Drink Scotch Whiskey all Night Long . . .

My internet has been a mess all day. Everything is running as slow as possible and stalling on me. There are some sites I just can't even open. I'm really hoping this blog post shows up.  This is very upsetting to my pattern of dollmaking/gameplaying/forumreading/musiclistening. Yes, I know. Deep and important pursuits. Hey, they keep me mostly sane.

Seriously, the net is really bad tonight. Every time Blogger autosaves, Pandora stalls on me. It's like having big dramatic pauses in the music. With the sultans, with the sult...............wing. Okay, like drunken pauses when the singer forgets the lyrics. Not good ones.

Yes, I'm listening to a nice 70's band station. I've been in this kind of nostalgia mood all day.  In fact, earlier I was listening to covers of disco songs, just to see what people could do with them. Verdict, some pretty neat stuff. I was quite pleased. On a related note, I want to learn to play the ukulele.

Right now, I'm listening to this Doobie Brothers/Eagles/Steely Dan/Fleetwood Mac station. It's a Mom station, built around the music I associate the most with her.  These are songs she introduced me to.  I wouldn't care if these songs sucked completely. I just couldn't see it because they remind me so much of her. 

When I hear them, I can picture her driving, a beer in her hand, windows down, sunglasses on, and singing passionately along with them. Mom was most happy when she was driving and singing. I think it was the one time she would really let go of all her torment and just be in the moment. I think music was the one place she would let herself escape.

And yes, I realized I just spoke of my mother drinking and driving. That was quite common, really. Like, practically every day. Like the lyrics say, "Drink scotch whiskey all night long and die behind the wheel." This was just the par for our lives. See this is why I can never say I'm not a lucky girl. I lived for years in  the potential shitstorm of my mother having a drunken car wreck. 

Actually, I was in a couple of wrecks with her. I wrote about one of them. The other one happened when she was writing a bike and I was in the babyseat on the back. She flipped us, from what I have been told. I was too little to remember. Though given how I act now, I'm guessing I landed on my head.

You know what's interesting about the songs like this is that they're kind of a slow burn towards destruction. Unlike the stuff I listen to and identify as close to my own tendencies, the songs my mother loved lulled one into destruction. Yeah, we're having a good time . . . oh wow, the house just burned down, but in a classy way. 

Oh wow. The next song up was Pink Floyd's "Wish You were Here." I think need to change stations before I get weepy.

Playing with Dolls

I think everyone has their favorite online places. The ones where you go to distract yourself from all the annoyance of . . . well, of all the other online places you go. The interwebz can be very emotionally tasking for people and everyone finds those moments when they need an escape.

I play with dolls.

See, honestly, if my life was as I want it to be, I would just play with dolls all day long and get paid for it. This is, truly, what I want to do for a living. I just haven't quite figured out a way to accomplish this. Hopefully I will.

Until then, I have Doll Divine. This is my absolute favorite website. I go here every day and play dress up. I put clothes on dandies or may my own Sailor Moon characters or whatever I happen to want to play with that day. It is completely relaxing to me and helps me cope with the levels of agitation I get from Facebook and forums.

Doll creator sites are also good for writers. You can use them to get a basic working concept of your character, in terms of how their personality shines through when you change the genre of their look.

For instance, my bff and I are working on character concepts for our second book. As I flesh out characters in my head, I go to various dollmakers and see how the character would translate. A lot of the time when you're working on book characters (or a character of any medium, really), you have to accept that aspects of their personality will be conveyed in how they appear. Tics, mode of dress, favored colors, even hair styles will become associated with this character. Really refining down what is most important where these physical aspects are concerned is helpful in knowing how to describe them.

So yes,  dollmakers can have both pleasurable and practical applications . . . which, in my opinion, translates to mostly just practical applications, as anything that brings pleasure to your life has some degree of practicality to it.

Spoons

Today, I happened to be in a message board and came across The Spoon Theory. It's very awesome and makes complete sense. I am very glad I found it.  The basic idea is that each of us (especially people who are ill) have only so many bits of energy we can dedicate in a day. The originator of the theory used spoons to illustrate her point.

Her friend asked her what it was like to be ill all the time. She handed her 12 spoons and explained that while healthy people have an infinite number of spoons (energy), sick people have a limited supply. You have to make choices about how your spoons will be spent. She then began to take spoons away from her as they discussed all the activities she would have in a day.

In my life, different aspects of my energy and resources have different spoon levels. I know things are limited, but there are some variables that give or taken away spoons for me.

For instance, I don't have a lot of physical energy. I can walk around the house, do some tasks, do some exercise, and tend to my basic needs. I would say, to use the metaphor, I have about five spoons of physical energy. During the summer, this drops to four because the heat takes so much out of me. The total number is up from where it was before I got my CPAP.  Back then, I probably had about two spoons' worth of energy. I could do very minor tasks and tend to my basic needs. The rest of the time, I was falling asleep.

The physical levels are increasing. I am trying to build my energy/endurance levels, so I expect to have more this time next year. I do not believe it will be a boundless amount.

I think it gets more complex with my social energy levels. I would say that on a good day, I probably have ten spoons of social energy. I can carry on conversations, talk to people, listen to them, and do other social things. During the summer, I lose two spoons, again because it is so hot.  When I am having some of my more intense mental or emotional problems, I lose another two spoons, taking me down to six.

Past that, it will just depend on the situation. If the socialization is commanding a lot of emotional energy from me, it's going to drain faster. If the socialization isn't something I am interested in, but am still required to participate in, it's going to drain VERY fast. If the social activity involved someone asking me a lot of questions or demanding I be entertaining beyond what I find enjoyable (especially on days when I'm not feeling that creative), my energy is going to drain away very quickly.

What is interesting and somewhat frustrating about losing your spoons (energy) is that once it happens, you shut down. You are drained. You need some time to recharge yourself. If it is a physical activity, you might just need to be sit for a while and rest. If it is a social thing, perhaps it is best if you can find a way to remove yourself from others until you can deal with them again.

There have been times when I was out with a friend or at a party, when I just found myself in that place where I knew I was starting to shut down emotionally and socially from the situation. In those cases, though I know perhaps the others found it baffling, I would politely tell everyone goodbye and leave. It was kind of embarrassing, but at the same time, I knew if I stayed, I'd just be no fun to anyone, including myself.  I needed to get away.

I think it is very important to know what your physical, social, emotional, mental, and creative limits are. I do not find this to be a defeating concept. In the same way that it is important to know how much money you have so you can formulate a realistic budget, it is practical and wise to know how much energy you have so you can make better choices about how to stretch it out over your day.

For example, say you wake up and know you don't have a lot of emotional energy that day. In order to make that energy last from your waking point to your going to bed point, you will need to make careful choices about how you spend that energy. If talking to your mother-in-law normally drains you on a GOOD emotional day, it is probably wise to not talk to her on a low day. If shopping for groceries is a big hassle for you emotionally, it is best to reschedule shopping for another day.

If others don't like it, big deal. These are your resources for you to manage, not theirs. If you have ten dollars to make it until the end of the week and a friend wants you to go to the movies with them, they shouldn't get upset when you tell them you can't afford it. This is just how things are.

So yeah, if you don't want to stumble through life feeling completely drained, start considering your internal resources. Be honest about what limitations you have and  make decisions based on what is best for maximizing the energy you have.  If you're not happy with those levels, allot some time from each day to work on increasing your capacities. At the same time, understand this may be a slow process.

In the end though, it might help you go to bed feeling less weary than you did the night before.

The Next Step . . . Kinda Literally

Today I began a new thing with my working out. My roommate bought some concrete pavers for me. They are 1.7 inches high. We put two in a row and them stacked another one on top of each of them. And now, they are there so I can do stairstep exercises. And yes, I know I have steps connected to the house. I could use these for work out purposes. However, all of the stairs and steps connected to the house are precarious and probably not up to code. It's honestly safer if I use the pavers.

I began this today and am pleased to report that I did not fall! I have a lot of trust issues with stairs. I assume this is due to the fact that I have fallen down them before. Actually, more than once. I'm counting every day that I don't fall as a victory.  I have been told that doing stairsteps helps to improve your balance and overall grace, so maybe falling won't even be a problem.

I was a little surprised and pleased that I could do as much as I did. Okay, I only did six minutes' worth, but that was still more than anticipated. I assume a lot of this has to do with the fact that I've been walking for a while now and have more strength in my legs than I assumed I would.

This is a huge bit of progress for me. I have the ball and the things I do inside, but they're mostly sitting down.  I walk, but not for very long. This is standing up, intense movement, and difficult. It's going to be a true challenge for me. Despite that, I'm fairly hopeful and optimistic about it.  I promise to give reports on my progress.

The Audacity

When my great-grandparents on my father's side got married , his family was so outraged by this that they didn't speak to them for over a year. You see, despite both families being Catholic, my great-grandfather was Irish and his family did not approve of him marrying a poor Italian girl. They saw her as very far beneath them.

My great-grandmother, who was a wonderful, bright, generous woman, once told me about that time. She said it was truly horrible. She felt like dirt. She felt dirty, unworthy of love or even of being alive. Understand that when she felt this way, she was a teenager. She was socially isolated, soon pregnant, and, on a daily basis, made to feel like she didn't deserve the basic love and dignity that other people could have, just because of who she was.

The people who did this to her weren't evil people. I'm sure they thought they were doing the right thing. I'm sure they felt it was important to take a stand, to show the world that this kind of union would not be approved of of accepted. It was important to define marriage as only fitting between certain kinds of people, otherwise it would destroy marriage forever.

In the end, my great-grandmother went on to become a valued member of her community. Italians and Irish people continued to marry each other. Eventually, no one saw that as a big deal anymore. It also didn't destroy marriage as an institution. The people who tried to stop the marriage didn't succeed. Well, I suppose they succeeded in making someone hurt and miserable. They made her feel dirty, unworthy, and marginalized. So I guess that's something.

Dan Cathy recently said, "I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say 'we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage' and I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about."

My statement back to him is that in EVERY generation, there have been people who had the audacity to be 'prideful and arrogant' enough to think we could define what marriage is. There were people with the audacity to realize that it was not just wrong but downright horrible to force a girl to marry the man who raped her. So we changed marriage there. There were people with the audacity to realize we shouldn't value a woman's virginity over her life, so we changed marriage there. There were people who had the audacity to believe it was okay to live life as a single person, without social penalty or a tax penalty. So we changed marriage there.

People faced down angry parents and married for love. People faced down the leaders of their churches and began to marry outside their faith. People faced down social and religious stigma and fought for more humane divorce laws. People opted to remarry, despite the social and religious stigma against that. People married and chose not to have children. Slaved married in secret, just to have that one bit of happiness in their lives, despite the chance of horrible consequences if they were discovered.

Instead of being angry that our current generation is being audacious enough to open up what marriage can be again, be grateful to them, and to everyone in the past who did the same thing. People have died for the rights of sexual autonomy and personal choice in who we can love and how we can express that love. And all the while, ALL THE WHILE, marriage has never been destroyed and it won't be. It's just too much a part of who we are.

In the meantime, when people try to prevent others from having the basic marriage rights they have, they will tell themselves they are doing the right thing. They will assume they are taking a stand for their culture, their religion, and freedom. Hopefully, if things go the way they have in the past, they will not succeed in preventing the new marriages from happening. Nor will marriage stop existing as an institution. But they will succeed in making people feel dirty and unworthy and marginalized. The more extreme of them will hurt some people, maybe even kill them. They might even lead some others into suicide. So . . . I guess that's something.

Swinging Back

Sometimes when I should be writing my blog, I have this process of procrastinating and thinking at the same time. On occasion, this process yields very inspiring posts . . . the rest of the time, I just write something about my cats.  Last night, while in process, I read this reprinting of a blog post. It is amazing and you should go read it for yourself.

I didn't write about this last night (and did write about cats) because I knew I needed to think about it for a while. The ideas had to stew and just kind of let the important parts bubble to the surface. Yes, I do believe I just mixed metaphors. Cheers.

Anyway, I think the part that stuck out to me the most was when he discussed the phase and concept of "swinging back." By this, he means hitting back, defending yourself from aggression with equal aggression . . . or at least as equal as you can manage. Swinging back is a big thing. It's a defining moment of who you are and how you view your destiny. It always has consequences. It also has a set up.

See, in order to "swing back," you have to have someone swing at you first. You have to be put in a position where you need to defend yourself. The thing is, even being in this position sucks. No one wants to be here. No one wants to be the person someone else is attacking. But there you are. You're being attacked. And once you are attacked, you have a choice.

You swing back or you don't.

America, as a nation, was basically built on the principle of swinging back. We did not wish to be bullied by other countries. We wanted to be free to live our lives as we saw fit. Something about tea and taxes.  You know the story. What it boils down to is that, as a people, we swung back. We opted to defend ourselves, aggression on aggression, and accepted the consequences of whatever that would bring.

But here is the irony, and I think if there is anything about America that should change on a fundamental level, it is this . . . we value the concept of swinging back. We teach that it is what we should do. We hold up our founders, a group of people who rebelled against the Powers that Were, and won. And yet . . . when anyone who is outside the mainstream of what we find to be acceptable tries to swing back, we demonize them.

The angry black. The angry feminist. The angry gay.  The angry poor person. The angry old person. The angry Native American. Put just about anyone outside the WASPy acceptance group behind that "angry" and we freak out. THOSE people aren't supposed to swing back. THOSE people are suppose to just accept the aggression dealt to them, in fact, realize that no real aggression is happening and it's all in their heads. They're being oversensitive. They have no cause to swing back.

This is bullshit, of course. Because like it or not, there are a lot of people out there who are attacked on a daily basis, just because they don't fit in with the normals. Society, and individuals in society, swing at them and swing at them until finally they know they can either just lay down and die . . . or they can swing back. And when most of them DO swing back, they do so knowing full well that it may not solve anything, that it might even make things worse.

A few days ago, a friend of mine told me about an attempted child abduction case he'd read about. A woman was walking of of the store with her child when a man grabbed the kid. She screamed and tried to hit the man. He hit her back. And her child, who I think he said was about three, latched onto the man's neck and bit a chuck of flesh out of it. As his blood came gushing from the wound, he let the child go. He didn't die, but he was injured badly enough to be arrested and taken into custody (via the hospital, because he did have a chuck of neck gone now).

Now, I'm not saying that we should live in a hyperviolent society. I don't think that every slight and every insult should be answered with a kick to the head. What I am saying, is that for each of us, there should be a recognized limit to what abuse we will take. Once someone is reaching that limit with us, we need to walk away from them. If they won't let us walk away, we need to make up our minds if we are going to swing back at them. It may make things worse.

However, it will certainly make things change.

Battle Eyedroppage

The cats are going through some bad eye issues right now. It's because of all the fans and constant air movement.  Oh, and because of the particles of shit in the air. Most of said shit is cat fur, so you could say the cats brought this on themselves. But that would be cruel.

 A while back, my roommate did some research on eyedrops cats can handle safely.  Once he found one, he bought some.  Now, when cat eye issues happen, the cats get eyedrops. It really does help.  The cats' eyes are clearing up far faster than they ever have before. The stuff works.

This does not make the cats like it.  Even if it occurred to them that the eyedroppage was making life better for them, they would still hate the process.  Just, you know, because they're cats. If there is a stubborn, difficult way to react to something, this is going to be the way the cats react.

So the medicating of cat eyes becomes an Event in our home. Right now, we have two cats that need drops. The white cat is easier. She can be lured to me with toys or games. Once near, I secure her in my arms while my roommate goes to get the drops. One lift of the chin, drops go in eyes, my arm gets clawed, and she is sent on her way.

The brown cat is more difficult.  She knows things are going on that deal with her eyes, so her tactic involves hiding and avoidance. When she suspects my roommate may be considering giving her the drops, she scurries under his bed. He always finds her, which prompts a series of protest noises. Usually, he holds her while he tends to her eyes. Sometimes, however, he has to have me help in the holding department. She never scratches me, but she is deeply resentful.

Despite the drama, I do believe tending to their eyes with the drops is very much worth it. Nothing is sadder than a cat with gimp eye. It just ruins your whole day. But with medicine to clear up their eyes, we have less sadness in the catdom.