Category: Uncategorized

quiet

I went quiet for a while.

Life was so stressful after the attempted overthrow of our Democracy, I was so worried all the time, then things moved ahead mostly as they should and I was weird and jittery for a bit. But I am still here. I couldn’t write, I wasn’t feeling it, I read instead but also did a lot of other things.

  • I am upping my Game Master game, trying to get better at running combats, better at Roll20.
  • I’ve been gaming a lot. I average about 3 or 4 RPGs per week including the one I am currently running.
  • I learned how to crochet a Magic Circle so now I can crochet amigurumi better, and mittens, etc.
  • Mastered the “half double crochet” stitch. You’d think that would be a single stitch but no… anyway, I finally got that one!
  • I have been making amigurumi stars, bees, etc
  • I am attempting my first sweater, I think it’s my first sweater, I forget a lot of stuff these days. LOL
  • I’ve been doing my usual stuff too and working.

So yeah, still trying to level up and become a more competent human!

Kintsugi

Sometimes i feel like i’m just a collection of broken pieces.

I walk around pretending to be a functioning human being.

I have interactions and conversations but i’m only half there because i’m lost in the maze of traumas past.

I’m trying, I’m fighting my very hardest. that you can’t hear my battle cries or see all the blood stuns me

those closest to me suffer through my fucked up reactions to everything

changes in plans that are nothing to everyone else hit me like an avalanche. it is an emergency, a threat, and I come up swinging, panicking, running for my life.

gods forbid someone startles me,

no telling what you will get

anything from falling to the floor crumpled in fear,

to a roar of rage-fueled ready to fight,

or maybe I detach, float in the fuzzy space that is nowhere, cold and safe

watching like an unconcerned, alien observer.

just the smell of the wrong aftershave and I am 5 years old

terrified, nauseated, scrambling to get away, screaming in my head for a mother I didn’t have

the one that would have stood between me and danger,

the one that would have seen,

would have known,

would have prevented me from shattering to pieces

But that isn’t how things happened.

This is what I have.

The child inside of me is defended now

when my inner 5 year old screams

the maelstrom rises to defend her

flaming swords and vicious bloody curses that rend the dark and all the dark things lurking there

but the monsters are all gone

bladed words hit those I would die to protect

in this safe new world

I am still made of broken shards

I keep gluing

and I keep breaking

I’m fighting as hard as I can

battle weary and covered in gore

but making a stand atop the hill

where I drew a line

feet planted

every day finding

there is still fight left in me.

Banner credit: “169/365” by drubuntu is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

2021 two weeks in…

So, we’ve had a seditious attack on our capitol by a rampaging mob who murdered 2 police officers and smeared human shit on the walls, so, wow, we are off to a really awful start! I am happy to see anti-democracy, home grown terrorists arrested and charged, that’s good, tRump losing his twitter privileges is good, far too little too late for him to learn anything from it but it’s something.

In my own life I’ve been a bit ill and very stressed out but mostly ok. Our furnace is not doing well so that’s a problem but we’ll get it sorted. The headache I currently have can take a flying leap, so over it, but I’m alive. I’ve been reading, trying to cook and clean, crocheting a lot, thinking about reopening my Etsy shop, maybe, the pile of mittens grows, I may as well give it a shot. Probably.

So, Democracy hangs by a thread, climate change teeters on the verge of destroying us all, a pandemic rages out of control, and my head hurts. I’ll be napping under the bed if anyone needs me.

waiting for sanity

Yesterday was surreal. When Hillary lost the left was in mourning, they knew what trump would do to this country, they knitted pink hats and wrote checks to planned parenthood and amnesty international. Now that trump has been defeated, despite his cronies’ attempts to sabotage and steal the election, the right is on an unhinged rampage and attempting a coup. They are smashing the windows of the capitol building and attacking police.

This chaos is an attack on Democracy. It has been encouraged and incited by a sitting President and is Treason on his part and the part of all who followed his lead. They literally hung a trump flag in our Capitol Building.

2020 winding down

hi there, my computer has decided that the function of shift keys is entirely optional so there will be no capital letters and some of the punctuation i want to use will be unavailable. yeah, so 2020 comes to an end taking my ability to capitalize with it. lol.

what i’ve been doing lately. since xmas i’ve been crocheting mittens/making super mittens. i’ve got two pairs crocheted and another almost half done. i still need to make liners and stitch them in. i’m sort of toying with the idea of turning on the lights at my etsy shop again. i’ve been gone a while. i’m also reading, of course, two excellent so far books; the angel of crows; by katherine addison, and the beast of the stapletons; by james lovegrove. i am loving them. i’ve also been watching and rewatching a ton of liziqi videos and a little series on youtube called that chapter.

tonight i worked for the last time in 2020 and heard the sad news that a patron’s father has just died of covid 19. awful. My brother in law has it now and so far he’s ok… oh look, it capitalized something! Oooo and exclamation points are back. Excellent. I refuse to retype this whole entry.

I’m thinking about my resolutions for the new year and trying to remain hopeful that 2021 will be a much better year than 2020. I don’t know about doing an end of the year recap, I kind of just want to move forward without looking back at this point. Maybe I will recap the good, try and glean something positive from 2020, and build upon whatever I can salvage from this garbage fire in 2021. I’ll post some pics and do a real entry sometime soon. Be well.

Busy and Grateful

I have to say one thing for the pandemic. Between my caution that severely limits the buildings and stores I will enter and the scalper’s prices a lot of craft items go for online, not to mention shipping charges and the potential for delay, I find myself giving very serious consideration for the supplies I already have. I’ve been making Super Mittens for my girls the past few days and I had to go to my yarn stash to do so. Limited amounts of various colors in the worsted weight category made me decide to use 2 colors per mitten/pair creating the body of each mitten in one color and the cuff in another. The lack of access to all my usual choices forces me to be creative and it is a great stash buster assisting me in using up stray balls of yarn and other supplies that have been hanging around. I’m also getting to projects I’ve been procrastinating on. I finally made the napkins for Harry Potter Xmas.

I also find myself appreciating what we already have more than I used to. I misplaced a pair of mittens in the grocery store on a rare in-person run for a few items, and I felt just awful about it. They are not the best pair of mittens or anything, I made them from a felted wool sweater and lined them with fleece cut from old PJ pants all acquired through thrift shops (over a year ago at least). They hit the magic sweet spot of being cheap, homemade, and recycled all at once. And they’re cute. I left a note with customer service and they called after a few hours. The mittens are safe at home again and I promise you, I will be much more careful with them in the future. Our dog also did some damage to the quilt I had on the bed and I thought the only replacement I had was languishing in the laundry room but I found a third bedspread I had completely forgotten about in the hall closet! And again it is cute. Why do I have so many bedspreads? Oh yeah, in the before time I used to thrift a lot and having pets means needing back ups of such things.

We are so, so lucky. We have so far gotten through this pandemic pretty ok. I mean, there’s definitely increased anxiety and stress, we feel uncertain about the future, worried about getting Covid 19, nervous about what may happen to our jobs, and the kids… All adults now, one in his senior year of HS, not able/willing to work because of scarce jobs & jobs they could get would be risky Covid-wise. Their lives are on hold. The girls are waiting for it to be safe to go job hunting again, for it to be safe to work again. We are a million times lucky that we’ve hung onto our house where there’s room for everyone and that we are still paying our bills, getting food on the table. So far we are still employed as long as that holds true we should be ok. My middlest child hasn’t had any min-painting commissions in a long while, not surprising, but she found a little place for herself online where she can use her creativity to make at least a small amount of money. I’m very proud of her for that and I hope that it boosts her self-esteem.

The bare fact that I can find any positives this year is amazing and speaks to how very fortunate we’ve been. I know people who are doing better than we are and some who are doing worse. It’s a mess out there and we are all hoping big for a much, much, much better year in 2021. I have never wished away a year so hard as this one. But, I have much to do before the new year and only scant few days to do it in. Be well. Stay safe.

Desperate Times

I was reading a thread the other day about the increase in shoplifting that’s going on and how the uptick is mainly food, baby formula, and diapers. So many people are hungry and desperate it’s absolutely heartbreaking. The ban on evictions ends January 1st and there is likely to be a tidal wave of homelessness just a week after Christmas. Most people commenting were sympathetic to those resorting to theft out of necessity but there were some who drew an unyielding line: Stealing Is Wrong and no one should ever resort to it. *sigh I don’t think I’ll ever understand that thinking. One commenter had seen a teen arrested for stealing a loaf of bread priced at under $1. They offered to pay for it but the store insisted the teen be arrested for such a heinous crime. Absolutely heartless.

Loads of stores of all types draw a hard line when it comes to theft. I mean, obviously, if people just take stuff all the time it a major freaking problem, I get it. But we’re living in desperate times. If you’re lucky enough to have held onto your job, managed not to catch, or have someone close to you catch Covid 19, if you are able to access food, water, shelter, etc…. so far, well that’s awesome. Seriously, those of us who are still employed, healthy, and managing to keep up with our bills, are so lucky. Maybe every time you’ve lost a job you’ve been able to scramble and find another one before starvation and homelessness occured. Maybe every time you’ve needed it the safety net has caught you or you’ve got enough family, friends, and/or strong community that has been there to help so that it never came to you becoming desperate enough to steal food. Not everyone is so lucky.

What if you didn’t have all of that luck? all those connections? What if when you lost your job, no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t get another one? What if that stayed true until unemployment ran out? What if the safety net of food-stamps/EBT card/WIC/Fuel assistance, etc wasn’t there when you needed it? What if so many in your community were unable to feed their families that you’d spent 7 hours in line to get food from the food pantry but before you got to head of the line the food ran out? What if your friends and family were all in the same boat as you and unable to help you? How many days could you watch your kids go hungry before you tried begging strangers to help? How many days without food would it take before you started to reason: “I’ll just take exactly what I need, just a little bit of food, and I’ll pay the store back as soon as I can.”

Access to food, water and shelter should not be dependant on having enough money to pay for it. The basics of life should be provided for those who fall on hard times by a safety net. Any decent safety net should include help with job searches, access to training/education, and so on. We want to live in a strong, healthy society, right? We want to build our communities up and prosper all together, don’t we? I don’t want anyone left out or left behind. I want everyone to be fed, clothed, sheltered, and have access to medical care and education. I want everyone to feel secure and safe. There is enough for all our needs to be met so why don’t we mould our society to provide for everyone? Right now, a tiny minority of people avariciously hoard most of the resources while many, many people go hungry, suffer homelessness, lack medical care and shelter, that is insane.

Where can people go to find help? To get food? There are still places people can contact to try to get help:

These are some that I found with a quick google search. I believe these are orgs that are active nationally or maybe regionally, and there are likely more local resources in any given area. Local churches, temples, and so on may provide access to food or clothing. Some schools and colleges have food pantries or “free closets” as well. Some restaurants or grocery stores, especially small, local places may off leftover food to folks in need. I work in a Public Library and in addition to offering free access to books, movies, and craft activities (in a bag during Covid) we also have appointments available so people can use computers/internet and printers. Your local librarian can help connect you to local resources. We often have flyers from local orgs or hear about resources in the community. Public Libraries may also offer free wifi inside the library or even out into the parking lot. Some libraries provide free wifi during business hours and some may provide wifi around the clock.

We all need to be kind to each other and help where we can. These are crazy times we’re living in and we all need help now and then.

Watching the cars outside my window…

So we’re ill again, somehow, despite a million precautions. Husband gets a Covid test later today and then we wait to hear back. UGH. The worry is hard to keep at bay but I’m doing my best. We’re okay, our symptoms are pretty mild and if Covid wasn’t a thing we wouldn’t be concerned about them at all.

We have so much on our plates it’s insane. I don’t know how we’re doing it sometimes. But we are so that’s good. I am tired and achey and I’m going to rest. Be well, Everyone. Be safe.

A Very Covid Thanksgiving

I haven’t been posting because I had an allergic reaction that lasted for days and then suffered a tick bite that required a doctor visit and antibiotics. Gods, I hate ticks so much. They are the worst.

This year Thanksgiving is going to be a little different. Usually this is a day to gather with family, and/or friends, to feast and celebrate but this year we would all be wise if we did any gathering via Zoom or Skype or some such. Our day will be spent, as all days since sometime in March, with only those who live in our household. That’s somewhat typical for us, we often have one or two loved ones from outside our home attend,but we’re not into huge gatherings. My mother is very into the big gatherings, the bigger the better. She used to host, and we would sometimes go (or go to my husband’s motherer’s) but the last few years she’s gone to her brother’s. Now, his state has just straight up said if folks go there they need to quarantine for 2 weeks. I predict she will go anyway and just blatantly skip the whole quarantine. That’s my guess.

I saw her the other day and she started crying and said she can’t take the pandemic anymore, she just really can’t. I sympathized and did not point out that she is exactly the reason why we are still in this shit. She travelled to neighboring states 3 times this summer to vacation. I saw the pictures of her on the beach with a group of people and jammed together for a photo not a mask in sight. I know she has gone to friend’s houses and had her friends over. She has had the woman who works for them in the house 5 days a week, she has continued to have a house cleaner in twice a week. Etc etc, etc. She also refused to wear a mask when she was out walking in her town. And now, 8 months since the start of the pandemic, we are still refusing to get together with her for a meal. Damn right we are! Christmas isn’t looking good either because the number of cases is climbing like I cannot even believe right now.

Christmas will be weird. My mother usually comes for that and even helps cook but this year I think it will just be my little family and some zoom calls. Our scaled back presents and Maximum Effort feast and holiday decor will have to carry the day. We’ll probably watch movies and play board games since getting a PS5 seems impossible at this point. Ooof. I know they were all hoping big for that console and some new games but profiteers bought up all the consoles and, last we checked, were selling them for FOUR TIMES the retail price. Jerks.

In Good News: I finally got a turkey! It took a month and this is the third time I ordered one and they were always out of stock by the time our pick-up appointment came around. Today we got one. The one I ordered was out of stock but the young woman who got our order substituted from some other brand. It’s about 14lbs so pretty perfect for us. Plenty for dinner and plenty for leftovers and there will be soup, oh yes.

The Itchening

I accidentally ate a bit of tomato yesterday so now I am both terribly itchy and zonked out on Benadryl. I’m through day one so only 2 or 3 to go like this. It sucks but at least my allergies have not been life-threatening. My mouth hurts so I am eating very cautiously, soft stuff, drinks, I’m finding tea soothing. I’m spacing out, staring at the TV a lot, using most of my willpower not to scratch my skin raw or claw at my eyes. It could be worse, I am ok, it could be a lot worse. I have my nurse by my side.

There are so many things I need to do, I wish I could do them, I just have no focus. I think I could fold laundry and get something out to thaw for dinner. Not sure what else I could do in this state. I’ll try to read and do a bit of work from home if I can. I’ll see you when the itching subsides.