Hot flashes, air ambulances and aliens.

Last night was rough.

I'm 43.  Now technically the average age of menopause is 51 in the US and technically it doesn't officially start until 12 months after your last period, but I've been getting my hormones in little brown bottles for a while now so I figure all bets are off on me being average about anything.  Hot flashes are slowly becoming more and more of a thing in my life, compounded by the Rogue Valley deciding not to do fall this year in any noticeable way.  Again.

So last night I went to bed at about 9:30.  It being a Sunday night I didn't take my evening anti-inflammatory because the week-end always throws my schedule off.  Skipping Sunday night resets it nicely and usually I'm asleep by the time the morning dose wears off, so I don't even notice.

Not last night.

At 10 I decided I was tired enough to put down my classic non-fiction book shut off a too-embarrassing to mention Reddit forum, pulled sleep braces over both wrists (yay carpal tunnel syndrome!) and drifted off.

At 11:30 I had my first hot flash of the night.

Of course I immediately pulled off my night shirt and every cover I owned and tried to cool off.  Then I remembered that Smokey, our 14 year old bastard of a cat, tends to have nightmares and wakes up fighting,  When he does he'll bite anything living, including any uncovered human limbs.  So I had to pull the burning hot sheet back over me and suffer for a while.

I spent the next two hours a) sweating and b) trying every combination of pillows I could find to attempt to not wake with a crick in my neck and shoulder.  I wake with said crick every morning and have for decades now.  But of late said crick has been disturbing me.  It use to be that I'd wake with the crick, stretch my shoulder down and back, and feel a joint somewhere around my shoulder or collarbone kind of slide back into place with a "thunk".  At which point the crick would go away and I'd go about my business.  But about a month ago it didn't go away and so I kept wiggling and I found that if I pushed down on my collarbone right at the nape of my neck a bone/joint in the back of my neck, aka my spine, went "thunk" back into place and made the crick go away,  Ever since it's been two thunks every morning, which is an easy fix but one in the spine simply cannot be good.  Last night every combination hurt my neck, which seemed likely to lead to The Crick, so I kept trying new ones.

The one thing I was not doing this time was sleeping.

I finally gave up, got up, remembered to put milk in my oats for later today, ignored the slugs on the floor (This has been a thing this summer,  Waking up to 2-4 slugs around the kitchen.  Still haven't figured out where they're coming from.) and checked the thermostat.  It was 78º in our house at 1 in the morning in October.  I cranked it down to 60º, then decided that the adult thing would be to not freeze the AC over by overworking it, again, and put it back to 65º before attempting to sleep once more.

It was only because I had sweated through the sleep braces I was wearing and they were stuck to my arms that kept me from hauling my shotgun out and shooting down the air ambulance that buzzed our neighborhood right about then.

At 2am I sent my husband a grumpy e-mail saying that if he woke me when his alarm went off at 4 (Mine was set for 3:30.  Not a chance this side of hell.) he'd be sleeping in the laundry basket with the other cats, but then I realized that breakfast comes with a side of anti-inflammatories so I got up.

Total sleep:  2.5 hours

During the process of getting dressed I realized that the Sunday bra really doesn't work for Mondays.  The Sunday bra doesn't have any holes, so I'm loathe to throw it out (I wear my clothes to rags, and then turn them into quilts if I can.  It's a Puritan thing,) but it doesn't support anything so it's only good for preventing headlights while lolling about on the couch and knitting.  Given that I did that yesterday today my kitchen looks like a bomb went off and support is needed.  So I went to the laundry closet to fetch a better bra.  This took me right past not one but three open windows, in full view of the back yard.

In my childhood I used to be scared of the dark.  I would never look out a window at night, convinced that if I did I would see creepy little alien things with big heads and long, skinny arms set about on mysteriously evil alien errands around our neighborhood.  And what's more, they would see me, and come after me because I knew something somehow.  So I never dared look out.  I figure I saw something once and it stuck with me in a strange way.  Odds are this was either a hallucination caused by medication (I took a lot of phenobarbital as a child.) or I saw some relatives of a sort off doing illicit things and buried the memory.  No desire to sort it out now, as an old friend Zeke once said if you don't remember you probably don't want to remember.

This morning I stood there in front of open windows, looking out over the dark of the backyard and thought that if the aliens were really that interested in my flabby, sagging, middle-aged menopausal, sleep-deprived tits they could come in and have a good look.  I was entirely out of fucks for aliens.

I consider this a sign of mental health.

That said the cats are currently whispering in the corners, which either negates the previous sentence, means I really need more sleep, or both.

I'm going back to bed.  Wish me luck.

Never certain what to say

Crafting continues apace here, but it never seems like there's enough progress to share pictures.  I'm currently working on a pair of socks for my Dungeon Kitty/husband, a cozy for a teapot with a difficult shape and a Xmas stocking in needlepoint that's also for my Dungeon Kitty/husband.  Just luck that he gets all the crafts this month.  Since it's past the midpoint of the month and I'm only finishing the first sock today if all goes well I doubt I'll get the pair finished by the end of the month, but next months projects promise to be simpler and so a little overlap is acceptable.  Less so on the needlepoint stocking, I'm woefully behind on that one and it must be done because next months needlepoint is even more complicated and will take the entire time and then some.

The other projects I'm working on around here are costumes for the holiday coming up.  (I have to teach the Dungeon Kitty/husband to use my sewing machine to sew faux fur.  Universe help me.) and then planning a holiday party for the first of December.  Things have to be ordered.  Things have to be acquired.  A tree must be found.  And festival is the same week-end.  In fact there is a ten day stretch starting with Thanksgiving which could have as many as seven events.  I'm going to have to start planning at the first of the month for *that* one.

I was considering something like a planner post, showing what I use for scheduling, or perhaps something like what the Modern Day 50's Housewife posts, chore charts for public accountability.  But that means drawing up the charts which would take away from knitting time today, and I am behind.  Perhaps when I catch up I'll do that here.  Day to day life in a Reverse 1950's Femdom household.   I don't know if anyone is actually following this, but if you are would you be interested at all?

There are no knitting elves, or at least there are no knitting elves in Oregon.  If I want things to show off I have to go work on them.  I'll check in again in a few days time.

Zelda's Fancy Hat

This project took all of September to finish.  That's a lot more embroidery than I was anticipating when I started.  I forgot you had to do all the seams as well.

Of course I didn't follow the pattern to the letter...

I used DMC instead of Weeks Dye Works, converting colors by the expedient method of looking up the Weeks color on line and picking a color that captured the spirit from my DMC stash.  I also used beads in place of the french knots, since I can't seem to french knot to save my life.  And I ended up winging some of the patterns, the chalk I was using to mark the embroidery patterns kept rubbing off.  For some of them I ended up going almost free-hand.  The beaded "lavender" on the cone being the best example.

And I didn't used cotton velveteen ($10.49/yard) for the base, I used poly "craft" felt ($4.79/yrd) instead.  Since I wasn't going to put a full cardboard bottom on the thing, for ease of storage, I cut a circle the size of the brim and sewed it on, turned it inside out through a slit cut in the middle of the felt, and topstitched around the edge of the brim and where the cone attached to the brim.  Then I stuffed the cone, slid a piece of template plastic cut to fit the base of the cone in there, and slip stitched the slit in the felt closed.  The felt won't unravel, the plastic will hold the stuffing in place, and the brim will fold down to fit in a storage box.  And since it sits on my coffee table the brim doesn't have to be perfectly flat.  (It sits flatter than it does in these pictures.

All in all I like it a lot.  It was a big, complicated project for me, the kind of thing I wouldn't have attempted a few years back.  But I decided to give it a go and it came out better than I expected.  I am quite happy with Zelda's hat.

Atheism, Dystheism, and the news today

Which is why I came back to this in the first place.

First off, a few definitions.

Atheism:

Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Most inclusively, atheism is the absence of belief that any deities exist. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which, in its most general form, is the belief that at least one deity exists.

And Dystheism:

Dystheism (from Greek δυσ- dys-, "bad" and θεός theos, "god"), is the belief that a god, goddess, or singular God is not wholly good as is commonly believed (such as the monotheistic religions of Christianity and Judaism), and is possibly evil.

So how does that work? You don't believe in God and yet you think God is evil?

I don't believe there is a great, intelligent, SkyDaddy up there running things and making good and bad things happen. I do believe in the concept of the Meme:

A meme (/ˈmiːm/ meem) is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture". A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.

(See also the evolutionary psychology of religion)

Memes tend to pass along like a virus. Not conscious, not sentient, not even truly alive, but very much there.  And the "virus" we call American Christianity is entirely evil.

I'll set aside the discussion of how I got there as it gets a little strange, and get into today's topic.

I'm sure everyone has heard of Kim Davis, a county clerk from Kentucky who is a believer in American Christianity and who is refusing to do her job and issue marriage licences to same sex couples.  Or to any couples.  Or to any couples if she has to sign it.  It's a little confusing at times but the big takeaway is that she's rabidly homophobic.  

She's also the darling of the followers of American Christianity,  She was invited to speak at their big political summit recently, along with many other examples of people poisoned by these evil memes.  They adore her for being their champion, and so on.  If you want to curry favor with the rest of the infected at this particular moment in time cozying up to her is a good way to do it.

In the other corner of today's triangle is Pope Francis.  While he is the leader of the largest Christian denomination on the planet he doesn't seem to be infected by the evil memes I call American Christianity.  He seems like a modest sort who genuinely loves everyone as Jesus loved everyone.  While he is still against gay marriage as far as Wikipedia can tell he's not rabidly homophobic. And he is not the sort to support a rabid homophobe.

So why on earth did he have a private meeting with Kim Davis on his trip to the US?

Apparently someone set him up:

On Friday, the Vatican’s press office reiterated that the meeting with Davis was not meant to be interpreted as an endorsement of her views, but rather a simple exchange of pleasantries between the Pope and a group of admirers, one of whom happened to be Davis. The Vatican also emphasized that the only one-on-one meeting that Pope Francis had during his time in Washington, D.C. was with Yayo Grassi, a gay man and former student of the Pope’s. But the Vatican appears to go one step further to make it clear that the Holy See in no way endorses Kim Davis’ bigotry. 

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who arranged the Pope’s meetings in Washington (including the one with Kim Davis), is expected to be held responsible for blowback resulting from the meeting with Davis. According to the New York Times, Viganò is “likely to be removed at the first respectable opportunity” if blowback from the meeting with Davis continues to build 

“The pope has to be able to rely on his own system, and in this case the system failed him,” theology professor Dr. Massimo Faggioli told the Times. “The question is, was it a mistake, or was it done with full knowledge of how toxic she was?”

I cannot imagine anyone living in the US and not knowing how toxic her belief system is. 

So who is this Archbishop?  Good question.  There's not a lot out there about him that predates this incident.  But according to the Times he's a cultural conservative and is a associated with National Organization for Marriage which is a major disseminator of the American Christianity meme.  He's also the one at the top of the org chart for dealing with all the multi-million dollar sex-scandal lawsuits.  Offending the American Christianity people is a good way to turn off the donation money tap.  

But an Archbishop trying to pull one over on the Pope to cozy up to the American Christianity leaders?  That's kind of a big deal, no?  I think that's a prime example of how infectious these toxic memes can be.  They can turn an Archbishop against the Pope.

Here's to hoping this shocks Pope Francis into realizing that not all of his advisers, especially those from the US, are reliable.  Maybe it will make him look at the topic of gay marriage with fresh eyes.  And here's to hoping he can keep these toxic memes from spreading beyond our borders.

Time to catch up a lot

Like I said, it's not that I don't do things, I'm just crap at blog keeping.

So what have I been up to all summer.  Well....

I finished the Log Cabin quilt.

I made up a little cross-stitch picture I have been carrying around with me since 1985, or thereabouts.

More on that when I talk about being an ACoN.

We bought a couch.  I made some pillows for the couch, and finished two of them,

There's a third but it's not finished.  The back is going to be a whack-load of garter and I have other whack-loads of garter that are a priority right now.

I finished the embroidery on Zelda's Fancy Hat.  It's due to be made up tomorrow, I'll share picts when it's done.

I wrote roughly 250,000 words of fan fiction, and published a lot of it:

Of The Blue - which is a rift on Templar fiction 

XX - Which involves my take on a trans character.  (I took some personal experience and blew it up by about a million or so.  If you don't like it, well, not your story.) 

The Willow Tree - My take on how the Dominionists might try to set up the perfect society. 

The Gift - Aliens and unexpected relationships 

Percival's Dominatrix - A not-yet finished, likely epic length, cross-over between CM and CSI, with lots of kink.

And two others still unpublished.  Still haven't made it all commercially viable.

I spent a lot of time at the gym:

That's just over 100 lbs gone, and down to approximately 30% body fat.  It's also a work in progress, but it's going well.

I read books.  I watched porn.  I spent too much time on Reddit.

And the husband and I finally decided to make this a formal Female-Led relationship, in the alt-sex sense, so I collared him.  We've gone more or less 24/7 into it and have joined the local community.  And we're both really, really happy with the way this is working in our lives.

And since that's out I might as well come out about religion. politics and all the rest of it, which I will do in the near future.  Hopefully I will be a better blogger in the future.

Time to catch up a little

It's not that I don't make things or do things, I'm just crap at keeping up a blog.

Time to catch up a bit.

For the holidays I completely a scarf for my MIL:

That's five feet of http://knitty.com/ISSUEsummer07/PATTwisp.htmlWisp by Cheryl Niamath done in KnitPicks Shimmer (discontinued) in Turquoise Splendor. 

I sent a pair of Foot Ovens off to my FIL.

I used the Paisley Pincushion Reversible Apron to make a fabulous apron for the husband.

I crocheted a whole bunch of snowflakes for the window.

I made stockings for each of our three cats:

That's Danni, Smokey and Sasha, in order.  I should put up a post about our fur children.  I will soon.

I made a couple of new tank tops.

I made a woobie for Danni because she's a tree cat and likes to sleep on top of our dresser.

I am currently making the husband a set of mitts, and more woobies for the beasties.

And I've made serious headway into quilting.

Also, the husband has changed jobs (good but scary!) and yes, we had a new fur baby move in.

But the one thing I haven't done enough of is take pictures.  I'll edit this post as they come in.

I have a confession to make

I'm a fan fiction writer.

There, I said it.

I started writing fan fiction because it sounded like an interesting idea.  It was a writing exercise, take an idea and write 1,500 words on it a day.  Take someone else's characters and world and use them as a writing prompt and just go.  And it came with a ready-made community for feedback.*

It's not something I talk about often because when I do game I tend to game with real, honest-to-god, published writers who churn out original plots and stories and characters in amazing ways.  Somehow by comparison what I do does not seem really real, even though more and more I'm creating original worlds and ideas and characters and I'm just borrowing someone elses to get a look at my world through their familiar eyes so I can better understand my own creation.

And it's fun.

So to add to the completion list this year the roughly 230,000 words I turned into stories.  Given the ideal novel length of 80,000 words that puts me at just under three so far and I'll likely make three by New Years.

Not counting RPG time, which sucked down most of the spring.

Now if I could turn this commercially viable I'd be golden.

If you do wander this way and you are at all interested I present you with:

Hunger - which is an interesting novella about the lengths people will go to cope with an abusive family member

The Infected - A chunk of supernatural sci-fi.

The Island - A look at what love is and why we need it so badly at times

The First Run - An alternate history piece set five minutes in the future.  This one I am particularly fond of since it will be spun off into a wholly original work if I can get it together in the new year. 

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*And when the author of one of the stories you were hiving off of tells you you did well with their material it's kind of amazing.  That happened here.