BLUEY IS BACK!

I haven't driven it yet since it came home last night. My mechanic drove it about 40 miles to get it here, so I know it probably works just fine, though.

We spent most of the day today with my mom for her birthday and then I had a meeting at the library until 7:30 PM.

Here's everything my mechanic accomplished over the last 6 months when it was gone:

Front lower control arms
Front ball joints
Front links
Rear control arms
Rear sway bushings
Rear sway links
Rear brakes
Rear brake hose
Lt rear bearing
Alignment
Diagnostics
Front vtec gasket
Vtec solenoid assembly
Powersteering pump
Serpentine belt
All engine mounts
Oil change
Install cat shield

I can't wait to feel the difference in how it drives. I won't have the time to try it until the weekend, though. Ack!

Next the cosmetics start (when I can afford to do them).

I'm hoping this one can be my daily/in-town driver and I can start to convert the 2010 to my camping/travel car. I've got a few extras to put on this one (roof rack, window rain shields) and then it's searching junkyards for the OEM replacement parts I need.

It's a stick shift, too. Woo! Fun!

#HondaElement #OldCar

I finally bought some pumpkins and am employing the #chickens to carve them for #Halloween.

#FediChooks

I fucking hate this extractive capitalist timeline.

So many of my friends are hurting right now in such deep ways.

I want to help out every single one of them, but I just don't have the resources.

Fuck.

For anyone who has never witnessed an #autistic #meltdown I imagine from the outside it looks frightening as hell.

I live alone, so my only witnesses right now are my animals, but I fear the day that my new housemate might stumble across me in the middle of one.

I am going to have to have a sit down with him sometime after he gets here and explain to him that he may encounter me in one at some point, and that the best response will be to ask me if there is anything I need from him when I'm in the middle of one -- and to assure him that I will be OK!

Today I've had two so far. One was in the middle of the night, triggered by a terrible, terrible nightmare, after which I took the maximum amount of my anti-anxiety drug that I am allowed to take. Then because of the drug, I was able to get three more hours of decent sleep (albeit with wildly weird and intense dreams).

Then, unfortunately, I slept all the way through to my first alarm, which I had not been doing lately. Lately I had been waking up fairly refreshed about an hour before, so I had the luxury of time to get things done not on an strict alarm schedule. But when all of my morning task alarms started going off every five to ten minutes today, I lost it again and ended up in a 45-minute rage meltdown.

The odd thing about me now is I can go into autopilot and get chores and other tasks done even if I am screaming and raging and crying. In fact, that's incredibly helpful to me to do.

That ability is a deflection tactic that I worked very hard to make myself switch to a few years ago so I would not self-harm during a meltdown. I need to move and handle things and hit soft things (and throw things!) in order not to hit myself -- especially my head.

I have vertigo now and have been having a severe bout of it this past week, and in 2021 I triggered a severe bout by hitting my head in a meltdown. I had to put a sign up in my bedroom that I could see without my glasses on that said: DO NOT HIT YOUR HEAD!

Hitting my head is something I have done since childhood when melting down. I would either bang the back of my head against a wall or, later, as an adult, I would actually slap myself silly or bash my own head with my own hands (and I am wicked strong, so I did damage).

My phone, which was the focus of my rage today because the alarms I have set for each task I realize now are completely unrealistic if I actually try to follow them, is often the victim of a hard, angry throw. I do retain the presence of mind not to throw many things that will break anymore, like I did when I was younger, but I did crack the phone screen protector (again) today and one of the cats' feeding plates (the cat is fine! I just slammed the wet food can down too hard on the fragile plate and it shattered).

All this to say: Even though I am older and fully aware during my meltdowns and can guide myself not to self-harm most of the time, it has to look like the worst mental breakdown ever from the outside. I've got to look like a madman!

It's no wonder our people were thrown into institutions to rot rather than approached with curiosity and compassion in the past. It's no wonder that parents who are not autistic who see these rages in their children freak out and want to put them through torturous "therapy" to break their spirits and make them stop. I have a sneaking suspicion that it is other people's discomfort that has caused most of our problems -- besides the self-harm that some of us do.

We are lucky to live in a time right now where we can't and shouldn't go back to social and institutional isolation. The egg has cracked, and now many of us are out in the world and striving for understanding and community. It is a travesty that most of us who are older were completely missed, and that there are no supports available for us. We've had to create our own community and our own supports and our own understanding, which actually has been amazing for me to experience.

We have one another. We get us. I wouldn't be here and able to understand myself and my neurology without the tireless advocacy and work of every autistic person who has fought for their self-advocacy and rights over the years. I wouldn't be here without stumbling across the information I needed on the Internet more than 10 years ago and realizing holy shit, I'm not broken, I'm autistic. There's a difference! Then, to have it confirmed in real life by a few other fellow autistic elders felt amazing, even though I'm no longer in contact with my autistic egg crack person. It doesn't mean that we all get along just because we have similar neurologies!

Also, I wouldn't feel that I could share all of this with you if we were still persecuted and shunned and shut away the way we have been in centuries past.

I know there are forces out there who believe us to be aberrations who are only pitiful and meant to be "cured", but we are SO not that. We are living, breathing, feeling, sometimes very intense human beings who deserve love and respect and kindness and work to do in the world as well as the space to let our neurologies balance themselves out in the way they need to -- even if that means we have to go through meltdowns.

The end result after a meltdown for me is as if my brain has been purged for a little while of all of the stress, tension, fear, worry, anger, anxiety, and toxic shit that builds up on a daily basis.

It's a hard-won shore to wash up onto, and it can't be triggered in smaller ways to release the stress less dramatically. Trust me, I've tried to "hack" myself, tried to trigger smaller, more manageable episodes, and it just does not work. I am an avid daily meditator, a trained meditation teacher, a trained yoga teacher, a lifelong body worker so I understand somatic and neurology, and I know everything I can possibly know about calmness and breathing techniques and everything you can even think of that people think are these wild magical techniques to hack the brain.

Autistic meltdowns defy all of those things, can't be avoided, and just have to be ridden out. I'm lucky that I have an anxiety medication prescription that I can use to blunt the edges if I can get to it. But it doesn't stop them. Mine usually lasts 30 to 45 minutes if they are a major one. And then it's like the sun came out again after a storm.

The unpredictability of meltdowns, though, does become a big issue. They often have a huge price to pay in the regular world, especially if we've broken things, missed work, missed a deadline, or had a witness to the event and that has disrupted *them* uncomfortably.

That has happened to me in the past, having a witness who didn't understand, and there have been a variety of responses from them, including rejection and abandonment.

I'm now behind on all my morning tasks, so I'm going to have to shift some of them to later in the day because I have to go to work in about an hour.

But I am back to being cogent, calm, and, of course, exhausted. My brain feels clear, even though I can feel the anti-anxiety drug still in my system.

I will spend some time later today resetting my morning alarms so they are not as unrealistic anymore in case I actually sleep up to my first alarm again. That may mean setting the first one a little earlier so I have the grace of more time between tasks in the morning.

I may also put all of the dozen tasks that I get done in the morning before I even sit down to meditate on my checklist because I realized today that only one of them is on there as an umbrella checkbox, and it's not satisfying AT All to only check off one of them when I've been working around the house and for the animals for 45 minutes straight! 🤣😩

Thanks for reading. I hope you are well today. Love you.

just got a spam with subject line "Own ChatGPT & Gemini's Baby for Life" and uh is this supposed to be appealing to someone?

You canNOT be anti #datacenter in your own damn backyard and still use any form of #AI.

You CANNOT. IN ANY FORM.

I know I'm like six years late to the #sourdough trend, but that's how I roll.

#Keto bread is stupid expensive now, pushing $12 a loaf, and it's meh. I've only been eating that because the gluten-free keto bread tastes like fish, probably because of the amount of psyllium in it. That one is also stupid expensive.

I started #fermenting some buckwheat flour just to see what would happen and because I always need more projects on my plate lol (<----- that is a LIE).

My first attempt at making a loaf was a failure because I didn't follow any directions, I used the discard rather than what's sitting on the counter, and I was a dingdong when I baked it (too low of a temperature, not enough time, sliced into it too early to see if it was done, added way too much psyllium and no salt), but hey, the chickens loved it.

This is my second loaf. It's just buckwheat flour, salt, water, and fermented buckwheat starter (which is just buckwheat flour and filtered water), and some psyllium husk to hold it together (I still definitely put in too much psyllium).

It's really dense. I buttered the pan with salted butter and buttered the top, which ended up being a mistake because the butter ran out of the pan and started burning on the bottom of the oven, but it came out just fine after the smoke cleared and the salted butter made a DELICIOUS crust. Mmmmmmm!

I think the amount of flour I used, which is from a recipe, was too much for the pan I used. But I like the shape of the pan that I used, so I will simply cut back on the amount of flour next time by about.... I don't know because the flour amount was in grams, so half a cup? 🤷

The taste is good, nicely sour, and nutty, and... I definitely could use less psyllium, because it seems to have inhibited the rise, even though the rise was pretty darn good.

Now I have to keep feeding the starter, which I have named Kevin, because I have too many Steves in my life. "Feed Kevin" is on my to-do list every single day now.

I haven't figured out what to do with the discard yet. Maybe make some flatbreads? Pancakes??? I still don't understand the discard process and why it's done? I guess I need to do some more reading. It's that perpetual need for autistic people to completely understand the process when normal people just assume that we know what they're talking about. I think an #autistic #baking cookbook would be really amazing! I'm not gonna write that one, though. Feel free to steal the idea.

I do have a new-to-me brand of gluten-free flour out of which I may try to make a sourdough boule with the buckwheat starter. I'm also supposed to be getting some actual gluten-free sourdough starter in the mail sometime this week, so maybe I will start a Steve.

But, I gotta go one loaf at the time bc I'm just one person, and I don't think anybody else would like this particular thick, heavy bread. I went ahead and sliced it and froze most of it for later. I'm continually grateful that I have a left-handed bread knife, gifted to me by my mother decades ago.

This 100% buckwheat bread makes decent toast if you like thick heavy toast. I think it'll be really tasty to use when I start making savory soups!

I'm also experimenting with this to see how much eating it might spike my blood sugar. I was hoping the psyllium would help keep that down. One slice with some stupid nonfat yogurt this morning wasn't bad (the non-fat part was an accident on my part).

Why is it sitting naked in the oven on the photo? The recipe called for baking it in the pan for 45 minutes and then popping it out of the pan to bake for another 15. It meant that there was a nice thick crust all the way around. Mmmmmmmmm!

Waffle Houses are closing because of Hurricane #Isaias!!! This is SERIOUS.

A #computer has never tasted a chocolate raspberry truffle. A computer has never experienced a sunrise. A computer has never cried upon hearing a piece of music. A computer has never felt a warm hug. A computer has never lost a loved one. A computer has never lain awake at night worrying. A computer has never truly loved.

Don't outsource your unique human brain and talents to a mishmash-making machine and expect transcendence.

All #AI does is take all the ingredients in your kitchen, whether wholesome or poisonous, and mash them all together to tell you it's made a delicious cake. The cake is a lie -- and it could kill you.

Only humans can make something exquisite, unforgettable, or transcendent. Human minds can feel, taste, hear, touch, see, love, experience, and interpret the world in beautiful, meaningful ways.

Don't outsource your gorgeous human mind and precious skills to an unthinking, uncaring, meaningless, #slop-making machine. Make it yourself. Do it yourself. Work on it. Struggle and suffer and transcend and learn to enjoy the messy process.

Make human meaning mean something again.

#Rant mode on!

Fuel light came on today because I've been pushing it 'cause I'm so close to overdrawn right now. I took the dogs to the dog park driving on fumes and just prayed that there wouldn't be a freight train blocking the entrance when I left, because I have to drive three extra miles out of of the way to go around the train whenever they do that. Luckily we got out OK.

It cost me $49 to fill my tank which I did on the way to work because I did not wanna run out of fuel and that's another couple of miles back up the road (and it's extremely dangerous to get there by bicycle because there are no shoulders on the roads).

I went ahead and filled up because I couldn't see any other way to handle the situation besides all or nothing. Luckily that tank should last me a three weeks to a month -- if I'm really careful and don't take any extra or unexpected drives like I had last month.

Guy next to me at the pump had a Prius and was filling up 5-gallon gas cans and putting them in the back because he said his brother-in-law is a trucker and they are going on strike next week because diesel is costing them somewhere between $8 and $10 per gallon in California.

California is where a lot of our food comes from...

Also a guy at the gas station stopped both of us to ask for money because he said he was stranded and was trying to get to Denver. He offered to give me a gold chain. I said dude, I spent my last six dollars cash yesterday (I did, I even had to raid my quarters stash which is now depleted down to $.50).

Truthfully, if I had an extra $20, I would've given it to him, because that's how I do things. But I am tapped out. I couldn't even offer to put $20 in gas on my debit card because it would've sent me under.

I don't understand how things keep getting worse -- but they're continuing to get worse!

One of the only breads I can eat on the drugs that I'm on costs me $11 a loaf now. And it's not even that great! It just has the zero carb thing going on, which is what I'm supposed to do. Sigh. Is it a tough time to be sick and reliant upon the medical establishment.

Also for some reason I forgot to pay the gas bill this month. I wrote it down on the little tally chit that I staple to the pile of bills every month when I was paying bills and I added up all the bills so I would know how much I paid in utilities, but when I looked at the gas bill, I actually didn't have a confirmation number, so apparently I didn't pay it. So now I'm fucked on that front until I get some money coming in.

One of my prescriptions went up 50% and another one went up 33% -- in one month. That's almost $300 just for two things. I mete out everything else that I don't have to take every day, but now I'm worried that my other special prescription is going to jump in cost as well. I think I'm going to ask them how much a six-month supply costs. There was a huge price break at the three-month level. That was incredibly surprising! It was costing me $60 a month for one month, but when I got a 90-day supply, it was only $102. So most of the cost of that must be for the time and energy for the compounding pharmacist to make it up.

I'm actually choosing to skip one of my essential medications for a couple of days until I get money in again, but it won't actually kill me to be off of it. When I get that refilled, that one's going to cost me $200 (that's the one that went up 33%). It barely lasts 30 days. It's a compounded prescription.

I don't understand what the purpose of squeezing the little guy like this actually is?

I'm watching these billionaires get richer and richer and wondering what the fucking end game is. For all of us to die in penury? How will that be good for anybody?

Oh wait. It's already good for the people who offer predatory payday loans, or like the "we've got a loan offer for you!" assholes who still keep calling me -- even on fucking Saturdays -- and those apps like Klarna that suggest that you buy your groceries on installments -- oh, AND the credit card companies, who are using the current situation to jack up interest rates.

Good luck eating money, you fucking assholes.

When the people who serve you and harvest your food (well, a ton of these folks are actually prison labor, which is reprehensible in and of itself) and cook for you in your goddamn mansions finally die off because we're all starving and can't afford our essential medications or housing, what are you gonna be left with?

The circular economy can only go so far, and it's propped up on our fucking backs. Billionaires need to eat a bag of dicks and choke on it.

I'm gonna go hang out in my backyard with my chickens and my dogs now. Not exactly touching grass, because there's no grass left back there, but I need some fucking outside time where I'm not walking the dogs or staring at chestnuts.

End rant

I'm in my final stretch of class for my advanced #meditation teacher training and I had to bite my tongue in class this week because of everybody talking about all the corporate social media that we're supposed to be on to promote ourselves, and using #AI even to code and build websites and and and...

I was hoping to get some really useful information out of this class because I trust the teacher and I know that he really knows his stuff, but I was really dismayed with this week's class. I feel like he's asking us to dance with the goddamned devil.

I resolutely refuse to use AI; I refuse to use it in my work, I refuse to use it to do any writing (I fucking know how to proofread, thank you very much!), I refuse to use it on my website, and I also refuse to use most social media, especially X, Instagram and LinkedIn. I do have a nominal Facebook presence again because it's the only place I know where I can connect with people in my own community regarding potential class offerings. (I truly hate every minute of it!)

The only corporate social I've fully caved to is YouTube, because I'm starting to post steam train videos and intentionally boring long-form outdoor adventure videos there, but I'm not interested in promoting my meditation teaching practice on YouTube right now for a number of valid reasons.

I'm sure I will pass the class just fine, but I'm trying to find a diplomatic way to bring up the topic of AI and how fucking destructive it is to the planet and to the human brain with these people. These are all Buddhists, for Buddha sake (well, I think most of them are?). You think that they would be a little more sensitive to such topics.

I guess I'm gonna be the turd in the pool on the community forum this week. I do not believe that outsourcing your brain and outsourcing your work to AI is a fruitful or useful thing. I believe that it's a fucking trap and that it degrades the human creative spirit almost instantly once one relies upon it.

I also need to remember that most of the people in my class are not neurodivergent, so probably don't think that deeply about these things. They likely see other people using AI and assume that it's OK. My strong ethical codes and boundaries and empathy for the planet are not how most other people live their lives.

Then again, I'm a poet, and a musician, so suffering through creating with my own brain is just part of how I exist, even though most of the work that I try to do in the world is aimed toward helping alleviate suffering for others (or, at the very least, making them laugh or smile). 🤷

I get so many #spam and #scam #phonecalls from Canadian area codes -- which apparently circumvents the United States Do Not Call List that I've been on for decades -- that I've been tearing my hair out about them because it takes me so much time to delete and report spam from those numbers.

Snarky outgoing voicemails haven't done a damn thing; neither has call screening. Neither has sending all unknown callers immediately to voicemail. They still have the fucking nerve to leave me a voicemail message with their fake name telling me that I applied for a loan blah blah blah blah blah... it's a bunch of bullshit.

None of their phone numbers can receive calls, so I can't call them back to tell them to take me off their list.

I came up with a brilliant but not perfect plan tonight: the old "time and temperature" phone number in my town is still disconnected, and as it turns out, I can forward all of my phone calls to any number I choose.

So, I'm forwarding all of my phone calls, no matter who, to that number now, which comes up after about three rings as "this number has been disconnected".

Hopefully within a month that will stop all of these spam calls!

I've texted everybody I know who might actually call me on the phone to let them know that they can still text me and they can still email me -- and I can also still call them back if they text me for a call.

It's not perfect, and a few people I forgot are probably gonna freak the eff out, but it is going to stop those annoying messages trying to sell me personal loans and whatever for now.

Ahhh. Victory is sweet. Pyrrhic, but sweet.

Oooh, I have a good #Caturday photo!

My babies like to sleep on the dogs' bed when the dogs are not on there.

In fact, they'll also sleep on the bed when the dogs are on the bed!

Tempted to change my pronouns to "them/thar" to see if anyone notices.

I only just remembered that it is the day! Yarrrrr!

#TalkLikeAPirateDay

I'm on the National do NOT Call List but how spammers are getting around that now is calling me from Canadian area codes. 🤬

It is getting so tiring. It's like whack-a-mole. I now have unknown callers go straight to voicemail, but it's still upsets the use of my phone -- especially dictation, which I use all the time -- when they are calling.

I left a nasty outgoing voicemail message but that isn't gonna help anybody. It was cathartic to record, though. Basically: take me off your list; take me off your list now. I do not need a personal loan. I report every single one of your calls as spam!

It isn't going to do anyone any good. Eventually I'll just revert to the default recording.

Somebody has an idea out there that I've applied for a personal loan and I don't know what the hell is going on. My name is out there, but I guess eventually it will go away because well, that's how things happen.

I hate the extractive capitalism timeline just so very much.

One of these days I should just answer the phone and say OK, give me a personal loan; give me a personal loan at an .001% interest rate. Then we'll talk!

Last week (when I did not have unknown callers being silenced because I was waiting for a call from somebody whose number was not in my phone) I was answering these calls just by screaming like I was dying. That didn't stop them either.

New "most American unit of measurement" just dropped

I have such an awesome neighbors. I can't even.

My back fence neighbor cooks for a sorority, and he also grows really amazing tomatoes, so not only did we get tomatoes this year from him (including chicken tomatoes with worms in them), he now brings me all of the veggie stems and scraps from cooking at the sorority!

It's so easy to throw these all into the food processor to make chickie slaw. The extra nutrition is just perfect right now for my layers because they're all going into a moult.

#ChickensOfMastodon #FediChooks

#Insomnia suuuuuuucks.

That is all.

I just got done with work and am wiped OUT so I am not going to be participating in #Monsterdon ... for the umpteenth time.

I have, however, seen this movie, and I honestly don't want to see it again.

I hope y'all have a great time! I do hope to join again some Sunday soon, but it won't be next week either (it's a holiday).

Ash says Happy #Caturday!