Unclenching is Complicated

Today was a decent mix of things.

Parents left in the morning. I took a Covid test (negative) and then messaged Fairy Gay Mother and Pirate Queen to check in on masking in their home. Seeing as the rest of my family won’t mask anymore even with numbers climbing again. Went over for Pirate lunch in honor of Fairy Gay Mothers entrance into the world.

Lovely noms, saw the silly singing episode of Star Trek. Realized I never finished first season of Our Flag Means Death. Started waning, but was just in time for cake, which was delicious, and also the sugar enabled me to get back without having the POTs flare.

Started about 3miles from home. Took my meds, took other meds to help, started pounding more water until my body was convinced to start eating more. Did a good mix of salty and sugar.

Thought I was evening out until I got up to go to the bathroom. That was the closest I’ve come to a full faint since I started on my meds and learning as much as I can about POTs. When you’re about to faint it always feels really funny to me. It’s like you fall asleep for a second while standing up, except I’m phasing in and out of consciousness. Which means I get to feel even weirder things, like my knees turning to jelly, and my hypermobile joints attempting to lock to keep me from hitting the ground. I get a hazy awareness of my fingers scrambling for purchase on the counter top. Those brief flashes of thought of, “do I try to hold onto the sink? Or do I use it as leverage to get myself to the floor so there’s less distance from my head to the ground?”.

Luckily it was just presyncope.

Sat my butt right back down and chugged more water and had some more food.

Got to watch a few episodes of Castlevania with my brother. And a few episodes of my current junk food show.

I’ve been in my feelings about a few things too. There’s some old wounds I’ve been trying to process because they are threatening to open some new ones with them. There’s been something I noticed over the last two days too that has been hard. Seeing things only I can see again, but tired of trying to convince anyone it’s real and I’m not crazy. So I just watched, observed, absorbed, and do what I always do. Survive.

There’s a voice in my head that tells me this thing from last night is so small and stupid I should just let it go. But my brain can’t.

Today was hard too around that.

I’ve been sad on and off all day since last night, but there’s something that gave me a tiny spark of hope. Not about the situation, but about myself. I started feeling really sad, and the junk food show was not sufficiently numbing, and I had the sudden urge to bake.

Baking and cooking are the places where I can find peace. The steps and thoughts needed for those tasks make my brain slow down and focus. It can slow it down enough that I can work through some bigger feelings or at the very least acknowledge them without a giant swell of anxiety.

It had always been one of the healthy coping mechanisms. And then I get the extra bonus of sharing the items with people I care about and that in turn makes me feel better.

My history with baking became complicated when Heathcliff used it as a way to start fights. My baking became less and less, until I basically stopped all together.

During the divorce, I was able to start finding that joy again.

Since moving back in with family, my cooking and baking has become twisted again. Having an existence in any space in this house has. I feel like I can’t do the things I need and enjoy in this space because it will always result in fights and further breaking me down, and gaslighting.

I’m happy that I reached for it tonight and didn’t have any hesitation or anxiety. I was just excited to see if I could make something I never had the courage to bake before.

Tomorrow, hopefully we’ll have homemade cinnamon rolls, using discard from my sourdough discard aka BOB. Pray to deities of rising dough for me.

Now I curl up in bed. The voices and not great thoughts are still there. But at least they’re quieter and I’m feeling more solid in knowing I will do what I need to do for taking care of myself. I’m figuring out new boundaries and lines and that’s important to keep myself healthy.

Tomorrow, brunch, at home spa day with the kids, maybe some chores, maybe some gaming, and definitely crafting.

Day 2 (bum bum)

In which mom starts the cycle of pretending. Today was a mix of theatre. Vertigo drama continues, but now peppered with satire on motherhood.

It was all about “what can I help prep?”, “I can chop things as long as I’m sitting down and I don’t tilt this way or that way”, jazz hands in the direction of my dad “I need to make sure our daughter isn’t having to do everything”, “I’m helping to make things easier for our daughter”.

Funny how none of that started until after dad and I were talking about the fridge, because I realized that with how late I stayed up, I missed the drawer. The drawer had melting vegetables in it. I wonder which ones were bad????

I had wonder where weird black liquid had come from that was on the lip of a not shelf in the fridge. It’s hard to explain the spot. Anyway. The sludge had gotten into this awkward to clean crevice in the drawer and so dad and I had strategized how to get it out, and short of that what would we accept as being sanitized.

Ultimately, she will have made one whole thing for tomorrow, and cubbed some bread. One less thing for me I guess. Though the amount of questions she still asked me, instead of just doing the thing which she has been making my entire life might have cost me more than the spoons to do it myself. I kept it to “sure” and “I can’t decide that for you, I have other things I’m doing right now”.

Realized time went sideways on me again and forgot how to math. Was trying to make bread for tomorrow, but the flour showed up too late. Will still maybe be able to bake it to send a loaf home with the kids. Going to do some meal prep things for them and me and dad since I’ll be cooking all day anyway.

Need to check my bulk rise in another 30mins. Really I’d like to just be sleeping.

Was riding overwhelm all day and didn’t realize it until trying to actually communicate. Then the second dose of new med made me feel extremely nauseous tonight. Wanted to just cry it was so bad.

Also new spot across my back and lower hip decided it wished to protest existence. Can’t blame it really.

It all finally eased though, which is why I wish I could just sleep.

Likely will not get my room done and all my stuff out of brothers room before they come over. Chugging in that direction though, and found some cute shelves today, even if I apparently can’t eyeball measurements. It’s fine. I’ll figure it out.

I at least moved my dirty laundry basket back to my closet. At this rate of dryer broken, part 2, I will have to go to the laundry mat, and I hate the laundry mat. Now at least I know it’s because it’s a sensory nightmare.

Outside of that, I did do a bunch of other adulting and tasks today. Went grocery shopping with dad (he wanted to make sure he was paying for brunch supplies), went through my budget and balanced things as best I could (a payment slipped off somewhere but not in a harming way since it was a second payment for the month), put in the insurance claims I’ve been forgetting for a week to get reimbursed, did a two hour class on high protocol tea service, and then back out to go to 3 stores before I realized I was overwhelmed. Then bread making after I laid on the floor for about 10mins.

Tomorrow I’m making all the things!

For brunch:

• Lobster Eggs Benedict
• Roasted Maple Brussel Sprouts
• Seasoned Roasted Potatoes
• Crepes with choice of three types of berries and a cheesecake like filling (savory options also available)
• My greenlees bread pudding with a rum caramel sauce
• Spinach Dip
• Various drinks (must remember I have to be careful with alcohol now, not that I drink a much ever)

For meal prep:

• Mac n cheese from scratch using fancy cheeses
• Personal lasagnas
• 4 different types of breakfast sammies (meatless ones for the brothers girlfriend)

You know, just a few things.

Most people don’t deserve me.

I’m a gem.

Priceless even.

B.O.B Diaries Entry #1

Our house has started getting abysmally cold, which is not great for proofing sourdough starter.

That’s B.O.B, my blob of bread and also named after the bread starter from “A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking” by T.Kingerfisher ( a pseudonym for an author but I’ve only read things from them under this name).

I’m not one that’s big on a desire to meet celebrities, but if I ever had the chance to meet them I would really like too. I remember when I first read this book I was both in love and absolutely crushed. Because they touched on a lot of ideas I had brewing for a story I wanted to write. But then after reading this book and started also getting overwhelmed and feeling like if I still tried to write my story people would think I was just plagiarizing them.

Fairy gay mother kindly talked me down. Informed me that we were both simply pulling inspiration from the same well of creativity in the universe, and there was in fact very few completely original stories out there. Everybody was sparked by something or someone else to write theirs. It helped, but I have still yet to finish working on those stories much.

I definitely digressed there.

Cold. Proofing.

Because it’s so cold it’s really suboptimal for yeast production. I have been doing this fun little game where I put B.O.B on the stove and then near the vent for the oven, with the oven on its lowest temp. I then turn him every hour or so and sometimes turn off the heat because he also can’t get to hot or that will kill the yeast production.

Sourdough starters really just need a way to stick their foot out or pull it in to regulate their temperature.

Have I mentioned it’s been a bad week and I basically got no sleep last night…this morning, so I might be a little unhinged?

Back to B.O.B

B.O.B had a paper label but Dad upgraded it for me and I give it a duel purpose to mark his proofing progress. Want to make him a fancier label some day.

First experiment was a mug warmer. I could only get it down to 122F but the problem was I needed to at least get a nap in. So I set the warmers timer for less than a full proof. Also meant I couldn’t be watching it the whole time to see what was happening with it.

3hr nap achieved.

B.O.B did not proof. And there was a slight yellow crust on top of him so he may have gotten too hot. But I also had done a cold feeding and since then have learned our new fridge is way too cold for him. B.O.B has very clear standards of care, and since we’re in a healthy relationship I’m hearing him and adjusting to his needs where I am able.

Discarded, warm feeding.

Experiment #2 – we’re trying the “leave the oven light on and proof” method.

B.O.B receiving light therapy

Bread making is developing into a special interest so while I was doing all the other steps until 1am, I was researching proofing methods. Mostly because I was trying to determine if my mug warmer was going to be too hot. But at least the research resulted in more things to try to keep him happy during these colder months.

If I don’t see some sort of rise from him in the next hour, I will go back to my overly complicated stove top heat cycling. Because it works, and I really can’t start all over again on this. I have deadlines to meet.

Had planned on taking another 2hr nap. Instead spent a very emotional heated morning trying to get through to my dad. I actually think I made some progress.

Also determined I am right, he definitely contributed to my Autism, but I think he has too negative a view on it yet to realize or accept he has it. I’m breading crumbing without taking responsibility for him. I’m being firm with my boundaries.

I’m so tired of doing so much work. On myself. For others. I’m tired of the expectations and that I’m responsible for everything and everyone. I would like more people in my life to be willing to actually put in the same amount of work and effort as I am. I’m not actually asking for too much. I usually don’t even ask for enough, fairy gay mother tells me that often. That even when I ask for the smallest thing, people tell me no. (She advised from now on I should go big if they’re going to tell me no anyway. Funny enough, Teapot has been encourage me to think of the most out there thing I can think of to ask for, for months now “even if is a fucking unicorn! What do you really want and need if it was a guaranteed yes”.) Or I’m wrong. Or how dare I not completely cater to how they need or want things. But they don’t have to and won’t reciprocate those same things.

I want to cry for like two week straight and get a break for once in my fucking life. But we know that’s not how things work for me. I can deserve it and be hard working my whole life. It will not actually result or manifest into getting those things.

I promise the next B.O.B diary will not end so emotionally. It just happened that again everything went to shit literally as I was trying to document.