The Larvae Are Meditating

My plot to addict everyone to Hamilton has been a success.  There girls resisted me at first, as they are wont to do.  Happily, Lin-Manuel overcame them with his genius, first Emily with the opening song, then Sasha with the Schulyer Sisters.  My mom likes good music and didn't take any convincing at all, obviously.  She just needed an introduction.  Steven clearly doesn't count as a person so his opinion is irrelevant.

Steven is learning the ways of the force, ever...so...sloooooooooowly.  At least it's progress I guess.  We are processing zucchinis and pears lately.  We got a jump on pear season so we're not having to tackle 12 boxes at once like last year.  Being able to process just a couple boxes at a time means I'm able to use the freeze dryer for more pear sauce and sorbet which Sasha is thrilled about.  It's always good to have more food.

School.  I thought school would be at least a little easier this year since the girls are doing a little better, but so far less panic doesn't translate to easier schoolwork.  There was one history lesson Emily didn't fight me too much on, but that is the only improvement I've noticed so far.  Less panic over managing migraine is helpful overall, and help with food is certainly helpful, but I don't know what it's going to take beside real, huge, amazing migraine improvement to translate to real, actual, school improvement.  Exhaustion still reigns in our lives.  Gah.

Speaking of exhaustion, RANT WARNING: There are those who say, "Just ask me and I'll come over and help you" but then when we do ask, we have to literally be worked around their golf schedules.  I call bullshit.  We're over here fighting for our lives, being as proactive as possible, homeschooling, making our SCRATCH from scratch, meditating, going to therapy, icing, massaging, driving to the neurologist, the GP, the chiropractor, the eye doctor, keeping meticulous records, keeping our blood work in order, manufuckingfacturing pills...and competing for a golf schedule is just a mockery I don't need or want.  I think golf can be worked around us, or we just don't need to put in the effort for that kind of "help".

Effort is kind of the whole problem here.  Friends, if you know someone who is chronically ill who needs help, you have to volunteer specifics.  "Can I come over on Tuesday and fold your laundry?" is a great way to start a sentence.  "Are there things falling apart in your house I can come fix on Saturday?" is another great thing to say.  Illness doesn't care about vacations or schedules or "church", all it wants is to suck the life out of your bones at 3 in the morning.  Loudly and painfully and repeatedly.  END RANT.

Night shift approaches.  The larvae are meditating and it's past their bedtime.  I hope to God we all get sleep tonight.  I hope to God that Sasha doesn't lose pears.  The very thought makes me physically ill.  On the bright side, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is going very well.  Peace out.

zucchini ass

Fuuuck migraine.  Mourning is valid, anger is valid.  Frustration can be motivating.  Being smashed against a wall over and over forces you to be creative, or turned to pulp.  Okay.  *meditative breath*  I am not a crap teacher, Emily has a neurological disease for which she was withdrawn from school.  Her state test math score reflects that.  Ugh, every waking day that I have tried to teach her math reflects that since migraine reentered her life.  Her English Language Arts/Literacy score reflects it less because she still reads obsessively,  even though she doesn't read what I assign her.  Math is the hardest thing for her to grasp through brain fog, even though it was never a problem before, neither in english or spanish.  It is a casualty of war, and that pisses me off so badly.

I don't know how this works either.  Is migraine such a disease that you can form new neural pathways around it?  Or do you just have to be extremely strong willed and self motivated to power through it?  Or does being extremely strong willed and self motivated allow you form new neural pathways?!  Clearly it's not always possible.  But when you're chronic and not always fighting all the symptoms, you just have to find ways to function sometimes.  I have been trying to teach Emily this.  The kid wants to return to classroom school in the foreseeable future so I told her that we'd take this year to catch up and see where she was.  We are five days in and far too familiar with the fight.

I'm going to have to do some restructuring around here.  First I need to go to bed, I'm starting to hallucinate.  I kicked a lot of food's asses today, way overdid it.  Bet you didn't know cabbage and zucchini had asses.  They do, and they got thoroughly kicked.  Boom.

Almost 38

It's almost pear season.

We seem to have plenty of pears left, thankfully.  However, that's because Sasha stopped eating pears for quite a while.  It turns out, the red pears make her feel crappy.  So ever the colored foods get her.  We still have green and brown pears tho.  Most of the pear sauce seems ok, and we had mostly green pears anyway.  So we know for this year.  *sigh*  Fuck you food sensitivities.

We're going to retrial cheese soon, so there's that.

Steven being here has certainly lightened the load.  He does dishes, laundry, food prep, and light parenting.  It is taking a lot of effort to teach him all the ins and outs of running this place, but he is learning.  I imagine in a year or so he'll have it down.  He got a decent job so when his debt is paid off he shouldn't have any trouble paying me back, bastard.  I only had to stop him from bringing nutty granola into the house once, so all told, not bad.  The work he provides costs me in stress and energy, but it's still probably an overall net gain, especially because my mom doesn't have to cover for me ALL the time anymore.  And as time passes he'll get with the program more and more, or I'll break his legs.

The girls and I are trying to recover from some excellent family time we just had.  Man, we went all over the place and hung out so much, no wonder we are tore up!  The girls even saw all the cousins at the reunion.  I had a migraine the whole time so I mainly slept, thank you hormone week.  I am back to aggressively icing and budgeting energy.  We had our second session with a lady who does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for kids, but that so far has just been business and not pain reduction.  Sasha has had a migraine both times we've been there so far.  Hopefully as we get into our school routine that will cease.

Blagh, school, the third (fourth?) bane of my existence.  It should be better this year, right?  Steven is here helping out, the girls are both feeling better, why am I not excited?  I am still having a lot of migraine, tho not as much as the horror that June was.  And July was a lot due to fun over kill.  August hasn't started out well but so far it has been July hangover.  I am bummed about the reality of Steven being a near worthless shithead who must be managed, along with the prospect of not even dying alone but dying with a near worthless shithead to manage.  Did I need another cross?  Does it matter?  How I feel definitely matters...so anyway there's that.  I have a thorn in my head and in my side and two more thorns asleep in their bunkbeds.

I do have Hamilton, and I do live in California, and those two things are to be celebrated daily.  Hallelujah.