I've seen a bunch of journals with these future-dated 'friends only' posts, and I think that's a really neat idea! Thing is, I don't have my journal friends-locked, and I don't plan on ever friends-locking it, so that's not a problem I really need a solution for.

I am, however, a very forgetful person, and often forget which LJ-name or net-handle matches which cherished friend/interesting person/new acquaintance. So here's what I'm doing: introduce yourself! I've done pages like this before, but they become outdated and I forget where I put them, and new people never see them. So, putting it here, at the top, where it can't be missed.

Who are you? How did you get here? If you're not going to friend me, feel free to comment anyway, like it's a guestbook. If you've already friended me, introduce yourself! Already done so? Certain I know you? Do it again! Like I said, I forget, and this will be the final copy, the last time I ask. I promise (I hope?).

So... hello! I'm Adam, and you are? :)

So I just saw breaking news that my old apartment complex, the one I just got out of five days ago, is on fire. Three-alarm. Actually, they reported the Jamestown apartments while I was in Colonial Arms, but that only puts it closer to my apartment than Colonial would; Jamestown are the apartments on the east side of my old apartment's building, sharing their back wall with our west-facing units.

Talk about a message from the gods that I made the right choice, eh?

Things have been way too busy for me to blog lately. Ironic that the events I'd most like to write about preclude my doing so. I can feel myself right on the cusp of staying away from this thing indefinitely, though, which I don't want, so I'm taking advantage of this time to post.

Things aren't so busy now. Jacki's convalescing, but is past the point where she needs constant aid. I'm still in her presence pretty much constantly, but that's more a want than a need. Her surgery went splendidly; the hysterectomy was textbook, no endometrial cells had adhered to her organs as they'd feared, and her tests came back cancer-free. The only complication is that a horrible cunt of a tech gave her a bladder infection by mishandling her catheter bag. At this stage, that infection (and the nauseating antibiotics) is the worst of her recovery. Hopefully she'll recover from that with the same alacrity with which she's recovering from the surgery.

As for me, I'm doing pretty well. I'm rather grateful for that five-day prorate into June the manager saddled us with, because I can't imagine all the hell and chaos of the last week of May culminating in the rush-job we did on the apartment. Garr and I were up until dawn getting everything moved. I seriously underestimated the last of the crap in the apartment; I figured half a vanload tops, but it turned out to be more like two vanloads after moving Garr's stuff to Becca's place.

I've got everything unloaded into the garage here at the house, and my room is pretty cozy. I'll take pictures at some point. The only thing I haven't moved into the room that I'm planning to is my computer; it turns out that a warm, dark, undisturbed place like the inside of my computer is just the sort of environment in which roaches like to nest. I bug-bombed my van with the box of computer stuff (and a whole bunch of other boxes) in it, but I don't think the toxic stuff got in deep enough because there was a live roach waving at me from on top of the box when I opened the van. Time to buy a can of Black Flag and get personal about it, then I can move my computer in onto the long, low table on which my guinea pigs and television reside.

Last but not least, I've named the guinea pigs at last. The one with the rough brown coat who's always picking fights is Mal, and the one in smooth black and white who's quiet, calm, and observant (not to mention always on Mal's bad side) is Simon. I don't doubt that I'll come up with perfect awesome ideal names that beat the hell out of those names in exactly one week, but that's just life.

Friction continues with Jeremy, but that's something for a whole other post some day. Right now I've got to head to Wal-Mart to arm myself for my own reenactment of Starship Troopers in the back of my van.

We've got the art of drawing out a couple of days' work to an entire month down to a science, I think. Now I'm back at the apartment, picking up clothes, the big pleather chair, and very probably my computer set-up. Oh, and closetstuff. I'm sleeping at the house now, and I haven't seen Garr for more than a couple of minutes in days. I miss him. D&D doesn't do the trick, because we're not really hanging out, and while I draw satisfaction from the game, it's very different from actually relaxing and having fun. With Jacki's pre-op stuff coming up, I'm going to have to put D&D on hold for a while. I'm also feeling a bit of burn-out (last session felt particularly unsatisfying), so a(nother) break would probably do me some good.

Jacki bought me guinea pigs! I was saying how I'd like to have a small, manageable pet of some kind, something like ferrets with less energy. Enter Buttercup and Oreo. Jacki gave me permission to change their names, which I intend to do, so I'm doing some deep pondering. One is a brown 'teddy bear' pig, curious and energetic, while the other is black and white, and very timid. I love unique and referential names (be they fandomish, mythological, or just plain nerdy), so feel free to pipe up with suggestions!

Okay, I've got to run. Got to throw my shit into the van (including a fuck off huge chair) in time to unload it at the house, drive to the other apartment to get Jacki and Jeremy's next load of stuff, and have us all to the theatre in time for Bad Movie Night.

We should be Totally Done Moving just as Jacki goes in for her surgery, at which point there'll be a lot of staying in and being quiet, so it'll be a much valued rest. Okay, running off, now. Later, babes!

So my dad's staying in some kind of hotel (I think it was La Kiva on I-40) and, because he's recuperating from surgery, I have to sign for his daily expenses at the desk. Walk up, sign, keep walking on my way to see him. He's staying in the hotel because our trailer (yeah, way back in Minnesota) got flooded. Somehow, I managed to piss off a secret global organization, like the Skulls and Bones or the Illuminati or someone, and I had just been notified that I was on their shit list. So I was in a bad mood.

I go up to the desk, sign where I'm supposed to sign, and begin to walk away. 'Actually, sir, you need to sign on this line too. It's a new policy.' I look down, and she's pointing to a row of a half-dozen different places to sign. I ask which one, she says that one, no that one, no that one, hang on, let me check. I sigh and wait. She goes over to someone else at the desk, asks about the signature, gets an 'I don't know', and then falls into gossip. For fifteen minutes, ignoring me as I try, with increasing frustration, to call her back to the desk. Finally she comes back, points at a random line (I could tell because her finger landed between two) and says 'That one.' I sign, then go to a man whose attire suggests management and ask if I could have a word.

I complain that it took twenty minutes to do something that normally takes twenty seconds. All I needed was a deferential apology, a promise to do better, and the notion that he'd give the clerk a talking to. I didn't get that. The guy (who looked like Will Farrel with thinning hair combed over a bald and jutting brow) gave me snark, attitude, and threatened my father's continued presence at the hotel. I told him that his combover was the reason he'd never gotten laid, then turned and walked out into the parking lot.

Apparently the insult touched a nerve, because he coldcocks a cop that's standing in the lobby, steals his baton and gun, and charges out to attack me. Realizing that I'm unarmed, I follow suit, cold-cocking the nearest person to me and taking his weapon. This turned out to be a five-year-old child with a squishy foam lightsaber. I apologized to his mother and then charged the night manager. He fired off a shot and missed, then we were grappling. I knocked the gun away, locked his baton arm, and jammed the lightsaber into his mouth. Eventually he suffocated into unconsciousness, at which point I victoriously dragged him back into the lobby for the hundred-or-more bystanders to congratulate me on my courage in dealing with the maniac.

I left the night manager with some EMTs who were on the scene, then got mobbed by a throng of what I thought were fans. It turns out that they were angry with me. They didn't believe my story, or my complaint of the signature taking twenty minutes. I pointed at the clock and saw, to my horror, that it said no such span of time had elapsed. 'But that doesn't matter! That man attacked me with a gun and baton!' 'Impossible,' they cried, 'he doesn't have any fingers to hold them with!' I looked and, surely enough, he didn't. That's when I realized what had happened. The EMTs had amputated his fingers while someone else set the clocks back, all so that the sinister secret global organization could frame me for making an unnecessary fuss at the hotel's front desk.

As I was taken away by the very cop that the night manager had knocked out, the dream continued on to follow the night manager covertly escaping from the parking lot by spinning a hot air balloon out of web (you see, in return for his cooperation, the sinister secret global organization had made him Spider-Man) and filling it from a propane tank. He floated away as a calm and measured voice began instructing him in the safe operation of a web-based hot air balloon, like a safety training video. It was difficult, being Spider-Man without any fingers, but he pulled it off. Eventually he reached the Pacific Ocean where he released enough gas to hover just above the surface, reach down, and use his spider-sticky to grab and redirect a huge nuclear torpedo that'd been fired by a Japanese fleet who were, inexplicably, decades late for Pearl Harbor.

The torpedo hit the lead ship, destroyed them all, and democracy was saved, all thanks to Spider-Man, the fingerless night manager of La Kiva on I-40.

Jamming a king-sized mattress into the back of a minivan should be one of the Ninja Warrior challenges. I'm going to go die now.

...so they won't be so long. I'll try to keep it relatively brief.

( Friday I got together with Jacki and Jeremy... )

( Saturday, Jer went off to work and Jacki and I... )

( Sunday morning! We got up, had some McDonald's... )

Anyway, that's my long weekend with J&J. Fun, crazy, and enriching. Today I am to spend moving as much of my stuff to the new house as I can. I'm going to see if I can jam a king-sized mattress into the back of a minivan. Wish me luck.

Recent goings-on in Something*Positive made me realize that my long history of cybersex (which always drew rave reviews) combined with my improvisational DMing skills and my newfound level of comfort talking to strangers on the phone make me a natural choice for phone sex work. I might consider it if I could work for Aubrey's company, but I fear that any place that exists in the real world would be as soul-destroying and corporate as any phone-slave job.

It is now the 15th, and I have two weeks remaining to move my shit to the new house. So far I have sorted the contents of three boxes, paring them down to two boxes in the process. Mmh. I'm going to have to move my mattress over there, and my dresser, and my bureau, and my book shelf, and my other book shelf, and the little cabinets, and my mirror, and probably a big comfy chair from the living room, and the table we're using for the computers... and THEN I'll have to move my STUFF! Mmh.

Inhale, exhale.

Does anyone have any good advice on the process of moving? Little tricks, big solutions, sage wisdom that will give me the necessary perspective to make the hard decisions of what to let go, what to keep, and how to organize it all?

I hope so.

Today, however, is calm day. Today I go and play Scrabble with Papa, and then I go hang at the park with J&J, then we'll go bowling! I love bowling, when I remember to bring painkillers for my hand. For some reason swinging a massive weight over and over again with three fingers aggravates my carpal tunnel a bit. Then... dunno! Prolly just gonna stay the night at J&J's. They are awesomesauce. Jacki tells me that Jeremy really enjoyed last night's birthday celebrations, which makes me all kinds of glad. She also said that he said that things felt kind of empty without me around, like we're only really complete as the three of us. That made me happy too. They're both awesome. :)

Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we move heavy things!

Not that these days are dreadful or anything, they're just busy. My batteries are going to run down sooner or later at this rate. Sure, I'll still have a few things to do tomorrow, but it won't be hectic; seeing Papa in the rehab centre, going to the skate park with Jacki and Jeremy, going bowling with Jacki and Jeremy, going home with Jacki and Jeremy. Oh, but I think Rondo's back to work on Friday too, so that's a few more miles to go before I sleep. Hrm. Ah well, it should still be fine.

One of these days I'm going to have a 'stay home and veg' day. Except then I wouldn't see Jacki... hrm. This 'life' business is tricky.

So last night we gave Jer a skateboard for his birthday. Apparently he's a skater! Jacki got a silver marker and we wrote little messages on the underside of the board for him. Mine was 'If Einstein knew how to grind a rail, he'd be you!' He dug that. He says he did very well on his engineering test yesterday, so he was feeling good, enjoying his Two Worlds Xbox game.

I'm still getting used to the situation with me, Jacki, and Jeremy. Last night, for example. He really wanted to play his game. Other nights it's stuff like his energy project or... more of his energy project. He focuses on something else for hours on end, and I end up worrying that he feels excluded when Jacki and I cuddle and talk and have fun. In poly terms, it almost feels like he's voluntarily stepping into the role of 'secondary', making me feel kind of guilty and awkward for filling a more 'primary' role. Jacki's talked to him about it, and he seems to be happy with things the way that they are, so I guess I just need to relax. I'll keep on keeping an eye on the situation, though.

Yesterday, at the mall, I convinced Jacki to buy a few turquoise-coloured peace sign things. A bigass pendant of pretty, a set of tiny peace sign earrings in every colour, and a cream-coloured scarf with turquoise peace signs all over it. I saw the scarves and thought Jacki'd look good in them, and I heard the self I used to be say 'but she doesn't wear them, so she obviously doesn't like them, so you're stupid and wrong.' I'm learning to ignore that guy, who's pretty quiet these days anyway, so I pointed them out to Jacki and she said 'Oh, I've always wanted to wear these but I didn't think it'd look good on me!' I made her try one on and convinced her otherwise, and now she's even more of a radical hippie chick than before. She looks awesome. :D

I continue to be amused by the presence of a woman who, though she is currently engaged in a transaction to buy items from the adult section of a shop, turns red if I mention those items to the person who is ringing them up. Isn't that adorable?

Okay, so it looks like my phone minutes didn't just mysteriously vanish as I'd thought. They're just going very, very quickly. With 88 out of 90 days remaining, I'm already down to 237 minutes out of 300. I never spent minutes this fast before Jacki came along, but now I'm texting all the time and I'm actually talking on the phone, and... mmf. Gone are the days when, at the end of those 90 days, I'd have 100 minutes left over. At this rate, I'll be out of minutes in a week. u_u;

Okay, I need to get going. I've got to clean up the moving mess in the living room and finalize plans for today's D&D session. There just isn't enough time in the day, y'know? More than ever, I wish I had Multiple Man's powers. Pop off a dupe to clean the apartment, pop off a dupe to post to LJ, pop off a dupe to run D&D, and I'd never have to leave Jacki ever.

Yeah, I'm in love. Dammit. :)

Being two people's work chauffeur doesn't help, I'm sure.

Let's see what's on the docket for today.

Take a shower, shave off remaining beard to see how it looks, get some more closet-delving done, drive Garr to work at 2pm, call Mom to sort out exact times for the lunch thing, go see Papa in the rehabilitation centre, go meet with Mom and Rondo at Abuelo's for a belated Mother's Day lunch, then ditch Rondo somewhere and pick up Jacki to go back to Abuelo's for 'getting to know you' coffee, go back to Jacki's place to spend some time ACTUALLY RELAXING HAPPILY, and then go pick up Garr from work at 11pm.

Considering how my mother and I are feeling about Rondo right now, I might swap the 'Mother's Day Lunch' and 'Coffee With Mom and Jacki' to 'Mother's Day Coffee' and 'Lunch With Mom and Jacki'. I definitely know who I'd rather spend a full meal with. I'm only inviting Rondo at all because half of the gift is 'from him'.

Oh, and somewhere in there I've got to figure out this week's D&D stuff. I'll do that some time after I get home and fix dinner for Garr and myself.

*grins*

And Jacki just texted me. Add 'go to the mall and shop for something sexy for Jacki to wear for Jeremy's upcoming birthday' somewhere after Abuelo's. That will definitely be fun, especially if their dressing room policies are lax...

Edit To Add: Oh right! I also need to get to the bank and give them money so they won't charge me for overdrawing on last night's groceries. I guess if I jump in the shower right now I can do that while Garr's waking up. Wheeeeee...

So! Busy day. These have gotten to be the norm. I'm not complaining, but... well, it's a little scary. It's also goodness, because I never thought I'd be able to be this active. Now I just need to get more active on the whole 'moving' thing. Got to clear out the van so we can use it for small stuff, and get my mattress to the new house, and figure out which clothes I'm keeping and which I'm giving away, and...

Doesn't look like I'm going to have a slow day any time soon, does it? Ah, well. I really can't complain. Be good, kids!

Random Thought: It sucks having an apartment overrun with cockroaches, but if they were spoonerized they'd be rock coaches, like that Walken character who was giving Blue Oyster Cult pointers on SNL. Even setting aside the crowding of having hundreds of that guy living in my kitchen, I'd get sick of the cowbell thing pretty fast.

Got woke up by a 'sorry, wrong apartment' a few hours early, which is probably all right. I need to start sorting through my stuff and thinning down the magpie-esque hoard in my closet. Note that I am, instead, journaling. I suck.

I've received permission to use Jacki and Jeremy's names in my LJ, as long as I don't use their last names. We've been spending a lot more time together, and we're really connecting. Jackie had a bad medication reaction about a week ago and Jeremy and I kind of bonded over protecting her while she recuperated. Then I fell ill with what was basically an aggressive headcold and she mothered me for the worst day of it. It was nice.

I've been eating vegan and gluten-free at every meal I share with them, just to explore the options. It's actually been fairly enlightening. Jacki makes wonderful things with lentils and brown rice (mmmm, curry), and though many restaurants' vegan options are pretty limited (I'm approaching the 'enough for now' point on Mexican vegan, which is always grilled veggies in a corn tortilla), there are enough restaurants in which you can kludge your own vegan that variety still happens.

I'm not about to make the pledge any time soon, though. I've got conflicted feelings about eating animals I wouldn't kill myself, yes. I know that I need to address this at some point. It's just that meat tastes damned good, and I've just been informed that a Famous Dave's is coming to Amarillo very soon. I don't know if any amount of enlightenment can keep me away from their brisket, ribs, and lemon chicken. Just the same, once I'm living with Jacki and Jeremy I'll be eating their cuisine whenever I'm with them, so I'll basically be living life as a Bad Vegan, grabbing a cheeseburger or a burrito whenever I'm out on my own. I can live with that for now.

Jacki and I have been growing closer and closer, but she's worried that Jeremy is moving away from her. He's spending a lot of time absorbed in his projects, which seems pretty in-keeping with his single-minded character, but I don't know the baseline that existed before I came along. Jacki reminds me of a very loving cat, enjoying a relatively constant level of adoration and presence. I have no problem with this because I adore physical affection and am perfectly happy to enjoy her presence. I think it's possible that, with me running interference, Jeremy is simply enjoying some time in which Jacki isn't walking on his keyboard, so to speak. I shall have to speak with him about it over coffee or something.

Shawn (the awesome intelligent weird guy who runs the local theater) warned me not to get romantically involved with them. He said I've made some great progress in the year that he's known me, that I have a lot of potential to be a wonderful human being someday, and that he doesn't want to see me get knocked back to 'start' by their drama. I appreciated his concern and advice, but I told him that I'm at a point in my life where I can't take his advice (I didn't cop to being romantically involved with them, because that's on the down-low right now). I've spent years literally hiding in my apartment, protecting myself from the big scary world out there. Even as I did, I looked at people who had stories about amazing, exciting, adventurous nights out, and I wondered 'what's the difference between them and me?' Eventually, I got pulled into a couple of such nights out, and I realized; the only difference is that those people answer 'yes' when invited.

I told Shawn that I'm done hiding, done protecting myself. I'm finally out of my cave and I need to face the world head-on. There's a good chance that I'll get hurt, but I'm not about to go back to ignoring life's opportunities just to avoid pain. Hell, the first time I did salvia I watched the person to my right freak out and try to flee the building, and the person on my left had a giggle fit that bordered on hysteria. It might've been stupid, but I unhesitatingly took the next hit. If I hadn't, I would've missed out on some of the most beautiful experiences of my life. Shawn's an awesome guy, and if I were going to take advice from anyone it'd be him, but I just can't let myself be the guy who refuses to fall in love because it might, or even probably will, hurt.

Okay, that's enough ramble for now. I really need to drag out a few boxes and start figuring out which cherished worthless precious junk that I haven't seen in years I can afford to let go of.

The beginning's a little fuzzy, as it flowed in from another, but Shawn was putting on a musical (it seemed to be set in the middle ages, heavily featuring nuns and monks). I showed up for the second rehearsal, meaning to ask when we'd be putting the show on, and saw that everyone was already in costume, getting ready for the first performance. For some reason I couldn't remember Shawn's name (I called him Blaine, and then Shane), and Brad Blaha was there, a guy who used to be rather unfriendly to me in the earlier years of high school choir. He said something snarky when I didn't know the song we were rehearsing, just a few minutes from curtain.

This is, of course, a classic nightmare dream. Willow has this exact nightmare in the dream episode of Buffy (I did not see the Cheese Man, though). Feeling unprepared, being criticized, failing publicly, and all the terror that goes with it.

Except that I wasn't afraid. I didn't freak out. I didn't hate myself for not knowing the music. I explained to people that I'd only had one day of rehearsal, and that it was unreasonable of them to expect me to be able to perform decently. Shawn (who found my misnaming him hilarious) was the only person on my side (his input came after I'd already been relaxed and groovy, so I still get credit for that) and said 'That's cool, man. Just grab a costume, stand in the back, and try to look good.'

ETA: Oh, and a hole got worn in my purse and rather than think 'God, see, what a stupid idea, carrying a purse, I'm such an idiot' I went 'Whoops, time to get a new purse. Maybe one that didn't cost $2.'

It was terrific. I had enough confidence and awareness to accurately diagnose people's expectations as unreasonable, to see that my failing in this situation was not my fault, and the wisdom to ignore people whose opinions truly didn't matter. My friends still liked me (even if they freaked on my behalf) and Shawn was cool and understanding (that way that he is about so very much), and they're the people whose opinions do matter.

I didn't panic (didn't even think to because I recognized that I'd done nothing wrong), I kept my shit together, and what could've been a classic nightmare scenario became simply interesting, even entertaining (I remember, after the dream was mostly finished, finding a dusty old yearbook backstage that summoned its subjects into my presence naked) in the moment, and enlightening once I remembered and meditated upon it upon waking.

I'm prepared to take this as a good sign regarding my mental health. :)

I've been so busy with things that I haven't had time to post, which sucks because... well, I'm not about to get any less busy any time soon. Let's see if I can cover the essentials. A friend of mine needed some papers written for him, and since they were more superfluous academic hoops than anything pertinent to his degree, I did so. Because he forgot to email me any of his sources for several weeks, he upped the ante from $180 to $350 if I could finish as a rush job. I did!

I didn't tell Garr about the upgrade to $350 because it wasn't a sure thing and I didn't want to let him see me fail like that. Turns out, I should've mentioned it. While I was taking my friend Shawn's son River to the cheapo theater for his birthday (there was also ice cream and mini-golf) Garr saw my last LJ entry (the only one he's read since I got back, I'm sure) and got very upset that I was just taking 'all the money' and going on a trip instead of repaying him for supporting me. He blindsided me with snark over fifteen bucks I picked up off the desk when he was actually upset about the trip money. I told him that I'd probably have two hundred dollars left over after getting the ticket, at least a hundred and fifty, and that I was going to give all of the remainder to him in the first place. I also explained that he'd have known that if he'd talked to me like a human being instead of trying to take me to task like a godsdamned child. Grr. He apologized. I said that it's clear that he's got issues with our arrangement that he'd let me think were resolved, and that I got that it wasn't working for him, so I mentioned the solution I've been working on.

About a week ago I found out that Ja and Je (The poly initial thing doesn't work when they're both frelling J's! I wish I could remember the hippie names they made up for each other when they watched my copy of Flashback; they called me Eden! I found that cute. ^_^) are moving in a month. Their lease expires at the end of May, which is coincidentally the same time mine and Garr's expire. I mentioned, very hesitantly, that I'd be interested in being their roommate if they'd like, and they were all over the idea. By now they've picked a little two-bedroom house to rent ($500/mo!), and I've said that it's a sure thing that I'll move in with them. So I told Garr about this, and said that he'd get to move in with Becca, and we agreed that it'd be a good solution and that we'd work to keep the friendship going despite the new distance. We also agreed that we should make this last month a good one, and with that we're all over the foo from earlier.

Ja and Je (I'll call them that for now because they seem a little gunshy about their coworkers and churchmates finding out about the nature of my association with them (I'll have to go back and edit the previous post where I say their names)) are just... so awesome. She's vegan, he's veggie, and they're both so open-minded and accepting and free and terrific. Ja's very empathic, and we've already developed a powerful bond. Je and I aren't as connected yet, but we're very comfortable with each other. They're eco-sound and very spiritual and queer-groovy and everything I've wanted to be but couldn't because of Garr's disapproving attitude.

Honestly, I feel like I've finally found spring at the end of a long winter. I'm not so much evolving as blossoming into something I've been waiting, for too long in the cold dark, to become. They care about me, see value in me, and I can't help but love them madly. Just this evening I looked at myself in the mirror, naked and fat with messed-up hair, and for the first time in so very long I smiled and found myself thinking 'what a beautiful person'.

I'm going to eat vegan, or at least veggie, whenever I'm with them. I'm not ready to take the vow myself, but they've got me considering it. I'm going to put an altar in my room! Nothing crazy, just a physical focus for my spirituality. I can't tell you how long I've wanted to have an altar or shrine, but haven't because of the environment that I'm in. Most importantly, I'm going to be in a place where I don't feel like a burden, like a worthless wretch, like Garr's booby prize for being stupid enough to fall for me. I'm going somewhere where I'll be valued and loved and cherished and nurtured and supported by two amazing people.

It's like a dream of heaven.

I know I've been away for a while, but I haven't poofed! I'm just having a life! It's weird, I know. I finished those papers I promised that guy, so I should have some money free to take a trip to new england to see winterfox, kaytebell, wgptrey, evilbeej, and anyone else in that region/on the way who'd like to see me (I'm in Amarillo, Texas, remember). I'm not sure when, because I'm sorting out living arrangements and at some point I may or may not have a gloomforge crashing with me (if housing has changed by then, he can crash with Dave, who has a much nicer place and jealoused at me when I mentioned the Have Dice, Will Travel thing).

Oy, let's see. Um, my dad fell down again. Spiral fracture of the left tibia, if I understand correctly. Got pins put in, he's in rehab now. Went to see him today, he's feeling all right but he's... well, he's very good at finding that last nerve and plucking it like a dulcimer, yaknow?

There's other stuff, specifically about where I'm going to be living in about a month, but I've got a dinner date with my wonderful friends Ja and Je in... gah, twenty minutes. And my hair is awful because they have my brush and comb! Ah well. Hippies tend to be pretty understanding about bedhead. :) Also I've got a new beard-style, resultant of a slip of the razor. It's kinda... dunno. Orli/Miguel/beatnik/whatever. Maybe it's good, maybe not. Just takes a week to return to default anyway. :)

Things are hectic as fuck and crazy as hell, but I'm in a good place. Living life is definitely better than hiding from it. Any energy or good vibes or well-wishing you'd care to beam me wouldn't hurt, though. ;)

Okay, peace out my darlings. I'll say more things (ooh, new insight into the salvia trips) later, whenever I can find some godsdamned time!

-A

...salvia is awesome. Just don't believe anyone who says it's 'just like legal weed'. It's more like a miniature acid trip. I spent five (objective) minutes spending several (subjective) weeks building rainbows with a man in an oversized tophat, then I felt vibratey-tingly for ten minutes, then I had a nice afterglow for half an hour. We were using the second-weakest of five strengths that the brand offers, and I would smash hard into a complete dissociative trip about five seconds after I exhaled the hit.

I'm going to have to compare notes with my friends, but I think it hit me better than theirs did; it was purely positive for me, while they needed some ground control to get them through the rough rush and into the calmer waters. If you plan on using the stuff, be sure to take the same precautions you would for peyote or LSD; this is not just a buzz, and there's a strong chance that you'll spend about five minutes completely out of your mind. Since it seriously debilitates your coordination, you're less likely to successfully do anything stupid, but it wasn't enough to keep the first person to take the first hit (we were expecting a weed-like effect, so the place was bright and cluttered and noisy and he was completely unprepared) from jumping onto the coffee table and trying to flee the building. I'd recommend tripping it in a nice big bed in the corner of the room with dim lights and someone you love and trust in the bed with you. Preferably naked, but that's just sound principle.

Caveats said, this drug is definitely on my 'to do' list. My experience was totally positive and involved some amazing sensations and visuals. Those hippie cartoons I grew up on as a kid make a lot more sense now. Especially the rainbows. :D

Sorry for the week between posts. I do not keep multiple plates spinning well, and things got busy. I got pulled into a Vampire game with my friends Neil, David, and Shawn, and I've been fighting the white-knuckle panic of starting my own D&D game back up, and add in the usual other stuff and I forget that I've got LJ here, which is dumb because LJ is good coping help.

I'm pretty good now, though. No worries. :)

I'll post about other things in a while, but right now I need to share a forehead-slap 'oh hey!' moment.

I have the damnedest time getting recognized as having Asperger's. Usually this is good, but I've asked two professionals now, and they've declined to diagnose me. Why? I make and read facial expressions, I make eye contact, I engage in smalltalk, I pick up nonverbal cues, I shake hands, all that stuff. I wasn't associated with either individual long enough for them to get/believe that none of that comes naturally, that it's hard fucking work and I just happen to A) have spent my life painstakingly sussing out how to mask my antisocial behaviour and B) be willing to work that hard all the time to keep from making people uncomfortable (which is A Sin in my mind).

I feel like that guy from Gattaca, the normal person with normal defects who's posing as one of the genetically-engineered elite. Everyone mistakes him as naturally superior because he keeps up flawlessly, but only because they don't see that he is struggling nonstop as hard as he can to do so. I definitely relate to holding oneself to the higher standard, feeling like a failure for the discrepancies rather than a success for keeping up so well, too.

Anyway, the 'aha!' moment came when I was reading this article (I haven't even finished it, I came straight here) and realized that there is a very large population of Aspies who've apparently done the exact same thing I have; females. Now, I'm not really sure what this means. Yes, I've got behavioural traits in common with female Aspies, and yes, I'm coming to admit that I identify more as female than male, but there's a good chance that I'm confusing correlation with causation here. The article seems to suggest that the impetus to mask is external, based upon parental/societal reaction to a girl behaving like an Aspie. Obviously, I wouldn't have that same impetus, as Aspie behaviours are more acceptable in boys and allowed to develop.

I might have had a similar situation, though. The same kind of controlling 'guidance' that made me learn to, as the article so rightly put it, 'mask, and mask, and mask, and mask some more.' I've never truly disliked the outdoors, or other children, or physical activities, but I've always liked the alternatives a whole lot more. Playing pretend with other kids out in the sun wasn't nightmarish (I'd have called it tolerable), but I simply didn't see the point when I could be alone in the cool, dark basement, reading a book thicker than my arm.

The similarity comes to my parents' reaction to this preference. They were loving but firm about my needing to behave like other children. They indulged my preferences, but they were treated as exactly that; an indulgence which should not be allowed to go too far. The hours between my getting home from school and dinner were Outside Time. I was not allowed back inside the house, nor was I allowed to bring books outside with me. I was told that I needed to make friends, so I went to the kid on the corner and asked him if he'd be my friend. He said yes, that requirement was met, and I never made any others until we moved away. My father made me learn to ride a bike. It was something that normal boys did, so I had to learn. I spent two summers trying to learn. It wasn't fun, it wasn't a bonding moment, it was my father forcing me to climb onto this thing I hated so that I could try and fail and try and fail and try and fail. The absurdly ironic thing is that my parents were so protective of me that, once I did learn how to ride (and did so out of a sense of obligation and a begrudging enjoyment of the sensation of speed), I couldn't leave the cul-de-sac we lived on. All that hell so that I could ride around and around in circles.

So maybe I had a similarly rigorous upbringing, telling me what's correct, what's not correct, don't do what you want, do this thing that makes no sense, etcetera, to the upbringing Aspie girls face. I certainly didn't get the kind of hands-off freedom I'm told Aspie boys tend to get. Maybe it's got nothing to do with my gender identity issues at all. Maybe it's just an odd correlation. Who knows?

Anyway. I honestly feel tired from remembering that stuff. Am I the only one who re-lives terrible situations when zie remembers it? At least insofar as experiencing the same terrible emotions, just as strong and fresh as on the day? It's very unpleasant. No wonder I've got such a poor memory; it's probably a learned defense against the alternative. Anyway. I'll post again later.

EDIT: Okay, I should really finish the article before posting, because, relevance!

"Later on, I discovered the definition of the Asperger (visual-spatial) type of hyperlexia -- a rare condition associated with the autism spectrum in which children spontaneously start reading on their own and learn to say and spell words well above their age level without ever being taught, but have huge deficits with understanding spoken language and the subverbal nuances of it, and also with visual/spatial/motor issues. I could see the ball coming just fine, but what to do with my hands other than cover my face with them? NO CLUE. When I drew a picture as an 11-year-old, it looked like the work of a 3-year-old. And if my mom told me to "set the table," over and over again I didn't realize she meant right now.

"Holy crap," I thought, "this definition should have my damn picture on it."

Holy crap, this definition should have my damn picture on it!

(No, I still haven't finished the article. Yes, I realize that this runs counter to what I just said at the top of the edit. As Alice said, I give myself such very good advice, but I very seldom follow it.)

My pelvis is fine. I think I just popped my hip; there's not even any residual soreness.

My knee, on the other hand...

I took a fall at Abuelo's, a fancy Mexican restaurant in the area. I went to walk through an archway (identical to several other archways in the restaurant that I've walked through), stepping between two tables as I did so. The tables and chairs blocked my view of the floor, and by the time I could've seen the foot-high stone ledge running the length of the archway, I'd have to be looking down at my feet to do so. I went ass over teakettle and hit both knees hard on the brick floor, my left in particular. I don't think there's any lasting damage, it just hurts a lot. I bashed the hell out of my patella, but because there's no deep tissue I don't get the satisfying display of a nice big bruise.

A bit of ice and an unapologetic visit from the manager later, and we got on with Garr's birthday luncheon. Because I'm a procrastinator who gets things done better in one big rush, I arranged the whole thing (with funding from Mom and Papa) in a mad dash spanning the three hours before we were to get together for lunch. It went swimmingly, knee injuries aside.

All of the cards on the shelf were utter crap. Unfunny, utter schmaltz, the usual. And, of course, five bucks a pop on average. I decided that if I was going to spend that kind of money on a gesture, it should be something Garr'd actually like, so I picked up four used DVDs (guaranteed to work, though) for five bucks each, then used post-its and a sharpie to dress them up and leave a space inside for people to write good wishes. Garr loved them, and they complemented his actual gifts; two seasons of Harvey Birdman and one season of Chapelle Show. Nothing goes with multimedia hedonism like multimedia hedonism. After lunch we went to see I Love You, Man. It was pretty good. I'd give it a seven. The soundtrack gets an 8. Like Superbad, it's a great movie to go see with a buddy. I hereby dub the genre 'bromance'.


In other news, bradhicks is scaring me. I kind of have to not believe him, otherwise I'm likely to just turtle and cry indefinitely. It really doesn't help that there's a fierce windstorm raging just outside my window as I read it; it brings me right back to the terror of that damned hurricane, the sound of a beast that never stops howling. It embodies my fear of the crushing misfortunes of the world and the utter failure of society's safeguards to protect me from them.


Also, as I was driving back from dropping Garr off at work, I saw a bunch of little papers fly out of the window of a vehicle ahead of me. I decided to give the shiny black hummer with its 'NUMB' vanity plate the benefit of the doubt, assume that it'd been an accident. Then, about a mile later, it happened again. I realized what the papers were; business cards. The hummer was getting upwind of high traffic areas and throwing out fistfuls of them. Note that right now we've got even stronger winds than usual; I had to fight the wheel a couple of times to keep the van in its lane, and Taco Bell's sign has exploded. Very, very strong winds. Nonetheless, I pulled over and started searching for business cards and found two crisp ones on the other side of a wall. Bryce W. Rogers, President and CEO of the Interdaq Corporation. I'm powerfully tempted to swing by the Amarillo Police Department and file a report. Littering pisses me off enough, but when it's on such a large scale and I've got the fucker's name and an unmistakable ID of zir vehicle, my inner vengeance demon perks up. Think I should report it? Think the police would even do anything?

Ow. I am dumb. Okay, changing lightbulb, dropped screw for lightbulb cover. Decided, inexplicably, to pick it up without fully dismounting chair. Ended up doing... contortiony... thing... Right foot on floor, left foot on chair, bent down and reached left hand down to touch the floor. Cue horrible, unnatural popping sound/sensation.

...I think I dislocated the vagina that I don't have.

o_O;

Normally I don't go in for these things, but this one hit me just right, so I answered it on scixual's journal, and am putting it up on mine. I was gonna post my answers here to save my lazy ass the trouble of reposting in others' journals (like there will be so many people flocking to be my meme sheep), but I remembered that some of the questions are tailored to the journal they're in, so it wouldn't quite be the same. Anyway, if you wanna see my answers, most of which will be the same if I respond to your posting this in your LJ, just check 'em out on scixual's journal.

__

If you're on my friends list, I want to know 36 things about you. I don't care if we never talk, or if we already know everything about each other. Short and sweet is fine... you're on my list, so I want to know you better!

Comment here and repost a blank one on your own journal.



01) Are you currently in a serious relationship?
02) What was your dream growing up?
03) What talent do you wish you had?
04) If I bought you a drink what would it be?
05) Favorite vegetable?
06) What was the last book you read?
07) What zodiac sign are you?
08) Any Tattoos and/or Piercings? Explain where.
09) Worst Habit?
10) If you saw me walking down the street would you offer me a ride?
11) What is your favorite sport?
12) Do you have a Pessimistic or Optimistic attitude?
13) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?
14) Worst thing to ever happen to you?
15) Tell me one weird fact about you.
16) Do you have any pets?
17) What if I showed up at your house unexpectedly?
18) What was your first impression of me?
19) Do you think clowns are cute or scary?
20) If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?
21) Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?
22) What color eyes do you have?
23) Ever been arrested?
24) Bottle or can soda?
25) If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it?
27) What's your favorite place to hang out at?
28) Do you believe in ghosts?
29) Favorite thing to do in your spare time?
30) Do you swear a lot?
31) Biggest pet peeve?
32) In one word, how would you describe yourself?
33) Do you believe/appreciate romance?
34) Favourite and least favourite food?
35) Do you believe in God?
36) Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?


Why not?