Things were more talky today. Which is better than less. Maybe even useful talking; I think closer to where we need to be. It’s hard to tell on the scale of half a day, but it’s at least calmer, and there’s more attention to things that feel like they matter. Maybe tomorrow we’ll keep moving in the same direction. Maybe tomorrow we can start The First Law together so I can share my fantasy-setting Mr. Robot and its deconstructed PoV characters. Accomplished enough day job today to (mostly) not fall behind, but that’s about it. I really need to take a look at the SSH bug tonight; I should have…

Three robot meetings in four days is too many; its hard to care about going today. Friday went okay – got the external camera working in code other than capturing to disk, and dealt with all the new null config errors. Saturday we got some maintenance done in terms of hardware changes and the like, but not much else. Today maybe I can get them to actually start the auto routines* instead of continuing to wait for some future configuration of the bot. I still need to get the targets aligned in the field model but it’s not a thing we should wait on – fine alignment is step 27…

This thing where Shanda can’t pay attention to anything else – even for a few minutes – when B is upset and available can’t be regular life. Where all plans all become “I’m going to sit next to B and think of nothing more than 2 minutes in the future” but she pretends that there’s no impact to anything else in her life. It particularly can’t be what happens when Shanda is only just piecing together her own self regulation. It’s perhaps better than last time but it’s still me trying to keep her life going sort of against her will. I’m so helpless to do anything about it while…

I’m having mixed feelings about paying for another month of Melissa’s medical insurance. She’s technically still employed and insured by her job from 2016. They haven’t assigned her any duties. They likely never will, given the circumstances of her departure, so if she pays $100/month to cover her share of the insurance cost she gets decent, cheap coverage, potentially for a long time. When she was getting LTD they took the premium out of that, but she screwed that LTD by taking other full-time work. She’s still covered but now has to pay in that $100 and hasn’t been doing so. I wish she would keep that insurance current because…

So costumes and favorites are related. Because it was safer to never like anything, and because I did not have reliable access to clothes that fit or that weren’t ragged let alone that I liked, I have primarily selected clothing on the basis of suitability to a purpose – does it technically achieve its intended function. This allowed me to be genuinely happy with lost and found winter clothes, and to value clothing as communication – i.e. as costumes. Once I stopped play acting family with Mother I made changes to my life to minimize the ability of other people to demand costumes of me. I now feel free to…

I stayed up until 5 AM working and pacing and generally being bad at 24 hour cycles. But I got all my work for the day done before anyone got into the office and then slept until noon, so it mostly worked out. I’m still negelcting the SSH bug and my TMA, but I’m caught up on everything else and happy to have the afternoon and evening to chill out. I told Alex that the reason I can’t talk to her is because I’m afraid she won’t protect me from Mother. I don’t know if she’ll be able to do anything with that information – and since I specialize in…

Yesterday’s The Screed was more or less as isolating as I expected. That’s not a complaint about anyone here, just about the general situation. About how it sucks to have to let people get used to some disgusting fact just for relevant context of the thing you actually want to share, or in response to their direct inquiry. There’s a thing I want to communicate but first I have to wait a few days alone because when I share the context no one can talk to me for a while. I find it particularly hard when it’s my own life because for me nothing has changed — I already had…

Had a whole variety of recontextualizations today. The one that has the most terrible context is where Mother…  Consider if there are any versions of the end of that sentence that you want to read before consuming the rest of today’s message. …used me in a multi-session narc suicidal ideation experiment. She smothered me with a pillow and showed me “what it was like to start suffocating” and rewarded my for not fighting and did it until I could not resist my body’s overwhelming urge to not die and started attacking. It happened enough times when I was about 4 for me spend time practicing holding my breath to be…

I had a discouraging interact with S today. Yesterday we talked about the work restrictions on young people and how it makes gainful employment very difficult for people who aren’t old enough to be eligible for any public assistance. He asked a question like “I don’t see young people camping on the sidewalk/highway margin — where are they”. Which I read as sort of like “are you sure young people are homeless”? Not a challenge per se but at least a sincere question. I did what I could to answer impromptu but I was not super satisfied with what was communicated. There conversations are always hard for me because I…

Traffic is the worst today. I’ve been waiting for 11 minutes to get out of Magnolia, and now I’m waiting for the Ballard bridge. It’s always crazy on Fridays but usually a car is faster than walking. I can’t wait until the train station at Northgate finally gets done so I don’t have to deal with this just to get to robots. Talked with Shanda about our recent interactions. It still seems pretty tenuous to her, the idea that anything in our lives has been difficult, other than the parts I ruin by talking about it. Or that anything in her life might impact me at all. Or that mood…