe, or pay attention to the fact that giant corporations, manufacturers, fishing industry, etc are way more at faults for the massive amounts of plastic junk in the ocean, on the land, and in landfills. As somebody once said it's not the fact that you didn't rinse your yogurt carton well enough and then put it in the recycling, that made China stop taking our recycling from the United States, nor is it why they refer to our dirty recycling.

We should be calling out the corporations.

I feel guilty about not performing femininity correctly, or enough. Because I like to wear what I like to wear, and I wear flat shoes all the time secure not always pretty shoes, I wear doc martens and I wear sandals. I wear blue jeans and t-shirts. I refuse to wear makeup, and I rarely even wear jewelry or do my hair.

When I still felt guilty about not performing femininity correctly, or enough, one of the ways that I tried to make myself feel better was by buying s***. Buying more clothes buying cute feminine shoes buying makeup that I knew I was never going to wear outside of Halloween or whatever. They make us feel guilty so that we buy their s*** It's like psychological warfare.

I used to feel guilty about being fat. If we lived by ourselves out in the wilderness, I don't know sheepherding or something, there's no reason to feel bad for being any kind of shape skinny or fat, whichever. Body functioning trumps shape whenever you don't care what you look like to outsiders. Advertisers play on our insecurities, plant seeds of doubt that we will be excluded or shunned, but nobody will love us if we don't look in a certain way. And the diet industry, profits, because people want to look a certain way. And then what happens is you have people who are hungry all the time which means you can't think well. And then what happens is if you have people hyper focusing on the size and shape of their body, which any of us can only do so much to change, genetics being what it is. And everybody is spending so much time and energy on weight loss and the size or shape of their body, that they can't look around and see that they're being duped, they're being played, they're being fleeced. ( that goes for doctors too )

If we just loved ourselves, if we knew we were safe, if we didn't live in fear. We wouldn't need to do all of these things.

Propaganda is real, friends, and it's everywhere. Between advertisements, and news that's actually a sponsored advertisement, billboards, pop-ups on your computer screen... Junk mail!

I don't have a solution, not exactly. For me I turned off the television. I stopped listening to a constant bombardment of television advertising, when I left my first husband in 2003. I don't need other people telling me what to think in that way. I need to make my own decisions about what's important to me. And for me a media fast did a remarkably good job at helping me start to clear my head.

Guilt and shame do nothing good for mental health. Figuring out how to uproot them and get them out of your life, however you do it, is one road towards peace, even contentment.

Be well. I love you.

Just picked up my new hearing aids today. Literally I've had them for about 2 hours now. My own voice sounds strange.

The backup noise in the Prius is super annoying. I heard the creek of the board in our house when I stepped inside. The water from the waterfall sounds different. The clicking noise from the turn signal was sharper and more plasticky.

And Jeff was on the phone to our friend girl purple, he had the conductive headphones on and when I leaned in I could hear Amy's voice but Jeff said no she can't hear you meaning me? Because normally I can't but this time I could! I couldn't hear super well but I could hear well enough to make out words and I was never able to do that before.

I've had a couple of friends now remind me that I'm likely to be tired today after all of this new input. Gosh yes everything is much more clear than it has been. They're light, I can barely feel them on the outside of my ear, the plug inside my ear? that's bearable, it's not aggravating, I can feel how I will probably get used to it.

I'm going to have to learn how to be very gentle in handling them. They are a new kind of model where I have Bluetooth enabled, and paired with my phone.

I was sat in the parking lot, because I was trying to nerve myself up to leave to drive home with these new ears in, and my auntie called, my aunt Kay, who her house burned down in late September and she barely got out. And the family didn't, well my family didn't, hear about it until mid to late October.

Fortunately she grabbed her purse on her way out and so she had her phone and her car keys and her wallet. So I think I'm going to try and find a way of getting her a nice sweater for Christmas. Even if I don't do other Christmas presents I think I'll do that. So I talked on the phone with Kay for almost half an hour I think. Getting a little bit caught up and a little bit of her story and how she got out and what she's been doing since. So I got a good test of what it's like getting a phone call on these things.

Jeff is currently up on the roof, he's installing a new vent for over the stove. We've lived in this house for 6 years and the vent was never connected to anything that would vent the fumes out of the house and it took us 4 years to recognize it. So we have a new vent. He's working on drilling a hole in the roof wow and he's installing the flashing and the I don't know what you call the metal tubing duct work? Probably that's it I'm just impressed that he is trying to do this himself but I wish he waited until our friend was available to to be here and be his backup.

So that's my news, I have new ears, and I am definitely planning on making the joke about you got your ears on good buddy? From the CB era. It's possible that will never not be funny.

Huh.
Trying to do a sex partner tally.
(Was on OkCupid reviewing match questions with someone)

I think I've only had sex with 17 people, if I define sex as, "everyone was willing and at least one orgasm occurred."

That is 17 in 32 years.
I need to think about, do I have feelings about that. And if so, what feelings do I have?

Hmmmmm

Had a hugging dream this morning. At a gas station, I run over to Lefty (dream-you gives good hugs too) & then realized I had no mask, went yikes, and woke up.

The other mini dream I had was less fun
In the dream Donaldo trumpissimo wanted to have sex with me. And I was taking refuge in the extremely formal language that I use to keep distance from unwelcome people, and in the dream I looked around the oval office (in retrospect I'm surprised I wasn't feeling regret that This was how I got to see the oval office) and I remember feeling extremely cautious about how I might successfully exit the room unassaulted, fully expecting that secret service and other guards would be no help in getting me out of the situation.

After I woke up this second time, I lay there still feeling cautious and on guard, and I realized something about the "grab them by the pussy" remark which is incredibly obvious in retrospect.
Trump said "they just let you do it"
And I realized that was simply a "freeze" reaction, of the "fight, flight, fawn, freeze, fuck" series.

And most women I know got trained out of their bodily autonomy before they were out of grade school. Poisonous culture.

More to chew on here. No solutions, not yet.

This is going to be a quick stream-of-consciousness kind of post, so I apologize for any typos or missing punctuation. I've been saying for years how annoying it is that I forget to eat. just in the last year or so after many years of taking metformin, I discovered that one of the side effects of metformin as an appetite suppressant. I got reminded of that because one night last week I forgot to take the medications before I went to bed. And then the following night when it was dinner time I think I ate twice as much as normal. I had one section of leftovers, and then went back and finished off the Chinese food as well.

I was off my meds for a day. The thing is, I actually had a hunger impulse that day and that is one of the things I am disconnected from more days than not. And I know that failing to eat affect both my mental health, my optimism, my energy levels obviously, and my ability to think clearly. So one thing I want to try and figure out is if there are other things available to treat my kind of diabetes than metformin, and whether we need to do anyting particular in order to try a different med.

My health as a general case oh, it's pretty good, I feel. Barring of course they ridiculous coronavirus shelter-in-place and quarantine, and bearing in mind that I have pre-existing conditions that really seemed to me like they will get triggered really hard if I catch this particular virus. So physical health related, I'm working out twice a week I feel pretty good as far as painless go I am not experiencing a lot of my usual muscle tension and pain. I do miss my mom, my sister and my niblings, and I should have may be arranged a screen type visit with them over the weekend. Benjamin just graduated from high school in so far as you can graduate from high school in 2012. and as of I guess today or maybe yesterday it sounds like he is off having adventures in southern California with a couple of his high school friends. Which on the one hand good for him and on the other hand f***. Because I'm going to have to wait and see whether it's possible that he has caught the virus before I come back up and visit. Although I know he's smart enough and self-aware enough to know that only too self quarantine when he comes back before he goes to see Mom. Mom has said he's been very assiduous and so has Ainsley about mask-wearing and being careful around her so that makes me feel better and a little bit safer for myself as well. At some point I would really like to go see them again?

But I just have to be really freaking careful. I cannot. Not. Afford to catch this virus, before we have antidotes reliable treatments, or a vaccine.

Circling back to the food question, the mind question: the ability to think when I cannot manage to feed myself very reliably. It makes it very difficult to get anything done. I can have the best of intentions and between the ADHD and not enough brain spoons it just does not happen. My Oblivion is actually very good for me in that regard, which is that when I feel myself starting a shame spiral I shove everything into the oubliette and then I don't have a shame spiral anymore. Of course I also don't have any niggling little reminders of those things that I intended to do.

I have tasks I meant to do before Christmas and haven't gotten done. Things I wanted to put in the mail. And I haven't done them. More things I wanted to put in the mail when we started shelter-in-place. I haven't mailed those either aside from about 8 at the very beginning. Have made one mask. That's it and now my sewing machine is jammed and the troubleshooting for that is beyond my current capacities. I'm not even depressed about this or ashamed or beating myself up or anxious or even tired. It's more numb. Some of that is due to the fact that I know I'm hungry even though I can't feel hunger. But I can tell based on how my brain is and is not working. I think I'm going to ask friends for help. Maybe I can subcontract out some of the brain work we'll have to see.

I hope you all are as well as you can be and staying as safe as you can be I'm thinking of you and I'll try to get back with everyone when I have a temporary likely resurgence of spoons.

I have an appointment for a video meeting with the audiology department at Kaiser tomorrow because I might be a good candidate for hearing aids. It's finally gotten to the point where it's enough of a pain oh, enough of an inconvenience and honestly the tinnitus is really bugging me. So wish me luck with that!

i have a new tattoo! First stage of my baby sea turtle was completed yesterday, and it's really a good one. jopie_lee made it so this stage is cool to wear and doesn't feel unfinished, but we'll come back to it in a month or so and work on the rest of the details.

i also had a pretty profound endorphins crash. wrenb called it a serotonin crash, she'd know better than i would.

she theorized that after the pain endurance of the tattoo and because I recognized at the time that I was definitely surfing the endorphin rush! that i was likely to crash today, so she checked in.

when i told her i was drinking yesterday's cold tea, she asked did i *want to* and I said "eh, it's easier"

she told the polycule that "whenever Liz or I aren't bothered or don't have the energy to make tea, something's wrong!" which, LOL, called out. But also not incorrect!

so she came over and took care of me, and it was LOVELY. she made all the decisions and just moved through the house like a mother of hobbits, helping and asking and doing and fixing things up "what else do you need to do to feel better" she asks after helping me clear all the surfaces in the livingroom/kitchen. so we (mostly she) folded and put away the laundry piles in the bedroom.

and wrenb found some clothes that were on the way to being rags and said, "do you really need to keep these?" and it was a good question to ask, because No, I don't need to keep ragged clothes, I can actually throw them away, it's totally fine, I have three other pairs of shorts and i don't actually know how many sports bras I have now... and it was GOOD.

All I have to do is finish clearing the bed off before bedtime. I fed myself lunch (potstickers in broth) after she left and it made it a little bit easier to think a little bit more, I'm gonna eat some fruit probably in just a bit and try to get a bit more housework under control.

*slurp* mmmm tea.

my friend Adi asked me why did I need to cover up the old piece. and that was also a good question to ask. I've given various reasons to other people, but to her I said, I got the old one when i was with my ex husband, and I need a new touchstone now. I like that. It has the added benefit of being honest and true without being something I thought too much about.

I don't know how i made it through literal years of thinking about and planning this tattoo without telling Jeff that I had elemental associations for all that big ones I've had planned. the one in the userpic above? the Sun. This one? a water turtle, ahead of my 50th birthday. Next one planned is a crow, mid-flight coming in to snatch a shiny thing. Probably gonna do that one for my 52nd birthday.

Earth, I've not decided yet. I've thought about a crescent moon on the back of my neck. not 100% sure about that.

I Contain Multitudes. =)))

and sometimes you just gotta shed some skin to make the change happen.