Stealing hugs... "no no no nooo!"

9:34 AM 12/31/10

Today I took my St. John's Wort and I got up early and was working on cleaning some stuff. Then I went looking for Curtis after a while, and I found him. So when I saw him, I was on the drug.

I talked to him comfortably, fearlessly, and easily. I smiled and laughed. There was the same big group of managers and other people standing near his area, just like the other day, having some kind of discussion. Maybe they are remodeling something. It looked like they were talking and making a decision about something in that area. So, they were there, but I went looking for him anyway. The drug makes me much more fearless.

By the way, the other day when I went looking for him, and then went away crying, was a day that he was puking his guts out (as he described on facebook) and he left work and went home. So I probably wouldn't have been able to find him anyway - he might have been in the bathroom - or if I did get close to him, I would've caught the virus. So it was good that I didn't see him that day.

I gave him my note today. I congratulated him on asking Carrie to marry him. They are now officially engaged. He did that on Christmas Eve. They were unofficially planning to be married, for quite a while now, but now it's official. He got her a ring and it's being resized.

I was talking to him over the salad bar, so there was something in between us. After talking for a couple minutes (about nothing really important, just about work, about being sick, him being engaged, me doing my own little projects, me wanting a second job... the usual... he wants to get out of food service and have a meaningful job... I understand) I then asked him to come over to the doorway at the end of the salad bar where I have talked to him a couple times before. I said, 'I have something to give you.'

I gave him a note, and, as before, there was something other than just a note. I felt a 'no' vibe, faintly, something intangible that I can't explain. I felt 'no.' I gave this to him anyway. The voices have been saying 'this is the last one.' I don't know if they really mean that or not.

Then, without fear - even though I had been trembling and shaking in the parking lot before I went in - I reached towards him, and he said, 'hug?' and I hugged him. It was a 'shallow' hug, and I had a thick coat on, so it wasn't an erotic hug, it was the kind of hug that two friends could give each other. It was a brief, dainty little hug, not a bear hug, not a strong hug. Kind of like how, in some cultures, people kiss each other on each cheek, lightly and quickly.

He is so thin, and so short. I am five foot two. He is only a tiny bit taller than I am. He is about a small as a fourteen year old. He has fetal alcohol syndrome. I read about it, and it said that people with FAS are usually in the 'lower third percentile' of size for their age. It means they're much smaller than everyone else their age. This is the reason why I was hearing voices calling me a pedophile, and they were trying to help me find someone who was very small, and also of legal age. He is exactly the size that I am attracted to. I'm attracted to a variety of guys, and they're not always small, but my strongest feelings are usually towards the smaller skinnier ones.

So I could reach up and put my hands on his shoulders, and they were bony and thin.

After I left, the moment I walked away, I was flooded with feelings. I felt like I 'stole' the hug. It's possible to do what someone else wants you to do, without wanting to do it. I have hugged older, unattractive men who liked me when I didn't like them. I used to hug the child molester who came over to my parents' house once in a while, until we had the 'last straw' incident where I decided I would not touch him anymore. I know how gross it feels to hug someone you're not attracted to, when someone is desperate and needy, and they need to touch you so badly, but you're not attracted to them sexually. Now I'm in the role reversed position. I'm the older, less attractive, desperate, needy person.

So I felt: guilty, disgusted, mad at myself, sick, aroused, excited, violated, and terrified... and desperate to do it again, for a longer time, without a thick coat on.

I made it out to my car and then I started crying and saying, 'no! no! no! noooo! no! no!' over and over again while crying and sobbing. 'no! nooooo! don't do that!' I said. The voices started talking back to me in my head, saying 'He liked it,' and other things to try to reassure me, but I said, 'no! no! you don't understand! don't do that!'

I don't want to mess it up. If I do the wrong thing, if I violate him too much, he will be disgusted and he will avoid me. He will signal 'no' in some way, nonverbally. I already felt a little bit of 'no' when I gave him my note today.

I tried a couple times in the past to ask him to talk about this with me, talk about setting boundaries, about what is okay and what is not okay. He wouldn't talk about it. I wrote notes, and he didn't even answer the notes that I wrote on paper.

(I just got an email from his girlfriend Carrie today, saying 'I've been emailing you and you haven't been answering my messages, are you mad at me, etc,' and this is the usual thing with the computer hackers interfering with my emails... so whenever I want to get an important message to someone, I give them a note on paper... and I'm saying that, okay, he didn't answer a lot of the text messages and emails, but that could've been because he never got them, or I never got his replies.... but he didn't answer the paper notes either, is the point.)

Anyway I have tried to warn him, in the past, that I wanted to touch him, I wanted to hug him, I'm sexually attracted to him - I've told him this quite a few times and several times it was written on paper notes, which he definitely received, because I gave them to him by hand. I asked him what kind of touch is okay, and he wouldn't answer. I was specific about it, is this okay, is that okay. And I still don't know.

So I have to find out the hard way, by just doing something risky and then getting a nonverbal 'no.' And of course I can do it when I'm on drugs and fearless... but I wasn't really fearless, I was terrified afterwards, terrified that I would disgust him and that it would ruin our relationship completely, that we wouldn't even be friends because I'm attracted to him and I always want to touch him.

And also now I was terrified because, now that I've hugged him one time, I will want to do it again and again and again. I will want to do it every time I see him. Sooner or later, it won't be okay anymore.

I drove away in my car, crying and sobbing and saying 'no! nooo! no no no no!' over and over for several minutes. And now I am home writing in my blog.

I don't know when is the next time I will see him or what I will do. I don't know if I will give any more gifts to him. I don't know what 'they' will make me do.

That was today's adventure. I stole something.

you were able to put up with hell

10:58 AM 12/29/10

This was a bad morning, but I won't have much time to write about it because I'm going to work in about half an hour. Some of it may have been triggered by a drug residue reaction, but for whatever reason, I was in a crying mood.

I want to convey the feeling of something, but it's hard to convey. I want to put it into the story, in order, like 'first this happened, then this happened,' but instead of doing that, I'll write the main idea first, before telling the story. The main idea is 'you can put up with hell because of this person.'

All my life, I've had crushes on somebody, at all times. When I was in elementary school, I always had a crush on *somebody*. I could look forward to going to school, because of that crush.

When I was working with Curtis, there was a time period when he and I had a lot of time alone together. That was when he worked in the evenings and so did I. We were both unsupervised. If we had a spare minute now and then, we could take a little break and go talk to each other. Or he would sometimes come over and ask for help if there was a problem, like the drain in the back room getting clogged up and there was water all over the floor, that kind of thing.

I don't like hourly wages, because of this. You can't take a five-minute break to go hang out and chat with someone, because you're worried that you'll get in trouble. They don't want you getting paid to talk. So I was only able to have these moments with him when there were no managers around. If nobody could see us standing around and talking, it was okay.

But then a few things changed. He moved to the morning shift. I hate the morning shift - I used to work morning jobs sometimes, during all my years of having various jobs, and I always found that it was hard for me to wake up that early. I could get up for the afternoon shift, but not the morning.

Because of my two-job schedule, I couldn't work the same shift he was working anymore. So I might see him briefly for an hour, and we'd never be alone. If other people were there, I couldn't go talk to him much anymore.

So that time we had together was all the time we ever had. It ended, and it was over. It ended when he went to the morning shift. It ended when he started working a shift where there were always people around.

I'm glad that he is working a shift where he has people to keep him company. I don't like working totally alone for long hours either. It's much easier to work if other people are there. So it was a good thing for him. But it meant that I couldn't have any of his time anymore.

I did something really hard to do. Well, but first, let me explain what else happened. I tried text messaging him, and later, emailing him, and calling him. But there were problems with that. Sometimes he would answer a text, but he never knew who I was, even though I had texted him before. And I was being forced by 'them' to try to send him these stupid, annoying messages worrying about this or that, messages that there just wasn't an answer to. I don't like talking on the phone, myself. I don't like to do it unless you have something specific that requires a specific answer, like 'Do you want to come over and play?' and yes, I know that sounds sexual in this context, but I'm remembering back when I used to call my next-door neighbor Jeremy on the phone, and it was a very brief, purposeful phone call, and that was all I would ask. Do you want to come over, or, can I come over there. Then we would hang up. I didn't do these long, chatty, worry-about-this-and-that type of messages or phone calls. I was being forced to write a bunch of garbage in my text messages and emails to him, without a specific purpose.

But then, even if I tried to ask specific things, I still couldn't get an answer. I was fighting, being controlled and forced to do something that I knew wasn't working and would never work, and I was struggling to protect myself and stay out of jail and out of the mental hospital, because I knew that I might freak him out with all my letters and he might call the police on me. So I would sometimes beg him to discuss this problem with me and I would beg him to tell me a certain time and date when we would be able to have a conversation and get everything settled, but even then, even if I were asking for something specific, I still couldn't get an answer at all. Only random, occasional answers to my text messages, and when he did answer, he never knew who I was, and I would have to explain that it was me, and then, I was being forced to text him at the worst possible moments anyway, so I never expected a real conversation.

I don't have enough time to write all this.

What I did was, I changed my schedule. I stopped working night shift at McDonald's - I had wanted to do that anyway. I hated the night shift. So I went to evenings at McD, and mornings at Weis. I hated mornings at Weis, too. There are a lot of reasons why I hated my job.

I was driving my car this morning, and I tried to go visit Curtis. I was going to give him a note. I walked in, and I saw a group of five or six people standing around, kind of in the general area where I have often found him. It was some kind of meeting or something. I waited a couple minutes, far away, wandering the aisles, and looked again. They were still there. It was the worst possible moment to go looking for him. So I left.

I drove my car around, in a crying mood, and I remembered him. I remembered working in the mornings at Weis. I changed my schedule, and finally, I was able to see him all day long, for more than just a minute or two when he was leaving. When I worked evenings at Weis, he went to the mornings, so I would occasionally see him just as he was leaving... or not at all, for many days.

But when I went to the mornings, suddenly I could see him again, all day long. I couldn't go over and talk to him. I was surrounded by managers and other people who required me to stay in my place. And he was surrounded by people too, and I didn't belong over there.

Things got worse at Weis. We lost a couple employees, and so somebody had to go take over the work in a different department, the hot foods bar, where the Chinese food was. For a lot of reasons, we all hated working over there. So I would sometimes have to go over there. And I hated my regular job at the other food service section, too, and I hated working up at the front of the deli slicing meat. I just hated the entire job, and I was having to do more and more of the worst parts of it.

Then some crazy new managers came in and everything went completely to hell.

And still, I was able to put up with it, and go to work every day. How on earth was I able to do it? I would look across the room, and see that he was over there. I might not even be able to make eye contact. I might just see his back turned to me while he was stocking the shelves. But I would look over there and get a glimpse of him for a few seconds while I was working. And those brief little glimpses were enough that I could put up with going to hell every day, doing a job that I hated, during the worst possible shift for me, the morning shift, with crazy managers making it impossible to work.

Then he lost his job. He didn't show up for work a few times. I don't know why. He was sick, or drunk, or depressed, or something. I don't know why. And he didn't have his own car anymore - he had lost his license. For whatever reason, he lost his job.

I only lasted a couple weeks after he left.

I went through a crying phase, which actually began BEFORE he left. I was crying partly because a few things had happened to destroy the trust in my relationship with him. I was crying for a lot of reasons, and it was the season of the year when I start to get depressed, and I was having other health problems too, and working too many hours. Everything at once. I would go into work and then walk around in tears, for hours, just crying while I worked. This began just before he left. And I felt like I knew he was leaving, too.

I was crying every day at work and then I started not showing up. I would call off, of course, but I couldn't explain why I was sick. And yes, I was actually sick. I was sort of having a breakdown from working too many hours, while also having a reaction to pesticides or something. Everything at once. But I stopped showing up, and then I told them they should probably not try to schedule me for work. Then I just didn't do anything for a while, but I kept working at McD.

As I drove my car around this morning, I was crying because I felt like I needed to cry. I wasn't able to go see him. I couldn't walk into a place where I don't belong, even though he invited me and said he would like to see me more often. I don't belong at his workplace. I'm an unwelcome intruder, an outsider. I have no claim on him. I'm barely even a 'friend.' I'm just some lady who used to work with him. That's all that I am.

I never managed to get him to say 'yes' to meeting with him away from work. It would be something where I would know what time to go see him, what day, how long I might stay, what we might do together. I never got him to agree to doing anything like that. I've always had to see him at work, and nowhere else. He just didn't answer letters or emails or text messages, and he would give a sort of negative answer when I asked him things directly. I could go into detail but I don't have any time left.

So today I drove my car crying, remembering what it felt like to look across the room, to just know that he was nearby, in the same building, and I could get a glimpse of him. We lost the time we had together, when we could spend several minutes talking or doing something together alone, when he worked in the evenings. Then he got a new girlfriend, his fiancee, his future wife, and there was even less chance of meeting him outside of work.

That was the theme of 'you can put up with hell, just because this person is there with you.'

I have to go to work now......

My iPod synced!

I had to bring everything together at once - the laptop, the iPod, and a wi-fi environment. It was like solving a puzzle in a video game, where you have to collect a bunch of magical devices and unite them all into one to create a more powerful magical weapon. It didn't work unless I have everything together.

I logged in to iTunes on my laptop first. Then I connected my iPod. For the first time ever, a user agreement came up and I had to fill out checkboxes and read a big long agreement. Then I could finally see the tabs where you can choose to transfer your purchased songs to the laptop, or delete the unwanted downloads, which I finally did.

I had to be online while connecting my iPod to sync it for the FIRST time, but will I have to do that EVERY time?

Foamy the Squirrel: Germaine's Problems

4:22 AM 12/28/10

I watched some of the early episodes of Foamy the Squirrel, and I've watched one or two of the recent episodes, along with 'Germaine For Stupids.'

If I try guessing her enneagram type, ignore me, because my guesses are usually wrong and I keep changing them.

What could have happened to Germaine? When I watch her, I start troubleshooting based on my own experiences and my own problems. Perhaps she began with environmental illness, or maybe food sensitivities. Those things could have made her moody and tired and sick.

Then she was going to clubs. When you go someplace where other people are using drugs, you get the drug effects secondhand. She could have had alcohol, or secondhand smoke, or she could have been exposed to residues of other drugs on the chairs and tables where she was sitting, and that could have been any drug at all. A lot of drugs are used by people at clubs. There could have been ecstasy, or lots of other illegal drugs, along with pharmaceutical drugs. She didn't have to try the drugs herself. Just being around other people using them can give you small doses, either through the skin, or inhaled, or through the mouth, and then you get withdrawal later on. Withdrawal can cause many strange symptoms and moods.

Then Germaine was suicidal. That's the kind of thing that can happen from the drug exposures too.

She also has a lot of piercings. I like the way piercings look, but they can possibly give you metal poisoning through the skin, and even more poisoning if you have piercings in your lips and mouth. Metal poisoning causes crazy moods and depression and other symptoms. It's a possibility to think about. I'm not sure how many health effects come from piercings and jewelry.

She was also hallucinating a scary guy while she was in the bathtub. That happened to me when I was on Prozac. Her hallucination looked exactly like mine. Some vague object moves quickly just outside the edge of your vision, and you don't see what it was, and it scares the crap out of you. Her skull mask guy appeared just like that when she first glimpsed him. Then she started thinking, 'How would I have defended myself? All I had was a rubber ducky.' The ghostly attacker caught her unprepared. So the joke of the cartoon was that she fought back, and won, with only the rubber duck. I've had similar 'How would I escape?' fantasies (go out the bedroom window, etc) during my terror attacks. Drug withdrawal can cause those panic attacks.

I didn't watch all the episodes in between, but I saw some titles that mentioned drugs. So it's very likely that somebody was on drugs, at least one of the characters, or just talking about drugs in general. But then, after that, there's this gradual weight gain. I've gained lots of weight when I've been on antidepressants.

Then she starts saying 'yes' too easily to sex. Being suggestible and agreeable is caused by drugs. Doing things that other people want you to do is caused by drugs. Wanting lots and lots and lots of sex is caused by drugs. Being indiscriminate - not caring who you have sex with - is caused by drugs. I've experienced these things myself.

So now, Germaine is wandering. And a minion is also out wandering looking for its master. One of the commenters wrote, 'Don't worry, she'll find Foamy.'

While traveling, she might improve the symptoms of her environmental illness, if by any chance she was suffering from that. I usually assume that if someone has lots of vague, unexplained health and mood problems and fatigue, then they probably have the usual food sensitivities and environmental illnesses.

So I wish that I could help the real Germaine, whoever she is. I'm still trying to help myself.

I have comments???

Oops, I wasn't meaning to ignore anyone.  I don't get comments very often and with my browser malfunctioning and everything, I wasn't seeing the part of the page that told me that I was getting comments.  Sorry everyone.  I'll try to answer some of them.  Thanks people.

Time management; categories of activities; the art of asking questions; using the word 'you'

9:35 AM 12/27/10

I hunted for Curtis today, but I didn't see him. I saw the manager-like guy, though, and he is the one who I originally asked about Curtis. I made eye contact for a fraction of a second but then I looked down. I'm paying attention to what my eye contact is doing, because it strongly relates to my drug residues. There are some drug residues that cause me to make prolonged eye contact comfortably, without fear.

Just now I took one of the St. John's Wort pills, because I need to continue with my time management, my projects and tasks. I've had stomach viruses over and over again for the past week, although they weren't as bad as the first one was. So I've hardly been eating anything, and I've spent a lot of time just lying in bed struggling not to vomit, and not doing anything.

Anyway, I didn't see Curtis today, so I bought a couple of small items and then left. I will try again. I'm still not ready to try texting him, and I'm also not ready to ask for more contact, although 'they,' or 'we,' were thinking about it, thinking that it's a conceivable possibility to ask him to let me visit him away from work, and to spend a short, limited time with him, and we will be required to talk about something other than work. We would be required to talk about something personal and get to know each other.

It could be boring, but we would just follow the rule that we were required to be together for a specific amount of time, and then I would leave. It would give me less anxiety, because if I were going to spend an unlimited amount of time with him, I would worry that either he, or I, would get bored and uncomfortable. (Although, I can imagine playing video games with him for a long time.)

I'm also trying to find a way that I won't be disturbing his relationship with his girlfriend. This was just a fantasy. Playing video games together actually seems believable. I don't know how he would feel about a psychological interrogation while I practice my questioning skills.

I was noticing how hard it is for me to talk to people about anything except work. It's like the only question I have is, 'How do you pay your taxes?' I don't ask that, and I don't phrase it that way, but that's what it comes down to. We are all working to pay our taxes, whether they are direct taxes or indirect taxes.

(Some people don't really understand it or realize it, but paying the rent is an indirect tax. The reason rents are so high is because of the property taxes on land, and because the government's banking system has distorted the price of land. So it's an indirect tax, and it's a huge tax - a large portion of our money goes to rent.)

Anyway, I don't know how to talk to people about personal subjects. What do you like? What do you dislike? What do you care about? What scares you? What bores you? What excites you? What makes you sad? What makes you angry? What do you not really care about one way or the other? What do you remember from your past? What do you see in your future? What's going on in your life right now? What do you want? What's on your to-do list? What do you dream of doing? And then you can ask 'Why?' about all those things too. You can ask people a million questions about how they feel about things, and I never ask those questions, and I never know people.

I had an entertaining day reading the internet a couple days ago. I was having a drug reaction and it was causing me to do lots of wandering and exploring and reading. I started out by reading about children's fantasy play and pretending, which is something I'm very interested in. I feel as though I still need it, as an adult, but it's something I can't do easily while being attacked.

Then I started reading about the questions children ask their parents, and they are often very hard, unthinkable, surprising questions. Some of them made me laugh and laugh. One kid asked, 'What would happen if there weren't any mosquitoes?' Another kid asked, 'Where does the water go?' when it goes down the bathtub drain, and every time his father answered, the kid said, 'Then where?'... 'Then where?'... 'Then where?'

Asking questions is an art. Your questions are shaped by the mood you're in, and by the overall spirit of the answers that you expect to find. If you are in a bad mood, you will tend to ask negative-leaning questions that direct you towards negative answers. If you are in a good mood, you will ask positive-leaning questions that lead towards happy answers. Both people will believe that they have found 'the truth about the world,' but in reality, their mood gives them a way of looking at the world, and the mood came first.

You could categorize questions - I've been thinking about 'categories' - what type of question is this, what is the concept behind it, etc. The 'no mosquitoes' question is a 'NOT' question. There's something in the world, and you imagined 'What if NOT X?' The libertarians (and anarchists, and anyone else who doesn't want a government) asked 'NOT' questions: what if there were no taxes, what if there were no government, no regulations, and so on. Then they saw all the invisible potential things that don't exist because they never happened - all the money we would have had, to spend on so many other things. All the free time we would have had, to achieve so many things. Those things are invisible and unthinkable to most of us.

You can always ask more than one question about something. If you think that you found a good question, it's actually only one possible question among many other questions. Sometimes you can find a really good question that gives insight, but you sort of already have to HAVE the insight BEFORE you ask the question. If you're stuck in 'questioner's block' (like writer's block), then your questions feel shallow and you can't see or learn anything from asking questions. You get answers that you already know. That's why I wanted to make categories of questions, to help people who have 'questioner's block,' so that they can try to ask questions from various categories, deeper and more insightful questions, to break the block, to help them see the subject differently. This is a lot like Edward de Bono's writings about creativity, actually.

The page I was reading said that children's questions were interesting and challenging because adults 'take everything at face value.' We've already seen everything, and we already know what happens. It's unthinkable to imagine 'what if' about something so familiar that we see it every day. What if there were no gravity on earth? We don't even bother to think about it.

Questions are very hard to see. You don't know what subject to ask questions about. If some whole area of consciousness is blocked out of your mind, if there's some subject that you hardly ever think about, you won't even know it exists and that you can ask questions about it. If you happen to see someone else asking those questions, you might feel bored and impatient, and look away from it, feeling like you already know this, or you don't need to know it. Edward de Bono said that people tend to say, 'We already tried that, and it didn't work,' or 'That's exactly like something we're already doing.' He said to focus on the differences. No, it ISN'T exactly like what we're already doing. No, it ISN'T exactly like something I already know.

My time management attempts are not going very well. But yet, that's not entirely true. I've done more 'stuff' than I was doing before. I just haven't done things reliably and consistently no matter what the circumstances. And it depends on taking St. John's Wort right now. I want the habits to be so strong that I can continue them even when I'm off the drug, but right now, it's very hard to keep trying when I'm off the drug, and getting hit by other drug residues that make me want to do nothing but sleep. I want my habits to be strong enough that I can mess up for a couple days, but then get back into it again. I am trying to make realistic lists of things to do and then actually do them.

I'm finding that I have categories of tasks and projects. The book that I have, Mark Forster's 'Do It Tomorrow,' describes a few categories of tasks and projects, but it wasn't enough for me. I started to feel like I was doing too much of one thing, and it was making my life not worth living. I need to do something each day that makes life worth living.

Let's imagine that all I did all day were chores. Life would not be worth living. I'd wake up and start cleaning the house, doing the laundry, cooking, and so on, and if that's all I did all day, I wouldn't have the spirit to do those things forever and ever. But if I do something else that I know is making progress in my life, making things better in the long run, or something that I really enjoy doing and that I really care about, then I can tolerate doing some of the meaningless routines and chores, because I know it's not all there is to life.

So I started writing all these categories that I've observed in my own lists. These are only an arbitrary group of categories out of an infinite number of possible categories. Categories are so flexible and so arbitrary that each person will see them differently. Whatever is important to you, whatever is noticeable and meaningful to you personally, will stand out and will have its own category. Those categories are useful to you, but they might not be useful to someone else. You can make huge, general, all-encompassing categories too, but they won't be specific enough to be useful. And even those are flexible.

I've seen authors and philosophers who like to put things into categories, and they act like THEIR categories are the only possible categories for everything in the universe. Like let's imagine someone characterized all objects in the universe as being either 'Blue' or 'Not Blue.' And those two categories are all you have to choose from! And somebody says that those categories are enough to describe everything that exists. It's true, you could categorize things that way, but there are infinity other possible ways that could be more useful. Things can be either 'Living' or 'Nonliving.' And so on. It depends on what you want to use the category to do.

So all my tasks and projects are being categorized. I need to categorize them because of how they make me feel. If I do too many tasks in the 'Life is a meaningless, miserable chore' category, then I will get depressed and hopeless.

'Task' and 'Project' are categories that the book gave me. I already vaguely felt that, when I looked at my to-do list (the original, infinite list where nothing ever gets crossed off), that there were some tasks that were small and quick and I could do them in a few minutes, and other things that were big and complex and they would take days, weeks, months, or years to complete. 'Task' is a small quick thing, although it can be slightly larger and it can have subtasks, but mostly it's something you can get done all at once, in one day. When it's done, it's done. 'Project' is a larger thing, with more subtasks and subprojects, and it takes several sessions to complete, maybe days, weeks, etc.

But I have other categories of things that I see on my list. And again, these are not the only possible categories. They are only things that I myself see in my list. 'Disaster Recovery' is a category for both tasks and projects. I have to waste a lot of time and money cleaning up drug residues and throwing things away and buying new things to cope with the accident a few years ago, and I shouldn't have to waste my time doing that, but if I don't, then I have terrible reactions. 'Patching up' is when I have to do something that's a temporary fix, without fixing the source of the problem - for instance, putting new clean paper down on the bed where I sleep, because it's always getting contaminated.

The books describes 'organization projects' and 'continuous projects.' Organizational projects are projects that are meant to achieve a specific goal, to create something, to start a program or build something, to make a new system of some kind. The project has an end. That would be something like, 'Start my own business.' Continuous projects are something that you must keep doing forever, or for a long time, and it's the same thing every day, like practicing a musical instrument, or jogging every day.

Because I've been reading about the enneagram for the past few years, I have mental structures that are based on the enneagram and the other psychological systems that they've connected with it. So I made categories called 'Productive,' 'Protective,' and 'Leisure,' which were loosely, vaguely based on enneagram type three, six, and nine. The enneagram gives me ideas for categories, but I know those aren't the only possible ways of looking at it.

I also have 'social, sexual, survival,' because of Ichazo's instincts. When I looked at a page about Ichazo's work, he actually had much longer more detailed lists of instincts, and it was confusing, and of course he always had things in groups of nine. A lot of that stuff isn't talked about much in the 'Americanized Enneagram,' the enneagram that is familiar to most of us. He has a lot more detail in his original work. So if I wanted to, I could take lots of his instincts as a suggestion for my categories.

An example of the 'Leisure' category: doing things that have to do with getting music and playing music. Authorizing my laptop yesterday was a task intended to help with my leisure, getting music to enjoy it for its own sake.

'Protective': Disaster recovery, fixing the bad consequences of an accident I had. Preventing future disasters, by doing things like a monthly check on my vehicle, according to the instructions in the owner's manual, to check the fluid levels, tire pressure, etc. Finding ways to save money, to avoid loss of money, to avoid wasting money, to cut expenses, to reduce the harmful consequences of something, to fix problems and prevent them.

'Productive': Creating something. Writing a story or a song. Learning a new skill. Finding a way to earn more income. Expressing myself.

But all of these three categories can be 'applied' to the three instincts. 'Applying' a 'higher level category' to a 'lower level category' or 'different group of categories' is a concept or mental structure that I have, so that there will be categories within categories. So for all three of those, productive, protective, and leisure, you can 'apply' the three categories of social, sexual, survival.

That's an enneagram system mental structure, after years of reading those books and thinking in those terms. So there are nine possible categories: Protective/social, Protective/sexual, Protective/survival, Leisure/social... and so on. And it's hard to think of what would fit into those categories.

'Sexual' doesn't just mean sex when people talk about the instincts and the enneagram - it also means 'close, personal, intimate relationships' and 'charismatic, warm, friendly personality' (instead of cold and formal) and it also means 'intense experiences.' An example of Protective/sexual might be... (this is hard to think of)... activities, projects, and tasks that are geared towards preventing you from getting hurt in relationships?

When something is hard to think of, that's the whole purpose of making these category structures: it forces you to look for something that's hard for you to think of. It isn't in your usual familiar group of categories, the easiest things to think of. But to someone else on earth, that category might be very, very important, and it's all that they think about all day long.

This kind of thing is useful if you're trying to create a story character, for instance. What does SOMEONE ELSE worry about all day long, someone different from yourself? These personality type systems are meant to explain why some people are so very different from ourselves.

If you look at the celebrities in the magazines, if you read about celebrities, a lot of them are the 'sexual instinct' type, and all that they worry about, all day long, is whether they are attractive to other people, and whether they're having enough intense experiences, and whether they are in love with somebody. Then there are other people, like a Social/Self-Preservation type, who don't worry very much about that, and they're more concerned with whether they have a job, and material safety, and they're being respected, and the people around them are like-minded and cooperating with them.

Anyway, that's something I like about the enneagram, or any personality typing systems. They give me categories that I can use to think differently from my usual way of thinking.

I've noticed people who use the word 'You' more often than I do. 'You' is almost a taboo word to me. It makes me squirm and feel uncomfortable. I almost feel like I'm sexually molesting them or harassing them. If I say 'you' to a female and ask personal-directed questions, I feel like she thinks I'm a lesbian. If I talk to a guy and I'm saying 'what do you think about this' or whatever, I feel like I'm flirting with them or suggesting that I'm attracted to them. It happened once when I asked a girl 'What are you doing after work?' or something like that, and I was just asking in a casual way, not meaning anything, but I had this feeling that I was a lesbian and that it was like I was going to ask her out on a date or something.

Then, afterwards, it feels like we have a 'special relationship' and I am supposed to give them priority above other people. So if someone else walks in, I am supposed to value this one person more than the other person. And if I then talk in a personal way to the other person, it lowers the first person's status and feels like competition, like the first person will want to butt in to the conversation and try to make themselves important and special again. If I did that with everybody, then everyone would be competing all the time to be the most important and the most special person. If someone gets left out, I feel bad. I don't like to have a conversation where somebody is standing off to the side feeling excluded.

So I don't like to say 'you' to co-workers or have lots of personal conversations. And I almost never do it, unless I'm using St. John's Wort, and it's always the puppeteers who suggest that I speak directly to somebody or jump into a conversation.

I noticed, many years ago, that it was very hard for me to remember and keep track of everybody's likes and dislikes. There are some people who can name a friend or family member and then say 'He likes this, this, this, and this, but doesn't like that.' It helps you with things like gift-buying. It means you know someone really well. But even when I'm dating someone, I don't know them well enough to quickly and easily make a long list of all the things they like and dislike. Even when I was dating Eric, and living in his house with him, it was still hard for me to know what kind of gifts he would want me to buy.

I was sitting at Barnes & Noble a couple weeks ago, and at the next table beside me, in the cafe area, there was a guy and girl who were clearly 'going on a date.' They were two strangers getting to know each other for the first time. They were talking directly to each other and asking questions, 'do you like this, do you like that, why do you like it?'

And their conversation was boring, and fascinating, and irritating, and disgusting, at the same time. The guy seemed fake and annoying and I didn't like him. He was putting on a fake persona. He was self-conscious and he was aware that I sat down next to them and that I could overhear their conversation. But he gradually relaxed as I continued to quietly look at my magazine. And when he asked the girl 'do you like this or that,' those questions seemed to excite him, and I could feel the sexual excitement between them, and to me it was strange and unpleasant and disgusting. I didn't look at him, I didn't see his face, and when I sat down I didn't even glance at the two of them - I saw enough to know that they were in the 'doesn't exist' category of people, the people who are totally unattractive and boring to me personally. I saw him for a fraction of a millisecond, long enough to see that he had short hair and was clean shaven and wearing normal clothing, so I put him in the 'doesn't exist' category and ignored him. He was just another member of the faceless crowd. So it was strange and uncomfortable listening to him asking these personal questions and getting excited.

And the girl seemed stupid and smart at the same time. She seemed weird and neurotic. She seemed both shallow and deep. She had a slightly nasal, stuffy voice, like someone with allergies, or someone with the Weston Price facial deformities that affect the sinuses. (Yes, I also have face and jaw deformities.) I was annoyed with her, too.

And I felt at the same time that both of these people would never like me. The feeling went both ways. I didn't like them, and they didn't like me. I envied them, and wished that I could be on a date with someone asking them stupid, trivial, annoying personal questions. 'I like black cats.' 'Why do you like them?' 'I don't know, it's sort of that creepy Halloween thing, you know, the spooky black cats with the green eyes, that kind of thing.' 'Do you have any brothers or sisters?' Every question, every topic, was you, you, you.

In the English language, we don't have a formal and informal 'you,' but other languages do. Some other languages have a formal 'you' that puts distance between you and the person you're talking to, as though you're talking to someone important, talking respectfully, in a cold and impersonal way. The English equivalent word might be 'They.'

Imagine if you talked to someone and referred to that person as 'They' and 'Them.' 'So, what did they do after work?' and the person would respond, 'We went home and watched TV.' Or you could use formal titles, like 'Where is my lady going on vacation this year?' Or 'Sir' or 'My Lord' or 'Sire' or some other formal title. (Yes, I looked these words up on the net a few months ago. I was curious about what words could be used.) When you talk to people that way, it puts a cold formal distance between you. I tend to talk to people that way, with a cold distance.

But other people have a more warm, personal 'you.' In their conversation, they observe things about me personally. 'I see that you like to do this,' 'What will you be doing?' 'What do you think about that?' They are directing it at me personally, as an individual. This is the 'sexual' instinct, which is why we say that it doesn't just mean 'having sex.' It also means 'individual person instead of a group,' or 'personal.'

Have you ever had a teacher, for instance, ask you the question, 'When you write an essay, do you need to imagine a specific person is reading it, or do you talk to a faceless group of people?' When I write, I can talk to a faceless group. Sometimes, I vaguely have a specific person who I want to be reading it, but I am comfortable addressing a whole group instead of individuals. Some people don't feel comfortable that way. They want to focus on one unique, individual person with their lists of likes and dislikes, past and future experiences, and so on, which are always different from one person to the next, and no two people are exactly alike.

I know someone at work who I feel pretty sure is a So/Sx type. She is 'everyone's best friend.' No matter what she's doing, you can interrupt her with a personal comment or a conversation, and she will focus on you, listen to you, and have a response directed at you, and you feel that she cares about what you're saying. But if someone else walks in the room and says something, she is just as likely to hear that person, and then get into a totally different conversation with them. She is warm and likeable. She targets her focus towards one person at a time, and is temporarily in that person's world. But there are many different people who can temporarily have her focus. That fits the So/Sx description.

I get a lot of this from a web page called 'Info from the underground' at www.ocean-moonshine.net. That web page has a malfuctioning first page, so you can't just type in that address in the browser, you have to google it. If you type the address, it gives you some kind of error message. The real address is something like www.ocean-moonshine.net/aPIU23hPOId_3ewpiuc1380734187dkjs, some kind of nonsense code.

I'm interested in these instincts because I want to know more about what's missing in my life. That's why I've been trying to pinpoint my personality type for so long. But I have made the enneagram system look like it's not reliable at all. I have a long history of changing my enneagram type, and before that, my Myers-Briggs type.

Here is my enneagram history: First heard about the enneagram when I was doing telephone therapy with Judith Swack (which is also when the severe electronic harassment began). I thought I was a Type One, because I have perfectionistic tendencies, and strong beliefs about what's right and wrong in society. Then I thought I might be a Nine. Then, a Six. Then I thought I was a Seven. Then, a Five. Then a Four. Now a Three. The only ones that I was sure about were the Eight and the Two. Those descriptions are clearly 'not me.' I'm not a 'strong, dominant, controlling person,' and I'm also not a 'warm, loving, giving, helping, controlling, manipulating, flattering' person. (I sometimes do helpful things, but the description of the Two is much too extreme to be me, in being helpful and other-focused, all of the time. I know I cannot possibly be that.)

Many of the changes were suggestions from 'the voices,' who have been controlling me for years since the therapy. I had electronic harassment experiences before that, but they were never so severe and life-ruining as they have been in the past few years. It was like the voices wanted to deliberately prevent me from feeling sure about who I am, to prevent me from understanding myself, to prevent me from being able to control myself, to prevent me from seeing outside my limitations.

Either the voices are really, really stupid and incompetent, or really, really malicious and evil. Either way, they have done extremely harmful things to my life for a very long time. They either intended to harm me, or were trying to help me but were so stupid and incompetent that all that they did was cause more damage. Whatever, the result has been that I have gone for a very long time unable to meditate, unable to ask myself questions, unable to look at myself, unable to look at the future, unable to make decisions for myself, constantly bombarded with zaps and loud noises whenever I try to think.

Yes, I could use a tape recorder and I could record the audible-to-everyone, physical, external clicking and snapping noises that they make on objects inside and outside my house. The voices are not just in my head. Other people hear these noises and they call it 'The house is settling,' or 'the boards are creaking' or 'the temperature change caused the wood to snap' or 'the temperature change made your windshield glass shrink or expand,' which is how they explain the snapping noises.

If I drive someplace in my car, park the car, and sit there and meditate, I will have a couple of minutes of quiet, but very soon, there will be loud banging cracks on the windshield, as though someone is throwing rocks at the windshield. And it will happen again, and again, and again, and again. Those noises are harassment, an attack.

Sometimes, during or after a snap, I can hear voices, as though it was a sonic bullet and when it exploded it delivered the payload, a message, a signal, a high-frequency audio message. It's my understanding that the snapping noises are caused by ultrasonic attacks, not radio frequency attacks, but, like all the victims, I am just guessing, based on what I've read, because I don't spend my time and money to collect and use these weapons against people, so I don't know what does what.

I got into writing a very long blog with no ending, just because I am entertained by the activity of writing, and because I haven't decided to do any other activities, tasks, or projects, or whatever. I should read over this and try to wrap everything up.

Because of reading and writing this, 'they' started to wonder if I might be a so/sx type instead of a so/sp type. Fine, whatever you want to wonder about, go ahead and wonder. They'll probably change my instinctual stacking a hundred more times before they settle on one thing. I'm keeping it so/sp for now.

http://www.ocean-moonshine.net/e142857369/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=20&MMN_position=83:80

Okay, I read over it, and I inserted a few more paragraphs and comments. And I broke apart the huge, gigantic paragraphs that are so hard to read. I'll go ahead and post it now.

Still can't sync my iPod to iTunes!

Update: I solved this problem. Look here: http://retmeishka.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/my-ipod-synced/. I had to do this:

1. Get your computer online. I had to go to a wi-fi place to connect my laptop, but you might use cable internet or whatever.
2. Open iTunes. Go to the iTunes store online.
3. Log in to iTunes.
4. THEN connect your iPod to the computer.
5. A user agreement should appear automatically. This can only happen if your computer is connected to iTunes and logged in.
6. Say yes to whatever on the user agreement and do whatever they tell you to do, and after that, you should be able to connect the iPod and open it without any problems... hopefully.


***************
ARRGGGHHH! The F-Word was used. I STILL can't sync my iPod to iTunes.

Here is what I do.

I've shut my iPod all the way off and I've restarted it.
I've shut my netbook all the way off and I've restarted it.

ITunes is open on the netbook. I connect the iPod (which is turned on) to the cord. 'Devices' appears in the list in iTunes, and 'iPod Touch' is listed.

(*I learned that I was making it disappear completely because I was pressing the 'eject' button. There is a little triangle with a line under it, to the right of 'iPod Touch,' and I didn't know it meant 'eject.' There's no way of knowing, because in this non-user-friendly computer program, it doesn't show a little popup explanation for a meaningless symbol when you mouse over it. (I found this out by right-clicking.) I thought it meant 'show the contents of this device,' or something like that. So all you see is a meaningless triangle with a line under it, and you have no way of knowing that means 'eject.' Especially since it doesn't make sense to eject an iPod which is connected to a physical cable, and nothing actually happens physically to the iPod when you push 'eject.' It just disappears from the list and is gone forever... unless you unplug the iPod and plug it back in. Then it reappears in the list! That's the first time I was able to make it reappear without totally restarting iTunes.*)

Edit/Preferences/Devices/'Prevent devices from syncing automatically' is NOT checked.

File/'Sync songs on iPod' is grayed out. File/'Transfer purchases from iPod' is grayed out. I cannot click on either of those at all.

Well, here is something suspicious that happens, which gives me a clue to what I need to do. When I connect the iPod, and it appears under 'devices,' a message appears. It says 'iTunes could not connect to the iTunes Store.'

That's why I suspected I might need to authorize my laptop. I figured it might be looking to find my account online at the iTunes Store so that it could try to authorize the computer. But today, I did that, and it still didn't make that message go away. For some reason, it still tries to look at the iTunes Store every time I connect my iPod. And since I don't have wi-fi at home, and since I didn't think to bring my iPod with me when I took my netbook to Barnes & Noble to use their wi-fi... AND since I only have dialup at home, and no dialup modem in my netbook... then I can't connect to the net unless I get in my car and go back out. And it's the Sunday after Christmas, so the library isn't open in Bellefonte, which is why I was doing it all the way in State College at B&N. I don't want to drive all the way back there again, just to see what happens when the netbook is able to reach the iTunes store after I connect my iPod touch to it.

Pet peeve. I *HATE* things that only work when you're online, things that constantly need to download something, things that can't be read offline, and so on. Most of the time, I'm not connected to the internet. I want everything to work independently, all by itself, when I'm not connected to anything. The iPod touch's user guide requires you to go to apple.com to view it - it has no help file saved on the iPod at all. Supposedly this is to save space... but how much space would it really use?

All of this trouble to protect songs from being shared for free... when almost all of the songs that I want to play are FREE electronic songs I downloaded from mp3.com (when it still existed) and soundclick.com, songs that their composers said you were ALLOWED to download for free.

Well... so the next test is, take it to a wi-fi place, both the netbook and the iPod and the connector cable. I won't forget next time. I can't believe it still won't sync. The instructions make it sound like it should be perfectly easy to sync to your iPod. It doesn't say ANYTHING about requiring an internet connection to do this. Apparently they just assume that, of course, EVERYONE is always connected to an always-on cable connection, and NOBODY would ever be using their netbook in a situation where they can't connect to the net.

ITunes won't connect to my iPod, continued...

After a bit of research, I decided that I might need to 'authorize' this laptop.  I've got iTunes installed on the laptop, and it's supposed to be able to connect to my iPod so that I can add or delete songs, because you can't delete them directly from your iPod. >:( Actually, I don't want to delete a song, I want to delete a free scientific lecture that I downloaded as a test.   You can't stop a download in progress either, by the way.  I went through all this already.  So now that this unwanted free download is on my iPod, I want to delete it, and I can't delete it on the iPod itself - I have to delete it on my laptop, in iTunes.

So I find that when I hook up my iPod, it won't connect to the iTunes program.  It connects well enough to recharge its power supply.  It connects well enough that it appears in iTunes's menu on the left side, showing that the iPod is a device connected.  But if you click on that, it disappears and won't come back, unless you shut down iTunes and restart the program.  You can't open it up and look at the contents of the iPod, from within iTunes.

I researched complaints like this on the net, and I had some trouble finding a help file on my own computer, but I did eventually find an offline help file to read.  Somewhere, I got the idea that maybe my laptop wasn't yet authorized to play the songs that I purchased on the iPod.  I purchased them already, but they think that I'm copying them and sharing them or whatever.  You're not allowed to share the files with unauthorized computers, so it won't let you use your laptop to look into the iPod's contents to delete the unwanted download, which you couldn't stop from downloading.  (Yes, other iPod users were making the same complaint.)  And this was a FREE download, so its authors didn't even care if you shared it with everyone!  But you're still not allowed to move it from your iPod to your unauthorized computer.

So I've authorized my laptop now and I'm going to try again to connect it to the iPod and look inside it.  I don't have my iPod with me right now, but I'll report the results later on.

OMG, something else annoyed me.  This laptop is brand new.  You know how I'm always complaining that I hate web pages that can't be viewed properly or operated properly, with buttons that won't push, and that kind of thing, unless you have the LATEST, GREATEST version of Internet Explorer, and no other browser will work, and no browser older than a couple years will work, especially not old Opera on my Windows 98 computer?  Well, guess what.  I'm on my BRAND NEW laptop.  It's so new, that parts of the monitor are still covered in the sticky tape that protects it while it's still in the box.  I have the latest, greatest version of internet explorer and I'm using it right now.

Well, I decided to reset my iTunes password.  I thought I knew what it was, but I got it wrong twice.  So I reset it to something I would remember.  First, I had to wait a long time for the password reset page to load, but that's not unusual for a secure web page.  When it loaded, I couldn't see the whole page.  I could see a choice: do you want us to email a link to you, or do you want to answer a security question?  But that was all I could see.  There was no 'yes' button for me to push, just those questions to choose from.  The page was too big to see.

I looked for a scroll bar.  There was no scroll bar.  The page was too big to display, but yet, there wasn't a scrollbar down on the bottom so that you could move out to the sides, and there wasn't even a scrollbar on the right side of the screen to scroll up and down.  There was nothing.

I clicked my touchpad to highlight the text, and then I slid the cursor down to the bottom.  Bingo - when I highlighted text and then moved down, the page scrolled for me so I could continue highlighting the bottom of the page.  That was a trick I learned years ago while working at a job where I had to look at badly designed web pages all day long, and find ways to print them.  I learned lots of tricks to make web pages viewable or printer friendly when they had strange problems like no scrollbars.  Some other tricks include things like:  taking a screenshot of the page and then pasting it into the drawing program, and then printing that image, if you have one of those web pages that wants to print a panel here on one page, and another panel on a separate page. 

This password reset page was one of THOSE kinds of web pages, not viewable, having strange unpredictable problems doing something which ought to have been straightforward and simple.  But I'm using the latest, greatest version of internet explorer.  It should be able to handle anything.  I was VERY annoyed.

After using the highlight-and-slide trick, I saw that there was a little zoom setting on the bottom right, saying '100%', and when I changed that to 50%, I could see the whole page.  I'm not used to this new laptop; I'm not used to internet explorer; and I'm not used to using a touchpad instead of a mouse, because I didn't bring my mouse with me.  I'm using the bare minimum netbook right now, no electrical cord, no mouse, a naked netbook.  So I have to use it the hard way.  Every little thing I want to do is a challenge that takes several minutes to figure out. 

Well, anyway.  So I couldn't even view the page properly, and it wouldn't interact with my browser properly (by creating scrollbars so that I could view the whole page).  I was very annoyed.  I can't believe that this kind of stuff is STILL going on in my latest, greatest browser.  No wonder that I'm still using Windows 98 and an ancient browser - the new ones are just barely any better than the old ones. 

I was thinking, does Curtis know that if he gets an iPad computer, he won't be able to view Flash on the internet?  I don't know if he wants to.  But I think that includes YouTube.  My iPod has a special app for viewing YouTube, but of course, it didn't work for a long time.  Then I got an updated version, and it sort of worked for a while.  I could be mistaken about this, but I think you can't view YouTube.  Maybe you can just get an app.  I think that's it.  Yeah, I think it's not as bad as I'm making it out to be.  Anyway.  I was just reading about this somewhere, reading about the iPad.  I just know about my own irritation with anything having to do with Apple.  Well anyway, I'll try this later today and comment whether it worked yet, whether I can look into my iPod or not. 

****

I'm going to try to find Curtis again before the end of this month.  That has nothing to do with the rest of this post.

We role-played Dungeons and Dragons when we were kids.

10:02 PM 12/25/10

When we were little, we played Dungeons and Dragons outdoors. My neighbor Jeremy, his little sister Billie, my brother John, and I all played together. It wasn't always all four of us.

We called it Dungeons and Dragons because it was a fantasy situation in a more primitive world with more primitive weapons - no guns, just swords and things like that, and magic, and there were monsters and dragons and evil creatures to fight.

Each of us had a role in the group.

Jeremy called himself the Weapons Expert. His skill was having a special weapon for every situation and knowing the right ones to use. He had a plastic He-Man sword. I don't recall all his other weapons and armor. But he was a fighter.

I was the Healer. I had a staff, which was actually a metal pole used to prop up the laundry line. (I once tried to use it for pole vaulting, but I couldn't get myself up very high off the ground.) I had a circle-shaped zipper bag with a strap, and in the bag I had magical healing items. There were lots of plastic jewels and marbles, bits of jewelry, feathers, miscellaneous objects, and other beautiful bright colored things. I wasn't a very strong fighter, so I was vulnerable to attack and had to call for help if anything was going on.

My brother John, if I recall correctly, was The Ninja. He was secretive, stealthy, skillful, and highly trained in advanced fighting. He was also the oldest. He had real Chinese throwing stars that he could throw at a target down in the basement. He knew how to climb over the side of the family room porch to get down to the basement porch. He had camouflage clothing. (I think we all had camo after a while, but I can't recall for sure if Jeremy and Billie had their own too.)

Billie was the youngest, and she was the Bondage Fetishist. No matter what was going on, it was likely that Billie would somehow end up getting kidnapped, and tied up, and would expect to be rescued. The Damsel in Distress. This was her favorite thing to play, and she was only about six years old at the time. She played this same thing over and over again. It kind of annoyed us sometimes. :) I'm not sure what her official title was, I can't recall. She was also The Copycat: If I had a particular toy, then she HAD to go out and buy that very same toy. I was irritated about it, but my mom said that she did it because she admired me. So it's possible that she was a Healer sometimes too, because I was. I don't remember. I think she might have been a fighter, too. She probably liked Wonder Woman, since Wonder Woman is all about ropes and being tied up and that kind of thing.

We didn't have another group to fight against, but whoever they were, they would have been The Bad Guys. But most of the time, our enemies were monsters. We sometimes fought dragons, or we hid from them if they were flying overhead. Airplanes were dragons. If an airplane flew over, it was a flying dragon and we would try to see what color it was. Black dragons were the strongest. Red dragons were less dangerous. Blue dragons were common, the weakest ones, but I don't recall for sure. (It didn't matter what color the plane really was. Somebody would 'declare' that the dragon was red, and we all agreed. Any changes or disagreements would have to be part of the plot. We tried not to step out of character too much, but we could say, 'I wanted it to be black. I have an idea for something I want us to do with a black dragon.' So we might settle the disagreement.) Some dragons were friendly. It might have landed in a nearby field, and we would have to go confront it, or avoid it. So we might have been more like hunters going after large animals as a group. But it didn't occur to us to kill the dragons and then eat them!

Other times there were supernatural monsters with magical powers. In our basement, there were Freakabomps. Freakabomps were created as kind of a cruel joke on Jeremy, but they continued to exist after the joke was over. I remember we were making fun of Jeremy because he said the word 'Bomp' instead of 'Bump.' It was just the way he talked. Then, the song 'Freakazoid' was on the radio (this was the 1980s), so we put these two things together and got Freakabomps. My brother and I told Jeremy that the Freakabomps lived in the basement. They lived in dark places, like The Grue in the Zork text adventure game.

We made masks out of construction paper, with ugly pig snout noses and horns on top of the head, and we put them on and tried to get Jeremy to come down to the basement so we could jump out and scare him. But he was already scared before he got all the way down the stairs, and he didn't want to walk down into our trap, in the dark basement with the lights off. He called our names, but nobody answered. He went back upstairs. And so I don't think he ever got bomped.

Afterwards, we were all scared of Freakabomps together, and it wasn't a joke on Jeremy anymore. When we played Freakabomps, we played on the same team, and we became more like The Ghostbusters, fighting against the basement monsters. Even though he knew it was just a mean joke that was played on him, Jeremy would still say that he was scared of the Freakabomps if we were going down to the basement. Once you've imagined them, they're hard to forget. A lot of things are like that!

I remembered all this while I was thinking about Pretending. I wanted to remember what kinds of things we pretended when we were playing as kids. Knowing what I know now, I could have more insight into how to make more interesting adventures and more complex plotlines. It could be more exciting and we wouldn't run out of ideas.

The comforting theme was that we were cooperating, working together for a purpose, working to do something, and taking care of each other, protecting and helping each other. That's why we did it.

Everything you eat is poisonous

I was thinking about this in a half-joking, half-serious way. Everything you eat is poisonous.

We are 'heterotrophic' organisms. This means that we have to eat substances that were created by another living creature. We can't just eat inorganic minerals by themselves. We have to eat other, more complex substances that come from living things.

So we eat plants and animals and insects and whatever other categories there are. Plants don't want to be eaten. They make poisons to protect themselves against us. We selectively breed plants so that they produce fewer poisons, but then, the bugs find them and eat them before we do, so we put poisonous pesticides on them to make them poisonous again (unless we are buying organic produce or growing it on a farm that deliberately doesn't use pesticides).

Anyway, from studying nutrition on and off for many years now, I've learned that almost every category of food has some kind of a dangerous aspect to it. Fruits and vegetables cause problems, and so do meats. Synthetic vitamin and mineral pills cause problems too. Nothing wants to be eaten. It's like we are just barely adapted to the world around us, but not quite. It's a constant battle.

I could go into detail about what kinds of problems are caused by foods... I'll just give a few quick examples. Phytic acid in grains and beans interferes with calcium absorption. Salicylates in fruits and vegetables causes reactions in salicylate-sensitive individuals. Tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, and some other foods in that family might cause arthritis in some people. Drugs and poisons come from millions of other plants, and you can't eat anything unfamiliar without being at risk.

My experience with bone marrow showed me that meats are definitely NOT 'meant' to be eaten. The animal didn't grow its body for the purpose of feeding us. It grew its body for the purpose of producing hormones and substances and doing all these functions it needs to do to stay alive. So when you eat bone marrow, you get poisoned by the very same hormones that cause the animal to feel that it is injured, and that trigger its body to produce new blood cells, and to feel strengthened so that it can fight to protect itself (the bone marrow made me feel extremely restless and 'strong' for several hours, and I went jogging around the parking lot because of this unbearable discomfort). Animal bodies weren't designed for the purpose of being eaten by us, any more than plant bodies were designed to be eaten by us.

If you try to eat just plain inorganic minerals you can be poisoned too. I tried to drink mineral water, the one with 'high mineral content,' from the grocery store, and it triggered vomiting, and it also produced poisonous vapors that triggered vomiting every time I got in the car where I had opened up the bottle of water. (Note, when I say it triggered vomiting, I mean that it TRIED to trigger vomiting, but I am vomit-phobic and so I forced myself not to vomit, but had to sit there struggling for a long time.) I don't know which mineral in the mineral water triggered vomiting.

I could go into a lot more detail but I'm not in the mood. I'm just entertaining myself by blogging.

angry outburst: I hate doctors! (except Dad) (and Uncle David)

Yes, I'm wearing drug-residue clothing and it's putting me into a ranting mood.

I was reading about Charlie Horses because I just got one. I remembered from nutrition class that rancid oils can cause them, for instance, if you eat old french fries that have been sitting for a long time.

I found this web page: https://www.mediguard.org/post/medication/view.html?id=37975&page=2. On this page, somebody says, 'Dear i guard whydoes omega 3 fish oil worsen my heart failure?'

The reply is: 'DOES NOT!' The end. He says, 'MediGuard Answer/Reply:

Omega 3 fish oil does not typically worsen heart disease. Its effects are still being studied however in many disease states. Follow-up with your doctor to monitor the progression of your heart failure and see what options you have to slow the progression of the disease.'

In other words, whatever you've observed or experienced CANNOT POSSIBLY BE TRUE, because YOU are not a double-blind placebo-controlled government-sponsored scientific experiment! You are a mere mortal, a single human being observing your own body! Whatever happened to you cannot possibly be real!

She said that taking fish oil worsened the symptoms of her heart failure. I believe her! I have taken fish oil capsules too, and they gave me TERRIBLE symptoms. I recently had some omega-3 capsules that I was going to try with Peter to help his foot, which has an unhealed sore on it. But before giving them to him, I skin-tested the oils myself.

After simply applying the oil to my skin, I was having chest pains within a short time after applying it. I also was getting chest pains when I was eating lots of packaged sausage snacks, which I accidentally left at room temperature (instead of refrigerating them) after opening the bag. I was eating lots of those last winter.

My chest pains and heart problems started a couple years ago. I did several things at once which were correlated with the beginning of my chest pains and heart problems: (let me mention, I am a 36 year old mostly healthy female weighing 130 pounds)

1. I burned candles in the apartment. Peter, and other people, had given me some candles and I never bothered to burn them before. In fact, I think I wasn't allowed to have them at that apartment. But in 2006 or so, I burned them. It was around that time that I started having chest pains.

2. I grew medicinal herbs in my apartment and contaminated my belongings. One of the herbs was tobacco. My chest pains began around that time.

3. I was friends with Peter, who is taking a variety of drugs and heart medications. I often got 'secondhand drug' exposures from being with him, touching him, going to his house, etc. I learned later on that many drugs go directly through skin, and you don't even have to eat them, and you only need a small amount of the drug to have a reaction. Some of Peter's heart medications list 'angina' (chest pains) as one of the withdrawal symptoms. I was getting chest pains during the time period that I was around Peter.

Nowadays, I have chest pains more often, and other heart problems like pounding heart, tachycardia, and slightly elevated blood pressure (but not elevated very much). Many times it comes from a reaction to my drug residues, but other times I notice it from eating certain foods.

Even though I advocate the Weston Price diet (except, don't eat bone marrow unless you want to be horribly traumatized and have extremely severe vomiting and food poisoning, and you should assume that all other internal organ meats will probably do that same thing to you, so if you try them, eat only a tiny crumb and then wait twenty minutes while it goes through the stomach to your intestines, to see if it triggers the vomit reflex)... Even though I advocate the Weston Price diet, with lots of precautions and disclaimers and exceptions and warnings... even so, I know from my own observations that some saturated fats cause heart problems immediately, very soon after eating them, and you can observe it yourself, and it will be very noticeable if you ALREADY have some kind of heart problem, like the lady on this web page had. She noticed it because she already has heart failure.

Omega-3 fish oils are 'smiled upon' by mainstream medicine right now as 'healthy fats.' But there is some kind of a problem with them. Maybe they are destroyed by cooking, canning, oxidizing, and by the process of making them into pills. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad if you ate fish oils from a raw fish. I don't know why. But I agree with this woman. If she observed it, it's real, and we need to understand what's causing it.

Fish oil pills are bad. I had a severe reaction to something years ago when I took two pills at once: a vitamin E pill, and a fish oil pill. The next morning, my whole body was covered in bruises for no reason. I was walking with a weakness in my left leg as though I had had a stroke. I took only one of each pill.

Also, I wanted to mention last year, last winter, I went through a time period when I was having such severe chest pains that I went to the doctor for them. Two things were going on. I was eating lots of those sausage things, which were a 'processed meat' with preservatives and all that, and I often left them at room temperature when I didn't know they were supposed to be kept refrigerated. The other thing going on was, I was having an outbreak of Rhododendron residues.

The Rhododendron incident began when 'they,' the voices, urged me to go take a picture of a rhododendron in Black Moshannon Park during one of my 'random' car trips. That picture is still up on my eagledove9 page on Flickr.com. After walking near the rhododendron, my shoes got contaminated with poison residue from the soil around the plant, and it got on the floor of my car and spread around the house. After getting on the floor, it would also get onto the bottom cuffs of my pants if they touched the floor. Then I would wash the pants and the poison would spread all over everything in the laundry. So I started having these terrible outbreaks of rhododendron poisoning with chest pains after that.

I was having one of those contamination outbreaks last winter when I had to call off work and go to the doctor about my chest pains. It got better whenever I got rid of the clothing that was contaminated, including the coat that I was wearing. In fact I remember writing in this blog about how I experimented with making a new 'cloak' for myself out of that synthetic fleece fabric.

All of these heart problems only started a couple years ago when I was doing the three things: 1. burning candles, 2. growing herbs including tobacco, and 3. being exposed to secondhand heart drugs from Peter.

Anyway, I hate how doctors automatically say, 'NO IT DOESN'T!' if you try to tell them that something caused a symptom. You couldn't possibly know what you're talking about. YOU'RE not a 'team of experts.'

No, Germaine's probably a Three

...which is why I can relate to her character so well. I watched the rest of 'Germaine For Stupids' today. I didn't know this cartoon has been around for eight years. It's probably a cartoon by a Three, about Threes. I know exactly how it feels to want people to respect you, and at the same time, they're seeing you as a sex object and nothing but that. And you WANT to be sexually desirable, but you don't want it to get in the way of your being understood and respected as a person.

In Wikipedia the descriptions of Foamy made it sound like Foamy hates Germaine, but he sounded sympathetic to her in that video. And Foamy is expressing the opinion of the cartoon creator Jonathan Ian Mathers, so the cartoonist obviously is sympathetic to her too.

I'm not sure why I frequently think that Threes are Sixes. It has happened a bunch of times. It happens if they have a 'countercultural' style, if they seem non-mainstream. I always thought that Threes were the most mainstream people imaginable, that they were the ones with the neatly cut short hair and suits and ties, and the women who follow all the rules without questioning them and cut their hair and wear their makeup and their clothes exactly the way they're supposed to. So when I see people in subcultures or countercultures I can't imagine they're Threes.

Yes, incandescent bulbs will be illegal. Absolute evil.

One little evil at a time, nickel and diming us to death. More and more of a communist dictatorship every year. It's true, incandescent light bulbs really will become illegal, starting in 2012.

Compact fluorescent bulbs make my eyes burn and my vision blurry. I even get sunburned by them if I've been using St. John's Wort, which causes sensitivity to ultraviolet. My face becomes painfully burned red after I visit Peter's house (which I haven't in a while), where he has several of those compact fluorescent bulbs. I absolutely hate those things. I hate the way they make me eyes feel. My eyes are unable to relax under those bulbs. I hate the fact that they are the only thing the government will let us use.

I took one of the retina-burner light bulbs out of my ceiling this evening. It was very hard to reach. I unscrewed it with the very tips of my fingers. What if I had dropped it? If it breaks, an explosion of mercury will splatter over your carpet and the carpet will have to be removed, for thousands of dollars. It will also splatter mercury onto the nearby walls. If you step in it, your feet will leave a trail of mercury footprints all over the house. I already know about this from herbal drug residues. Mercury will be exactly the same. Mercury vapor will rise from every single footprint of splattered mercury tracked around your house. And not everyone knows about this. Only a few people know that those light bulbs contain mercury. Only a few people know that if they break, mercury will splatter around the entire area and will be tracked around your whole house. The government doesn't care.

This law is the most evil and insane thing that I have ever heard, and it's really true. I really am going to start stockpiling lots and lots of incandescent bulbs. Maybe I will hand-paint a picture of a middle finger on each and every one of them, to express my feelings about the new law. Yes, some black market entrepreneur should make incandescent bulbs that come in a box with a raised middle finger on the front of the box.

I am so chemical sensitive that I am actually afraid I might have gotten some mercury on me just from handling the bulb. I washed my hands right afterwards, but things like that don't wash very easily.

I truly, truly, truly hate the government. And it won't be long now before I'm not allowed to say that in my blog anymore. A few more years, and it will be censored internet. We already have a censored internet, but it will be EVEN MORE censored. Not long before people go to jail for saying that they hate the government.

Actually, when I talk about things like this, I usually don't say 'not long until.' Things like this are usually true right now and have already been true for a long time. It isn't just in the future. It's continuing from the past into the present. It's already happening.

We are all too tired and sick to revolt. We're all too busy paying the bills.

Foamy the Squirrel; men/women ratio; female power

'It doesn't matter if I gain weight to deter them, it doesn't matter if I shave my head bald... men will fuck anything.' Germaine, Foamy the Squirrel, 'Travel Log II.'

I'm watching Foamy the Squirrel because Curtis posted an episode on his facebook page, 'No Christmas For You!' Watching Foamy is like watching softcore porn. This person sounds like they might be a So/Sx Type Six... but I'm always wrong about my enneagram type guesses. Even so, that's what they sound like to me.

I think I like Germaine. I've only watched two episodes of her so far - I watched 'Five More Minutes' (about her sleeping while Foamy wants to wake her up so she'll take him out to get a bagel), and 'Travel Log II.' I will probably watch 'Germaine For Stupids,' which is for people who need to get to know the Germaine character.

I agree with her. It doesn't matter if I grow a mustache, it doesn't matter if I don't shave, it doesn't matter if I stop washing my hair and I grow dreadlocks. Men will fuck anything. I've known that for a while. But not all men will fuck anything. And that doesn't mean that it's easy to get the particular men you want to fuck you, to fuck you. It's easy to get large numbers of men you DON'T want to fuck you.

(Yes, I'm having a drug reaction today. I'm wearing some old clothes that are contaminated with SJW residue. This particular one is the 'sex-obsessed' drug mix.)

There was a time when I thought, or 'they' thought, that I was doing 'gross' things to keep men away from me. However, it's not that simple. My hair and shaving routines are something that I believe in now as a personal value system or religious practice. Also, I have found out that large numbers of men love women who don't shave. These are ordinary men, not 'hippies.' Some of the men on the hair lovers websites also love whiskers and facial hair. So there is a 'small but devoted cult following' who love the things that I have, and I know they exist.

I wanted to talk about the men/women ratio. This is one of the reasons why 'men will fuck anything.'

First, I have read that the likelihood of having a male child is higher than the likelihood of having a female child. There is a slightly higher number of males born than females. It's not much, but it adds up. (That seems strange because in the past I remembered reading that there were slightly more women than men. So I could be wrong about this. It doesn't matter.)

I've read Warren Farrell's books, and he says that women don't usually initiate - they don't ask a guy out. Either they're trained that way by society, or it's something instinctive, but for whatever reason, men usually have to go after the women, because women won't go after them. This isn't always true, it's just a general rule. He says that if men don't ask a woman out, then nothing will happen. I know that this is true on dating websites. I've made a 'male' profile (without a photo) at dating websites before, and NOBODY ever emails me. But I can make a female profile on the dating website, and NOT EVEN POST A PHOTO, and write nothing about myself, and I will get dozens of emails right away. It's a blank photo, and only a few words about myself to fill up the space required, and I'll get bombarded with emails.

So I don't know for sure about whether there really are more men born than women. And I don't know if the problem is because women don't initiate. But I know one other thing: women go through menopause.

Around the age of fifty, usually starting in the late thirties and into the forties, women's bodies change and gradually become less fertile (I know, everyone knows this). But think about what that does to the male/female ratio. What if you're a sixty year old man who suddenly decides that you want to have children sometime before you die? You HAVE to go chasing after somebody younger than fifty or so. The older they are, the higher the chance of getting a deformed child or Down's Syndrome or other diseases.

So all of the over-fifty men are now REQUIRED, by necessity, to chase after women many decades younger than they are, if they decide that they want to have children. (If you only want sex, you can still go after people your own age. I'm talking about fertility now.)

(*I was trying to download 'Germaine For Stupids,' but in the middle of it, I tried to move the slider to replay something I couldn't hear, and the player messed up so that it forgot everything it had downloaded, and it kept downloading but it wouldn't let me start playing again. I hate these temporary downloads and flash players and all the stuff designed to make it so that you can't save the video. I'm on dialup, but it still does that when I download it on my iPod using wi-fi too. It's even worse on my iPod, actually. I've never tried using the laptop at the library.*)

(*Last night 'they' were saying I should give Curtis my new laptop that I really didn't want. That's a strange idea, but it isn't inconceivable. It's not the kind he wanted, and he gave me the impression that he was just going to try again to go get the one he wanted. He had a lightning bolt or power surge or something that messed up his computer. I think it's salvageable, but I haven't seen it. It also could have been an electronic attack by 'them,' or else a computer virus. Again, I haven't seen it.*)

Women who lose their fertility, after menopause, are still able to have sex, although it's more difficult because the vagina produces less mucus than it used to (and because our stupid society cuts off men's foreskins without their consent, and without a foreskin, you need more artificial lubrication for sex. The foreskin prevents the penis from chafing directly against the vaginal walls as much as a circumcised penis does.). But anyway women have no choice, they can't have a baby anymore unless they use some kind of medical treatment like using an egg donated by someone else. But they can still find large numbers of men who will have sex with them.

I know this is confusing and hard to explain. It's possible for both sexes, at any age, to find someone who will have sex with them. But in terms of FERTILITY, older men are still fertile, and older women are not. If I am only talking about fertility, then the men/women ratio is very high. There are very large numbers of fertile men, compared to a small number of fertile women. Men don't just 'give up trying' when they get older. Women are forced to 'give up trying' unless they want to spend money on fertility treatments. So a lot of older men are still trying to go after younger women for fertility reasons. There are some older women going after younger men, for a variety of reasons, but it isn't necessary for fertility.

If it's true that there really are a slightly larger number of men born than women, then that really adds up, each generation. Every year, every time someone is born, there is a slightly higher chance that it will be a boy instead of a girl. Over time it adds up a lot (if it's true). If you have 49% women, and 51% men, then that means that in a group of 1000 people, you'll have 490 women, and 510 men, which is 20 men who don't have a (monogamous) woman to match up with. In 10,000 people, it's 4900 women for 5100 men, so that's 200 men without a woman. In 1,000,000 people (I know this is repetitive, I'm just thinking out loud), there are 490,000 women, and 510,000 men, so it's 20,000 men without (monogamous) partners. All of those men are lurking around on dating websites now.

I'm just thinking about this, trying to explain why things are the way they are, why women have so much sexual power and men have so much less sexual power (on dating websites anyway), why average women, or ugly women, can still get lots of men more easily than average/ugly men can get lots of women.

But even though I can find large numbers of average men, it's hard to find the particular men I want. I'm picky about who I'm attracted to, and I am somewhat an ephebophile, looking for young teenage guys or small skinny guys who look younger than they are. I am also a hair lover, which everyone who reads my blog already knows.

And it's hard to find anyone who understands me and can talk to me the right way, especially since I am being constantly zapped and attacked, so that I can't focus my mind on the conversation we're having, and I can't feel the subtle feelings or subtle thoughts, I can't really be myself, I can't do anything except those brain functions that are easy and familiar, because when you're constantly zapped with something, even just for surveillance purposes, it disrupts the electrical fields of the brain and the body. The hardest things, the deepest things, the most original observations, the truest and most sincere thoughts and feelings, are also the weakest, the most fragile, the most subtle, and the hardest to protect against attack. They are the first things you lose when you become a victim of constant electronic attacks. All that's left is 'autopilot,' those things that are easiest to say, the shallowest thoughts and feelings, anything that comes out automatically, and whatever puppet words the soul-murderers force you to say. So that makes it hard to have a deep conversation, or a deep relationship, with anybody at all. I can't feel my deepest thoughts and so you're having a conversation with a mindless robot, an artificial intelligence.

I'm just ranting today. I have to go to work in a couple hours. I've had a large cup of coffee. I started my period and took ibuprofen for the cramping. I hate when I start it on a work day - I'd rather start on my days off.

I'm not even thinking about Christmas or remembering that today is Christmas Eve. I would want a holiday that is meaningful to me and 'my people.' The So/Sp instinctual type has a bad reputation for being a 'social climber.' Social climbers are portrayed as heartless, soulless psychopaths who abandon their best friends because those friends aren't 'good enough' for the social group that the climber wants to be in (you're too poor, too ugly, too fat, etc, for my social group to approve of you). But that's not how it feels to me. To me it feels like I'm searching for 'my people,' a group of people who understand me, who want to live in the same kind of world that I want to live in, who see things the way I see them, which is why I'm interested in intentional communities.

I think I'll post this now... nothing more I can think of. I'll probably write another one later, maybe.

virus day

7:04 PM 12/23/10

Having a stomach virus is very hard for someone who's emetophobic and will do ANYTHING to avoid vomiting.

Getting over a stomach virus today, and I'm sure I'll catch it again. The viruses will be on the bed or on the clothes I was wearing. I will have to clean those things to stop re-catching the virus. I got it at work from a girl who likes to run around pushing people and getting in your face and getting all over everyone. She's always touching everyone. I don't usually mind it. But yesterday she was close to me while she was using her phone and I smelled the fear smell, that adrenaline smell. It's the same thing I smell when Peter's having an insulin reaction. It happens when you vomit, too. She told me she had just vomited a few minutes ago. She was in my face several times and hugging and touching and running around me. I like her, but she sometimes gets on my nerves, and I didn't want to be close to her after she said she was vomiting and I smelled that fear smell. Then, she actually got ready to vomit again, right after she was getting in my face and pushing me around. She almost threw up in a trash can. So it was inevitable that I caught it. I catch stomach viruses very easily.

After being around her, I started feeling like I was going to vomit. So I didn't eat or drink anything. The virus was slightly different from the version of the stomach virus that I've had several times this year. With this virus, I was actually sensitive to smells. Every smell disgusted me, even mild smells. And I was having trouble controlling the muscle contractions - they were happening on their own and I couldn't stop them. Usually I can fight to suppress them. But I would get a vomit-contraction if I yawned, or if I moved my mouth the wrong way, or moved my tongue. I was glad I didn't have a full stomach because I would have thrown up right away and there would have been no hope of controlling it. So that was different. The past couple viruses I had, I didn't notice smells making me sick, and I didn't have uncontrollable muscle contractions, and I was able to fight it.

We got it because of Christmas. When large numbers of people travel, they always cause outbreaks of the Norovirus. It happens during football season too. It's predictable, consistent, and reliable. Our managers at Weis always complained that lots of people called off sick during football games, and they were always assuming that was because people wanted to go to the game or watch it on TV. But I hate football, and I never watch it at all, but I still always get sick right around football game days. A whole bunch of people get sick for real.

So I called off work today. I stayed in bed all day and just drank a little bit of water, and then later on, sugar water.

*****

Theme: The revival of hope. I've gotten hit with a drug on my clothing, with St. John's Wort, and it was the herbal residue version of it, along with the tobacco plant residues. Both of those are mixed together in the residues from the other apartment. That particular mix makes me very friendly, cheerful, and hopeful, and it also causes sexual arousal. But even though I know that I'm having a drug-induced mood, I am still wondering about hope.

I can only be hopeful for real if something has changed in my life that will make it so that the same problems don't happen again and again. The only new thing is that I've been reading about time management and self-motivation. I don't know if that's enough to make a major change in my life that will permanently improve things for real.

But I always feel hopeful after the winter solstice anyway. The days will be getting longer. We are still losing heat in the Northern Hemisphere, so the weather will get worse, but the light will be brighter and warmer.