Mayalaen

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 15:38:57 GMT

I tried out an MNPD (malignant narcissistic personality disorder) technique I recently learned from the therapy book on dad last night.

It worked better than anything else I've tried and I feel as good as I can about the interaction.

MNPD thrive off attention - negative or positive - so the best thing to do is give them the very least amount of attention you can.

I was doing something when he tried to interrupt me (MNPD will purposely ALWAYS catch you when you're busy).

I kept my eyes on what I was doing, showed no emotion whatsoever, took a while responding, and when he did his stupid too low talking because he wants me to feel stupid and need clarification, I made him wait while I did more of what I was doing and finally said "oh did you say something?"

He spoke up clearly, asked a real question, didn't insult me or make stupid comments, and patiently waited for my response. 😱

When I finally responded to the question, he shut up and left the room! That's always the goal is for him to leave as quickly as possible and he has NEVER left so soon like that 🥳

I didn't feel manipulated after he left and I didn't have the burning anger either. I consider that a big win!

MNPD want all their stuff to matter to you (even though nothing of yours matters to them so if you're dismissive or focusing on something else, they don't get their fix.

Every interaction with them is a game on their end, and I've fought playing games back for years (because playing games with people is sick) but it's necessary with MNPD so recently I decided okay I'll play if it means I get as little interaction as possible and I don't feel like shit every time.

I doubt this would have worked a few years ago before he was on medication and before he was actually scared of me and weak physically himself but it works now and I'm really excited!!

Bonus: My mom was in the room watching TV and afterwards told me she was so excited that she had to hide her face so he wouldn't see her gleefully grinning because she said I pulled off the technique perfectly and now she wants to try it 😂

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Mon, 11 Mar 2024 21:12:09 GMT

CW Death & Real Life Shit

Death doesn't usually bother me all that much. I believe that people just stop existing, and while it's hard for those left behind, the person who died is no longer suffering and nothing else bad will happen to them now.

The schiz probably helps with it too - my outlook on life and reality in general.

But sometimes things hit me weird, and this weekend I got hit.

I had a few very close friends growing up (I wasn't a super social person + I'm weird 😂), and I've kept in touch with several of them. A few of those were friends + fuckbuddies.

Cecil was one of them.

We stopped playing when he got married. Played after his divorce. Stopped playing again when he got married again. I kept in touch off and on over the years though.

Last weekend he died of complications related to Covid. His wife said he wasn't feeling THAT bad, and once he stopped testing positive, he went back to work. But then his heart and lungs just gave out.

The doctor listed the cause of death as exhaustion, but he was a fairly healthy guy who didn't let life's stresses get to him and wasn't overworked, so his wife and I are convinced that Covid beat the shit out of him and his body gave out.

His wife wants him listed as a Covid death and is pissed the doc wouldn't do that. We've complained to each other before about how dismissive everybody is about Covid.

Anyway, Cecil was there for me during a really REALLY shitty time in my life when I wasn't trusting anybody (not that it's easy for me to trust anyway) and my schiz was at its worst.

He's one of only two people I let dom me for several years because I couldn't let go with anybody else and wouldn't allow anybody else to get me into bondage I couldn't get myself out of. I've always mostly dommed because of this.

It's always the good people who die early and the total pieces of shit who live a long life.

Cecil wasn't perfect, but he left A LOT of family and friends behind who adored him.

He let me complain about my shitty family in my life, and he always joked about how he KNEW they were going to live long lives because they're so shitty. I would tell him he was going to die young because he was awesome. He had a dark sense of humor and thought that was hilarious.

It hit me that he left behind so many people who are really going to miss him.

And in a selfish way it hit me that the only two people I trusted to dom me when I was at my worst are both gone now. Cecil recently and Amanda a few years back.

My family pulled more stupid shit over the weekend that had me scrambling to fix things, so during the day I was distracted enough, but at night when nobody is bugging me and it's dark and quiet, it's getting to me.

One of those "feeling lonely when you're surrounded by people" types of thing when I'm usually not a lonely person, but it's probably just the concept that's making me feel that way. The reality is nothing's really changed.

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Thu, 01 Feb 2024 21:08:32 GMT

I got over having that sadness for no reason a couple weeks ago and was doing better for a bit, but then a couple days ago got knocked over by it again.

And just in time for family to start REALLY pushing a lot of buttons since yesterday morning.

Pushing them hard enough that I'm too pissed and upset about it to even write it out and post it.

I know a few followers are entertained by family shit and the way I present it but it ain't coming out nicely 😂

It's nothing that horrible. It's just coming on top of other things, and I've had two days of NOTHING going right at all.

It's very frustrating.

It feels like every single thing I try to accomplish gets screwed up so badly that it takes no less than three times as long as it should to take care of it and every one of them also creates new problems in the meantime 😭

Not sleeping as well because of it, so that doesn't help. I usually run on around 5 hours a night, but lately it's 2 hours at night and an hour nap when I conk out sometime during the day.

But the family and businesses are up during the day, so when I'm trying to nap, they're calling and texting with situations they've created and want me to fix.

It doesn't help that I'm still doing the counseling thing and more shit is hitting me hard recently.

So I'm overtired, grouchy, and still realizing just how many anger issues I have when I thought I wasn't an angry person (when you're not allowed to show anger as a kid/teen it doesn't mean it goes away, you idiot).

People I know being shitty around me or to me IRL and online is just really testing that "never loses it on anybody" thing I've got going. I need a babysitter for my life so I can take a 2-day nap.

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icymi Orgain Sold the Majority Stake in Their Company to Nestle

Mon, 08 Jan 2024 15:54:35 GMT

Orgain was created by a cancer survivor because he couldn't find clean protein shakes on the market.

He created his own company with all clean and organic ingredients, natural sugars, and using a wide variety of vegetables and fruits.

But sometime around mid 2022, he sold a majority of the company stake to Nestle, of all companies.

Here's one of the articles about it: Nestlé to buy majority stake in protein powder maker OrgainThe deal accelerates the CPG giant's push to grow its health and wellness business while selling parts of its slower-growing food and beverages.

I noticed a change in taste right away, but since the owner had improved the formula two other times over the years, I figured he did it again.

Nope.

The goal of Nestle is to make as much money as possible while not giving a shit about the human cost or what they do to the environment. I can't say for certain, but I'm pretty sure they were behind the changes to Orgain powder.

Now there are several unhealthy sugar substitutes in it, almost none of the vegetables they used to have, and they no longer list the ingredients as clean sourced.

I was thrilled to find Orgain years ago because multiple family members have cancer, but for well over a year I was feeding them this new formula because I didn't realize what happened to the company.

If you use this product, check the ingredients again just to make sure you're still comfortable with what's in it.

Part of the agreement in 2022 included the option to acquire the rest of the company in 2024, so if you use Orgain, keep an eye on the ingredient list since it will most likely change again this year once Nestle fully owns the company.

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UPDATE

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 17:49:36 GMT

Oh and an update to the last post! Because he didn't suck enough already.

He just now came into my room and said "I didn't really drink any of it yet. I just wanted to see if it would freak you out."

This is nothing new with him. Mindgames constantly. He was stupid enough to take the water into his room without paying attention to the packaging, but hadn't actually drank any yet.

With the help of therapy and other people who know how to deal with MNPD (malignant narcissistic personality disorder), I'm learning how to respond so...

My response was "Oh I wasn't worried" and went back to what I was doing.

The less emotion you put into things and the less you let people with MNPD cause events, the less damage they cause and the less they get out of the interaction.

I had already looked up the ingredients to see if he needed a hospital visit, but I didn't tell him I did that. He doesn't need to know I wasted time looking something up for his benefit.

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Sun, 31 Dec 2023 17:47:35 GMT

dad: hey thanks for getting me more water!
me: what water?
dad: the water you left for me on the living room table
me: that's not yours. DO NOT drink that.
dad: why?
me: it's distilled water.
dad: is there something wrong with that?
me: besides distilled water not being good for humans to drink regularly, this water is specifically fortified for carnivorous plants. with fertilizer.
dad: ... okay?
me: humans can't drink it. that's what it says on the packaging.
dad: oh. i already drank about 1/4 gallon of it.
me: i guess i get to look up all the ingredients and see if you need to go to the hospital

- It boggles my mind that men of his age and disposition surround themselves with enough people to take care of them that they can make it to 80 years old without dying or severely injuring themselves.

BTW the water was in completely different containers than the drinking water I get him, I never put his water on the living room table, and I always tell him when I've gotten him more of his water.

Unfortunately for me and my mom, he didn't drink enough to ☠️
(he's an abusive asshole so that's why I said that last bit)

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Sun, 31 Dec 2023 17:09:10 GMT

The three of us are STILL having symptoms of covid on a daily basis, and our doc has said don't get around ANYBODY right now because our immune systems are shot.

Doc won't even let us go get our flu shots even though we're REALLY overdue, and my liver enzymes are off from all the meds I was on to get through covid.

Just now one of our outside cams alerted me to movement, and I go out there and my dad is standing there blabbing away with a guy who does work for him.

No mask on either one of them.

The dude who works for him goes into other people's houses for a living.

Seriously?!

Charlie (my uncle) and Marissa have been doing work outside our house for the last week and my mom and I haven't even been able to visit with them because we're being careful about cold, flu, pneumonia (which mom and I have had multiple times), and covid, and you're just gonna traipse out front and blab with a dude in his 30s in perfect health who hangs around people all day and never wears a mask?!

🤬

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summaries?

Sat, 30 Dec 2023 21:08:39 GMT

This isn't a complaint or demand, and I would never directly ask anybody to change how they do things. Because fic is free, and I'm grateful.

And I spent years in fandoms back when writers frequently didn't even list pairings or fic length or summaries at all.

But it's very difficult for me to figure out whether or not I want to read a fic when the summaries are only snippets of the fic itself. Snippets that don't even include key sentences.

Some fandoms seem to do this more than others, but I'm seeing it more and more.

I don't check tags unless there's a snippet summary, but most of the time I can't even figure out what a fic is about from the tags.

Again, I'm not complaining, but I'm asking if this is a trend done on purpose and I'm just not connecting things or missed something.

Is it done so more people read the fic because they want to find out what it's about? Is it a stylistic thing?

If traditional summaries are going out of style, I don't want to fight it like an ass on my own fics.

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my brain hurts

Fri, 22 Dec 2023 14:36:45 GMT

I left my phone in the freezer.

That's a first for me.

I've put things from the fridge in cupboards before, and I've put dishes "away" in the fridge before, but I've never left my PHONE in the freezer before.

I was going to take a pic of Roo (my dog) and I'm like crap I left my phone somewhere.

Searched everywhere I'd been this morning, and when I was sure I'd looked everywhere, I tried the freezer with a "yeah sure it'll be in there 🙄" sort of vibe and ended up doing Pikachu reaction standing there with the freezer door open.

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I'm Trying a Thing Out

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 17:07:41 GMT

I've changed my pronouns in my about section on all the social media sites and all the Discord servers.

I changed my PFP to a dude who looks about as close to my old PFP as I could get.

Not sure if I'm gonna stick with this, but for now this feels really comfy and I'm surprised by how all that irritation about ticking the boxes she/her is just GONE. Other things feel more settled in the last few days too.

I really like my RL name and my URL, but it's obviously feminine.

I've gone by Laen and male pronouns in gaming spaces ever since I was a kid (that's how I came up with the fandom name Mayalean) just because I've always felt more comfortable playing as male. I'm not sure if I wanna change my name yet, but it would probably be Laen if I did.

So yeah I'm gonna try he/him out for a while 🙂

(if all the kids I grew up with heard about this they wouldn't be surprised - whenever we played I was always the guy/husband and I could never figure out why the other girls were so happy about me taking that role because what little girl wouldn't want to play a guy?! 😂 My mom has tons of pics of me playing the guy as young as 3 years old)

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this is probably not a good idea

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 15:50:32 GMT

Technology is unreliable. I'm the anal geek who has not just one backup of everything but TWO backups in different places.

I don't rely on "cloud" tech at all. I don't trust services because the owners can do whatever they want.

But it's so frustrating to have Diigo (social bookmarking), Evernote (note taking and storage with cloud-like backup and available on multiple devices) and Google Docs all with different info.

I've got:

all the fanfic files saved on my computer (easy backups)
the bookmarks saved in Diigo (hard-ish backups)
the files and bookmarks saved in Evernote (hard backups)
the files saved in Docs (slow backups)

They're all organized into folders, and both Diigo and Evernote have tagging for easy search.

But none of them care connected at all! And I haven't found a good one-size-fits-all program.

So every time I want to save a fic, I either have to decide which one I want to save it in or save it in all the places. That's time consuming.

Diigo also has a browser add-on, which is EXTREMELY convenient because my memory sucks and it tells me when I've already been someplace so I don't re-read fics constantly without knowing. It also has a cache feature, which is awesome.

Google Drive now has the ability to sync across my desktop and Evernote, so any changes I make in my desktop automatically gets updated in Drive/Docs and Evernote.

But this is SCARY. I could fuck things up badly with a mistake or a virus (which I haven't had since my early days of being a geek but it can happen any time).

But... CONVENIENCE 😭

I also want to be able to share fics with people easily, and the easiest way is granting access to Docs, which would be sharing a fic from my own computer, which is fine for friends, but just throwing it out there to anybody who asks is weird even if it's view only.

Now that I have all the fics I recently downloaded from a friend, I want to have them all in the same place. That's going to take a lot of organizing, and I need to decide on this before working with over 1 million files.

I fight depending on a tech service this strongly, but the features and convenience are so tempting!

Maybe I could just do more frequent backups?

Seriously if anybody ever built a service that did all this AND made it easy to do backups, I would pay for it.

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I'm way too grouchy today.

Sat, 16 Dec 2023 14:09:03 GMT

I lost $900 today because my family STILL won't double check things.

When I first got covid, I was REALLY sick, and they knew it. My brain wasn't functioning right (still isn't but it's better than it was) and I wasn't double checking out-of-state orders for the shop personally for a couple weeks.

It had been a few months since they sent something out that was obviously paid for with a stolen credit card so I was like okay I'm gonna just step back and take care of myself and let them do their thing. It's a slow time of year anyway in the tattoo industry.

more whining under the cut

( Read more... )

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covid sucks

Sat, 09 Dec 2023 20:53:57 GMT

I'm now on week 5 of Covid and still feel shitty and my brain is mush.

Cinnamon still tastes like dirt. I really REALLY liked cinnamon (added it to my breakfast shake every day before), and I'm hoping it's not gone forever.

I can't taste tomatoes at all. It's so weird. It's like there's mushy nothingness in my mouth.

I've lost smell/taste before with colds but never like this 😭

I also can't taste anything bitter, so Brussels sprouts (one of my faves) have absolutely no bitterness.

Which you think would be great, but I kinda miss the contrast.

I know I should be glad I lived (I'm pretty sure me and my mom would've been among those to die if we'd gotten Covid before vaccines and other treatments were available) but I'm definitely feeling whiny.

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Fri, 17 Nov 2023 17:42:24 GMT

I live close-ish (18 miles) to an air force base, and when we first moved to the area, they did maneuvers about 1 to 2 times a week for maybe 2 hours each, but they always stopped by about 9pm.

It picked up over the years, but since 2020 it's almost every day that they're out and it's almost all day and into the night. Sometimes as late as 2am.

The older fighter jets were loud but easy to ignore inside the house.

These new ones they started using in the last 2 years are so ridiculously loud that standing outside while they're doing flyovers in a regular neighborhood can cause hearing damage. I have a decibel meter and have confirmed this.

That's not even legal over neighborhoods and is the reason why the air force base was built near open desert, but the air force doesn't give a fuck and flies over neighborhoods anyway.

The weirdest part about the newer fighter jets is when they get close enough there's this piercingly loud high-pitched scream it does that sounds like someone is whistling or a little kid is doing one of those super high screams right behind your head.

It's loud enough you can hear it over the roar of the jet itself.

Today they started at 6am and they're still going at 10am. Last night they were still going at midnight.

Last year our neighbor got a new car, and the asshole got a sensitive car alarm even though there's almost no car theft in our neighborhood or the surrounding ones.

Every. Single. Time. A jet flies overhead, his car alarm goes off, and it takes a few minutes for the guy to get off his ass and shut it off.

The military says their jets don't set off car alarms (oh no we're not THAT loud!!), but at least two go off in the neighborhood every single time.

Inside the house with all the doors and windows closed you literally can't hear someone talking to you in the same room while they're flying overhead.

I get that the air force needs to train, but there's a huge desert out there! Go fly over it!

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Fri, 10 Nov 2023 17:18:06 GMT

I managed to go this whole time without any of the three of us getting Covid and I caught it from an asshole who went to work sick.

The ONLY place I take off my mask when out (we only go out to doc visits, which has been really inconvenient, but we're careful because of our health issues) is the dentist's office.

While I was on the chair, I heard the dentist off in another room tell a coworker she was "getting over a cold."

I should've left, but she had already been working on me for about 10 minutes and had my braces apart.

Even though the whole office wears masks, it's those shitty paper masks. I wear the N95 into and out of the place, but take it off only when I'm in the room in the chair.

I know people have to make a living, and employers don't let people take time off, but for immunocompromised people who just want to get their fucking teeth taken care of, this totally sucks 😡

It took 2 days for me to notice symptoms, so I had been in the house with 2 other immunocompromised people that whole time.

Not only has my mom got cancer, but she's got that eye issue that she's getting immuneotherapy for, and if she gets sick, she can lose more or possible all of the sight in that eye.

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usps you guys are killin' me!

Thu, 02 Nov 2023 14:34:07 GMT

I shipped a Priority Mail package out on September 27th.

Customer emailed me October 27th to say it still wasn't there. I don't know why he didn't say something earlier, but by then he was nasty, as people always are when they contact me.

I contacted USPS and submitted a missing mail search and refunded the customer.

October 27th was going into the Holiday weekend but November 1st, their first day back to work, suddenly they delivered the package!

Like my dudes. Did you forget to actually give it to the customer? Did you guys leave a month early on vacation? What are you guys doing?

It happens all the time. I send out hundreds of packages a month and I deal with no less than 2 people a week who have ridiculous issues with their package.

And of course customers are never mad at USPS. It's always me they think did it even though I have no control over USPS.

There's also this cute thing USPS does where they lose packages but list them as delivered.

At first I thought it was customers scamming me, and I'm sure there are some who do...

but USPS has done it to me a bunch of times when I order things myself.

The tracking will say "delivered to front desk" or "delivered in mailbox" but there's no front desk and we have a locker across the street, not a mailbox on the house.

They also say random names signed for it/took it.

My house isn't wonky on Google Maps or USPS, so it's not like it's sending carriers someplace weird like it does with my uncle -- Google and USPS say he lives one street away from where he really does and it fucks up his deliveries, so he has stuff sent to my house.

It really cuts into small business income and turns customers away, but USPS is the service most customers choose because it delivers to more places than any other carriers.

I lost $400 on one customer a few months back because they fucked up so badly, and in the last few years they rarely honor the refund policies for the service itself and never refund for the cost of the products.

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mindgames

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 20:40:55 GMT

Aunt Carol just texted me to complain that I haven't bought her the eyeshadow she asked for a week ago yet.

Last week when she asked me to get it for her, I told her I was busy and she would have to wait a bit.

But apparently it's been too long because she went off on me with "the last time I asked you to get makeup for me you waited SO LONG to get it that they stopped making it!!!"

I remember that item. It was discontinued 1-1/2 years before she asked me to get it for her. The one she found was on Amazon was a knock off, but she assumed it was currently being made.

I explained that to her at the time but it seems that all she remembers is I'm an asshole who waited too long and she didn't get her makeup, so she comes at me with "don't wait so long this time or they'll stop making this one too!"

It's a good thing my head is in a good place or all these fuckheads would be convincing me that I was the one who was remembering wrong and fucking things up.

Nope. Nice try. Now I'm not gonna get you the eyeshadow either. Go ask your sister-in-law to get it for you.

Oh and the reason Carol "can't" get it herself is because she refuses to learn how to order things online. And she's not allowed to have credit cards because she maxes them out (she has no money and no job and lives off of everyone else bc they let her) and kept giving the number out to friends who would spend money on them too. Because that's a normal thing to do right? 🙄

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Sun, 22 Oct 2023 18:24:13 GMT

My mom came out of her room this morning with a small Beanie Baby in her hand.

"I've had this sitting in my drawer since somebody - I don't even remember who - gave it to me. I think it was new at the time, but I like lizards and they thought it was a lizard, but it's not 🙄 so I just put it in a drawer and kept moving it whenever we moved. Now I realize it's a chameleon and you're The Chameleon (thanks mental illness) so here this has always made me think of you!"

I looked at the card, which said it was an iguana, but it clearly wasn't an iguana. The only iguana-like part is the weird spiky thing on the back.

Confused, I looked it up (I was never into Beanie Babies but my cousin was).

It's a misprint from the 90s, and one of them recently sold for $6500 because it had some of the errors this one has, but this one has ALL the errors and apparently is worth even more?

So my mom has been carefully moving this from one spot to another for over twenty years and it's this super rare misprint Beanie Baby that some idiot gave her without paying attention to what it was or what she liked 😂

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this is in?

Fri, 20 Oct 2023 14:32:47 GMT

I felt really oldweirdoutoftouch yesterday because I was walking my dog in the park and a car full of the Cool Guys™ drove up listening to what can only be described as Nintendoesque Mario Bros-type music

and the teen guy who stepped out of the back of the car was wearing red/black plaid sleep pants, a fishing hat, and a backpack with a softball-sized Pikachu dangling off it

I only knew it was the Cool Guys™ car because one of the other guys was wearing a letter jacket and the girl in the passenger seat was the typical cheerleader blond with a pink outfit on and the two guys did the dudebro handshake before he drove off

The phrase "back in my day" shivered through my brain as I watched the Pikachu kid walk through a group of teens in full football gear who were practicing in the park and NOBODY BULLIED HIM.

Not that I would've bullied him as a kid. I've always been the dork. But whatever it is the kids on my lawn have going for them these days? Keep it up. That was beautiful 😢

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ocular migraine fun

Wed, 04 Oct 2023 12:52:20 GMT

Only been up for an hour and already an ocular migraine starting 😭

The visual disturbances are weird enough (and I always have to remind myself it's not permanent), but the fuzzy brain/confusion makes doing everything difficult.

I just tried to put peanut butter on the jar of peanut butter instead of the toast 😖

and you have no idea how long it took me to think of/type OCULAR correctly instead of oral-aural-ourel

The colorful line on the left moves and is jagged, so it's kinda distracting.

EDIT: HOLY SHIT CBD OIL WORKS!!

A few weeks ago my mom read about CBD oil being a possible treatment for ocular migraines, and a few days later I had a small one start.

I get 2 different kinds and that was the one that starts as a gray blog in the center that gets bigger over the next 45 minutes until it's covering everything and afterwards I'm kinda out of it, but not as bad as the one today.

I took the oil that day, and in about five minutes the blob just kinda went away, but I thought oh well maybe it wasn't going to get bad anyway, let's not get too excited.

But I saw this one coming on today and took the oil right away. It took 15 minutes for it to work this time, but it stopped before it got so bad I couldn't see anything on lighted screens!

I still feel kinda fuzzy-headed (no idea if the CBD oil will help with that yet), but this is awesome!

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Silent Generation and Boomers:

Mon, 02 Oct 2023 14:32:38 GMT

Guys. I think my mom figured out what happened to the Silent Generation and Boomers and older GenX.

Microwaves became popular in the 1970s, and she told me that EVERYONE in her generation (she's 69) and my dad's generation (he's 79) got so excited over it that they stood with their noses pressed to the glass to watch the food cook FOR YEARS.

She said it wasn't until some of the younger GenX (and definitely Millennials) started coming home from school in the 80s-90s with the advice "don't get close to the microwave while it's on because it'll damage your brain and reproductive system!" that they stopped.

She still forgets sometimes and I gotta remind her that a 5 foot distance is best.

"Yeah, we all cooked our brains. Not that we have nothing to contribute to society, but you really should take the big decision-making abilities away from us. Someone who pressed their nose up against the glass for years shouldn't be making decisions and laws about reproductive health, welfare, minimum wage, etc."

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Fri, 29 Sep 2023 00:02:40 GMT

Okay I've had my first psychiatric visit with my new pdoc since my old one retired and now I can live again. (she already sent in the prescriptions!! it used to take a week to get refills out of my old doc!)

Man I hate how weird I get over shit - that ridiculous thing where something is happening in the future that's kindasorta a big deal and I can't see past it and I can't plan other things and...

Three days ago I bottled 8 gallons of water for my dad (I use an osmosis system + a Berkey filter to clean tap water for us and bottle it for use) and I set the 8 gallons in my hallway and in my head I was like I can't take these into his room yet.

No idea why.

I didn't think it through. And when I feel like that, I let unimportant things go because I know whatever needs to happen that gets me over the hump will happen and then I catch up on all the stupid shit.

As soon as I ended the appointment I was like why the fuck are these water bottles in my hallway?!

Schiz brain is ridiculous, I tell you!

My old pdoc retied in May, and she gave me several refills to give me time to find a new pdoc, but the local psych places are all booked so far out that I didn't have an actual appointment with the new doc until today.

Everything went well and the new doc is more than happy to give me 90-day prescriptions and do televisits once a month, so YAY!!!

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more about the brvo

Sun, 24 Sep 2023 14:00:53 GMT

Oh and I'd also like to mention that prior to this year I'd never actually known someone who had this even though I worked in the medical field for YEARS and docs would check for it every time someone came in with an eye issue.

Now I know two people -- my mom and a tattoo artist friend who owns several tattoo shops.

He had this happen about seven months ago, but he thought it would go away on its own. A month later he finally went to the eye doc and was diagnosed and they started injections.

He has it in both eyes (likely because he's diabetic). His parents are both in wheelchairs, and he's their 24/7 caretaker. He also owns 3 tattoo shops and is an artist himself, so he's a pretty busy guy.

Since this happened, he's only been able to do "bangers" -- small tattoos with only a few colors each. He's hopeful he'll recover fully, but he's been through the full treatment of monthly eye injections (6 is the limit for improvement) and they've started on laser treatments that don't always help.

I haven't heard anything about this on the news or social media, and yet it's becoming so common that the ophthalmologist who diagnosed my mom sighed when he looked at the scan of her eye, walked out into the hallway, called one of his nurses over, and whispered "we got another occlusion, can you get the emergency referral to the retinal specialist going please?"

And when we were at the retinal specialist, there were four other people in the waiting room who were there for the injections (I heard them at the front desk).

And even while my mom got the injections, there was someone in the next room getting them.

So that's five people in the specialist's office just that day within 4 hours that I know of. The place was kinda busy so there may have been more.

Also this can happen in an area of your eye where you can't see it, and you'd never know you had it without a retinal scan.

Those cases aren't nearly as bad because it doesn't threaten your vision, but it's still happening and if you're going in for eye surgery and find it on a scan, they have to postpone or cancel your surgery until they're sure they won't cause another occlusion during surgery.

But yes this is all completely normal 🙄and Covid is nothing more than a cold or flu so I don't know why all these people are getting so worked up about it and forcing me to wear a *gasp* dIaPeR oN mY fAcE! Sheeeeeple!!

Sorry to rant a bit at the end there but my own extended family thinks we're insane for wearing masks and being careful about Covid, colds, flu, and other illnesses even though we have shitty immune systems and there's tons of strokes in my mom's side of the family.

Like I get it if you don't agree. I'm not forcing you to wear a mask. But leave me the fuck alone and stop harassing me and constantly acting like it's an attack on YOU because I want to wear one.

I haven't been sick in over three years and it's GLORIOUS I DIDN'T KNOW LIFE COULD BE LIKE THIS!

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$15,000 for less than nothing

Sun, 24 Sep 2023 12:53:55 GMT

I looked at the insurance bills for my mom's ER visit a few weeks ago.

Y'know the ER visit where she went in because of vision loss in her left eye, and the doc wrote in the report she came in for a migraine, and "after treatment the patient said she was improved so we discharged her" but actually a mild pain in her head was the least of her worries and she STILL clearly said she was partially blind in her left eye but he said it was nothing and to "follow-up with your ophthalmologist WHEN YOU CAN" and not urgently?!

Yeah that time.

They billed the insurance company $15,000 for that visit.

$15,000 to lie to us, create a false report to look like they did their job instead of missing a branch retinal vein occlusion (when there's a blockage or shrinking of a vein IN YOUR EYE that causes partial blindness and if treated promptly can be completely reversed about 60%-70% of the time and 20%-30% of the time can be greatly improved and the other 5-10% won't ever improve)

The doctor is a locum tenens doc which means he isn't technically an employee and as if it wasn't hard enough to sue or complain about doctors in hospitals, it's fucking impossible with locum tenens.

So this asshole gets to work wherever he wants (and when I looked him up he's been EVERYWHERE like seriously how many people have you fucked up when you've worked in more states than you haven't?) and the hospitals get to let these fucks bring in thousands of dollars for a few minutes of "durr nuttin wrong here folks go home"

$15,000 and my mom very perfectly described the symptoms of a BRVO to him.

Oh and since Covid started, BRVOs and CRVOs are happening A LOT more than they used to.

Seriously folks if you get dark "floaters" in your eye(s) suddenly, go to a retinal urgent care NOW. If it's nothing then yay. If it's BRVO or CRVO then you may have just saved your eyesight.

Even though this condition used to be rare, they STILL usually test for it in ERs because it's so serious, and if it happens to be a CENTRAL retinal vein occlusion instead of BRANCH retinal vein occlusion and it's not promptly treated, you lose your eyesight within 5 years.

This is also a doctor who let a Covid positive patient walk around maskless even after diagnosing her. She was wandering around talking to people in the emergency room because she was bored.

Other than the admitting nurse, my mom and I were the only ones with masks on.

It's like... why bother going to the emergency room unless you're dying and ya just gotta hope they pay attention to what they're doing?!

The retinal specialist I took my mom to over a week later after we finally found out what happened was super nice, and he works in an office that has a doc on call 24/7 for emergencies.

They treat eye emergencies within 4 hours of arrival no matter how busy they are.

I told everyone in my family that the next time they have ANY eye issues, don't go to the ER. Go to this retinal specialist urgent care office.

Within 4 hours he diagnosed her with EXACTLY what was wrong, set up a baseline, and began eye injection treatments.

So back when this all happened, I could've taken her there and within 4 hours she could've been treated for something that leaves some people completely blind.

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Sat, 23 Sep 2023 14:41:19 GMT

I was on a walk with Roo last night and watched the weekly saying-goodbye-to-the-grandparents show that is a neighbor's 3yo and 5yo running down the street as fast as they can to the corner to wave goodbye.

The 5yo always dictates EXACTLY. WHAT. HAPPENS.

And the grandparents go with it because they're good grandparents.

This time I heard the 5yo's voice carrying through the neighborhood with "I want you to race me to the corner but I wanna win and when you get there do the alligator and crocodile thing but I wanna do the crocodile part - that's mine! - and you have to wave with the window open all the way and you can't close the window until I can't see you anymore but say the alligator thing at the corner, and after you turn the corner you have to blow kisses and throw hugs at us and THEN you can close the window and flash your lights. And don't forget HONK HONK!!"

The poor old fart driving the SUV got ALMOST everything right. He got to the corner and said "honk honk after a while crocodile" and those damn kids made the grandparents reset the whole scene.

He reversed the SUV, went all the way back, she explained it again, and thankfully the grandparents got it right the second time and the kids cheered and ran home to tell mom and dad that grandpa got it right.

This happens every Friday night and the kids are so intense about it that I almost feel like cheering for the grandparents when they get the instructions right.

And let's not forget that the orders change randomly. Last week grandpa was in trouble for saying the alligator part because last week it was HER TURN TO SAY IT GRANDPA!!!

Gotta keep those old farts on their toes.

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