The next 50 years

Okay, so it'll be awhile before the text gets too long.  I am probably killing the buffer or something, I dunno. So my parents piled me into the car and drove me out to Whitby, a regional psychiatric hospital in Ontario, one town over from my home town.  We drove a long gravel avenue past the grounds, typically pastoral with trees, and trees lining the road, but no hedges or bushes to screen the view.  I looked out and saw autistic people rocking themselves on the lawn among other figures, most of them looking hunched and bloated and grey.  I think it must have been evening, it was twilight.  The rest of it, the boring cement rooms with furniture, the desk and the test and the friendly guy in the coat passing evil judgement on me were unimpressive.  Well, I didn't appreciate the guy saying there was nothing wrong except I wasn't trying hard enough.  But I believed him!  he was the expert!  He said I was just lazy and if I tried harder, I'd d...

I've got these scandihoovian kitchen witches in the form of salt and pepper shakers.  I believe they help me cook.  They figure out how much time on the nuker, or let me know it's time to do something with the pot on the stove.  They tell me how much is enough of seasoning and other ingredients.  They even think up recipes some times. I was imagining someone criticising me over that.  Telling me it does me no good to take what few skills I have and ascribe them to some imaginary supernatural power.  So I had that conversation.  What good does confidence do me when it makes people hate me all the more?  What difference if I am confident in skills I do have or don't have, when they won't be letting me show it anyway.  Nobody will say to me "oh, you think you can cook?  here, show us your stuff!"  So who cares if I think I'm a good cook?  I may as well think I'm a good singer, good writer, good dancer, pretty, sexy, friendly, hec...

I'm sitting here thinking, when one feels this awful it's easy to see it lasting forever.   Then the thought, how in the hell can I go about my basic independant needs if I can't turn off my emotions?  I can't go shopping like this, tear stained and weepy.  It's embarassing at the least and an unwanted conversation starter at the worst.  If I can't shake it, it could make my life even worse. Then I realized if worst came to worst, most of the things I do could be done in a burqa!  They don't know it's not a muslim woman inside and I don't have to converse with anyone to let on.  They'd react to me slightly better than if I went around crying in public!  I could go shopping over on the east side where the women who wear Niqabs go about.  I'd have to do my stuff early, like they do. That's when I realized one possible reason these women cling to this tradition.  Maybe they need cover for tear stained eyes too?  I expect a great deal of t...

I'm depressed because people think I'm crazy.   They think I'm crazy because I cry all the time.  I cry all the time because I'm lonely.  I'm lonely because too many people think I'm crazy.  That makes me depressed.  That makes me cry.  Loop. When I'm not depressed, it's because I'm feeling well enough to shove it from my mind and focus on day to day minutiae.  But give me the flu, or sleep deprivation, or poor nutrition, and I'll spend the whole day spinning that loop.  I didn't include the anger part, but we could call that the depression.  After all, depression and anger are married, in case you don't know.  Depression is what happens when the anger breaks on the rocks of reality.  Depressed people are angry people with no recourse to action and it turns inside and they try to destroy themselves.  I'm angry at being a pariah.  I ought to get a name change, Pariah Sims.  that'd be a very good name for me. ...

Damn mental health commercial is making me crazy!  I've seen two so far and both times it upset me. They have a scenario at work where two people are talking about someone else.  One, it's "so and so has anxiety" and the other is depression.  Three or four times they glitch repeat a scene where one tells the other the gossip, and the other says something flippant in the normal way.  Then in the final scene, they say something touching and caring.   "that can be tough, I'll give him a call/look in on her" is the answer and I burst into tears and fury. They never will.  They don't want to care, it's too much work.  They might have to actually lift a finger to help someone who's crazy! Here's what I think people think about crazy.  I think they consider us lost causes.  I include myself here because the stuff they're addressing in the commercials is me.  Depression, anxiety, and I'm sure they'll address adhd, and so on.  Yeah,...

I need to lean harder on this blog.  Every time I think I have a pithy thing to say or a thought to share or whatever, I should come here.  Not twitter, not vine, not google plus, nor any other effort that tries to get a response.  I don't get them and it depresses me.  I won't expect it from here so I won't get as depressed once I've killed the habit of spitting out material on social networks. I'll use vine to share Timmy I suppose, but I suspect if I just quit nobody'll notice so I'll see. After six months other people have soared into vine popularity on the strength of something as lame as "Hello folk, I'm ___ name, and I'm getting a haircut!"  Seriously, there's a guy who's popular simply for his cheery hello.  I can't understand why but I am still sitting with about 400 followers, mostly spam or idle people who aren't actually active, and I am still lucky to count 10 likes on the good vines.  Who could help but notic...

I'm so fucking depressed lately.  I don't think about it or tell anyone because I don't want to give it added traction but tonight I have to admit it, I'm feeling utterly worthless lately.  Utterly, completely.  I can't seem to accept it as okay.  I want so much for it to not be so.  I don't want to feel guilty for using resources up, you know?  I'm nobody.  I'm nothing.  I have zero value to the wide world.  Even my cute dog vines are getting fewer and fewer likes on vine.  I wonder if I'm actually crazy.  I wonder if when the world looks at me it sees an old crazed drug addict with nothing to offer anyone, ugly and worn out and pitiable.  I wonder if the words flowing out of my fingers are actually unstrung profundities apropos of nothing that relate to no reality and draw illogical conclusions between disparate entitities, like a schizophrenic transvestite bouncing from the paranoia of infrared cameras on his tv to the idea ...

Here's how one can spend two hours in the dark trying to sleep.  Okay, I am not spending the entire time that way, I did turn on the ipad for a bit. I woke up to pee, that's ordinary.  Got downstairs and it was frigid so I grabbed the fireplace remote/thermostat and took it downstairs to replace the battery.  It uses 9v so after poking around with a flashlight for awhile I gave up and put the half dead thing closer to the fireplace so Dan won't freeze down there.   Up to bed.  Back to the bathroom again because I think maybe I need to crap.  I don't, but I pick up Dan's ipad to watch a wimp video and there's a text message from the kid he undercharged who wants to pay electronically. I'm mad about it.  He likes this kid, it was nice working with him, but the young man's moved to a new job.  Dan isn't going to be buddies with him.  The man asked him to do his house, like everyone in town wouldn't like to be able to ask? JUST lost 10mins typ...

So I'm an ass again today.  It's been spread out enough I should be okay but the minute I start trying to share out of my head it's too late, and I'm an ass. I tweeted the president of Iran several times in reply to his tweets.  Yes, I follow people like that.  He is interesting, so I am interested.  He is important, so I hope to buzz into his ear for world peace.  That sort of thing.  I don't know what he wants, personally, out of his position.  Whether he wants to expand something or define something, enrich it or improve it, or just use the world for personal comfort.  I don't know his heart, and I cannot imagine I ever would.  I even expect it is just a low level clerk in the corner copying from the latest propaganda department slogan.  But I get all full of my own self worth when I do this stuff, and that's deadly.  I don't know how to protect my beloved self from the sorrow of feeling utterly worthless but I believe I have to...

Here's another aspect of Christmas we overlook, quite deliberately.  would anyone out there disagree that we expect to damage our health by eating and drinking things that are not nourishing healthful food?  consider the focus on "junk food" and "candy" and "sweets," or the focus on binge drinking.  Again, we get this idea that because of the time of year we're somehow entitled to indulge our animal wants even to the detriment of our own health, as though even Nature will "cut us some slack" because "it's Christmas time!" Really, shouldn't we espouse the positives all year and avoid the negatives equally constantly?  Can't we find another way to light the darkness and banish the cold?

seriously ugly insult: Hey cumstain, your mother got pregnant with you by sucking jizz off the floor at work with her twat! I can't say to anyone, nor do I want it on my twitter feed, etc., but it's too clever to leave in the air so here it is.  Inspired by a cumstain who fakes through the drive thru to steal the dinner bought by the guy behind him.  It's a video I saw today. So I'm colouring my hair.  I reasoned that there'd never be more time to mess with it than now so it's getting done.  I'm feeling a lot less flu-sick now though I can tell that acting foolish would quickly make it bad again.  So a hot bath is good, and a longer bath with more heat is better, leaving it a good time to sit around with product on my head. I had some great thoughts there, said "must get the blog open and write that down" but then I had to get the product soaking first.... Oh yeah, christmas and self entitlement.  First off, let me define "self entitlemen...

So Dan came down with my flu last night.  He's still got work this weekend too.  So I'm back to using my own energy again for chores.  I was able to relax while dan got them done the first two days.  Just waking up the birds has me beat already!    I want a nap!  I think I'll go lay on the couch with Timmy and get one.

Seriously, I woke up yesterday morning with flu, really bad too.  All the usual symptoms piled on.  I spent the day on the couch alternately laying to nap and sitting up to drink water or do something with the ipad or game controller.  During naps I watched netflix because I was rarely really sleeping.  Last night I got a great night's sleep thanks to some cold medicine and today I feel merely shitty.  If I treat myself the same today I should wake up flu-free tomorrow. I was born 11 days before the assassination of President Kennedy.  I have no memory of that event in another country.  I was a baby in my immigrant Dutch mother's arms.  My first memories outside of school and family, that noticed the wider world outside, were of a fringed vest.  I wanted one so badly!  My barbie had one but they were expensive.  I was told not to be so silly and shut up.  Years later I finally found one in Toronto at Kensington market.  I...

terday I did the shopping and a friend gave me some shroom brownies, or chocolates or whatever it is.  Just enough for two old fogies to have a light christmas high and look for santa or his elves!  We're going to do that tomorrow early and play video games. So today I spent cooking.  Right after breakfast a turkey and a turkey breast roast went in the oven.  Then I made the fruit salad.  Then I carved up the cooked turkey and took a bath.  Dan carved the roast when it was done. Came out the tub and made winter rainbow soup with rainbow carrots, bunched fresh herbs, yam, red potato, red onion, turkey, broth, and turkey fat.  With the stock cubes and all the food it needs no seasoning usually so I left it out.  I can add a little at the table if it's pale.  I find this is rarely the case. Using no salt in the soup also reduces our total salt inake since w'ere terrible that way.  Salty foods are our achilles heel still.  Chips, smok...

I have lost track of how long it's been since the sun shone into our house.  Well in fact it's not really shining in because it's so low the neighboring house blocks it.  But to see blue skies and bright light outside is a real treat ll the same.  I should send Timmy up to the attic for sunshine.  I will, and will return to writing after. there now, tiny dog with his tiny feet is upstairs in the tiny loft basking in the sunshine coming through the tiny window.  He has a tiny chew stick.  The attic sticks up just high enough to catch sun all winter long but it's been weeks since the sky was clear. I have sam beside me in the kitchen, cage and all. I roll him out for company because I think he feels too isolated out in the living room alone.  He's a lousy pet but an interesting person well worthy of kindness even in the face of his emotional storms.  He deserves it for what we humans have done to him! For anyone not knowing the details, Sam is a ...

Things slow tv is good for: helps insomnia by providing rhythmic reassuring noise, something relaxing to watch while awake, and soft flickering light while sleeping.  The noise and light help mask ouiside noises that might disturb a light sleeper and the lovely views it usually provides are terrific to take your mind off things that keep you awake. While visiting:  I'm generally in need of secondary entertainment while visiting but not something that excludes conversation.  One used to play cards or chess or such, but this habit is lost, so one sits yapping with no other activity unless it is on a screen.  Gaming, music videos, or just watching shows together, all of the above interferes with the actual interaction.  With a slow tv feed, you can talk about what is on the screen or gaze at it during lulls in the conversation, but it doens't interfere with moments when the topic takes hold and the chatting gets good. While idling.  Let's face it, some peop...

So the internet was getting slow much too quickly, much too often.  Every couple of weeks everything would start to hang, even netflix would have issues and connection drops.  Dan did a speed test and it was dismal, yet again.   It's been a few months and we've been working on the tech at home to remedy it so I felt this was likely not our end, but perhaps my recent flood of binge watching netflix while playing on vine and streaming slowtv to the living room for my parrot had triggered a piracy alert. Here's the thing, it's not legal for them to choke our bandwidth, but they are allowed to restrict ports and speeds by port setting to prevent illegal uses like spam, botnets, and piracy.  It's a shady business, really, dancing on the edges of legal service provision.  it states right in the contract how and when they'll actually throttle you, but it's phrased such that it doesn't quite fit the legal definition of throttling.  Basically, they have data cap...

Went to see the last hobbit movie and yeah, it shows the level of experience and talent coming out of New Zealand lately.  wow.  The scenes with the dragon were absolutely captivating.  The battle choreography both fantastic and believeable at the same time.  The monsters were every bit as terrifying as anything in the Lord of The Rings movies.  Peter Jackson's skill has become as great as the lonely mountain!  I warn, you however, this is no disney movie.  There is a lot of sorrow and death and more gore than you might want children witnessing.  But what a scene!  Oh when that thing I won't tell you happened, and he went so high and we saw the light go out and he fell, oh my!  Oh I can't tell you because I won't interfere with the story teller's art, but let me assure you, it's a splendid death scene worthy of it's victim!  Oh yes, someone dies...  Tolkien was not afraid to let death walk in his stories and if you've read them...

Rocks me to sleep, that is!  But seriously, it's really nice to have on while sleeping.  I find it much easier to return to sleep, and stay sleeping with the sound and light from a long quiet train ride.  Similarly  it's also delightful to stop and watch periodically in the house while otherwise engaged.  Today it's on the large tv just playing quietly, a long train ride through norway.  We can all stop and watch, like looking out the window on a train ride.  Until one has seen the whole ride several times it won't seem the same view each time one stops to look awhile. I'm noticing, curiously, that there seems to be a wildlife shortage in Norway's incredible landscape.  It's so much like Canada that it's eerie, at times Ontario or Quebec, others like the rockies in BC, but if it were, you'd see innumerable sparrows and pigeons in the train stations, little twitty birds along the shrubbery to the side, water fowl using the nearby lakes and rivers,...

I got a teeshirt today.  It says "shut up and shoot me already" in orange on black.  I used a couple of really campy fonts to create it.  Well, I instructed the girl who used them.  She did the work, just making what I wanted.  I took Timmy along to pick it up.  He likes coming along and as long as I can keep him warm, I like having him along!  I have only had to leave him at home when grocery shopping as that's a lot of time he's alone in a cold car.  You can't bring a dog in there even if you could get away with it, it's just disrespectful to people's food.  Service dogs are the exception for good reason and yes, I'd keep my dog away from the food too, but that's me and unless I get a service designation for him, that's that.  Boy I wish I could, but it's pretty near impossible if you don't buy the dog from the training people who do the program.  Plus which, Timmy's willingness to bloodlet would bar him.  He was a star at th...

I love it so much, I'd like to grow a chocolate plant!  Thinkgeek has a chocolate kit for sale, including raw cacao beans.  I wonder if they'd grow?  I can get some groovy lights these days, so giving it the light needed isn't seriously hard to do.  Imagine a chocolate plant in saskatchewan?  LOL! So I made a shitload of tasty chocolate treats.  I made white chocolate coated macadamia nuts, pumpkin pacman loaf (pity I didn't include the cute names),  classic marzipan, paleo nanaimo bars, pistachio bark,  chocolate marzipan spirals, walnut truffle balls, raspberry creams,  and some white chocolate macaroons that didn't make it into the packages due to being poorly manufactured the first time around.  It's too bad but in fact the packages are well and nicely stocked anyway.  I took an assorted nuts gift tray I'd saved and filled that with choclates for the vet clinic.  It's lovely, with cling wrap, christmas ribbon and a nice ca...

When a pet dies at the clinic they send a card with a footprint.  Sarah's arrived today and I gave it to Timmy for sniffing.  He sniffed it a very long time.  He loved her, so it's sad for him.  I'm glad someone grieves, and I know I can keep him content enough to ride it out. I think I had about three fantastic things to write about in the last two days and forgot them before getting to the blog.  Id open the ipad and some alert would go off and by the time I'd addressed the thing, I'd forget what I'm doing. Now dan is home and there's no way I can do this and watch the corner gas movie properly with him talking.  Besides I'd rather he didn't get familiar with this blog anyway.  Not for him to read.  I'll tell him when I'm ready.

I just discovered slow tv.  I've hungered and searched for it, not knowing what it was called, but knowing what I wanted.  It's funny to read the reviews written by busy magazine writers.  They can't understand it.  They're standing on the outside looking in and trying to figure out what the appeal is.  They have never had enough chill time to need to give the space ambience. These are people who rush through breakfast in 30 minutes for grooming and feeding and dressing.  These folks then occupy themselves while commuting with social interaction work.  Usually called "email" or they read the news, whatever, they spend the commute time reconnecting with the social environment.  They arrive at a new location and socially plug in to that for another two hours.  With keyboard, telephone and personal face-time they are busy processing more language and social communication.  They then take time for quiet before lunch, an hour or so of concen...

I got my first etsy sale!  It's not a lovely box, but the rocket ship I put up to fill the shop that first week.  Nevertheless, it means a rating when I complete the exchange and that will help assure others I won't cheat them.  I packed it up but I realize I better study up on the laws around things like shipping product over the border.   I won't be sending it before monday since our post office doesn't open on weekends, so that's time to sort it out.   it's packed up nice and secure in a clock radio box and it looks quite safe from bouncing around.  Okay, so Tom is coming by any minute so that's today's post.

Sarah Noelle Mackenzie, b 02NO02 d 12DE14, aged 12 years.  Died of euthanasia due to heart condition and severe tooth decay. Timmy is a bit out of sorts of course.  So are we, and she had other friends out there who are sad.  She got old.  I feel worn out from being sad.  Tired and beat.  Anyway.  I hate being the one who takes them in and I wish I'd sat her down but I just wanted to be done with it.  Poor girl.  Well I did my best for her for 12 years.  it is what it is.

Oh I just have to talk about this fool.  See, about 4 years ago we signed on with a security company.  For a 3 year contract we got a couple door sensors, two motion sensors, and a control panel.  By year two we couldn't be bothered to use it.  Firstly it had bothered us too many times with false alarms, once while we were sleeping!  I mean, not like we'd done it, it just would call the monitoring station and they'd call us, sitting quietly at home unaware! Nevermind the problem that we could only come in the back door so we could turn it off, had to teach it to anyone we wanted access into our homes, or that it did in fact go off a few times too, during failed input efforts.  Either we didn't get our fingers on it soon enough, or we entered something wrong either turning it on, or off, and it went off.  Oh my goodness.  And when there was a power outtage it wouldn't shut up either, beeping like a smoke alarm with a dead battery!  Now we've ...

"Hey, how are you, I haven't seen you in ages!" "oh hello, I'm fine, yes it has been a year or two, hasn't it?" "I've tried to call you but you never pick up, why not?" "I don't really have any reason to." "Don't you want to talk to me?" "I don't really have any reason to." "Don't you get lonely?" "Not any more.  I used to, and talking to you once a year didn't help." Yeah, I think if I get pulled into that conversation by one of my "friends" out there on the street again, I'm okay saying that.  It would make the uncomfortable grilling quite short.  they like to pretend like it's my fault we're not closer and that they have hurt feelings but when I try and pull close, they shove me away constantly and disrespect me till I'm crying for days, so yeah, I think I could. On a similar topic, the clown friend actually called just to chat, I thi...

I just figured it out, a circuit is just a variant of conductive material and non-conductive material arranged specifically.  If you want a straight run, there's just straight lines, like in house wiring.  When you want to interrupt it, you put in a stop of NC, but then you need a way to start it again, that's  a switch because it puts the C back in and takes it out.  Transistors are digitally activated switches. A capacitator is a kind of battery.  it's got tons of both C and NC layered so the electricity that goes in gets stuck in a maze, or like a water tank, allowing you to pour in a whole bunch, then open the switch at the end and it all comes out KABANG in a release.  Then there's resistors, they slow it down.  I guess you mix the conductive and non-conductive so the stuff has to jump to get across and loses power, plus you'd need to allow for heating because the effort gets the electrons all overheated and they warm up the circuit that makes th...

I wish "post title" was at the bottom, since one wants to fill it in last, not first.  But if I don't put something in first, I'm likely to forget after!  I wonder what it would be like to have a good memory like folks had before literacy? I have so much trouble with my posture.  Seriously, I have wondered if it's a sign of something weird in my brain because of how quickly I return to a crouch.  I straighten up and return my attention to what I'm doing and immediately my body returns to the crouch.  It's being caused partly by my poor eyesight.  My eyes are doing that middle-aged thing where you can't see close up and I already had bad distance vision.  It's where everything is blurry at every distance and I should definitely get those graduated lenses. So I'm finding myself way too involved with a woman on Vine.  She's a sympathy addict.  She whines daily in long streams of 6 sec cuts of random thought.  Like if she was that fascinat...

See, this is how it happens.  I get a bit busy, lose the habit of writing, and suddenly it's a quick blip to list the events of the week as though they are important.  yet that's not what this blog is for.  it's for musing and thinking and if I don't do it regularly it won't be there when I need it. One thing I hate about losing weight, my rings getting too loose.  They drop around and the jewel sits under my finger while I type, annoying me.  Not quite as much as how this keyboard can't keep up with me and doubles too many characters. So the first busy thing was I bought an Xbox on sunday.  So that blew monday and tuesday away, really.  Except that also on Tuesday the washing machine flooded the basement.  So there's more work.  I'm trying to play catch-up on regular chores and cooking while painting boxes and playing xbox but then I'm drying out the basement, moving stuff out of the wet zone, cleaning up and so forth.  and the washer...

I put my knitting down to take care of something but what, I can't remember.  I know I thought it important enough to stop knitting and get to work on it.  Damn.  Middle aged memory is so very fragile.  Mad Men is such a compelling show, it keeps getting all my attention and wiping out my short term memory.  But what in heck was I going to do??

More snow this morning but not a lot on the ground.  Just enough to make me feel guilty if I don't clear it.  I'm stuck trying to remember what I should do with my day and I'm not sure I actually have anything that needs done today.    This is the upside to unemployment, LOL!  Nobody sets up my schedule and i'ts only as full as I want it to be.  Personally I believe I'd kill myself if I had to live any other way.  Certainly I tried hard enough and was far too sick from the stress to be any good at it anyway.  I could ask why I can't do what everyone else does, but I'm more inclined to ask how they do it, why they do it, why it isn't unendurable to them.  Then the answer floats up as obvious as "it's warm because the sun is out" would.  The simple answer is that being autistic means I can't do the social part of "normal" life and so every attempt to do "normal" things brings me into my disability again.  Whether it...