I hate cat puke.
I also dislike waking up with the knowledge that very bad dreams were going on all night long, but not remembering anything about them. Not to mention back and joint pain.
Rebuilding my SETI@Home Graveyard has begun. This is a good thing.
Highly entertained by YouTube videos that keep popping up in my RSS feeds and in my email.
Time to get the oldest ready for school and to find caffeine.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Two-thirds of people surveyed said they would rather look good than feel good. I hope you’re not one of them. The ironic fact of the matter is that if you put the emphasis on looking good in the coming week — creating favorable impressions, acting dishonest in order to curry favor, wearing uncomfortable but attractive clothes — you will end up feeling sub-par and looking mediocre. On the other hand, if you put the priority on feeling good — treating your body like a beloved pet, seeking out encounters that nurture your secret self, and hanging out in environments that encourage you to relax — you will look good and feel good.
I love that I’ve gotten Myst Online to work faster and smoother on a Pentium 4 desktop with 1 gig of RAM under Wine on Ubuntu than on my Windows 7 laptop with a dual-core processor and 3 gigs of RAM. Then again, the desktop has a dedicated 256 meg video card, and the laptop is using an integrated video card. *shrug* Now if only the audio would work in Wine.
I’ve been walking in Yeesha’s steps again, re-learning about the Least, the Bahro. I’ve been remembering the puzzles, their solutions, and their meanings in a story that I thought forgotten. Because I’ve done it before, there is a feeling of breezing through things, of worrying more about rote than the experience.
I’m hoping that once I complete all that I completed before, I’ll be able to drop back into the in-Cavern mode, and begin writing from the character’s perspective again. I continued that tradition with EVE, and it’s a lot of fun.
My brain is good at avoidance. It’s good at distraction, changing of subjects, and shuffling conversations – both verbal and internal – away from topics that it would rather avoid. Out loud, I do it without even thinking. Internally, it’s like the thoughts and memories don’t even exist. There’s nothing there, hey look at this shiny thing over here. When I want to, I can push my brain. I can force it to look; I can trap it so that there’s no other way but through the thing it wants to avoid.
Pain lies in that direction, right now. A flood of it. Absolute freakin’ deluge.
I started avoiding the pain as a means of survival. Don’t have time to deal with this right now, need to help Nikki. Can’t acknowledge this, need to keep upbeat for kids. I’ll deal with it later, when I get some time, need to get us to the hospital. Need to be strong. Then I added in the fears that came with my wife being in the hospital. Worry about the lack of information? Worry about the vagueness of the info that we did get? In the pool with the pain. Fear that a doctor would have an attack of stupid and hurt my wife? In the pool. Fear that something bad had already happened, and that I’d go home without my partner in life? The water’s fine! Keep smiling. Keep doing what she asks, so that she doesn’t worry about you. Yes, she’s right, you need to eat, even if you’re not hungry. Go eat. Don’t think about her in that hospital bed on painkillers all alone. Hold her hand, let her know that everything’s going to be all right. Don’t let her see your fear that everything is absolutely not all right. Don’t let her know that she looks like she’s in pain, and not being able to do anything about it is killing you. This is not the time nor the place. Don’t scream at the doctors to let her go home. Don’t yell at the nurses to tell you something, for god’s sake, anything. They don’t know. They’re doing their jobs. Be strong for her, she’s always strong for you.
There’s only so many times that I can repeat something before it becomes true. The pain, fear, and doubt of the miscarriage were put in that place of forgetfulness over the last week. Doing so, I’m sad and ashamed to admit, dragged whole memories with the pain. Things that were said at the memorial service, things that I said at the service, and things that I said that night feel like vague recollections of a dream. They sound familiar and they feel like echoes. I can push my mind to remember, I can force it to stay on target, but I can feel the pain and the fear and the doubt leak in around the edges as I get near. If I push harder and farther, I will get to what I’ve locked away, but I may drown in it.
Today, I have most of the day to myself. I was holding myself back until today so that I could let go. So that I could drown, maybe. So I could feel, even if I did drown. I’m staring down the hallway, but I’m not stepping forward. I keep finding other things that need to be done, and trying to default back to feeling good through accomplishing tasks. Surprise, surprise, it’s not working. So, here I am, writing, and feeling better.
My child died on Monday, 22 February around 6 AM. On Tuesday night, at the memorial service, and in bed with my wife, I stated that I wanted to get her/him back, I wanted to try again. There is so much pain that I have made myself forget saying any of that. I can no longer remember most of the memorial service. Nearly all of the rest of the evening is inaccessible to me.
My child died on Monday, 22 February around 6 AM. I will never get to hold that baby’s tiny fingers. I will never get to stroke that baby’s soft skin. I will never get to feed, comfort, teach, or know this child that was made of pieces of both of us.
My child died on Monday, 22 February around 6 AM. No, I am not okay. I am not holding up well. I feel like shit, and am in an incredible amount of emotional pain that I have no method of coping with.
My child died. My heart knows what it wants; it voiced itself the night of the service. My mind knows what it wants; it has blocked out and cordoned off the pain. Their goals are in direct opposition to each other. I am, literally, torn inside.
My child died.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): This is one time when you can be both the river and the bridge. In fact, I strongly suggest that you make every effort to be both the river and the bridge. I’ll leave it up to you to interpret how this metaphor applies to your life, but here’s a clue to get you started. Be a force of nature that flows vigorously along even as you also provide a refuge for those who want to be close to your energy but are not yet ready to be inside it and flow along with it.
We wish we could have met you, Baby Crampton. We hope you’re in a good place.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Throughout 2010, you’re most likely to be consistently in the right place at the right time if you cultivate an amused skepticism toward what’s in vogue. In fact, I suspect that only one trend will be of any use to you at all. You heard me correctly, Taurus: Of all the fashionable obsessions that may tempt you, just one will be in sweet alignment with your authentic needs. And guess what? Right now happens, to be the perfect moment to get hooked up with it.
Family
I’m knocking on wood when I say this… it appears that we are out of the woods. Neither Hunter nor Nikki have had regressions into the land of Flu, Aidan has successfully been transferred to his father’s house without any more butt explosions, and my feelings of nausea and exhaustion have mostly faded. We’re settling back into our usual routine of frantic. Instead of the other routine of frantic. Um. Yeah.
Mom and Dad are on vacation, and I hope that they’re having a great time. I foresee souvenir spoiling of the grandkids in the near future. ;)
Spent the weekend with Nikki’s sister and family. This culminated in an epic bowling outing that involved four lanes of bowlers. I missed bowling quite a bit, it seemed, and I hadn’t lost my barely-break-100 touch. Heh.
Oh! There are new photos up on Flickr from Yule.
Games
Once again, I unknowingly went a week without logging in to EVE Online. I logged back in last night, and I’d lost the auto-offered mission. The training agent won’t speak to me. I’m really thinking that EVE requires a more active player, and that it’s not really designed for the casual level that I play at. I mean, at this rate, I’ll never finish the training missions for the different careers. So, I’m seriously considering not buying more time.
On an unrelated and yet surprisingly opportune note, Myst Online: URU Live is back up and running. They’re calling it MO:ULagain, and the server’s being run by donations. Cyan once again owns full rights, and it’s nearly exactly the same. There are some more helpful clues lying around, like an explanation of D’ni time, and a clock in (I’m guessing) every neighborhood instead of just some. Either that, or I’m one of the lucky ones to get the clock.
If EVE doesn’t pan out, I could definitely see my way to donating my monthly fee to Myst Online.
Got my speakers set up at my desktop as well. I even found my media hub from Xmas at Liquid Web. Switches perfectly between headset and speakers, and the volume control works. Not bad for spending several years in basements and storage areas.