Acceptable Substitutions:

I wound up fucking off the yoga two days in a row... but, hear me out. I think I'm actually justified in this. (this time, anyway)

A significant portion of my yoga poses are designed to strengthen me where I become the most fatigued during/after some seriously hot sex.

Okay... so, I had an intimate encounter last night. Zero fatigue both during and after.

This morning I accidentally slept in by about 30 minutes, and then coffee and I were slow going because I was responding to messages and updating my private journal and my other blog with a great deal of information.

I was still about to *start* the yoga before 11 am. And that's my rule. I try to be DONE by 11 am, but on slow mornings it's okay if I at least start it by 11.

At 10:45 I received an important phone call. Someone who means more to me than the yoga itself. Someone worthy of taking my time away from my usual routine. As we talked I paced up and down my hallway and during the course of our conversation, my Fitbit signaled that I'd reached my step goal for the day.

Okay, so, technically I DID exercise. Both last night and this morning. So, I'm letting the yoga go for another day. I still feel a little 'off/guilty' about it. But I'm sure I'll be able to let that go soon enough.

SSI and Bad JuJu...

My SSI hearing for disability is coming up soon. At least soon enough that I'm starting to get paperwork in the mail from them. More requests to 'prove' my mental health disability.

This just causes bad juju with me. It makes me think of the two years I was homeless and desperately clinging to any ray of hope that would get me off the couches of friends and frienemies.

I’m okay now. I've been safe, stable and housed for almost three years even without the help from SSI. But I hate all the judgement by people who think I'm faking my disability.

I realize they have all the reasons in the world to be suspicious. So many people do succeed at working the system. I hate that too. It just makes problems for those of us who really need the support.

Bad ass in training... a recovery update.

Things turned to total shit in June. I went into hiding.

I'm mostly okay now. There have been big changes.

One of my goals for recovery was to eventually take up the martial arts. But, with my health issues, this is a problem.

One: Blood thinners. I will only be able to learn movements and forms. I will never be able to spar with a partner because a single hit could result in either internal bleeding or another blood clot.

Two: My non-specific chronic inflammatory condition that had me 100% sedentary for a really long time.

So, the first step here is just to get my body accustomed to movement. I'm happy to report that I'm doing exceptionally well with this.

I've been doing yoga every morning.  :)

I mix movements from my yoga deck and do them along with some of the Mindful Yoga routines done by Corey Roos of White Cloud Wellness.

I don't follow Corey exactly. I don't listen to the mindfulness training while I'm doing the poses. I listen to heavy metal, LOL.

Yeah, you heard me right.

I listen to the Metal Goddesses playlist on Spotify.

So far everyone from Corey himself down to my therapist thinks it's awesome that I listen to heavy metal while I do my morning yoga.

*shrug* what can I say. It's like my way of meditation, Knitting while watching horror movies. This is the part of me that is pure shadow. I can't do anything self-improvement wise that isn't equally made of light and dark like me.

Hey, it works.

So, anyway...




It used to take so much work to motivate me to do the yoga. Now my whole day is shot if I don't. So, that's a good thing.

--

I'm also writing again!!

Current work in progress is about a part succubus girl and a male siren. A lot of it is available to read and critique on if anyone is interested.

Where the hell is my Ariste implant?! (i.e. struggling with identity)

In a fictional verse of wonder, written by Walter Jon Williams, people with multiple identities have one hell of an advantage.  A wetware implant that allows each voice to operate independently.  Each individual personality can be assigned to his or her own project, and the overall result is that one physical body's worth of a person can multi-task like a son of a bitch.  Aristoi

I've been trying really hard to let each of my projects flourish under the same level of care and attention, and the result I got was overworking myself into major meltdown space.

*sigh*

The experts have told me that I need to just focus on one thing at a time.

It's a struggle, but I see what they mean.

For the month of July and probably a good portion of August, I will be letting my Amanda Harris voice come to the foreground.  Amanda writes psychological horror and is participating in the 2015 Camp NaNoWriMo.

During the month of August I will be working on getting Amanda's work published.

September I will return to my anti-bully campaign, The Bronykin Alliance.

October, November & December I will be back with Amanda for NaNoWriMo2015

Past that... I'm not really sure... I have other voices that need attention.

If you need to reach me, my email is companion.anne@gmail.com

Updaty post is all updaty and shiz...

Um, yeah... I just said that.

Anyway, this is a general update post, but it also has some foreshadowing on my new project.

Up first, HEATH:

In the aftermath of my afternoon in the ER, whatever was up with my kidney's is done and over with.  My INR isn't 100% on track because I skipped several days of my meds trying to get it down from "oh my god, I could bleed out at any second."  I get it tested every Friday, so let's just hope that it all works out.

SKIN:

I don't know if it's hard water or what.  I know it's not allergies or detergent or anything like that.  But my skin is ITCHY!!!  I was scratching so often and so hard that I was leaving long, deep bleeding furrows in my flesh.  The Beloved One had a fear that I would either scratch myself bloody or contract some sort of weird staph infection if I didn't get it looked at.

As a result, I now have a dermatologist prescribed goo that I have to slime myself with regularly.  It's basically mineral oil and white petroleum jelly with a tiny bit of medicine in it to combat the itchy.

So far I don't think the medicine itself is strong enough because I'm still just as itchy if not more.  However, my skin is SO HYDRATED now!  Once the stuff absorbs, my skin feels wonderful.  So, this isn't so bad after all.

WEIGHT GAIN:

During the homeless crisis I gained a lot of weight.  I know I'm only making it worse by using TONS of real sugar in my coffee and basically living a sedentary life.  Don't worry... I'm working on it.  Baby steps.  First things first is tackling that sugar thing.  But, um, UGH!  The artificial stuff tastes SO nasty.  (shudder)

THE ARROW IN MY KNEE:

I blame my friend Brandy,   If it weren't for some random Facebook push about something awesome she did in the Game of Thrones Ascent game, I probably could have gone my whole life without descending back into the world of Facebook games again.  *le sigh*

As it stands, I'm at something like level 98 or so and climbing in the game.  And THEN I decided I needed something to do while my vassles were questing and such and I decided to look into simulation games.  I have no gaming budget, so I have to go with what's free, otherwise I'd just give in to the Beloved One's demands that I stop Facebook gaming and play The Sims.  Nevertheless, I did find a game called City Girl Life, where I play a recent college grad moving to New York City and making a name for herself.  I get to decorate an apartment, work a job and wear cute clothes.  It's mindless fun and I like it.

Now, I did also download a bunch of REAL games.  Free to play, via Steam.  BUT, I can't play any of them because my computer is falling apart.  The case is cracked.  The fan is broken.  It randomly overheats and shuts off.  If I try to game an actual game, the computer can only handle the extra strain on the processor for about twenty-minutes.

Getting a new computer is on the list.  But there are are a lot of other things that are going to have to come first.

SOCIAL MEDIA:

I'm getting good at this social media thing.  I'm getting retweeted by some pretty upscale entities.  I think that's pretty bad ass.  It's also a skill that is going to be seriously important in the upcoming months.

NEW PROJECT:

I'm still going to try to keep up with my project of building resource lists and posting about things that I'm passionate about, but this new project is very Little One-centric.  It's a new BIG THING that will operate with me in the background and allow her to serve as the public face.

Step One is having something to call it.  I've brainstormed a short list of names and I'm going to start a poll on Friday, October 3rd.  This will give the poll a full week to run and then the Little One and are going to announce the winning name/label/title/whatchmacallit on the evening of Friday, October 10th.  Hopefully I'll have the entire project off the ground by her birthday on the 16th.

Without going into too many details.  It's essentially going to be an awareness campaign / non-profit organization.  I hope it will eventually take on a life of it's own and become a movement.

In general it's just really cool to have a BIG project to work on again.  It's also a mommy thing and gives the Little One and I something to do together while introducing her to the value of non-traditional 'work' rolls.  She has a pretty niche brain.  I'm not sure that a normal 9-5 job is what's exactly in the cards for her.  Opening her up to a potential career path at an early age is just kinda bad ass.

#ThisIsWhyIRock

Phew!

So, after a considerable amount of time spent at the ER today.  I was given a teeny, tiny, little, itty, bitty, half tab of a vitamin K pill and sent on my way with instructions to drink lots of water and get my INR checked tomorrow.

Since I have a habit of not dying, I'm not going to worry.

Many many many moons ago I was hospitalized with a pulmonary embolism.

I was hospitalized for a week.

Many many moons ago I was hospitalized with a saddle embolus.

Now the second one should have killed me, it was HUGE.  However, I responded so well to the treatment that I was bagged, tagged and released back into the wild in less than three days.

It was, however, decided, after the second hospitalization that I would be on blood thinners for the rest of my life.  This requires weekly blood tests to determine my INR.

In the last couple of months or so my INR has been all over the place.  Too low (under 2.0) and I could be gifted with a lovely new blood clot and all that entails.  Too high (over 3.0) and I'm in danger of bleeding out.  Granted, I've been really shitty about taking my meds at the correct time, forgetting whether or not I've taken them, over-compensating for the possibility that I might not have taken them by taking more.  Uh, yeah... anyway.

Lately I've been really really good though.  On time, every day, correct dose and everything.

And yet...

Friday my INR was 8.5.

I was told not to worry unless I saw signs of bleeding.

Well, now I've noticed signs of bleeding.

The Beloved One is monitoring me.  We're flushing my system with water and doing what we need to do.  I am NOT worried.  Like I said, I have a habit of not dying no matter how bad the medical prognosis is.  I've survived way worse than this.  Trust me.