I think about this world a lot and I cry

UConn’s last pure white husky has crossed the rainbow bridge…

I’m a fucking mess right now.

I can’t even deny it… tear tracks are running down my face and I haven’t been able to stop the tears for days. (Other than when I need to pull my shit together for work, of course. They can’t see how broken I am.)

It started with the announcement that Jonathan XII had died.

Yes.

A dog that wasn’t mine… that I wasn’t even close to… is dead and I can’t deal with it.

I suppose, all things considered, I should have seen this coming.

I’m past exhausted.

I’m not sleeping.

I’ve barely been eating.

And, I’ve been waiting for this day.

My complete and utter breakdown.

The day the depression brings me to my knees.

Catharsis.

Why was the death of a dog such a big deal? How could something like that move me to the tears I so needed to shed?

Easy.

Despite my… complicated… relationship with my mother, she was a UConn grad, too. There was always a little bit of me that wished - that still wishes, if we’re to be honest (and when have I ever lied here?) - that she could have been there for those years. She was already dead by the time I was applying for colleges. Didn’t know that UConn was the absolute last school I wanted to go to. Because of her. Didn’t know that it was the only school I applied to. Also because of her… and that’s a story for another time. I’m already fucked up enough without revisiting that time of my life.

Standing at the practice field, staring at the Towers dorms. Dating a guy who actually lived in her fucking building. Having to walk past what was her room. She had left enough of her behind in a scrapbook that I was able to find her fucking room. And I don’t think I ever told the boyfriend that… maybe in passing, but not in enough detail.

SO. UConn. It was a place where I was able to finally define myself as something other than Helen’s daughter (even if I carried that weight around for four years). I lived through so much craziness over four years and I don’t regret a moment of it. We always wind up where we’re supposed to be, even if we don’t know it at the time.

Going to UConn was the beginning of a wild ride… again, it was a decision I will never regret and I will always be proud to be a Husky… and a hussy, because we’re Bus 4, after all. And a white Jonathan will - even after all this time - be my husky.

And the last white one is gone. With a generic husky taking his place.

My UConn is gone.

My mother’s UConn is gone.

Replaced with an imposter.

And, while you may not understand why, it hurts. Badly.

To make matters even worse, I just finished a piece of Drarry fan fic that has brought me to tears over the past two days.

Fuck, I wish I could write like that.

Seriously.

It started with Draco in New York, recreating himself, working with at-risk kids and turning his back on all things magical and Malfoy. He ends up sharing dreams with Harry, and it is like the slowest burns of slow burns. Of course, I didn’t cry when Evan killed himself. I didn’t cry at the too real emotions that Draco was going through. Nope. I bawled like a fucking baby when Harry showed up in New York. And then I cried harder when he left. And then I cried even harder when he came back. It. Was. Beautiful. I love when fics break me like that. I really do.

Oddly enough, that level of heartache spurred me on to clean up the mess I made in the Otayuri fic I’ve been working on… until that vicious editor in my head decided to speak up. Yes, editor, I gave up on the slow burn. No, that wasn’t what I wanted to do. No, there won’t be any age-inappropriate scenarios. Yes, this is all Otabek Altin’s fucking fault. Three drafts, three fucking drafts, and he’s all ‘eyes of a soldier’ and Люди могут забыть, что вы сказали. Могут забыть, что вы сделали. Но никогда не забудут, что вы заставили их почувствовать. People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.  (God bless Google and Russian language blogs for giving me the ultimate apology quote…)

But the editor did what they set out to do and, well, imposter syndrome.

So, I just wasted a bunch of time rereading all seven of my published fan fics, all the comments, and just started at my statistics.

I’m never going to be a Sara’s Girl, or bixgirl1, but they all did better than I would have thought.

For me, not you, I submit the following for those days when I feel like I can no longer make the words do the thing good because englishing is hard:

 

 

Oh. Fuck.

all I need is a 16 minute mile… and to NOT die

Soooooooooooooooo

Assuming the new wave of Coronavirus doesn’t cancel the races, I’m running both Wine and Dine and Marathon weekends.

Yes.

THE FUCKING DOPEY CHALLENGE. #DOPEY2021 IS REAL (although a year late)

I have no idea what I’m doing - I had planned on skipping the race this year. But it’s the 50th anniversary of the House of Mouse and I plan to be one and done, so why not?

My newsfeed was packed full of people wanting to register so I didn’t think I had a hope in hell of making it in.

Yeah… my luck is never that good. LOL

One more time for those not obsessing over these races with me:

Wine & Dine - 5K, 10K, Half Marathon - 4 medals - one for each race and one for the two course challenge (10K + half). That’s 22.4 miles over three days. The 5K is optional, but why the fuck not? It’s a practice run for January.

Dopey kicks it up a notch - 5K, 10K, Half, Full Marathon - 6 medals - SIX! - one for each race, then the Goofy Challenge (half + full), and then the Dopey medal. None of the races are optional. That’s 48.6 miles over four days.

There is something wrong with me.

Speaking of things that are wrong with me…

I get lost in video games when I can’t get lost in my head. There’s too much noise in there right now as I start to approach being stable.

The mood swings are lessening. The depression is no longer such a heavy weight on my shoulders. (Still there, still affecting the day-to-day, but there is finally - FINALLY!!!!! - a light at the end of the tunnel. AND it’s not a train!)

All because we hired an AP person…. and now I don’t know what to do on the weekends.

But, anyhoo, all that to say, I’m addicted to the Sims 4 again. (I’m also oddly into watching speed builds on YouTube and I still can’t wrap my brain around how that’s a valid form of income…)

One of the Simmers uses two mods that I was really interested in and I decided to try them. (MC Command Centre and UI Cheats) Then I fell down the rabbit hole of custom content and other mods.

There is a bipolar mod. A BIPOLAR MOD.

And one that brings drugs into the Sims. You want to grow weed in your place? OK. You want to sell weed? MMDA? Coke? Heroin? Yup. All of it.

You can even make your sim an alcoholic / stoner / addict. It shows the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ of a chemically altered life.

Of course, I had to check that shit out.

So… I made a sim that highlighted the “best” parts of my mother:

Bipolar? Check

Smokes weed from time to time? Check

Constantly drunk? Check check

Yeah… that sim didn’t last too long before I cheated to get rid of the bipolar and and make them sober.

Plus, you know, I play to escape reality… not live it in a virtual world.

I haven’t looked too deeply into the 18+ mods and custom content because… I don’t know… they feel too dirty for the Sims. But if I were into that… my sims could be a prostitute, run a strip club, be a porn star, make sex tapes, and leave dildos and condoms all over the bedroom. Like seriously… if that’s your cup of tea, you’ll find everything you want and more.

Yeah… that’s not really for me.

It was kind of eye opening to see just how much content is out there, though. I’ve never been into mods and custom content, but I downloaded a bunch of “safe” things - just boring, vanilla, game play modifications.

I’ve got a bunch of things to do this weekend, so I’m going to end it here.

(Besides, there are cows and llamas and chickens to buy after I build my country house in Henford-on-Bagley!!!) MOOOOOOOOO!

(and holy shit - this entire post is textbook mania in a written form. whoops)

Don’t Panic! / Not Again!

And so, Don’t Panic - the most recent BotF winner - heads into the finals

I should have posted this AGES ago, but the last Battle of the Fandoms team I was on was Hitchhiker’s themed. It’s a bit of an odd book, one I don’t read often enough, but it was transformative when it came into my life. I can’t read it without thinking of the ex who forced it on me (and who I almost stole it from.) We are still friendly and I’m glad… he was such a huge part of my life.

I digress.

Right now, I’m running for another Hitchhiker’s team in the ‘season finale’. This team will most definitely lose. (There are a LOT of miles between us and first place. Possible, but highly unlikely. I mean, ANYTHING is possible during Racery.)

Normally, I let it bother me… but after a bunch of low milage Racery events, I’m done.

D.O.N.E.

Done.

I’ve gotten to the point where work is almost manageable. I’ve been working half weekends instead of full ones, so that’s progress.

I ran my first miles for Not Again last night. A 10K. The first long run in a while.

And…

Fuck me.

It felt good.

Running hasn’t felt that good in ages. Probably since COVID shut the world down.

Bipolar is a random bitch… some days I’m on top of the world and some days, the Ick is so bad, I want to dig a hole and hide.

Not going to lie, self-care hasn’t been high on my priority list. Surviving has been. Which includes getting the disaster that is the accounting department under control. (It’s been a year-long process…)

My new AR person is finding five figure mistakes - invoices there weren’t collected in a timely fashion. We still haven’t collected all the receivables from Hurricane Laura. That was 9 months ago. Most of that is the fault of the insurance company we worked for, but still. Then there’s the two guys who owed $20K+ - she never followed up on either, even though all the insurance proceeds went to the homeowner. Her replacement hunted one of them down - turns out the homeowner opened a claim, but the job contact was the tenant. We went after both of them until they finally paid us in full. In MAY.

Then, there’s still the small matter that I can’t get the books cleaned up. Every time I try, I seem to fail. Still haven’t closed January 2021.

Or the fact that I’m trying to squeeze HR and IT into already overflowing days.

I’m on my second AP person in a month and so far I think it’s love.

Better than the first one, at least.

So, yeah. I’m back to running. Back to training for Dopey, even though runDisney has been radio silent regarding the future. I’m not even sure I want to run Dopey any more, but I think that’s the depression talking.

I’ve signed up for ALL the Boston races since they’re offering all of them as virtual. No time requirements. I’ve already run the 5K. The 10K is at the end of this month, the half is in mid-September, and the marathon is in October.

This means that I will have my first marathon under my belt in 5 months. FIVE MONTHS.

That also means that I could upgrade my entry into the Palm Beach Marathon to the Marathon. It also means that I might run Miami, too.

I don’t know.

I have motivation again.

SERIOUS motivation.

OH! I almost forgot! We were watching some documentary on BBCAmerica and there is a fucking festival for people who like to watch cat videos on the internet.

Let that sink in for a moment.

The talking head said that people who watch cat videos find their anxiety lessening, they seem to be less depressed…

I HAVE FOUND THE PERFECT CURE FOR MY DEPRESSION AND IT IS NOT MEDS.

IT IS FUCKING CAT VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE.

My shrinky-dink is going to fucking love that. Especially since I can’t take anti-depressants.

It might also explain my desire to own a cat again.

Of course, we can’t because the dog hates them.

He just turned ten and knowing him, he has another full decade or two before he leaves us. So, there might not be a cat in our house for a long time.

But that’s OK. I have YouTube to get me though the dark days.

 

- - - - - - - - - -

The Battle Fish is improbable, yellow, prone to winning, and definitely the oddest thing in the universe. It feeds on the miles logged by other teams and transforms that energy into miles for Don’t Panic. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from each member of the team. It then excretes into the minds of every runner a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with an insatiable desire to win. The practical upshot of all of this is that if you stick a battle fish into your Racery team you can win Battle of the Fandoms. The miles you log are fed into the Racery application and designate the Don’t Panic team as the Season Two, Episode Three victors.  Possible side effects may include extreme giddiness, a desire to compete in all Racery events, the overwhelming need to translate English hashtags into German, fatigue, and some blisters.

It’s because of these drugs I do

wikipedia: creeping me out since 2001

Watching Netflix’s “Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel” and checking out Wikipedia.As you do when you’re home alone.

We all know the story of Elisa Lam - and if you don’t, where the fuck were you back in 2013 when the security camera footage went viral? But, there’s always more to the story than the creepy elevator video or the random way she died…

Like she was bipolar.

Buckle up, kids. Shit’s about to get real.

I’ve watched the video more times than I care to admit and I always thought she was fucked up on… something.

It never once occurred to me that she might have been out of her mind due to mania.

Which, well, my history *might* suggest an occasion or two where, um, things that should have been in my head actually weren’t.

At this point, I need to post a disclaimer:

WHEN I WAS FIRST DIAGNOSED, MY MEDS WERE NOT BALANCED CORRECTLY AND THEY FUCKED ME UP MORE THAN I ALREADY WAS. I AM NOT PROUD OF - NOR DO I LIKE TO REMEMBER / DISCUSS - THIS ROUGH PERIOD OF MY LIFE.

You’ve been warned. OK?

So. Yeah.

That.

The list of prescription drugs she was taking caught my eye because I have taken all four of those. I’m currently taking two of them in combination.

But.

The Wellbutrin… holy mother of fucking FUCK.

I swear when I wasn’t tasting fucking COLOURS, I was bouncing back and forth between severe depressions and… well, Guinness record breaking manic phases.

I hit both extremes so quickly and so consistently over a few weeks that I couldn’t function.

I didn’t know which way was up half the time.

And have I mentioned?

I COULD TASTE COLOURS!

It took forever to figure out what was going on and it turned out that the Wellbutrin was making me manic. Except, when you’re already manic, shit goes sideways real fucking quick.

(As it turned out, I can’t take anything marketed as an “anti-depressant” because they trigger the mania. I can thank the Wellbutrin for pointing out that particular quirk in my biology.)

So… enough about me.

Watching the video and realising that she was bipolar was like reliving the Wellbutrin days.

I would never go as far as to call it a psychotic break, because I (thankfully) don’t know what something that severe is like, but I can tell you that there were points where I might have been hallucinating and I might have acted kind of, sort of, similar to the way she did.

Thankfully, my Wellbutrin days are far, far, far behind me and I’ve not had that particular experience again… but watching her… yeah. I can totally see the mania in her actions.

Although… the odd thing is that she seems to have stopped taking her meds, or at least was weaning herself off of them.

Which, yeah, if you’re fucked up enough and you stop taking the things that make you less fucked up then, that’s a totally valid reason for her behaviour as well.

Will we ever know what really happened? Probably not.

In all honesty, I’m not sure I want to know… because if it was mania induced, well… I don’t know how I could process that.

I need some music, I need some sleep

Spending Christmas with Matt

I’ve taken over the HR duties at work, and there was a conversation I can’t let go of:

We had a client sleep with several of our subcontractors. Apparently, there was a move on our Project Manager.

Question: if he had slept with her and something had happened, would he be eligible for workers comp?

Heart attack, sprained muscle, STD… anything is fair game.

If they were at her house (“job site”), would it count as being on the job? Even if it was after hours?

Sometimes, I think we should adjust my meds. My head is going to the weirdest places lately.

-  -  -  -  -

We decided to paint my office this month and the husband went after it with a vengeance.

I ended up going with a soft grey - the same grey from the reading nook - with the same roman blinds, but no curtains.

That room used to be so dark that I used fairy lights and desk lamps(s) to try and brighten it up. I replaced the ugly sconces. The gold nipple lamp in the entry got replaced with a flush mount LED that’s brighter than the fucking sun. I also added a new ceiling fan with a light. Also LED. Also bright as fuck.

On one of the walls, there was a floor to ceiling mirror. One of the very first things we did when we moved in was had it removed. I left up the frame and we painted the inside of it with a bright white. (If removing the frame wasn’t going to necessitate replacing all the drywall, I’d have taken it down. That adhesive is nasty.)

The reading nook and the office are one big room, half assed divided by an arch and I think they will compliment each other beautifully. The reading nook is dark and cosy, with a bright red wall dominating. The office is bright and airy, with a large white area. They’re divided by a white and red IKEA shelving unit and I’m SO HAPPY with the way it all came together.

-  -  -  -  -

After quitting running (temporarily) due to depression, I signed up for Fandom Running Club’s year long event.

I think I have ONE real live race in 2021 so far… and I’m not sure I’ll be signing up for others.

Disney went virtual for Marathon Weekend and Rival Run and I’m not paying Disney dollars for a medal. That completely broke me. SHATTERED me.

So I’ve been licking my wounds and using a ridiculous backlog of work from the day job to distract myself.

But.

I miss running. Even if I only run on a treadmill and get bored after the first five minutes, I miss it.

I never finished my 2020 medal rerun, so I’m scrapping it. It doesn’t make sense to beat myself up for two shitty Racery events and not finishing all my medals. Let’s be honest, I’ve been in such a shit place that it takes EFFORT to get out of bed every morning, so… if that’s all I have spoons for, that’s all I have spoons for. I’m not going to sweat it.

I’ll be rerunning them all this year. Same rules apply: have to run entire medal distance in one go, intentional miles only, and the challenge medals are the same distance as all the year’s races. (The 2018 PHRC Phoenix Challenge only required that you ran all the races.)

-  -  -  -  -

I am not doing well.

That’s not a cry for attention. It’s a fact.

I’m exhausted.

I’m homesick.

I’m lonely.

It’s that last one that kills me… I’m not a people person by any means, but I miss being able to go out.