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,