The next 50 years

The off duty EMT who saw me go down said I hit my head.  My head didn't hurt and I don't have a headache, but the helmet definitely caused whiplash and it did take a good knock on the back. I do need a new one, but not till I have a bike to ride again.  Won't be this week. So how do I know it's whiplash?  Well I started googling "accident aftercare" or something like, and kept running into whiplash advice.  Even as the advice piled up, so too did the muscle stiffness and a neck pain of the icky sort. So I figure, yeah, whiplash and a banged knee.  What I can tell about it, rest and stretching, NSAID pain killers, and life goes on as usual for me but the cause of my chronic pain is temporarily known by me, and by this blog.  Only. You see, the car I hit had a scuff on it's black bumper.  It was pretty slow speed and my bike is light so it didn't breach the bumper's shock absorbtion ability.  It will actually buff out. However, SGI wants to inte...

Man am I beat.  I was riding my motor scooter along 22nd.  The guys in the car next to me were fooling around distracting me when the guy in front, after picking up speed, had to ram his brakes on for someone turning into the parking lot.  Bam.  I smashed off my front fender and misaligned my forks, busted the mirror and my knee.  Apparently, and EMT witnessing says I hit my head but the helmet did it's job so I never felt it.  I was rolling off in a judo roll when it happened too.  My leathers really saved my skin and clothes but my knee took a bad whack with minor abrasion, and it's going to swell up like a purple grapefruit.  I tried calling CAA when I discovered the forks were broken.  First the computer kept not hearing me over the wind on my cell phone and my cheek kept pressing numbers on the screen.  So then I got a human on the second call and she wouldn't just send a tow, had to get my license (never gave it) and my name, and a...

"Ooh I love my ugly boy, so rough and tough and don't care bout anything but me, I love him 'cause he's so crazy, just crazy about me!"  -Die Antwoord So now that song is off my working mind maybe my mind will work! I saw this video of a wedding between two people up against hard odds.  They had been battling illness and poverty and got chosen for a surprise wedding, honeymoon, and cash towards the hospital bills.  The whole scene was touching enough in concept, but when you saw these two homely people looking so loving and sweet, all you could think was that this was a Miracle in progress.  They found not only each other, but the beauty in each other in a way that the shallow look from outside can not. Well the whole time I saw her looking into his mug, that song was playing in my head, LOL! If I had my druthers I'd do nothing but paint. Sadly, the world won't have it.  Dan still hasn't taken care of his income tax responsibilities.  He's supp...

I seem to have a nasty headache out of nowhere. Dan pointed out that the smart car in the tiny house design is more squished than it would allow for real.  He's right.  The thing doesn't quite fit the way I've got it and it's too far forward into the salon, resulting in coming too close to the wheel housing on the trailer. However, I'm a bit confused about that, the wheels on the model may not represent the trailer itself when we get it.  But there's got to be a specific clearance for shock travel too.  Some trailers, though, really don't need more than a couple inches of headroom into the floor around the wheels, while others are as high a well as you see on buses and vans!  Ultimately, it'll come down to what we can buy and we can't get a trailer till i find the courage to list the koi pond and deal with the replies (pray I get some). On the up side, if I sell it that money just might finance the actual trailer purchase. So I am thinking it mig...

You load four to five tons and what do you get? Another day older and nothin' but fed. If you cain't make it you get whipped instead! I lost my soul to the mining of coal. Blacks were enslaved in the mines and their only wage,if they met their quota, was dinner. I don't know what it takes to load four or five tons of coal but I am damn sure he didn't have time to moonlight for breakfast or lunch meals.  What's more, when a man ultimately lost his strength, he would have gone down very fast. It's not like he could say "oh, I think I won't go in to work today to fail at loading my quota."  That'd mean an extra few whippings during the day if not continuously till he fainted. I looked it up after hearing "sixteen tons" the old coal mining folk song.  As I read about it, the phrase of the song above imagined itself in my head as though I were hearing an old black miner invent the song which eventually got white-washed into a nice po...

I can honestly say I believe we can have a bright future.  It's a feeling that's been growing steadily as this century proceeds.  I haven't always felt that way.  There were times I thought the doomsday clock was conservative.  Now, though, I see so much positive growing and proceeding against steep odds.  I see Facebook deciding to push for my personal dream, internet to the 3rd world.  I firmly believe these people would solve all their own problems in a single generation if they had the ready access to knowlege that I love so much.  The difference it's made over here is clear enough to me, for I lived a quarter century and more without it.  I remember the days of party line POTS telephone service.  Pretty much just a fence wire system and it was weird because you could hear the line interference enough to really get a sense of the distance between you.  If they were across town, it was fairly clear.  In the next exchange?  A...

So the guy doing my goggles came over and next you know, it's an argument about whether the world is doomed or not.  Oh from his POV it's more specific here and there and generalizing it to "the whole world" is unfair.  Yet, no matter what topic, he's got an absolute black/white  paradigm wherein you'll never heal the problem because the negative shit belongs there. It's not true!  I swear it isn't!  I can't prove it, though.  But once you know, you get it, it's for realz man, the whole thing is just a big story we're writing and should be righting. Oh don't get me wrong, it's an important story worth the greatest of our craft!  it's OUR story and it's The Only Story that exists!  But that's just it, make no mistake, there's no rules we can't eventually learn to break in any direction we choose.  Whether we focus on hurtful choices because we're hurting, or healing choices because we see the hurting, we are...

Today I found myself getting frenzied in the other direction, the one we usually nurture and chase.  High energy, high focus, high drive.  It's a state that can move mountains but I usually only need to wash dishes and floors!  What's more, it comes with a lot of stream-talking and haste.  I noticed the animals weren't comfortable with me in that state first.  Then I realized with a shock that I didn't need to be in a frenzy to have access to this lovely energy today.  Whatever mix of diet and hormones were working together, it wasn't any wiser to be intense happy than it was to be intense unhappy!  I realized that this happy version crashed all too easily into unhappy if enough roadblocks or distractions came up.  So I did my "take five" bit.  I plugged my ears with my thumbs and covered my eyelids with my fingers for better concentration and started imagining.  It was harder this time but I forced it, that's the mental discipline part,...

Peace of mind is not easy in this century.  I sit to catch up on break videos and every other one is "exciting" in some way.  Be it americans being oppressed by their militarized police forces or avalanche digging for rescue.  From kittens in cement to trailers for action movies.  There just is no end to the videos, nested among the cute, inspiring, and hilarious and calming stuff, that ramp one back up.  Here's another one. Shot in his driveway.  Dammit.  Some are too quick even to realize I should move to the next. Well this is part of my challenge I see, learning to move on when "entertainment" is overstimulating.  On the up side, it's later and I have been sleeping through well enough to go to bed 8hrs b4 the alarm instead of padding in 2 hours of restless time.  That's one of the things that trying to manage the overstimulation minute by minute will give back, a good night's rest. This is the thing, see, that you can't see on the wrong...

So drinking always breaks the brain's cycle of emotion creating reasons creating more emotion.  I'm therefor feeling better.  I also found some excellent websites on ADHD that help clarify a lot.  I shared it with Dan and he read some of it but sadly not all and I don't think he's going to take up the cause and let me off the responsibility hook yet.  From the reading I am now utterly certain that I am doing my full best and following all the guides.  Dan, however, is just rampantly indulging his disorder at my expense. So then I saw this video on the brain that said my brain can't tell the difference between physical and mental injury and pain!  Nor can it understand that imaginary isn't happening.  So if you imagine getting your head slammed, your brain will react as though it has to protect from a slam.  This will cause all the usual secondary harm that stress does.  You see, the way the body adapts to injury is not a healthy way to funct...

Next time I try that, better bring a glass along so I know how much I've swallowed.  I got so incredibly ill!  Dan picked up the slack for the animals but to me showed no sympathy.  I didn't expect it.  He takes any excuse he can find to make me tough it out and he hasn't a clue how to emotionally care for another being anyway. So in the spirit of keeping my word I sat on the living room floor facing my little ceramic idols, a set of tibetan cymbal finger bells (what are they called?) in my hands, and chanted the green tara mantra.  I tried to keep my eyes on the statue and had the timer counting for me.  I brought the dog next to me so he wouldn't feel the need to wander over and bug me. Didn't work.  He waited about six minutes into it and started dashing around and acting like he had to crap right this minute.  So I had to stop, at 6 mins, feeling twice as agitated.  I almost started over but my mood was truly sour and meditating has alw...

I did it. I got wasted. AKA comfortably numb. (and needing the backspace key a lot more.) Yes, I type at the speed of speech and correct on the fly with the backspace key.  Doing it a LOT right now.  Engage typing brain Ok, so I learned to type at age 13 b/c I was so bad at writing.  My hand spasms halfway down the page and fine motor control suffers.  Tapping your fingers is much easier.  However, I've just slowed down by half. Yes, I'm drunk/stoned, feeling finally numb.  Okay, almost 3 am and not asleep but on the upside dan'll be in charge of Timmy tomorrow and I can get up when I do. wholly crap, here comes sleep but I better pee first. See what self control I have?  Drinking jack daniels, smoking pipe, want to pass out, still typing, and planning it all the way through a trip down a ladder and a stairway to the toilet and back. But seriously, how could my hypothalamus fool me when it can't even take over with this level of sedation?  F...

If it was all my fault, the power to fix it would be all mine too.  I'd just need a recipe, a map, a set of instructions, methods, etc. Gee whiz, I do know of one.  I know of one single method of instruction, set of instructions, methods, way to make oneself never the direct cause.  meditation. I've avoided it all these years because I don't get what it does.  oh I've tried.  I've researched. happens... I get mad.  No really, I get mad.  I get so restless my anger rises to force an end. I think, though, if I want to really address my own possible part in my relationship woes, and I worry that I'm too volatile, too sensitive, too focussed on slights.  I think if I want a plan, there's one that's been offered that I haven't tried. Ok. Tomorrow I will. Oh how long do I force myself?  To meditate with a timer going, doing buddhist chants because it's the only way to keep from getting into an emotional frenzy.  A week?  A month? ...

Why can't people like me just die and make us all happy?  I don't want to live.  Nobody else wants me alive.  Even my dog hates me now. Dan came home and started another fight and I yelled about it at him for around an hour.  Then trying to go to sleep (failing due to excess crying) and Timmy gets up and pisses on my bed.  Just walks over to the corner and pisses then tries to bury it in the sheets.  Why would he do that out of the blue?  He was out at the usual time.  So I'm up at 2 am with the bissel on my memory foam mattress wondering if I don't get to have a dog with me at night anymore.  I think so.  He pissed on the floor this morning.  I really loved having him here. If everyone just fucking hates me, why am I still here?  Why can't I go somewhere and vanish?  Why isn't there somewhere I can stop existing instead of facing 108 years of being a pariah with everyone?  What is a person like me supposed to do? ...

I just saw a video of a woman being arrested on a plane for the very sort of "dire announcement" rant that Dan is guilty of putting on me all the time!  She wouldn't quit trying to alert everyone that USA had declared war on Venezuela over oil rights.  The relative truth of the question isn't the point.  The point, here, is there's a limit as to how much action you are allowed to stir in others!  The famous example is "you can't yell 'fire' in a crowded theatre."  This isn't as obvious to today's people.  But the net result of upsetting people in that way is a stampede with injury or death.  Now a plane full of people aren't likely to stampede over a declaration of war, but they are likely, with no controls, to turn into a mob and kill the person who won't shut up when requested. People will tell you to shut up if you're upsetting them.  Then if you don't, they'll start focussing on forcing you to.  The harder you...

It's interesting, but I can tell how well I've been eating by how my face feels in my hands.  If I feel my cheek bones firmly under my skin, I'm well.  If I've been cheating, eating potato chips, or candy from the store, and such, it'll feel softer, fatter.  My cheeks will feel noticeably wider and softer!   I see it in the mirror too, but it translates more subtly as "looking younger." I think, though, that others can tell my age by my face. I don't think they're all thinking I'm only 30 something, although some certainly do.  I suspect those are people who focus on the superficial cues like hairstyle, carriage, and clothing.  I don't dress my age, no no, except of course, it IS my age.  You see, the given style of the average "old" woman is whatever she felt most "cool" or "beautiful" or otherwise positive about when she was younger and feeling at her best.  This is usually a style relating to around age 30 ...

I've probably told this story too often now, but not on this particular site.  I ought to go find the write-up on the first mugging that I did right afterwards and just paste it, LOL, but this will be much briefer. Yesterday at the store I was waiting in line for a toilet with a Hutterite gentlemen of less than angelic bent.  He opened the conversation about his love of large tankards of beer.  At first, my response seemed to shame him a bit but I confessed to a love of another type of alcohol and he relaxed.  Sheesh, alkie much? Damn, I just realized, yeah, an alcoholic in the colonies would be neither rare or funny.  One alcoholic elder could toxify the whole village in a scene like that.  Hutterites live in large communes.  They have individual private family homes but share most of their lives, including meals, with their entire village.  Colonies, as they are called, will interact overland with other colonies around the country and in the US...

I've been riding the high of inspiration again after solving a thorny problem that's beset me.  Whether Dan and I go together or me by myself, I didn't know what kind of vehicle configuration.  Solving it with the idea of a garage on the back of the house is just exploding with possibilities.  If we've got a 30' trailer then that would leave a 6' deck on the back, useful for more control parking the car, as well as being a deck!  That made me realize I'd actually have more work space in the new home than I've had since moving to this tiny cottage.  The space cleared by the car would allow me to sculpt, sew, invite friends for dinner, set up a hot tub, lay out a project, dance or just work on my vehicle.  On a lovely evening with the door open and chairs out on the deck the house would just open right up spacious and airy.  I'm so excited! But a quick check of the local market shows that finding a trailer for a sum we can conjure is going to be the f...

Hee hee, I just had the greatest day thinking further on the "smart car garage in the tiny house" and I realized that I can also get an inflatable hot tub to put in it's place, up against the openable door for hot tub evenings.  Or take the tub away and install a large table for dinner guests.  Planks on saw horses work great if you put a big nice sheet over them! I also decided on the plumbing and it's going to extreme basic. Water from the tiny house tank under the living room can come up just one single tap by the toilet and car park.  A drain in the floor allowing car washing, hot tub use, and general spraying around with a shower curtain and shower head. The shower will include a temperature handle with an on-demand water heater and a water pump powered from the tiny house batteries will also allow me to use this water for household cleaning.  Water for drinking and hand washing can come from urns mounted above sinks which drain into holding buckets.  Th...