Be the change you want to see.

Today I did one of my pay it forward tasks.

Today I drove out to Cupertino to pick up my friend's s*** from her ex-boyfriend. They split up a while ago and he has been gas lighting her since just a little bit before they split up.

His name's Johan. Don't date him.

Anyway, I'd offered something like two weeks ago and just spontaneously got the executive functioning going well enough that I engaged with him yesterday to do the thing today, and after my workout this morning, and food after that, I got my ducks in a row.

Pinged Johan for where I'd pickup his drop-off, he condescends to say, yeah I guess this method is better for L's nerves

LIKE FUCK YOU, DUDE

He gave me a map pin, it was accurate, I parked at the red zone like the Amazon and UPS vans, turned on my hazard lights like them, grabbed the black plastic bag with her stuff, passenger seat, (traffic was heavy through the neighborhood) and then legged it over to L's.

Dropped the bag o stuff on her back porch (her house is weird, built on a corner and has 2 back porches, a tiny one about 3'x2' off one of the bedrooms I think, and the actual back porch for like BBQ or whatever.)

And then I came home and read my own pornography, and a couple of other people's, for awhile.

My pornography has now reached 49k words for the current series, and well past 120 k for all my words posted to AO3.

So I mentioned on FB today that I feel like "a real writer" and just, Yay.

Also, the trees are FINALLY, finally changing color. Sent photos to Stephen in the Bahamas per request, and also I felt like a badass in sneakers, yoga pants, sweater and the black denim trench coat Luisa have me last year. I fucking love that thing...

Had lunch with one of my oldest friends just yesterday.

Hearing aids 👂
+ everyone masked up 😷
+ lots of ambient noise 🎶 🍽️ 🗣️
= STRUGGLE. 🥺☹️😞😟

Still a good visit, I'll need to do this again with her. ☕ 🌯 🫂

Last night we had dinner at friend's house and they have a saltwater pool (it's very luxe, DO RECOMMEND)

ALSO they have a jacuzzi with jets strong enough to do authentic massage.

It was my first time in a pool in over 2 years I think.

Took a leisurely swim and float, looking up at the stars, chatting with L, one of the daughters of the family, and then I did oopsy daisy over into the Jacuzzi from the pool and had the jets absolutely POUND my sore places in back and hips.

Today, the world is beautiful, and nothing hurts.

This morning and got up earlier than I usually do on a Sunday. I had an appointment starting at 11:00 a.m. for a 2-hour training on the embroidery machine at the Maker Nexus We just recently joined. I got my breakfast, and got dressed, was mostly ready by 10:00 which i was proud of. Got there with 15 minutes to spare, also proud of that. It's just over in Sunnyvale so not very far, but it was the first time I'd driven for myself.

I met Carmen the teacher for this (they call em BOSS classes, you're THE BOSS of that specific machine sounds like!) She got my badge, showed me the process for badging in and checking in checking out & where we were going to be working.

I got a lot of relief for my anxiety on trying a new thing from the fact that I could literally use the bathroom there. And as it turned out I needed to this morning though I'd eaten something last night for dinner that I don't usually eat and that had its usual consequences!

The machine I was learning on is a 15 thread embroidery machine, circa 2004, so not a touch screen but it does have a computer screen, you transfer designs to the computer on the embroidery machine by uploading the pattern to a thumb drive maximum size two gigs. Which part of me goes lawl and part of me is like of course 2005.

Carmen showed me a variety of samples: printouts that she and other people had done for patterns and also stitching samples that people had done. It's got a lot of possible subtlety to the end product. If the pattern design is done well then the end product is quite lovely and detailed. But it's all in the question of how good is the design that you bought. Or created, Once you learn the design software. Which is beyond the scope for me to buy that design software that they're using, the company wants a thousand bucks for the license. Hence why I will be using the maker Nexus copy of the software.

She showed me a few examples of here's how you access existing patterns that are already uploaded to the machine, here's how you get a pattern off of the laptop to the thumb drive to the embroidery machine and then download it which sounds a lot easier than it actually is. The user interface for the embroidery machine is elderly and non-intuitive, it's definitely usable but it's going to take practice to get it to do what you want.

The easy part relatively speaking is the mechanical nature of the machine. Rethreading the machine is just more complicated version of how I thread my sewing machine. The bobbin thread only requires one additional tiny gesture to anchor the bobbin thread into what she called a pigtail it was a tiny metal curlicue that comes off of the space where on my machine the bobbin would just have a little gap that would feed the thread but they need a lot more control I guess with this particular embroidery machine. We did rethread one bobbin so I could see how it was done It's a fussy process but doable and she showed me the tools that make it a little easier, I have some very fine needles that are meant to be used for threading seed beads, and my jewelry supplies and she was using one of those to bring the thread down from the embroidery thread cone through the home mechanism and then through the last place that it needs to go so that the machine will pick it up and will use it appropriately. So the mechanical stuff is not even all that difficult It's really going to be the programming and finding my way through the interfaces of unfamiliar software and unfamiliar control panel.

One of the designs that was already installed on the pattern design software would make a beautiful Burning Man patch. It was a kind of a fluid,free form heart with two almost touching curlicues at the place where the heart comes to a point at the top? and it was just like the legs and arms of the symbol for the man and inside the heart it said you are so loved! I might just knock a few of those out as prototypes for friends to get started.

At some point I'd like to create some custom patches for friends and family, and I'd like to do some business that I can use to decorate my blue jeans. I think ivy or flowers like a climbing line or morning glories would be delightful and ridiculous!

We finished up with the class about a half an hour early, right around 12:30. I had a good size breakfast so I wasn't hungry, and my friend Tox had offered me to come over and harvest some of his veggies. He has a hydroponic garden.

It was my first time seeing it. Wow, what a hydroponic garden! He had peppers growing all the way up to the top of the trellis and he had basil that was taller than me and he had tomato plants occupying the entire side yard of his house like you could not walk back there because they had grown over the pathway! He has a small sage bush, but like just the basil and the peppers themselves alone well worth the trip I got five or six cherry tomatoes, and multiple different kinds of peppers. Thai chili peppers in this luminous red a different varietal in yellow, tinged orange? And I accidentally broke off some branches that included green peppers so I'll probably do those up as a separate batch of vinegar chili peppers for Jeff, and then have a different batch for the yellow and a different batch for the red. He had long Chipotle peppers that were nearly as long as my forearm! Giant healthy beautiful untouched by insects beautiful peppers!

Now I understand better why my husband wants to do a hydroponic garden.

Unfortunately San Jose is better for that kind of gardening endeavor. It has a delightful microclimate that is perfect for tomatoes and figs and quite a few other Mediterranean things. But something about just coming a few miles further up the peninsula to the town where I live, and conditions are radically different.

****

Came home to be reminded that my adopted Seester was visiting Jeff today! So while I didn't get all the deets of some recent adventures she's been having, I did get a nice check in and short visit at a social distance on our back patio.

While I enjoyed her company I agree with her about the fact that since pandemic and shelter in place has started it's been hard to get me time. I am a lot more of an introvert, Jeff is more an extrovert, and my seester similarly needed time that was just for her, without her spouse: so not 24/7 in the same space as him, I think that's more accurate. And I agree with that and Jeff agrees similarly, that he needs time without me. While that hurt once upon a time it doesn't anymore. It makes a lot more sense now.

Thanks for listening, it helps a lot to be able to clear my head by dumping what happened here. Today was an unusually eventful day, and this weekend was an unusually eventful weekend!

Time to go try and put some words in on my October writing project which is a little bit less than daily but all words are good words in this case!

I wish that I had had access to the term executive functioning, or executive dysfunction, years ago. Having the knowledge that this is a thing, makes a big difference in how harshly I will judge myself for failing to do things that I feel like I should be doing.

I have trouble writing, at least fiction. I'm writing short pieces for Tumblr right now, or occasional answers to questions on quora. I have multiple works in progress on AO3, and I can feel the story sitting in that part of my brain, and I can't find a way to let it out yet. And it's frustrating as hell.

This executive dysfunction is largely, I guess, emotionally based, sometimes physical distress is part of it but largely when I'm in emotional distress is when I have the most difficulty. And today, I'm only writing this post because I am out of the house, house sitting/cat sitting for my friend girl purple. And while I'm here, I can use speech to text.

For writing, it hits me in different places to write by hand, to write at a keyboard, to write on the phone, or to dictate. At this immediate moment I'm making an end run around the writing dysfunction by speaking instead. I've been thinking there must be other ways to get around the fact that writing is hard right now I mean, now more than usual. With the pandemic and shelter in place, with not being able to have access to my usual support network, or my activities that feed me, like dance, like going to an open floor dance or a five rhythms dance, I can't go visit my friends I can't ask somebody to come over and sit with me while I accomplish things. I think maybe I need to pet the cats, and maybe I need to sit down and let myself feel my feelings.

I think the next thing that I will do for myself is I will write down onto paper and put it up somewhere I can see it, the list I just made of the different ways that I could write and perhaps I will also pull out the couple of self-help books that I've used in the past to wake up the skills that I have had in the past to Get Shit Done.

Time to go eat a food and try to get shit done.

Hi there.

This is where you should comment if you know me IRL or perhaps have met me via a community here on LJ.
I'm not averse to having new Friends, and you are welcome to add my journal. Usually I will read some of your journal first before deciding whether to add your journal to my filters.

A few posts are public so people can see if they like my writing.

(June 11, 2007)
(Edit October 10, 2009)

I am sorry that it took me this long to recognize how patient you were with me, and how hard you tried to trust me and to let me be a part of your lives. I'm sorry that it didn't work out for us to continue being friends. Despite the pain we ended up causing each other, there was some good stuff there that I miss. But we really had so many communication problems that I really think it was for the best to end things and cut contact.

I don't want to see you or talk to either of you anymore, because we both broke each other's trust in the process of progressive miscommunication. And I don't spend more time than I have to anymore with people who I can't trust not to hurt me.

I wish you as well with your lives as is possible under the circumstances, and may you not break trust again as you broke mine; may I never break another's trust again as I broke yours.

today my friend Jade_Falcon let me know that our mutual friend was thinking about killing herself

he said i don't know what to do
I thought i don't know what the fuck to do either
he said I'm twisting her arm to talk to you
I was scared to do it but more scared not to.

she did talk to me
I talked kind of a lot
told her about my own crisis and my own pain
reflected what I understood about hers
and told her I love her
several times.

the most fucked up part is that she's so broke that a giant part of her motivation to off herself was so her kids would go into foster care and out of the essentially slave-labor living situation she's in right now, and that maybe they would have a chance to be happy.

I'm not broke and in a bit of poetic justice, the person who she's living with (and working, unpaid, for) owed me money and actually, shocker, PAID it. I set it aside as a "get out of hell fund" for her, and that made the difference.

so now she's got enough distance from the situation, to see that her newly-ex, ex, really has been a gold plated turd. He just messaged all their mutual friends to tell them she was like psychotic and making things up. Like within a couple of hours of breaking up with her, this is what he does.

I'm feeling a bit wrung out right now, and I'll be off the internet for a couple hours, but I'm really proud of myself and of HER. the pile of shit she's digging out from under is really unbelievable and I'm not surprised she thought she was drowning.

I hope that our life preserver will hold long enough that she either finds a good boat or some dry land.

hi everyone.
I have been feeling some guilt over not visiting LJ properly in weeks and I have found that the best way to manage feeling guilty is to do so head on.
Busy making pottery and holidaying, being social. Need to spend a little while getting caught up on what y'all have been up to.

Completely bailed on therealljidol. Not gonna lie. Too much otherstuff going on in meatspace.

y'all are loved and I wish you all the winter holiday blessings and all the good stuff in the new year.

Be well, I'll be back in a bit.

<3

I had plans for doing a ritual for the full moon this month, especially as it coincided with Lammas/Lughnasaad, but the timing didnt work out to do so with a friend, and I did not feel like doing so alone this time.

Instead my friend and i were Makers.
We made a prototype for a costume piece that we both liked.

It was its own kind of celebration, really. And quite appropriate for both a Full Moon and Lammas... We Manifested a dream, took on a challenge, saw it through, together. She is a joy to work with, eager and interested and fine with me being the boss. She's impressed with my relatively basic sewing skills, which is both sweet and gratifying. (I cook like I sew, not fancy but gets the job done.)

Actually Getting Stuff DONE was so gratifying, felt like a harbinger of other good things for the future.