Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Sleep, eat, overthink (part seven)

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My car would not start tonight. A month or two ago, it wouldn’t start and I charged it overnight with my battery charger (after talking to my brother about it). He said that I should start it every few months or drive it twenty minutes every few months to keep the battery juiced. I tried it a few days ago just to make sure it started. I was meeting a friend for dinner tonight–and the car would  not start. All the lights were lit up like it does when the battery is dead. My friend came to pick me up (the restaurant was only two or three minutes from my house), and when I got back home, I called put my car on the charger.

Then, I called my brother to tell him what happened. He immediately said that I needed a new battery; I was morbidly glad that I had properly diagonosed the siuation. But, then a weight settled on my shoulders because I hate doing car shit. Especially since I have a hybrid, so it’s a bit trickier than if I just had a gas car. Also, tomorrow/today is Friday. And I am single, which means I have to just do it myself. Or call my brother to help me. I don’t like to rely on him too much, though, because he’s very busy.

Oh, and the reason I was checking to see if my car worked was because I want to get one of my meds before the weekend. Sigh.

My sleep has been terrible the last two nights. I went to bed earlier for me, and I got three hours and four-and-a-half hours, respectively. Maybe closer to five the second night, but that’s still not enough. It’s so frustrating to actually try to do the right(ish) thing and still not get enough sleep. I’ve been snoozing on and off while I’m “awake”, which is very frustrating.

I need to get more than six hours of sleep tonight, but with the car woes on my mind, who knows?

I don’t think I’ll finish this tonight. I’m so tired, and I keep nodding off. I’ll write more tomorrow.

(Written the next day.) I managed to get over seven hours of sleep last night, so I feel a bit better. My car place wasn’t open past ten a.m., so I did not get to talk to them. But I was able to start my car and went to pick up my meds.

Still. I’m feeling pretty down for a variety of reasons. Some big, some small, but it’s just all adding up to me being pretty unhappy at the moment. And still exhausted from getting shitty sleep the last couple of days. I’ve been nodding on and off, and never feeling awake, really.


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Taking a risk–and my daily weather report

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I’m back with the daily weather report. It’s 50F right now, but got up to the sixties earlier. Here is my post from yesterday in which I talked about whatever was on my mind. We’re supposed to get up to 78F tomorrow. I have a private lesson, which we might actually be able to do outside if it doesn’t rain (afternoon showers are predicted). I don’t mind going outside in a drizzle as long as there are no flies/mosquitos/wasps/other bugs. If there are any bugs, I will not go outside.

Bugs love me so much. The last time I went out when there were bugs, I got bit by a wasp–and I couldn’t help but scratch it. Therefore, it got infected, and I had to go to the doctor for antibiotics. Fortunately, a ten-day regiment (started with seven and added three) worked–even though the first seven days didn’t completely do the job. My finger was swollen to approximately four times the regular size (only a slight exaggeration), and I feared that it was going to be worse than it actually was. Fortunately, the last three days of the treatment took care of it, otherwise, who knows what the fuck I would do?

My long-standing joke that isn’t really a joke is that I’m allergic to everything including air. Another is that I like the outdoors as long as there’s a door between it and me. The third is that I like the outdoors, but the outdoors hates me.None of these are really jokes, though. Everything outside affects me negatively, which means I stay inside as much as possible.

When I used to play tennis as a kid with my family and my parents’ friends, the mosquitoes would eat me alive while they left my father strictly alone. As a result, he did not believe that they bit me (anything that did not happen to him did not happen at all), which was doubly frustrating.

Honestly, it’s such a pain. Whenever I’m outside, I feel like I have to be on my guard. The problem is that I can’t really protect myself against things like wasps because they’re too fast for me. If I didn’t have to care about infection, then I wouldn’t worry so much. I don’t mind getting bit (I do) as long as the bites don’t blow up.

To wildly switch subjects, my mom told me about being audited by the regulatory board that governs the field she’s in. She needs to get 40 credits (which is common in many careers) a year, which she easily did because she taught/trained a lot. The problem was that she did not keep any records, so she has no proof that she did any of it.

She complained that the board had gotten so strict with the little laugh she did when she was annoyed/flustered/upset. She also has an issue doing anything online because she has an almost phobic response to it. She knows that it’s irrational, but she can’t do anything about it. Or rather, she won’t get the help she needs to get past it.


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Feel jolly, but not holly

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More on Christmas. Here was yesterday’s post, and I’m going to continue my musing. I have hated Christmas and I have been studiedly indifferent to Christmas, but now, I’m feeling warmly about the holiday time. Not Christmas itself, but community. Atnd being alive.

As I said in the last post, it’s been a long road to get where I am now. This year, I’m feeling warm and cozy about, not Christmas, but about the holiday season and how much I love the people who are meaninngful to me. My two besties, my Taiji teacher, my brother, my nibling and their brothers, my cat–of course!!–and people on the periphery.

I love the forums to which I belong. Well, one forum. The RKG Discord. However, I am starting to feel a bit…

Here’s the thing. I get to the end of things and then I am done. With websites, if they don’t evolve, then I get bored. The same thing with the same comments by the same people…what’s the point in that? I used to follow politics back when Obama was president. And I would get tired of people being so limited in their points of view. I am sure they would say the same things about me, by the way. That’s the nature of people. They don’t hugely change on the daily. It would be a wild and woolly time if they did. But it’s frustrating when I constantly butt up against the limits of each person.

That’s what I’m starting to feel about the RKG Discord. I like the people very much. Most of them are really kind and caring. But. (You knew there was going to be a but, right?) The limits to the understanding of life outside their own experiences are very restrictive.  Here’s the thing. RKG are three cis het white Western dudes. They’re great guys, yes, but they’re still very much in the mainstream themselves.

To that point, their commenters are much like them. The vast majority are cis het white dudes–which is othering at times. Not on purpsoe, obviously, but just because that’s what they know. There is a channel for the grot, and it’s interesting when certain topics come up. Someone brought up polyamory and asked where all his poly people were at. The three of us who responded were all queer people (of varying alternate gender identities). The white straight dudes (which the guy asking was) were all quick to say NO WAY NUH UH HELL NO! Well, one was not, but that was a more complicated response. He wasn’t pro-poly, per se.


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It’s my life, it’s now

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There’s a question in this weekend’s Ask A Manager forum about how you (general you) live your life. The original poster (OP) asked how people viewed the term YOLO among other things. First of all, I have lived three times so YOLO is not applicable to me! I‘m including the video from Lonely Island (feat. Adam Levine and Kendrick Lamarr) here. I have a different video for my main vid.

Here’s my answer. It’s long and complicated, of course, because it’s me.

What do I think of the phrase YOLO? I think it’s meaningless. Despite my quip, yeah, we all have one life. That just is, as the kids say, what it is. The meme about grabbing life by the balls and doing all this risky business, yawn. It’s so boring and bro-ey. It’s very Silicon Valley, and I just want to take a long nap whenever I hear the phrase.

The song by Lonely Island is hilarious because it goes in the opposite direction to the extreme. It’s about how you only live once so be extra-careful so you don’t die. Adam Levine sings the hook, and it’s super-catchy. Kendrick Lamarr comes in  halfway through to rap financial advice–and he makes sense.

I love how they mock the YOLO meme, but also, they’re pointing out that you can go to the extreme in many different ways. It’s hilarious, but they’re not wrong. They’re not right, either, but they’re not completely wrong. (To them YOLO stands for You Oughta Look Out.)

Here’s my thoughts from actually having died twice. And, I promise you this isn’t as bleak as it sounds. Nothing we do matters. We’re all going to die. I’ve done it–twice. It’s not terrible. It’s not great, either, but it’s not the worst experience of my life by a country mile.

I’m very lucky in that I don’t have to worry too much about money. I work for myself, and I can avoid travel. For the first year after my medical crisis, I lived day to day. I didn’t think much about my future because I was just marveling that I was fucking alive!

I was looking out the window every day and just soaking it all in. I have always been a negative person all my life, and while that has not completely changed (I’m still highly critical of things), I have become more grateful about things in my life. Hell, I’m grateful to be alive at all.

I should be dead. I cannot emphasize this enough. Nor can I overstate what this has done to my frame of mind. Every day I have is a bonus. That doesn’t mean I’m living my best life or making the most of the time I have left, but it does mean that I’m fully appreciating that I still have a life.


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Life goals

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I have stated several times that I am better than I ever was. My medical crisis was the best thing to happen to me, and, yet, that doesn’t mean I’m magically without flaws. I still talk too much and get mean when I’m tired or short of energy. I’m lazy and a slob, and I tend to procrastinate when I don’t want to do something. It makes it a bigger deal than it needs to be. I know I’m doing this, but cannot stop myself from doing it.

It’s been eye-opening to see my brother working the dating apps. He does it while he’s here so I jump into it as well. I’m on Bumble and OkCupid, but I haven’t really done anything with either. I don’t like that you can only be a man or a woman on Bumble, though I do like that I don’t have to put up with dick pics before even getting a ‘hello’. So. Many. Dick. Pics on Craigslist.

I like that OkCupid allows for a wide variety of genders as well as sexual orientations and relationship choices. You can be polyamorous in different ways,  or you could just be looking for sex. But it’s overwhelming in other ways, which makes me just not want to use it at all.

For example. You cannot save a profile for later. You have to swipe right or left immediately. I understand why they made this choice, but I don’t like it. I want to be able to think and ponder before making a decision. Yes, I know if you swipe right on Bumble, you have 24 hours before you have to message, but that’s still pressure.

My brother is quick to swipe left or right. He sends a brief message and if he gets a reply, suggests they chat on the app or meet up in person. When I used to use Craigslist, I would message with someone several times before feeling comfortable enough to meet them in person. That could be because of gender dynamics, which was certainly part of the issue. But, it’s also that I’m a ditherer, and I rarely make decisions in an appropriate timeframe.

I wish I could be more like my brother.  I’ve been thinking about dating for ages. My last relationship was a decade ago, and it was spectacularly bad. I was love-bombed from the start and fell for it completely. He was a sexist, narcissistic, touchy, alcoholic lout who should not in any way have been in a relationship. I’m no angel by any means, but I did not deserve to feel like I constantly had to tiptoe around his fragile male ego.


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Battling the holiday onslaught and other miscellaneous thoughts

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Now that Thanksgiving is done and in the bank, of course the whole nation turns its attention to Christmas.

*sigh*

Before I get to that, however, I want to rave about how adding twenty minutes of stretching to my taiji routine when I first get up and sprinkling more stretches throughout the day has really helped my back and my leg by extension. I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s amazing how my back pain has nearly disappeared, and the numbness in my right thigh changed into fiery hot pain in the upper thigh, then fiery hot pain just above the knee, and then back to numbness but to a much less degree. Then, after class yesterday, it was back to fiery hot pain, but only for a few seconds. In addition, we did the whole Solo Form (Medium) yesterday, and for the first time ever, I was able to do the whole form without my back hurting like hell by the third section.

However, my sleep is all over the map, which means I’m probably getting sick again. Which, you know, sucks. I’m so fucking tired from the minute I wake up until the minute I drop off to sleep. I also have this thing where if I miss the window for falling asleep, I’m up for a good long time. I was up for nearly twenty hours yesterday, not for any good reason, but just because I couldn’t fall asleep.

Now, let’s talk about NaNoWriMo. I said before it started that I was going to set my own goal because writing 50,000 words a month for me is not a problem. I was already writing 2,000 words a day for months before that, so yeah, I wasn’t worried about 50,000 words. I said I wanted to look into marketing and publishing, but that didn’t happen. I’ve decided I will set aside a different month to do it in. In that month, I’ll lift the 2,000 words a day requirement and focus on editing, marketing, and publishing. I’ve decided which novels I want to publish (one which is on my other website), but I need to do a little updating.

So, what have I been doing this month? Starting four different novels. I worked on the first one for a few weeks, then decided to shelve it. The second one lasted a few days, I think, and the same with the third. Then, I had a conversation with a Twitter friend, @NotSoSilentMajo, who inspired me to start something completely different. I don’t want to talk about it right now because I prefer to wait until I’m done with a novel before talking about it, but I can say it’s urban fantasy. I’ve never attempted fantasy before (though I love reading it), so I’m excited about it in a way that I haven’t been in quite some time. Thank you, @NotSoSilentMajo for giving me the kick in the (not-so-flat yellow) ass that I needed to get out of my rut!

Now. On to Christmas. Me when thinking about it (apropos because I dressed up as Yoko Ono for Halloween one year):

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Break From the Ordinary

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I had another post planned for today, but sometimes, reality takes precedence. My mom fell this afternoon, twisting her knee. She tried to tough it out by icing it, but it was really hurting. I took her to the Twin Cities Orthopedics (Coon Rapids) because they have Urgent Care that is open until 8 p.m., and I’m relieved that nothing is broken or torn.

However, because of it, my whole schedule is in shambles, and I’m not up to writing the post I was originally working on. Therefore, today, you get Shironeko (white cat with orange markings in the background) and his buddy just chilling.

I could do with a little serenity, and Shironeko helps me get there.

Odlly enough, however, for all my PTSD worst-case scenario catastrophizing, I’m actually pretty good in a real crisis. Instead of overreacting as I normally do, I’m calm, focused, and relaxed. I concentrate on what needs to be done, and I’m not upset or flustered by what is happening. I think it’s because I’ve practiced in my mind for a disaster so many times, actual terrible things are easier to handle.

It’s also taiji. I’m always going to give credit to taiji for making me calmer and more able to deal with stressors.

The doctor told my mother that all she needed was ice and Tylenol. She (the doctor) did give my mother crutches, which she’s using to hobble around. The doctor looks twelve, by the way, but she was terrific, as was the technician and the front desk person. All in all, it was an easy and smooth experience, and I would recommend them to anyone who needs orthopedic work.

Here’s an extra video of Maru relaxing in a hammock plus various other activities, including laying flat on his back with his tail lazily swishing back and forth. Bonus appearances by his sister, Hana. I can’t with the cuteness!

RIP, Chris Cornell

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I woke up this morning to the news that Chris Cornell is dead. Not only is he dead, it’s possibly a suicide. I reacted strongly to the news, and that surprised me. See, I was never a big Soundgarden fan, nor an Audioslave fan. I was not into the grunge movement at all, but of course I knew who the slight guy with the huge voice was. I was in the middle of writing another post when I read an article on FB about Cornell’s death, and I can’t get it off my mind ever since. I’ve been listening to this on repeat for the last half hour:

His voice is otherworldly. There’s something angelic about it, but also earthy. Like many gifted people, he made it seem effortless when he’d glide from a growl to falsetto with ease. Every time I heard him sing, I thought he was not meant to be living among us. It was always metaphorical, though. Like, a voice like that is meant to soar high above us, not mingle with us mere mortals. He is one person whose singing can send literal chills up and down my spine.

I’ve listened to several of his covers, and they are incredible. He takes the song and makes it his own without losing the core of what made the song powerful in the first place.

The thing is, when I listen to Cornell sing, I can’t help but feel all the emotions pouring out of him. The pain, the rage, the agony. Especially the pain. Cornell lays it all out there every time he sings, and there’s a steep price to pay for that.

I think that’s what I can’t get over. More than losing an incredible talent that could evoke so much emotion from his listeners, it’s knowing he was such a conduit for all the darkness in this world. One of the downsides to being creative is being exposed to all the shadow emotions that most people deny, shy away from, or simply don’t realize exist. I don’t think you have to be mentally ill to be creative, but I do think you have to be open to things that aren’t always safe or good for you. The trick is knowing how to control it and not let it control you, and that line is invisible at times.

It can be a burden to see things others don’t see, to feel things so deeply, your heart literally aches. I don’t know if this was true for Chris Cornell, but his voice says it was.

Chris Cornell is, was, incredibly attractive for so many reasons. I joked that I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating crackers, and it’s not just his piercing blue eyes and intense gaze. It was the whole package, including that incredible voice and, yes, his brooding nature. I’m attracted to the darkness as are many other creative types.

I’m sitting here, stunned, by the death of a man I didn’t know, never met, and only knew through his music. I can’t put into words why I feel this way because I simply do not know. I haven’t been hit this hard by a celebrity death since…Alan Rickman. That one made sense to me; this one does not.

I wish I had something pithy or wise to say to wrap up this post, but I do not. All I can say is it’s so fucking sad that Chris Cornell is dead. Another one taken from us way too soon. RIP, Chris.

I. Cannot.

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So, Hollywood has chosen yet again to cast a white dude in the role of an Asian (Hawaiian, this time)–a real person this time. They haven’t learned from their high-profile failures, and I’m done.

I’m also tired and grumpy today, and my effluvia isn’t getting any better. Therefore, here’s a video of Vienna Teng and Alex Wong singing Antebellum just because.