Household Heraldry

I got pillow covers today [fig 1], which are possibly the first piece of home decor I ever bought for myself. I have selected, purchased, and built many things but I always viewed them in the context of for another person, at least with respect to their appearance. Like colors it’s another one of many things on the list of personal preferences I failed to imagine I might have despite recognizing in others. It’s a skill that has made me very resistant to many forms of marketing and manipulation. At the cost of not being able to participate in many forms of expression or adjust my environment to suit my taste. It’s why lighting projects were always my favorite, because I could imagine them as technology but use them as art. And it’s why I should get back to my theater improvements before never, now that I have some idea how to make projects go again.

I got a couple of new shirts today, increasing my supply of long-sleeved garments by 200%. There was another cool one in the bag ¹And for some reason a pair of pink, wide-band, boy short, Asos-branded underwear in size small. Which are actually pretty cute but not at all my size. If that’s your sort of thing speak up and I’ll forward them to you. but it didn’t fit and isn’t available for exchange. Still I’ve finally got a regular sweatshirt, which reminds me of the only piece of soft clothing I owned in high school (and that Brenda never returned) in a majestic bright purple. And a towel-textured thing that’s got 4 color blocks in sort of 90s pallet. It reminds me of the good parts of my middle-school poncho; tough and textured and multi-colored. I turns out I’ve always had very strong options about clothes, it’s just that they were always about survival and punishment, and I only got 1 or 2 pieces a year.

Got this month’s care packages wrapped up and ready for mailing, after a longer than usual period on my dining room table. Lots of reasons for the delays, but I think I’m on target to get back to the usual cadence ²And I have a plan to employ CookieZ help with that, though I should try to do the thing they asked me about before I poke them again. They thought I might be able to track down someone they knew from 20 years ago. I’m guessing it’s someone who went to my high school, though I don’t recognize the name. The answer is almost certainly no — … Continue reading. I’m excited to be sending a thing from E in one of them, and to have done some slightly different box art. I also finally pulled out my new markers for the label. I’ve never used A) honestly any decent markers at all ³My life was generally devoid of tools of expression when I was young — not that it would have been safe to use any even if I had access — but markers in particular were a thing Mother had issues with. She sometimes had markers —the worst sort of dollar-store things you could find — though she never used them for anything fun. Mostly they … Continue reading and B) any with brush tips. It’s a whole different thing. I’m eager to try something more complicated now that I’ve played with them a little. I think there’s a solvent-only pen in the set too, for blending, though I neither read the insert nor attempted to use it to confirm that assumption.

I also finished a small tape face, and got some attention about makeup from @BPS: https://www.instagram.com/p/BvazQhBBVeT/ Sort of banner day for literal color in my life on many fronts.

E offered discussion on checking in. Got me moving toward better questions, and away from the flaws in my current description. I do understand the immediate conversational mechanics of “checking in on” as a prompt to start communication, or as a request for someone to do so in the future. The logistical framework makes sense to me. But I’m still missing the meaning, because people use the phrase in other contexts, and about a feeling that isn’t merely “I want to start talking”. For example, people feel like they’re subject to being checked in on even between actual attempts to foster conversation. And they feel checked in on even when conversation was already a planned an expected activity. I think it has something to do with occupying another person’s mind space even while not engaged with them interactively. And it’s got a persistent internal component as well, because people seem to feel it between interactions — they believe they are being (or will be) checked in on and that belief offers some sort of reassurance.

Occupying other people’s mind space is another area I’m pretty weak on, since I have always imagined that I should try to keep people from thinking about me when I’m not around — if possible, even while I am around. Like so many other things from my early life I’ve got a whole system of interconnected lies to get through, which makes it hard for people to explain anything in terms I can understand. I don’t just not get this one phrase or concept, I have missing or inaccurate knowledge for a whole range of topics, and so comparisons have to be built a long way off and refined toward the truth. I built the uncoordinated lies I was told for Mother’s momentary convenience into a set of self-consistent rules, and one of the ways I made that work was by deciding I was common factor in all her (as far as I knew at the time) reasonable demands for better treatment.

Got lots of things done today but only a medium amount of work. Got through email and checklists and things but only made trivial progress on SRs. I had hoped to at least comment in the last two today, but it’s not gonna happen. I am up-to-date on all the tasks with hard deadlines though, so just hitting those two SRs tomorrow should be sufficient. Which is good because I’ve got a decent amount of errands to run. I missed my morning meeting today without even noticing my alarm (presumably I turned it off but I do not recall), but it turned out to be canceled anyway so no harm no foul. Someday I should write a bot that automatically checks for meeting removes and resets my alarm to the normal time if I don’t need to get up. I’d get better sleep quality for that last ~90 minutes if it wasn’t interrupted with an alarm and interaction with a bright phone while I manually check my schedule.

Shanda had lots of feels about Scaffolding. Which is to be expected, since you’re one of the people who struggles to support me. I know you want to, though hearing people say they “want” my life to be better is a little hard for me to take. But I do see your effort. And you do lots of things that are good for me. It’s mostly just the parts about me having feelings that are so tricky for you. Or the parts where it would be useful for you to not imagine me as an authority. I try really hard to ensure that no one imagines me as an authority in any situation, absent maybe emergency response, because I understand that role as inherently abusive. I don’t want to be in charge, I don’t want you to defer to me, and I certainly don’t want to participate in a power structure I know hurts people. It’s hard enough to feel like I’m always alone when the decisions are hard, but to be told I’m “making” you do something really guts me, and is a big barrier to me helping you back into a state of mind where you might eventually be able to help me, once you’ve recovered from the panic I induced by having a need.

Dog is doing okay today. A little restless but better than yesterday, and than Sunday. Energetic at the end of the day, in part because it was too late and I was too busy to take him out again after supper. But it will be another day or so before we can tell if he’s actually better or is back in one of his recurring GI distress cycles. Hopefully tomorrow brings Dog some more substantial relief, and frees us from the fear of cleaning up after him.

I still need to get to some research for Eggsy, though I’ve finally got some time on the schedule later this week to make that happen. Medicaid is on my list too, but my step next is back to waiting for others so I’m trying not to worry about it until they’re ready. And I need to get Ben to finish his phone switching so I can get credit for his old one. His new phone arrived the day after he broke his bone and I’m sure he hasn’t looked at it yet. Even if he wasn’t busy trying to get addicted to opioids it’s a thing of some anxiety for him, so he wants to not think about it. Which puts me in a complicated situation, because it impacts me but talking about it is hard for him, and if I force the issue he feels attacked or guilty and might just opt out of talking completely. It’s all a moot point until he decides to pop up again, and even then it has to be like priority #3 behind all the other things he’s afraid to think about but might need my help with. I hope all that happens before the delay makes things even more complicated.

Shanda asked me how I was feeling this morning as soon as I woke up. The answer is I’m not prepared to think about it right away, for like 7 different reasons. Some of them are related to my fear that I’ll discover things are bad and that will make me not want to get up at all. Some of them are related to my performance of illness, wherein being ill required that you stay in bed and not have needs or make noise, so I trained myself to be extra disconnected from my body while I’m in bed (this also helps me sleep when my body is not doing great, and I suppose might be a factor in why I don’t remember dreams). Plus there’s the thing where I don’t feel entitled to claim my pain or disfunction just like i don’t feel entitled to relate to any identity groups or to other people’s pain — if I told anyone, or even thought in my own head, that I had anything other than perfect health it would obviously be me trying to manipulate people into having sympathy for me. It would be proof that I’m a monster who is trying to prey on the kindness of others who don’t know better than to ignore my complaints. I did get to lunch today, before 2 PM even. And to supper at about the same time as Shanda. And other than being tired I was feeling as well as I usually do by the time my brain was ready to check at like 4 PM. Even now after just explaining the irrational reasons I can’t talk about it I still can’t talk about it in terms anyone else would be able to compare to. Maybe it would help if I prepared a rubric, so I could just point to a prefab explanation instead of having to claim a unique one every day. For now let’s say 4/7.

I feel like this didn’t really come together. Didn’t get at the heart of my experience today. But that’s because I haven’t myself, and I’m not going to before tomorrow. I shouldn’t feel bad for that; I was busy today. But I know my life goes better if I don’t string together too many days when I’m too busy to pull all (or at least many of) the pieces back together before I sleep.

ZiB

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