There’s a lot of plans and signs that we’ve had to sort out. We’re hopeful that we can stay in the location for a while and establish clientele. The market is a lot more easy-going than the Thursday market and much better value for money.

Munchkin and I just had a long talk about managing time and not spending a lot of time chained to the computer. He’s been allowed to play games on the computer but I’m limiting his time a lot more thoroughly than I have before because when I would get distracted by what I was doing it was very easy for me to let him play at longer than the time limit. He was very unhappy when I told him to get off the computer and made sure to not get distracted myself so he got off the computer at the end of the next level of the game he was playing. He stomped his feet and got very angry with me when I told him that not only could he no longer play on the computer but he wasn’t going straight from the computer to watching TV or playing a game on the TV either because that was just as bad. I talked to him about how important it was to not spend all his time just playing games in that way that he should play with his toys or do other things and how I was working on that myself and that once I finished this blog post I was going to work on the laundry some more and get something out to thaw for supper then he and I could work on something together again and that if he helped with the laundry by putting away his clothes it would be all the faster. He whined a bit more but he calmed down and hugged me and I came back out here.

We had another little spat because he brought out a very noisy toy and sat down next to Kore who is succumbing to the plague and rather miserable and playing a game on her computer to relax and he started watching her and trying to tell her how to play the game so there was a ruling that he should go back to his room with the noisy game, “But it’s BORING!” he said; but after it was pointed out to him that if the game is boring in his room it would be boring out here too he decided he would go get a book to read instead and asked if that was okay to sit out here with so long as he was at the table instead of watching Kore. So, progress already.

Now, I’m going to sign this off and do the laundry like I said I would.

Mental illnesses have stigma; much more so than most physical illnesses partially because if you have something mentally wrong you don’t look sick. When you see someone in a wheelchair or on crutches you automatically know that there’s something wrong. You can see how you can help them if they need it. When someone tells you that they have a mental health issue that’s more squirrelly; because who knows they might snap and fly off the handle at any moment.

I won’t claim that D.I.D. has the worst stigma attached to it of any other mental health condition but it’s pretty difficult to overcome bias and misinformation. I imagine there are many incorrect assumptions about any condition and this comes from the fact that not enough people are talking about conditions such as this. The ones who are talking about them are ones who sensationalize the issues to draw attention or viewers: the movies where people fake having a condition to get away with murder; or where the person committing the crimes has the health condition which leads the general populace to assume that everyone with that condition must be so inherently damaged that they’re going to lash out with violence. Anyone might be provoked into violent action whether they’re dissociative or are bipolar or are just a bigot. From what I’ve seen and experienced most people with mental health issues are more likely to hurt themselves than others but there are always exceptions to a rule.

I found that with my dissociation I’m more likely to curl up in a ball and rock backwards and forwards, or shut off in a more catatonic fashion than lash out. Really reaction to stimuli with D.I.D. is as varied as the alter who is present when dealing with it and who may be thrust out afterward.

Many I’ve dealt with and spoken to who have D.I.D. have a “cover diagnosis” to use when talking to the public. They won’t even tell other health professionals they deal with: dentists, G.P.s, that this is what’s going on with them which I feel is detrimental. Someone who is taking care of you in any capacity needs to know about every factor that goes into the equation. For example with us we can react differently to medication depending on who is “forward” and given everyone has different things which can trigger switches professionals need to be made aware of this so they can ensure you get the best care possible. If you were allergic to penicillin you would tell your doctor so he didn’t prescribe it to you. I view speaking about D.I.D. the same way. I felt it was very important to tell my new OB-GYN because that exam is pretty darn creepy. I try to use both my ability to dissociate and tools I learned in hypnotherapy to prevent freaking out but that’s not to say something won’t go screwy somewhere and the person who walked into the exam isn’t the one who comes to afterward and while they might just take it in stride they also might not and if the doctor and staff are aware that this could happen they’re better able to help and diffuse without having to call the cops and add fuel to the fire.

Life is hard enough; why make it more difficult?

My first rule of D.I.D. is inform within acceptable limits. My second rule of D.I.D. is answer questions honestly and openly to educate others in the reality of the condition. It is weird, yes, and it can be scary, but some of us have to take steps forward otherwise misinformation will win out and things will just get worse.

You can’t escape the crazy though and the ways to do so are not productive. I am not leaving my son. I refuse.

I love how they tell you “write what you know” when trying to start something. What if all you are is confused? and then pissed off at yourself because you sound like some stupid emo clone, or some high schooler trying to be all “deep and shit”.

I have decided NyQuil is a bad, evil thing. I was talking earlier (was it me?) about how DayQuil is really the one that is of the devil. How people all complain about the green death medicine but that it really doesn’t taste that bad. DayQuil though…it’s gag, biter central. I’m not even sure what it’s supposed to taste like. NyQuil at least has the licorice thing going on.

Still the root is that I can’t sleep and now my brain is doing hyper circles like a demented roller coaster and I can’t find the paper journal so I’m typing it up here and probably annoying people. Sue me.

I need to call Elsie, that’s part of what started it, that and freaking out about munchkin’s party and whether or not I should go. School is doing a party for the end of term and for the birthdays of all the kids whose birthdays are after school gets out. He asked if I was going. I’ve only been to prizegiving so far. I use the excuse that he’ll have more fun without me there. I use the excuse that I’m busy (which is sometimes true–trying to start up a business means random times of randomness); but the main thing is that we get freaked out by the idea of being around people and the fear becomes so much that even those who can handle social stuff can’t get through it.

That’s when I really feel that DID which is supposed to be this wonderful safety thing is actually crippling but then it’s not what’s crippling it’s the social anxiety. I want to talk to Elsie but I don’t know how to begin to call her, which is dumb, because I have her number. It was never deleted from the phone and she’s using it for her new office. Just like it’s been so long I don’t know about calling the psych. I guess it’s the danger of mental illness where you feel good for a while and then when things start to go bad again you don’t know what to do. You feel like you failed at being healthy when the truth is you weren’t properly healthy to begin with you were just managing.

You are supposed to set something to do with stride and something else which pops up with a funky “r” on the screen and each of these have numbers which run in increments of five. I have no idea whatsoever and the tiny sheet of instructions doesn’t explain it at all.

Today it told me that I walked 5849 steps when Mum and I went for our walk. The pedometer on Kore’s ipod told us that the same distance walked was around 4000 steps. Granted Kore and I are bound to have different strides as we are 3 inches different in height but you would expect the taller person to take less steps? Plus when I got home and tested it out in the house I walked ten steps and it told me I walked fourteen. I have no idea. I think it might be easier to just have it tell me the miles I’ve walked. According to Google Maps the distance we walked today is around 1.6 or 1.7 miles so I will try that function out tomorrow if I can make it work. It’s times like this I realize why people just go for the best diet pills and leave it at that much less effort and brain stretching!

It’s been busy so far and it’s only halfway through. We’ve had gathers with family, work cleaning up the house (which isn’t finished) and time spent reorganizing. Then munchkin finishing up school, working with the business and catching up on some movies that we’ve been wanting to see. Also we’ve been working on the start of our 101 in 1001 which involves doing some reading and also walking during the day.

2011 is the year we start on the plan for the rest of our life. In keeping with that we have to get our health in order and rather than look for the best appetite suppressants we’re working on properly retraining ourself. This means we’re going on walks during the mornings some times with Mum and Dee (dog) and other times with Kore and/or the munchkin or by ourself. Today we invested in a pedometer to help us keep track of our exercise. We’re also going to be working with the Wii Fit once the batteries recharge.

We’ve thrown out quite a bit of things that we didn’t need any more and are going to take the majority of the games and books that we’ve been trying to sell online since last year to GameStop and the second hand bookstore given they’ve not sold since this time last year so I doubt they will at all.

We spent time with the in-laws celebrating a belated Yule and learned the value of kinship. We’ve been taking advantage of the limited time that we have premium channels to catch up on movies that we’ve been wanting to see. So, we’ve recently seen “Salt”, “Despicable Me”, “Tale of Desperaux”, “The Losers”, “Machete”, “Time Traveler’s Wife”, “Zerophilia”, “I Love You, Man”, “Valentine’s Day”, “Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief”, “Harry Potter 6″, “Last Exorcism” and “The Collector”. Not all of these turned out to be films that we liked and a couple of them we stopped watching before they finished.

We got to go and see a movie in the theater today: “The Green Hornet” which was very cool. I’ll write more about that later.

It’s been a good couple of days though we knocked out everything on our to do list except things which required the internet because it wasn’t working at our business partners house. In some ways I think that was helpful because I don’t get distracted by emails of car insurance quotes and then segue from deleting all those into reading LOLCATS and checking Facebook.

The other day he tried something similar. He’d been barred from playing video games which happens quite a bit. We’ll let him play things like “Plants vs. Zombies” or “Insaniquarium” if he’s been being good. He also has the learning games on the Leapster2 which Mum bought him for Christmas and given he likes car driving games and the “Cars” movie we had put several editions of “Burnout” on his Yule list and the in-laws bought him those. So, he gets to play the games if he’s been behaving but he was barred because he was getting antsy and whining about them and generally demonstrating that over the Christmas break he’d played too much and needed to have his gaming time cut down, so hubbie and I agreed that he wasn’t going to play games for several days. Then when he went back to school he peed himself and was being generally belligerent with his teacher so I told him that he could only play with his Leapster when we got home and was not allowed to have any of the “fun” games.

When hubbie got home munchkin followed him into the back room and apparently told hubbie he’d been good today because a few minutes later munchkin comes out asking about the controllers and wanting batteries. He said that Daddy had told him to pick them up so I went in the back to see if he was just having munchkin scout for a controller for him while he was getting changed or if they were planning on playing together. Munchkin hadn’t told him the truth and then tried to lie again when hubbie asked him what had really happened so he got banned for two days.

Yesterday was day two of that and munchkin was home sick from school. However, he almost got us. He had asked to play Katamari in his room and we were part way into setting it up for him when I suddenly had the memory that he still wasn’t allowed to play games, and after a mini argument with munchkin a movie was put on for him instead.

Later on in the evening a couple of hours after he would have been getting home from school he and hubbie played a game together. Still it was interesting, “No, I’m allowed, you said!” “No, I didn’t say. I got mixed up. You have to keep being good longer and then when Daddy gets up he and I will talk about it.” “No, no, it’s been enough time.” “No it hasn’t munchkin and if you keep arguing with me it’ll be even longer.” “Oh, man!”

This is why I usually write myselves notes.