Lessons learned this semester

Here is what I learned besides the classroom stuff.

1. Take only one massive graphics intensive class at a time.  If there is overlap don't do it.
2. There is a good reason that you are feeling wigged out in the classroom. The PTSD is no joke to deal with, you now know the spatial triggers, take steps to make sure you don't get in a trigger loop.  
3. Weather permitting, take the bike.
4. Take a meal. you need to eat more than you have been. 
5. Do the gym before class.  this means leaving house at 12:30. 
6. Life is much nicer for you when you have the food you like to eat ready to hand.  It is worth the effort having home baked cookies and lentil stew available to pack and go. 
7. Take your supplements.
8. Being upset is exhausting. Get your rest.

portrait of the "NotMyDog

Photoshop has some fun

I am working on my Final for Photoshop, this is the background.

 

partial restoration of a sweet picture of mom and dad

further work done on restoration.

things move on

Mr Footless's feet are headed to Africa to walk for someone else.

Having an assessment about things

I seem to have hit a wall.  Goodness  knows that I have faced walls before.  I have done a lot of things that seemed impossible and looked to me like I would never be able to do them.  I understand the value of persistence, calm action in the face of wanting to run screaming down the street, wanting to cry and quit.
I am considering if I have come upon a place that is permanently broken. If it is, I will simply have to build bridges around it,or if I have accidentally overloaded myself and if I temporarily back off and try to proceed more slowly I can get through.
the vision therapy is working on the more intense parts of convergence.  About an hour after I finish one of the new exercises I find myself in a state of fight or flight rage and sorrow that lasts, well it lasts a long time.
I know that in part it is being exacerbated by what is becoming increasingly clear  is positional PTSD.  My present class seat is making this a whole lot worse.  I did not know that I should not be sitting where I have to turn my head to the right and constantly refocus my eyes while turning between the front and the computer screen.
I know that now.
Up to the last week I have been spending my time too freaked out to climb out of my tree and cope with my life.  I finally took enough time to just, sit, long enough to be able to focus on homework and get some things done.
I don't know what to do.  I don't like quitting when I can see the benefits of proceeding. At the same time I can't have another semester like this, it takes too much out of me.
I also hate the trauma that broke me, and left me with these problems and I will not let it or the perpetrators win.  If I give up do they win?  If I let myself be broken while I see a way of repairing the broken parts do they win?  If I am not strong enough to do this, do they win?
Am I backing down or backing away to get a run up?  Am I leaving the object I can not move, or going out to find a lever?  I think I may be shifting into a lower gear for the steeper grade.  If I don't bomb through it all at top speed and it still gets done, it is still done.  Whose timetable am I working on anyway?
Mine. Really. If I do it slower and from lower down it will still happen.  I may be facing a wall but I am not stuck in a situation I can not escape, and my distress is not permanent.
screw normal. I can only be me as well as I can.
   

And a thousand words more

please note: the door is closed.  I got Lucille in there and closed the door.  I got it done.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Here is a picture that I could not have enough words to say.

kind of in the middle

now

almost there, another few things need to go.

Indulging in excess

Yesterday I overdid.  In fact this entire weekend I overdid.  It started on Friday when I dropped everything at a moments notice to go dancing, knowing that I was also going dancing Saturday and had to provide snacks for the dance as well as doing my normal Saturday things.  So come Sunday  I had this day all planned in my head, that included cleaning up the kitchen and homework and building food for the rest of the week.  Then I got a text from Bestie.  she has been my friend for multi many years and had just got back from a trip to Italy. So instead of the quiet day doing things I needed to do for a calm week, I did do the kitchen cleanup mostly, and the rest of the day was spent in exercise. 
First I biked over to Bestie's house. Then we went on a hike up some lovely foothill country including a time sitting looking out over the next ridges and watching a hawk playing on the wind and hovering motionless until he would get bored and swoop and rise and find another  place to sit motionless with the wind holding him up.  We got back to her place, and I headed on. 
The ride back made me realize that I had not eaten in a long time and so I decided to detour  and hit the fish taco stand for a fast dinner.  I texted Sound guy these plans and we decided to meet up and do taco stand and eating together.  He was coming up from his place, and when I hit downtown  He was still a ways out so I decided to ride down along his route and meet him. 
two miles south, we meet up, and ride back together talking about what did we really want to eat.  We ended up at a pizza by the slice place.  After eating we were neither one ready to head back home.
So we went riding back up the  river trail another two miles, before heading down and towards my house. 
I would expect to be feeling like I had been hit by a truck after that much exercise.  I don't,  I am ever so slightly sore.
Four years ago I was extremely sedentary  as Mr Footless was failing and becoming more and more unstable.  I have physically transformed over the last three years.  I have my self, my strong energetic self back. 
I am so glad to see me again.

thinking about what happens next

As time goes on things have sorted out in a lot of different ways.  I keep learning about who I am and what I am able to do, and what I want to do that I am able to do, not necessarily the same thing.  The big question that I have circling in my brain is this: What happens next, and how?  What am I supposed to do, what can I do? and how will I get there from here?
Those are the distance questions.  Then there are the close up ones.  How do I make this day count in the scheme of things what are the tasks today that will count  for tomorrow and the distant future? I feel like I am building a bridge across air to a place I can't see with things I don't understand.  I have hopes  that I can't place and wants I can't articulate.  what do I want really?

•  To clean up the residual mess here, to sell this place and move to one that suits me better.  
• Something smaller, tidier, more manageable.
•  I want the means to live by my own lights.
•  If that means working, I want to work  somewhere that does not micromanage and that leaves me alone to do whatever it is. 
• Whatever my fears about getting from here to there, I want them not to drop me in my tracks.
• I want to live with no one in my personal living space. 
• I also want male companionship and cuddling from time to time.
• I have served others and cared for others all of my life.  I want to care for me mostly.  

I am still who I am.  I have a compassionate and caring heart. I just don't want to live giving all myself away. 
I am tired. I have a day in front of me I want to go back to bed.  Bed is boring. Time to move on.

Practice practice practice.  This is the latest Photoshop assignment.  The actual photo shoot will happen later today with someone who will not pick up and move the camera.

Short story

The last time I saw my husband, was the day I washed and dressed him for the long business of being dead.  I was so entirely drained by the last few months, the last few years of living with him and the illness that finally killed him that I was numb.  I wanted to love him, to feel his loss, to be sad about him going, and truth is, I wasn't, I didn't, and except on a very few occasions, I still don't.
I did want to give him a loving preparation, so on the day of his burial I went to the funeral home carrying the clothes and cloth and the soap and towels I would need to send him out clean and dressed for his last time above ground and the time after that below it.
My Husband lay on a table in a room.  He lay next to the coffin I had bought from the coffin maker and taken up to my home town.  I had painted the coffin with a nine pointed star on the lid.  It had taken three days to finish and now the lid was set aside and the box waited like an empty hole for its contents.
He was so still. He lay with his eyes half open, in the semi curl that his tightened muscles would never relax.  His legs were drawn up and the stumps where his feet would have been sat in the air. Who was that,  and what did you do with the man that I loved and lived with? Without life he was almost not recognizable, was that really him?
 He suffered deeply from the cold, always, so I had chosen and washed his favorite warm clothes.  I brought his lined jeans, the long underwear, the favorite shirt, woolly stump covers and one of his ubiquitous hats. I brought the knitted vest he chose the yarn for, that I had knitted and he had worn into a felted mess that he would not take off, except twice a year, for washing. I laid aside the clothes and pulled out a pan and soap.
I looked him over as I washed his legs and belly, trying to memorize what would be gone soon, trying to gather a sense that this was the same person I knew so well.  Even washing his face and combing and parting his hair feeling the whiskers under my fingers and his mustache, I still couldn't have a sense that this still dead form was anything but a seashell.
I changed the water three times washing the last remaining bits of his final days off him. they hadn't been nice days and he smelled. I left his hands for last.  
 The tendons in his hands had tightened over time closing his hands into half curls that he could open only partly.  He had worked with them all his life. Even old and shrunken his fingers were callused and hard palmed, with ingrained dirt and short nails.  Now they were curled tight against the palms like withered leaves.  I took a while to soak out some of the dirt and to loosen the fingers enough to place the burial ring on one of them.  They loosened a bit with the warm water, not much, just a bit.
 I uncurled the one hand and set the ring in place.  His hand curled around mine and cradled it in a movement that was so natural and so habitual, It was the movement that over all the years had held my hand and let me feel his love.  When we were driving at night, sitting together watching TV, curled together in bed spooned behind me his hand held mine like that.
 This was the last time he would ever hold my hand.  It was the time I cried the most and longest, for all the times he would never be there to hold my hand again.
I dried my eyes and wiped and blew my nose on the cloth I brought to wrap him in.  The rules said silk, Somehow silk would not have fit him at all.  I had looked through the fabrics that were on offer at the store and finally chosen a woven cotton flannel plaid in green and brown.  He would have liked it.  I wrapped the fabric around him carefully and asked one of the assistants if he could help me with the last bits.
Two men came in and very gently and respectfully lifted him into the open hole in the box.  I patted him one last time, and the lid slid home. He would have been happy to hear the battery powered drill that fastened the lid down seating the screws neatly into place, he liked a job done right.
He was made ready as well as I could, I was entirely wrung out and done for the day, and ahead for me was the burial and the funeral dinner. I patted his lid and said goodbye.
He rolled off to ride out to his last place, I folded my towels and picked up my things and walked home to get ready to meet him there.

I found something

The Equal opportunity silly hat

 now the hat alone

photoshop final

This is my final project in Photoshop

I have been learning to use PhotoShop.

Here is the beast,

Beginning again

The semester is over the semester begins.  Just paid tuition on the summer set. Just got the book for the  online class.  Time has come to pull Violetta out and get her ready for summer transport. I need to mow the lawn in back, pull in the laundry wash my dancing shoes, find or make another dancing skirt, just the things of daily living.
I suddenly see that over time I have begun to make a life that fits me.  For the first time in so many years, I can be myself as hard as I can.  I think I like it.

Finishing up

This week is final project week.  I am finishing my classes, and settling down for a couple weeks off until I start summer semester.  I am doing ok, I know that I passed and in my art class I am getting a high B.  Considering everything I did somewhat better than Ok.  Positives: I am stronger. Physically. I have improved my muscle strength, and my stamina.  I am more organized.  I got out the door twice a week with all my equipment and supper and got to class on time and did my work.  I am adapted in to the bus system.  I know how and where and when to pick up the bus to get where I need to go. I am free of depending on my car for distance in ugly weather. I made the transition to the student mind set, and am being accepted by my much younger fellow students.  I have retrieved my flexibility of mind, the one that lets me say, if you can't do it one way you can find another bridge.  I have relearned the process of building new brain paths.  I found some highly emotional swamp lands and found my way through them.
Yesterday I made one of those grownup purchases that  have to happen.  I went out and bought  a lawn mower.  One with a battery and charger so that I will finally not have to be dragging the cord and struggling with not mowing the thing.  I feel badly because it was an expensive purchase, and I don't really "need" to buy it because my 16 year old electric mower does work.  Thing is, I hate it with a passion and have many angry bad memories of it over the years,  Mr Footless's OCD rituals and compulsions were particularly bad around mowing, and we hates it and the memories.  So I did a bit of research and a bit of shopping and now I have this big machine to massacre the grass in my yard. 
Do I think I will ever like doing this? No.  I never understood the idea of a lawn and lawn care as this important thing.  I can keep the weeds down though and keep the city Yard Nazi off my behind.  What I would really like to do is let it go back to natural grass prairie and leave it the hell alone.  It is a distinct thought.

Thinking about summer

It is time to register for summer classes. I am not sure that I want to, at the same time I need to not waste any time. 
I feel much more confident, I have done relatively well in my classes. Much to my surprise considering the way the class has kicked my behind I am doing very well in the art class.  CAD continues to be a challenge, but since the teacher has been very kind about helping me by walking me through and sitting on her hands to not help, I am learning the huge pig of a program.  My eye hand coordination and my memory bank of things I understand is growing daily.
 I think that I kind of know what my direction should be.  I think that 3D printing is my direction and right now I am thinking about how to aim at the next tree, which tree in the forest in the direction of 3D printing is my next tree?
This afternoon I will be headed in to talk to the course advisers and pick my tree. I am beginning to think I may be able to do this thing.  Want to know the funny thing? I am expending all this effort, struggling and learning  and moving ahead, and in reality, I don't really care.  I have  no passion for this work. I don't hate it, don't love it, I know that the jobs and money will be in this direction, so I am going there and my basic feeling is Meh.
My passion has always been for the healing, for  changing  the outcomes in peoples lives.  I just don't want to earn my living this way.
So this training will  earn my living and I don't take it from my gut.  Good enough.

Happy dance

Spring break.  10 days with no classes and only one piece of homework. I will be passing all my classes.  I am pretty sure that I may be getting decent grades.  I think I have set up a system for the next class that will keep me saner and help keep me up on what needs yet to be done.

•  I am going to the zoo with my drawing board, paper and pencils. 
•  I am by gum going to get  the painting finished  in the basement big room and lay the plastic and start the floor.
• It is time to  put up dry wall along the ceiling and walls in the kitchen.  I want to get the kitchen primed and ready as well. I need to set up a minutia list, one of those outline things that has all the weeny steps in each of the steps.
• I was going to dance both Friday and Saturday but that got axed. Why? because on Thursday I started the mother of all colds. I could have gone but I am selfish about these things; It is my cold and I am not sharing.
• As I look at my house I realize that I have more and more  things heading for the finish, and that I really did clean up and rehab this place. With the grand help of many friends and some sweat equity of my own it is going to end up as a place that feels like people are welcome.

Today's  job on the list is making lists.  Lists full of minutia because I know for sure that long after the break I will be using them to head out on getting this thing done. 

Doing the dratted dog paddle

It has been quite the month since school started and I went almost but not quite under the waves.  I am doing the best I can with something quite  different for me, and things that I would never have  imagined being a part of the program keep tripping me up.
The one that has me sitting sand bagged is the actual art class, the one where for the first time in my life I am getting instruction on how to put pencil/charcoal or whatever to the page.
 What is really really cool is that if I follow the instructions I get what I think of as pretty good drawings.
The reason I sit rather sand bagged is something I never knew about and could not have predicted.
 It is the blank spot.  I sit to do as the instructor asks, I work very hard at seeing what I am looking at and drawing what I see.  It can be very meditative and methodical.
 First the blank spot showed up as a funny wonky change in the lines of the drawings.  The teacher suggested that I pay careful attention to keeping my viewpoint exactly the same. I want to do this as well as possible, so I did that.  What emerged was a place where not only do I not see, but I do not register that there is something in there to be seen. Whatever is in the blank spot does not exist.  I ignore it entirely and draw around it.
I think it is the thing that I was told by an Optometrist." People with head injuries don't process with their central vision. They use their peripheral vision exclusively. That is why they have problems with going down the aisles in grocery stores and driving in heavy traffic."
I can tell you that people with head injuries don't sort out sounds well and can't figure out what to listen to when there are several sound sources  at the same time too.
With the last drawing I worked on I have chosen to leave the blank parts blank and see if I can map this very disturbing thing in the middle of my sight that I can't under normal circumstances even recognize is there.  If I am not seeing, I want to be able to understand what and where it lives.
What comes up for me is the emotion. Words can not express just how hurt, angry and lost I feel seeing this empty spot in the middle of my vision.

Surprise

A gift from another dancer

Frustration Ratio and Perportion

At the moment I have homework to do. Lots of it.  I managed to do an amazing stupid yesterday. Which was saved by a sweet voiced lady at the Bus station who snagged my drawing board and set it aside for me after I made the horrifying discovery that I had gotten on the bus without it. I explained the problem to the art teacher and she extended the hand in for me.  Bless them both.
I was beyond frustrated with trying to download the soft ware that I needed for the main class I am taking.  Problem solved with nice people this weekend. 
Then comes the problem of actually doing the homework.  I don't understand this soft ware and how it works, figuring it out runs into one of the things that is really hard for me to deal with.  It does not work the way my brain thinks it should.  Carving a new path in there, one that does not have any familiar things to hang my learning on takes  repetition of a kind that teachers don't get.  Like, 

• tell me three times in the same way.
•  Show me three times, talking as you go. 
• Run me through it three times with me clicking the buttons, 
• and then do it again, and again, and again. 

And why do I need this done? because I have a brain injury.
 I am in new territory, I need a three pronged tell, see, do. and then practice practice practice to learn this stuff.
 The ratio is 3:1 to learn one thing I need to be told three times, I need to see it three times, and I need to do it three times.  and then I need to wait a day and do it again. I am spending a lot of time on small stuff.   
People tell me that it gets easier over time, and on one hand I know this is true. Then I sit in front of the screen and I can't remember the things I need to do.   The frustration ratio is also 3:1.  I am frustrated by things three times for every one I can get and do with my own laborious process of learning.
 I never did get to making cookie dough, and right now I think cookie dough would be a very good thing indeed... Excuse me I have something I need to do now, in the kitchen.

So how's it going?

Well this week has been a learning curve if ever there was one.  Next week will be one too.  I am going to be a lot stronger by the end of the semester than I am now and most likely more organized as well.  I know when to get on the bus, and where to get off and that walking a mile is faster than waiting for the bus on certain routes.
 I know that my books are effing heavy and that the drawing board is going to be a pain in the ass.  I am taking steps to remedy what I can.  Meantime I got at least part of the homework done and set up to get the rest finished on time.
 I have been eating healthy food all week, and I feel the need for salt, grease, sugar and burnt black crunchy bits. I'm going to get a small pizza, and I think I will make cookie dough, and I think I will bake a batch, and eat them.

Comparison pics

 this was the basement right after Mr Footless died.

This is the basement as of last night. It has been a long road. Many thanks to the many people who participated.  They cleaned, threw, sorted, lugged, dragged, hauled and hung out, ate with me, laughed and did donation runs to ARC and Habitat and the dump.

To them I owe much I will never be able to repay.

The G forces have been messing with my mind

I have commented on the  surprising way that  things have changed for me over the past going on three years. Nothing moved much, things were stagnant and then when I chose to change, it all moved unbelievably fast, wild, and in so many unexpected directions.
This last week my brain began having problems. 
I am putting the last pieces into place for going back to school and that means that I am at the point where I need to rehearse things like getting from point A to point B on the bus. 

•  I need to know when to start, 
• which bus to take 
• how much time to expect walking at both ends, 
• what do I need to take for a day, 
• how much that is going to weigh, 
• what  containers will I pack it in and 
• where in my gigungous pack will it live.

I am not going to use Lucille my sturdy reliable truck, because Lucille leaves me tied to a vehicle and parking is a ring tailed bitch on campus. To say nothing about road construction, trains and the efforts of the city fathers to isolate the very north east end of this town from the rest of town.  The way things are  set up right now you can't get there from here without going way out of the way.  The bus will be much less stressful once I have it settled in my head.
I personally dislike being tied to a vehicle, it leaves me feeling trapped.  It isn't rational, it just is. 
This is all lead in to my adventures in my brain.
I have been taking the bus to places  to get used to the system and suddenly I find myself unable to send a coherent text.  I am on the bus headed west, and I can't send a text that says west, I type west and what comes out on the phone is east, or senseless garbage.
 My task is to take something to a place, drop it off and pick up something else. I do the drop off and then I walk out the door three times without putting the pick up in my pack.  It is sitting on the table, and I can't seem to get it into the pack and out the door.
After the third time  through I am in tears of frustration with being unable to do what I need.
Then I am panicked. If I can't do something so simple as this, how on earth will I manage a full class load?
Well what I finally figured out is that when I am over stressed, my brain reverts to injured brain mode.
 I sat down and ran through all the things that have changed in just the past year, not to think of the two years before that.  One of my teachers (thank you Wendy for all the work you have done) explained that if you can manage 2% change in a year you are doing really well.  These past two years I have changed something like 35% of my life Per Year.
If I wasn't somewhat stressed I would be in some kind of crazy land.   I went and fed myself and I went home and unwound.  I will be OK, I just need to be respectful of the forces of change that I am  encountering. Slow down, breathe and center.
It is the G forces.  Calm down. When the time comes, I will be alright,

The element of Surprise.

nothing succeeds like success.  I baked this bread from yeast that was growing in an elderly yoghurt container  in the throw out pile from the fridge.  It is too hot to cut to eat but you can bet that it will be tested repeatedly for flavor, texture and that illusive element of !surprise!

Bowling down the runway.

Things are set.  I have the books, supplies, bus pass, back pack, classes, schedule, calendar, pens flash drive, folders, and all but one building sussed out.  I still don't know where the art class is.  I am as ready as a little kid with a cape, swim goggles, dish washing gloves, cowboy hat and a wooden sword and a shield. Like that kid I am not quite sure exactly what it is that I am ready for.  I just know that I have gotten myself as ready as I can.  Then like a duck trying to take off from dry land I will be galloping wildly across the fields flapping my wings and bounding from hummock to hummock in an effort to be airborne.  I may not make it into the air. I may just provide any of the watchers with a really entertaining view with a good laugh at the end of it.
Ready or not, Here I come.

New goals new direction

I wonder where I will be come the first of June.  What do I want to have done? how much of what I want will be actually possible? 
Here are some of the things I want to see happen.

• Finish the first semester of the AutoCad course, with a B or better average.
• Clear out the basement, repaint and re floor with all that means.
• Get a better handle on meeting my basic needs
• Be prepared for the fall semester financially and Fafsa wise
• Improve my strength and flexibility, especially the upper body, and my stamina.

You would think that this looks like an entirely doable list but I am not sure of what I will be able to do besides the first one, that and dance. I will definitely be able to do that.

Looking back, Looking forward

Yesterday on the last day of the year, I took the last things out of my office and officially moved the remnants back home.
 Last year at this time I was still in two residences.  My house was still a hoarded mess, The dumpster was still being filled.  Thirty hours a week was going to an unpaid job, and twenty hours to other clients.  I was working on the process, the task at hand was to get into one place.
Last year the task at hand was to sort out the good from the dreck.
If I look at what I have done, I have come a million miles in this year. I am a better stronger person, but it isn't at all the person I thought it might be.
I never expected that I would be letting go of my healing practice.
 I never imagined that I might have another relationship. 
It wasn't on my radar that I would walk out on someone I considered a friend.
Dancing was small part of who and what I was. 
School wasn't anywhere in the picture.
Now here I am.
Danceing is a big part of my life.
I left the "friend" and moved on.
there is someone there for me.
My healing practice is taking back seat to something else.
In three weeks I will be back in school, to train in something that is entirely different from anything I have done in the past.
I have no idea where this will lead but it looks like new.
 I can use new.