I’ve also been working on a few website related things for both myself and a client, so that’s been nice, if a little stressful in spots, there are always bugs and I tend to be very hard on myself when it comes to “getting things right” so the fact that certain CSS related things don’t seem to be sticking with me or coming to my memory when I should know them are frustrating me.

As for NaNoWriMo my current count is around 4500 words. The day 3 “ideal goal” is 5001, so you can see, this being day 5 that I am a little behind and I’m trying to remind myself that it doesn’t really matter, that the fact I’m writing at all is what’s important.

They had a lot of really nifty things set up, decorations all over, mood pieces, areas set up like wilderness camp and hillbilly camp, humidifier filters and smoke machines, people in costume wandering around interacting with the guests. There was one girl meandering around asking if anyone had seen her baby, another with her wrists cut and a bloody dress kept seemingly aimlessly walking around and would stop every once in a while to ask in a dreamy voice if other people “heard him” too and knew of his “wonder” and “would come to him”. There was also a hatchet man, and a doctor with H1N1 vaccines and several others. I won’t speak about the walk itself too much because there’s another showing of it tonight, but it was a worthy cause and a great experience.

We stayed for the midnight showing of George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” which was apparently being simulcast on AMC which is neat. It was a restored 16mm copy which had been found in a widow’s garage after her husband passed and had been painstakingly restored by Movie Joint. In certain spots they claimed you could see boom mikes but I wasn’t paying enough attention. I was pretty tired.

It was a very nice evening though. I enjoyed it a lot, and I’m very glad that hubbie talked me into going. We’ve enjoyed everything we’ve been to at the Enzian so far.

Though this time it was me who had to remind him that we weren’t going on the walk any more because he’d refused to eat his breakfast and so the walk, which was going to be to his Gran’s house had been taken away until we’d had a good hour or more of good behavior.

Rose has been out a lot more recently than she’s been since before we left England. When we moved to the State she gravitated towards “Guardian of the Littles” and so spent more of her time within the headspace only coming out in moments of munchkin related crisis or every once in a while. She was at the hospital when he was burned, or on the one occasion that he fell down our stair case.

However in the past few weeks we seem to have had a rearrange and she and I have been rotating out quite a bit, this means however that some of my bloggy things have been being “neglected” because she doesn’t register them. She does have her own facebook, and with her coming out more we also set her up with her own livejournal so that she has some of her own space, so we can get accustomed to each other a bit more. She feels a bit unnerving and unnerved at times from what I gather. She speaks with a much more pronounced English accent than the rest of us so it’s a lot easier for our local friends to tell when she’s out and about, and while we are aware of each other being out I’m so used to it and the switching that it doesn’t really register to me that it registers to them.

So, when a friend called last Saturday and said, “Hi,” and then, “Oh, hi!” when I answered the phone, and I said, “Um…okay…” and he said, “Well, you’re a different you than you were when I called earlier…” it took me a second and then I just went, “Oh, well, that happens,” and he said, “Yeah, it does,” and the conversation went on, as Rose filled me in that he’d wanted to check if he left something at our house that was when it struck me that she was being out a bit more than is normal.

Prior to this month it wasn’t uncommon for it to be three or four months between her visits to the driver’s seat. She’s been out almost every day this week. As I said I’m not saying this is a bad thing, in fact it’s been pretty good.

I was joking with Mum earlier that I woke up yesterday and found that my kitchen was cleaned. Mum didn’t quite get it. I knew I was up. In fact I’d been out on and off during the day, and it’s not as if Rose is untrustworthy with the munchkin, she used to be the one who would babysit Mum’s friends children and would babysit our cousins and generally has a lot more patience than I do (I blame Terri for that :p) she had said she would clean the kitchen as a thank you for me making the layout for her livejournal so she cut me off from the front a little to make sure it would be more of a surprise and it was a very nice one. A much better surprise than waking up and discovering I’ve tried to cook a pine cone in the microwave, which happened when I was in high school.

So, I dealt with that for an hour or so after I got back from work the other day. I’m getting ready to go to work right now. I’ve spent quite a bit of the rest of time doing tarot readings, and catching up on shopping that we’ve needed to do because we’ve been broke and I haven’t been able to.

In amongst all this I haven’t realized but I’ve apparently somehow been doing good with my dieting. Perhaps it’s been the lack of food and the being stressed out, I haven’t needed appetite suppressants that’s for sure. I’m down to 234.2 which is the lowest I’ve been since giving birth. So, that’s awesome, that means I’m just shy of 22lbs weight loss.

I have two websites I need to work on. One I need to put back up and one I need to update, but I don’t think I’m going to get that done in the twenty minutes before I need to go to work. I should at least be able to get one ticket submitted. Then perhaps things will be ready after my shift is over so I can get all that done.

I think we’ll be having hot dogs for dinner. It’s simple.

I’m going to have to watch him!

I did tell her about the behavior, however she said she didn’t believe it was a concern, because I was recognizing the behavior and taking steps to rectify it, however, I’m still finding it a concern because it keeps coming back. I suppose that’s why it’s a problem. If it wasn’t an issue I would stop doing it and it would be done, it wouldn’t be an obsessive compulsion then it would just be a phase.

Hubbie and I will joke that it would be better if the obsessive cleaning compulsions kicked in more often, but usually instead my compulsions come in the form of things needing to be even or balanced or needing to be certain numbers. My therapist said if they weren’t interfering with things then they weren’t an issue, but at times they do interfere with things I’ll get hung up because fields in “Farmville” on facebook aren’t even or because the Bejeweled score isn’t a number that’s balanced like 8765678 or something like that so I won’t be able to stop playing, or because the fish in Fish World aren’t at 100% happiness or I haven’t reached a certain number of “achievements” or because pictures on the walls aren’t level or the Halloween decorations aren’t even, or rather than worrying about the fact that the kitchen floor is dirty I’ll be more bothered that the cans in the pantry aren’t all facing the same way or the boxes aren’t all lined up. I didn’t really realize my parallels until we were watching the A&E show “Obsessed” the first show I saw was about a woman who was obsessed with her appearance to the point that when she would get troubled by her facial blemishes rather than using acne treatments she would pick at her skin and pull until she made herself bleed. It was others I saw who would turn clocks on and off a number of times and check things that made me more aware of my own behaviors.

The games can prove a more difficult one because I’ll get locked into that on the computer and will ignore people who are over. This is the reason why I’ve made sure to NOT get “World of Warcraft” or any of those games we have to pay for because I know I’d be even worse with something like that. It gets bad enough as it is.

I will recognize it at a certain point, especially because hubbie and Kore are good at pointing it out to me, but even so I will purge them and then I’ll find myself getting a different one to take it’s place, and some of us will be, “Oh, we’ll just try it out” and then here we go again!

It’s worse with facebook because friends will just send the invite, and I will innocently click and then get sucked in to something. I keep telling myself I’ll block it, and then I’ll click on something or just ads something to help out another friend who needs numbers so they can unlock something but then find myself playing anyway because one of us lacks willpower then the obsessive behavior streak kicks in.

I am very afraid that I’m just going to have to block facebook altogether and not use it at all, detox completely as though it were a drug. Maybe I can start by asking all my friends to help out by not inviting me to ANYTHING at all if it’s a game, and try JUST to use it for “keeping in touch” sharing pictures and shameless self-promotion and see how that goes.

I was talking on Joyful Path this morning about how I’m trying to find ways to actual figure out the social media madness. I know I went about things the wrong way for a while because I wasn’t being “out” about my mental state, so anything to do with the multiplicity was on a separate blog and that blog had it’s own twitter account, it’s own bloglog account, it’s own technorati and on and on and on. That was too much to deal with, and in spending so much time keeping everything “separate and equal” I never actually learned how to use any of them properly.

Then, of course, I got burned out.

When I decided “screw it” and merged everything together opened up about my mental condition and condensed down all those various accounts I have at least been able to find a bit more in the way of time, but I still don’t really know how to actually make these things work. I now only have the one twitter (are you following me? am I following you? I may be! I don’t know!!), down from three, but I still have two facebooks, down from four.

How does a person wind up with four facebooks? Well, considering how many alters I have I’m lucky I didn’t wind up with ten, really! So I have my facebook and then there’s the one that’s the more public facebook I suppose, which people find when they’re looking for tarot readings and the like, and actually has all the “family photos” and things like that on it. Though I do use mine to showcase all the fun graphic design things that I do.

Still, I realize that especially with the short burst nature of twitter and the way facebook really seems to go with all the games and “add me so I can level up in the games” crap that goes on there doesn’t actually seem to be all that much real connecting that I do, it’s all “like” “like” “why isn’t there a dislike button?” “ooh shiny” move on. occasionally there’ll be some conversation but it’s very much, dig for treasure, farm produce, move on; and I tick myself off with it because I get obsessed (I have that issue) with points and details and the stupid games and don’t do more productive things. I keep going through and deleting games and then adding different ones to replace the hole instead of actually doing something productive.

So, on that front I’ve given myself an ultimatum that if I go back and add more games after I delete them this time facebook is going to have to go until I get this under control, but at the same time I do need to figure out how to actually “work the system” instead of having it work me over.

I see people doing it. They network, they connect, they even going to conferences and actually interact physically with the vast number of men and women out there. There are tons of fellow bloggers out there who are doing this, who understand about these things, yet all I seem to find as I said on my other blog post is conflicting information: some say you shouldn’t link twitter and facebook, others swear by it, some say that you shouldn’t post on twitter, sorry “tweet” when you update your blog, others say you should because it drives traffic that way, but I suppose people are already supposed to know because they’re already supposed to be subscribed?

I would really appreciate if any of you fellow bloggers out there who might actually be reading could give me a few pointers to help me cut through the clutter and start to get the ball rolling without it carrying me down the hill and off a cliff. Thank you!

They’re going to pay for me to see the chiropractor.

“You don’t deserve to live in pain,” Judy told me, “We want to see you happy. You should be happy.” I nearly cried again. When my husband told me that they’d said they would pay for me to see the chiropractor I did cry. We sucked it up as quickly as we could because we literally had to be at work in five minutes, but things like that happen and I’m always in shock.

Even though I’m trying to learn that it is the truth that I do deserve to have these good things it’s still always unexpected. I suppose it’s good not to just expect them, but they tend to blind-side me and there’s always this WHY? As though I expect these good things to be yanked away from me like they’re a cruel joke. When the insurance reset everything and I had to cancel all my appointments and go back to not getting treatment several of us were going “You should have expected this” “This is how it’s going to be” Kiddy was primary on this, “We don’t get to get better. We get pain that’s what we get” and I’m trying to go, “No, we don’t have to be this way. We can sort something out surely,” but Kiddy’s a very tough one to fight, and exhaustion and pain, pain on top of exhaustion it is a hard battle to fight and win.

In just a week and a half at the chiropractor I’d had so much better mobility. I could do yard work. I cleaned our pantry. I could do a shift at work without having to take 800 mg painkillers or ANY painkillers, and I know some of the issue was just the mental downer of having that taken away, the prospect of continuing to feel healthy was gone, the rest was the lack of sleep I’ve been experiencing coupled with things starting to go back to the way they were.

Of course it also reminds me of the joke were the person goes to their doctor and says, “Oh, hey, after I go through this will able to able to do the whole Myrtle beach golf thing?” and the doctor says, “Oh, absolutely! Of course,” and the person goes, “Great! Because I sucked at it before!” but seriously, with my in-law’s help though we should be able to get through the end of the year and by then we’ll have some money saved and the city will have the HSA re-filled and we can start paying part of the treatment out of the HSA and part out of pocket and when we’re on maintenance there will be less visits also so that will be easier to pay for, because instead of three times a week it’ll be twice a month.

The fact that I won’t be stuck with a dowager’s hump unable to straighten my body is very…exciting, hopeful, happy-making. The fact that I’ll be able to walk, exercise, do household chores, SLEEP for more than a few hours at a time, wean myself off pain medications. All these things.

I have to go to work for 11 a.m. so I’m not feeling so happy about that; but I’ll get through it. It’s only until 5 p.m. and it’s not as if I’ll be the only one there given it’s truck day.

A lot times I feel as if I have no right to complain about my physical condition. I don’t have M.S. or cancer. I’m not going through malignant Mesothelioma treatment. I’m not in traction. Fibromyalgia is at least becoming more understood, but it’s still. I suppose it’s just me. I come from a very “suck it up and soldier through” sort of mentality. There’s no blood, your arm’s still attached “get over it”. So, I know a lot of this “I should be able to do this” comes from me, internally.

Elsie, my therapist, had wanted to talk to us, particularly Kiddy, about this “martyr complex” as she called it. She kept pointing out that we don’t deserve to live in agony, that we should not and do not have to put up with being in pain and just “deal with it” that’s it’s not “okay”. Kiddy kept laughing at her and going “okay, whatever.” Elsie kept saying, “No, listen to me. This is NOT your lot in life. You might believe it is, but it’s not, that’s just been drilled into you. It’s a type of programming, but life is not supposed to be all about pain.”

So, that’s what I’m trying to remember this morning. I’m in pain. That’s not okay. I’m not whining when I articulate that. I have medicine I can take to remedy that and I should do so.

I’d done good not having any at all, but then a few days ago I had such a craving I could do nothing but drive up to the store and buy a 12-pack of Mountain Dew. This is when I realize that I truly am a caffeine addict. That is absolute addict behavior. I had to have my fix. I hadn’t left the house all day, and my husband actually followed me to the store in his squad car he said I’d sped past him, the fastest car he’d seen all day. I know he was winding me up, but at the same time…the behavior bothers me because it’s not good, and the caffeine has been messing up my body before, and here I go with it again.

Last night Kore and I exchanged readings with each other. One of the benefits of living and working with a fellow card reader is that you can do this. We were also talking about doing a cleanse on a variety of levels on Samhain itself. That we would make a new protection and elemental candle for the house, do some rituals and start back on our low-carb, low-sugar diet because it was working really well for the both of us, we both lost about 20lbs and then we both lapsed on the diet due to a variety of factors, mine being a flare-up up of my physical ailments, and hers being stressful times at school. She said she’s gained weight and I know I’ve gained 6lbs back. I’m still lower than I was, but I know I need to cut back and I really need to start exercising again.

I’ve barely been leaving the house, partially due to the weather and partially due to my mental state. This is the antithesis of what I told myself I was going to be doing. It’s not good for me and it’s definitely not good for my son. He’ll play outside in the back yard, but it would be good for us to go out on our walks, and it would be really good for me to take him up to the park. We might even meet other parents in the area then and he can play with other children his age. He has a really easy time making friends, me not so much. I should take some lessons from him.