Adventures du jour!
I’m in a mood. The bright lime flavor of my soul has slid over to red wine vinegar. Acerbic. It’s probably hormonal, although I’m at the stage of life where my period is so chaotic that who knows.
I always go into a minor panic mode when I catch on that my period or other hormonal changes are happening. My mom made everyone’s lives around her hell when she was perimenopausal for over a decade. Of course everyone with uterus-related hormones in the same household tends to align over time, and I’d end up having my periods as a teen while she was first starting to have her chaos. Any sign that I was having emotions of any sort whatsoever was an excuse for mom to lash out; I was the safest target, but others caught damage, too. Since then I keep waiting for someone to start yelling at me, or for me to start yelling, whenever I’m having a period. And of course the ex picked up on that and wrung every last bit of manipulation out of it, too.
Hi, my name is DeAnna and I’m terrified of being on the rag.
Anyway, I warned Ray and apologized for snapping at her earlier today; she said what I said wasn’t unjustified and that I wasn’t out of line. I reiterated that I was sorry for bringing stuff that didn’t need to be there to that discussion. We have hugged. She said she was okay not hanging out much today. I have coffee with chai mix, chocolate, and other suitable snacks with me.
I don’t have terribly painful cramps, usually, but moderate cramps that I handle by taking meds and/or kind of turning off my ability to feel them. Ray habitually checks on me to make sure I’m not in pain anyway, because I’ll be like, “I’m doing something right now; I don’t have time for headaches” when I could just take a couple of ibuprofen instead. Most of the low-level pain that I report feeling throughout the day, I’ve had to teach myself how to feel, particularly the hip cramps. In Littleton I used to go for walks and find myself walking off the sidewalk “for no reason,” when I was really having horrible spasms and didn’t know it.
I think a lot of people do this and wreck their bodies that way. I’m trying to stop. Like, the skill will always be there if I need it. “I’m fine. I’ll just walk it off. ‘Tis but a scratch.”–I’m not *fine.* I’m in pain and whining about it is healthier than not whining, really, as long as I don’t try to twist my empathy to make *you* feel pain, too.
Writing yesterday went well, but today I started tearing myself up. “What did you think you could become a writer? Nothing ever happens in your stories. All the characters do is talk.” I may skip writing today, or I might double down on the mood and see what happens.
I wrapped up a scene with the Goob.–There’s this thing that Zelazny, the fiction writer, calls “taking on the character’s Aspect,” where his normally goob-ish main characters invoke some kind of hidden talent and assume an aura of divinity or unstoppableness. Here, the Goob puts his on but not all the way. It was fun to write, but I’ll have to check it over when I’m in a better mood to make sure readers can follow. It’s not supernatural at all; everyone has an Aspect, although most people don’t develop it. Mine’s Weaponized Curiosity. Logan’s is Luck. Marina doesn’t know about hers yet, but she has one (the Cut Direct); Mr. Assassin has one but I haven’t named it yet (but “What doesn’t kill me gives me XP” is how the Goob refers to it). Other characters have them too, but they aren’t as thought-out.
The last surviving member of the Idiot Quartet, Dom, finally showed up. Yay! I was starting to worry he wouldn’t make it in time. Weirdly, he’s in civvies. Not weirdly, he’s not clear about whether he should help the Goob or not. It’s complicated, and even I’m not sure what side he’s on yet or what his goals are. But hey! I get to like him either way. I’ll have to give him a nickname now.
After that, it was back to Mr. Assassin, fixing a few things earlier in the story that I’d forgotten to fix earlier, and shifting him into his Aspect.–This morning during the walk he was out walking with me, in a terrifically good mood, and did a little dance. It was surprisingly fluid, like he could pull off not just drag but burlesque, if that makes sense. (Ah! Like Tom Holland.) But then again, most of us are more relaxed when we’re not at work.
Yoga: I did more yoga last night to unfuck the body from sitting, using the same poses that had me melting down yesterday. It went fine, no crying or weird memories blubbing out. This morning I woke up aching from pretty much knees to armpits. Yoga went well, although trying to get into the new balance pose was an exercise in the ridiculous. I dragged a chair out to the patio and needed it, too.
Midjourney: I worked on papier-mache masks, using several different countries/cultures for reference: Italian, Chinese, Kenyan, Inuit. The masks turned out different, but not as much as I wanted. Next time I do something like that, I’ll take breaks between cultures to train the AI so I get more disparate results.
Today one of the things I’m working on is flowers, trying to get unnatural, yet still plausible, blooms. Some of the prompts seem to delight the AI, with FAR better results coming from “unusual” and “luscious” rather than “exotic,” for example, but MJ’s kind of repeating herself at this point. Because of the mood I’m in, I’m probably going to twist things toward horror/gore slowly. We’ll see.
The rest of today was a lot of practical details, distractions, and shopping for replacement Crocs.
Well, the coffee chai has been drunk, the snacks consumed, and my mood is better, if darker. I’m going to hang out with Mr. Assassin for a while and see if we can’t get into some trouble, even though we’re starting late.