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…

The window got fixed today when some dude called me around 1 PM, didn’t identify himself, and said he’d be over in 30 minutes. That’s almost Melissa levels of showing up unannounced* but like Melissa by the time she actually comes you just have to be grateful that whatever you needed is finally getting done. Didn’t get much work done today. I hadn’t planned to, but I had hoped to do more than I actually accomplished. Instead I did things like go to the bank box to get Melissa’s rings that she has convinced herself she can pawn to cover rent but probably wouldn’t sell for $200, let alone pawn…

Today is a long day. Another attempt at getting the window fixed* and so disrupting the bedroom again first thing in the morning and being ready to accommodate workers whenever they show up. A presentation at work this afternoon – one that I’m not quite done with – and dog training until 9 PM. Plus some filler from people who don’t care that I was out for 2 days and some new bug that’s assigned to me because years ago I submitted a last minute fix to code that isn’t in use anymore. But if I can make it through today the rest of the week should be tolerable. And…

The last The Screed was a bit premature, with me hitting send instead of save while I was scratching the dog. I used to be more careful, to ensure I could never accidentally communicate. But that’s counter to my purposes here, so occasional early edition. Talked with DerbyK about conversations, the virtues and hazards of physical personhood, and the social value of trivial personal preferences. I still hadn’t really considered the impact to others. For a very long time I have understood things like favorite colors as A) imaginary1This makes certain forms of security questions very difficult for me. Between that and my inability to enroll in many fingerprint systems…

Shanda’s CASA case is finally moving again, with a petition for guardianship ready to be filed. Which is likely result in an adversarial process that’s months or even years long and expensive and after much fighting will merely recategorize the status quo as the interim default. I do not understand how we think this system is supposed to help. I used to think that I would go back to CASA work after Melissa, but I’m not going to. I used to think that maybe bandaging the wounds caused by our societal mistreatment of young people would help – maybe me, or maybe them – but now it just feels like…

I got up early on my day off to get the window repaired. Moved my bed, chased the dog out, settled in downstairs so they’d be able to work. But they left minutes after they arrived without fixing the window. They don’t have what they need. Friday, they tell me, is the soonest they can be back. I have a backup appointment for Wednesday with another company, but this is really starting to be a problem. I can’t keep clearing my schedule for someone to show up for 2 minutes and not so any work. It’s time for episode 2 of Important Things with Demetri (M)artin. I’ve been waiting impatiently…