sev @sev@weirder.earth

A-ha! It's a cabinet with plumbing behind it and they don't want to store anything where there might be a leak, maybe

Seen today in the ER

Today I realized that "doesn't deal well with ambiguity" is tech-management bullshit-speak for "Won't let management gaslight them with vague requirements that are guaranteed to not be met" and that explains so much

Made my favorite candied nuts again. I'm always surprised at how fast & simple the recipe is...and also how goddamn hot molten sugar is. I have, once again, blistered a finger because I forgot that recently decanted slightly caramelized sugar is reeeallly hot. Ow.

Also, having added ginger and allspice and cayenne this time, it smells fab and I'm impatient for it to cool so I can eat some!

(recipe: https://www.hummingbirdhigh.com/2012/08/new-york-style-candied-peanuts.html)

Aw, heck, I forgot to cw:food that. Dammit. Sorry, y'all.

Hey, if you're one of the folks that H. E. harrassed and now you're having to listen to people mourning him like he was some great guy, I hear you. Hearing how people miss your harasser *sucks* and I'm sad that your experience isn't better respected.

I just told a friend's 12-year-old that "pop tarts are basically dumplings" and the expression of amazement on that kid's face was *priceless*.

I had *one* mojito. Just one.

And now I am super-floaty. And maybe I should have better dinner and a lot of water.

happy kitty home

Bigkitty squeezed himself out a barely-open window last night, hung out on the roof for awhile, and then bolted when we tried to figure out how to get him to come in for dinner.

He came back after 4am, meowing on the back porch until I came down to let him in, hissed at me on his way in, but eventually decided to calm down.

Of course, by that time, smolcat had eaten his dinner.

I'm a wreck today but at least my kitty is home.

Tonight my schedule is wide open and my family will be out and I have no idea what I'm going to do with all that freedom!

Last time I found myself in this situation I was up until 5am playing video games. Maybe I'll do that. (what shall I play?)

I don't enumerate my praxis, but if I did, "do not argue vocabulary across class lines" would be on there.

I'm an ivory tower feminist. Blue-collar queers have way better things to do than to listen to me twaddle on about definitions. (No, this was not brought on by any discussion anywhere recently. I just had a moment of missing the former partner with whom I learned this lesson. I can't talk to them so instead I'm here sharing it with y'all.)

To test all this I took a short-acting anti-anxiety med before circus class today and there were several things that were suddenly much more achievable. Turns out that months of forcing myself to Do It Anyway despite my panic-reaction didn't help at all.

Remember, kids, "propranolol" ends with "LOL"!

So that's how I end up crying, terrified, over things that I've done successfully, over and over again. I keep doing it and it keeps feeling worse. Anxiety-brain doesn't listen to logic, so muscling my way through the thing is only a good solution in the shortest of terms. (sometimes, I really just have to get the thing done and worry about the consequences later).

Other than medication, I don't have reliable ways of breaking this cycle.

Logic-brain looks at that and says, see, you did the Thing, and nothing bad happened! Hypothesis tested. Thing is safe. Stop worrying.

But anxiety-brain says: I did the thing and it felt *awful*. There was a knot in my stomach and I couldn't breathe right and that just felt terrible and please don't do that again. So next time it's time to do the thing then I feel *worse*, because anxiety-brain is ramping up the anxiety, don't do that, it's awful!

having named my anxiety, rather than just lumping it in as a depression symptom, means I can look at it as its own thing, which I've been doing some over the last coupe of years.

It doesn't work the way I thought it did.

When I'm feeling anxiety about something, I usually start by rolling my eyes, c'mon, jerkbrain, stop getting in the way. And then I make myself do the thing anyway.

I'm pretty sure that's making it worse. (continued)