Offline

As bragged to you previously, I finally deactivated *my Twitter account (*actually an account I inherited from a disinterested party). I won't replace it by going on another site, either, so don't come calling around with suggestions. I'm done with other vox populi sucking all the time and energy out of my otherwise awesome life.

Hear me now, listen to me later. Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, it doesn't matter what kind of misanthropic billionaire freak💩 owns Twitter. Vox populi will ruin it like it ruins everything. Vox populi should only have a voice at election time AS DEMOCRACY INTENDED.

Cripes, it got so I was sick of my own opinions, never mind anybody else's.

😀

Also, since leaving Twitter my skin has recovered its healthy glow, colours are brighter and everything everywhere smells like sunshine and lollipops.

😍

I even got a spiffy new haircut to symbolize my coming home to the real world of beg buttons (that's what we pedestrians call the manual walk signals we must push so we can somewhat safely cross Ottawa streets, because Ottawa was built for taxpayers who drive their privately owned vehicles everywhere, not taxpayers who walk or get around in other non-habitat-destroying ways not applicable in winter) and packaged news and entertainment delivered by professional journalists on our publicly funded airwaves.

👵

Oh and the Saturday Globe and Mail, I've returned to reading it, even Andrew Coyne, because he knows more about politics than I do, AND doing the crossword, although not the cryptic crossword.

How do you people do the cryptic crossword? It seems impossibly difficult to me, although I am a bit of a philistine. Not Ricky from Trailer Park Boys territory, or even Doug Ford, although I'd be further ahead had I gone to business college or trade school than university. I've even saved last week's cryptic crossword to check answers provided in the next week's Globe and STILL have no idea how you people can do it.

😡

(Yes, it's true, I'm Team Ford on streaming grade whatevers into the trades and whatnot. I saw a news clip on CBC Ottawa last night and was actually jealous of the little buggers gittin' therselfs sum skillz. Let the eggheads waste their learnin' years on hi falutin' nonsense when they could be out makin' $$$ to buy a monster home on a Greenbelt or wetland or somesuch.)

I think soon I'll buy a couple of magazines. One of my Millennials recently realized she wanted good old fashioned fashion magazines lying around her overpriced apartment that eats up 99% of her meagre salary (she went to university - even got an MA - like a chump) she could pick up and flip through. I want the same, although different. I loved fashion magazines growing up, starting with Seventeen and progressing on from there, but that sort of fashion isn't my interest anymore.

Perhaps a sewing fashion magazine. Get inspired to sew up some of the fabric I've bought over the years still sitting neatly folded in a closet. Waiting to be turned into a real live outfit.

I learned more in home ec than I did in any other class except phys ed and that's a fact jack.

💁

For sure Vanity Fair was a monthly must back in the day, Christopher Hitchens a delight until his sexism overtook his intellect, but by then I'd moved on to enjoy other writers amid its fashion ads - always part of its attraction.

Graydon Carter once penned an editorial explaining how an issue thick with fashion ads was paying for the in depth articles I was reading, as if they otherwise presented a problem, so perhaps he didn't quite understand Vanity Fair's demographic. I mean, if we didn't want the fashion ads we'd buy Harpers or The Atlantic, ffs, which I will likely buy now as I have no idea who the young celebrities are on the covers of Vanity Fair and I've got my own thrift shop style now, thanks.

😎

But that's not what this entry is about because this entry is about a book I finished reading on Monday to help me in my cold turkey break with my Twitter addiction - because it definitely was an addiction, an habitual behaviour I knew was harmful and I didn't want to be engaged in but which I was nevertheless powerless to quit until I did, quitting being a skill some of us need to learn in grade school instead of "if at first you don't succeed, try, try, again": 

Trust the Plan

The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America

By Will Sommer

I highly recommend it if you want to be even more freaked out about the state of affairs these days, particularly south of the border, than you already are. It was a great Twitter substitute, too, if you're trying to ween yourself off the greatest time and energy sucker ever invented.

Repeat after me: There are no good billionaires and vox populi ruins everything.

Put me in charge of increasing national productivity AND improving our collective mental health. I'll do it in one fell swoop by taking over Twitter and only allowing professionally accredited journalists - graduates of journalism schools working in lamestream media - on it.

Fact: Vox populi doesn't understand journalism. There is no such thing as a citizen journalist. Journalism is a profession. Either go to journalism school or don't but unless you do you're not a journalist. End of.

😑

Don't believe me about improving productivity by taking over Twitter so only professionally accredited journalists can waste their time and energy on it? I read an actual book in two days and probably could have read it in one, I was so into it, but made myself put it down so I could take advantage of climate change and get a first coat of paint on a bedroom while the temperature was in the upper 20s C. In Ottawa. In early April.

It's a wonder CBC's meteorologists don't just break down and cry delivering the weather news now. And yes, the weather is news. Some Debbie Downers might even argue it's the only news that really matters.

😭

Hey, come to think of it, if Doug Ford had been Premier back in the 70s I could've had a career as a professional painter, dammit. I'm like the Mike Holmes of painting I'm so good at it. I'd bet I'd be rolling in $$$ instead of living this, well, admittedly great life on a barely five digit income.

😤

Don't worry about me, though. Or us. A couple of plucky paupers we be and proud of it. Also if the government of Canada doesn't bring in a guaranteed annual income of, oh say, $30K a year for Canadians 65+, it can go #$*&! itself in the ear.

👫

(By the way, a friend recently suggested I just read Twitter, without having an account, but that's because she doesn't understand addiction. I used to just read Twitter, without having an account, and I wasn't on it any less than I was when I was adding to its vox populi content.😬)

But back to Trust the Plan. It's shocking, what conspiracy theorists (i.e. nutcases) are willing to believe, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, but I can't judge too harshly because the higher up and further in the book I went, the more clear it became to me - I'm a conspiracy nut, too.

😳

For instance, back when I was just reading Twitter, and immediately after Donald Trump was "elected" fake POTUS 😡 I looked to a handful of American Tweeters for reassurance all would be revealed, justice would prevail and he would be sent packing to prison where he belonged.

Any. Day. Now.

I wasn't *on* Twitter, tweeting, I was just reading it. Obsessively. Checking in constantly so as not to miss the big story when Donald Trump, fake POTUS, would go down.

😡

Well, Twitter being somewhat of a Peyton Place (I'm not old enough to have watched Peyton Place, just old enough to know it refers to a soap opera) my handful of American Tweeters became an unlikely trio of Louise Mensch, Eric Garland and Claude Taylor. Then Louise Mensch, Andrew C. Laufer and Ming Nethery.

Yes, yes, I know, I know. You think Louise Mensch is this or that. I don't care. She was a lifeline for me. An anti-Republican-Party-in-the-time-of-Trump Conservative. She called it wrong on occasion - she initially designated Bill Barr a White Hat - but always corrected the record. Just as importantly, because I respect her, she helped me understand why some people are Conservatives, their very different perspective on what government should be, how they view individual responsibilities vs collective rights, etc etc etc.

😲

Eric Garland turned out to be a creep 👺and Claude Taylor hawking shit I wasn't interested in buying on his feed all the time.

For the record, Twitter and its Tweeters never received a dime from me, so if somebody's making money from Twitter, as opposed to destroying their life and/or career, I'd be interested to know who and how much.

Andrew C. Laufer is a New York city civil rights lawyer, a Democrat, and well-informed on the legal ins and outs of the miasma of US politics, particularly with regard to Trump, the Russian Mob, etc etc etc.

Ming Nethery, however, about whom I knew exactly nothing because they were tweeting under a pseudonym, turned out to be some loserish guy who made wild predictions I shared conspiratorially with others (😝) EVEN AFTER LOUISE MENSCH HAD EXPOSED HIM AS SOME LOSERISH GUY MAKING WILD PREDICTIONS.

I believed because I wanted to believe, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, Ming Nethery was a special agent operating behind the scenes who would save us all from, not just Trump, but the Republican Party, the NRA, the Russian Mob, and Putin.

All the bad guys and dolls. Ming Nethery would save us all. He knew shit, he did.

NOT!😡

Louise Mensch even posted an old mugshot of the guy (who responded by alleging she would go down soon for committing multiple felonies, yet another wild prediction I actually worried about coming true because I really really really liked Louise Mensch) proving he was basically Florida Man, and STILL I could not be dissuaded from believing, well, he must somehow someway be in the know because, well, he just must be.

Maybe Louise Mensch just, like, I dunno, something.

😧

I can't even remember now how, when, why I stopped checking in with him, Louise Mensch, Andrew C. Laufer, but I imagine it was not long after I inherited an account and started tweeting myself, but on Canadian politics, not American, because, of course, I wasn't getting any likes or retweets from my trio.

I was too unknown to play with the big guys and gals.

Anyway, suffice it to say the best thing that could probably happen to the world, other than SOMEBODY FFS!! taking out Putin, is for Twitter to go belly up and everybody on it to go outside to experience climate change.

Because it's real. I know I live in Ottawa where the weather can be tricky but we went from an ice storm to a heat wave to snow flurries in just a few days. C'mon people. We need all our time and energy on deck, not sucked up by addictive products created by billionaire misanthropic freaks💩 who think they can tech their way to immortality on Mars while the rest of us argue in cyber space over the spoils of our precious finite lives here in real life.

😇

Do No Harm

I deactivated my Twitter account today. You non-addicts likely won't get what a big deal that is. Even you addicts whose addiction isn't Twitter may not get what a big deal that is.

But it's a big deal.

I have trouble regulating my behaviour so I don't overdo it and end up causing myself harm. But I'm getting better at calling myself out.

Twitter was the elephant in my room for quite a while. I'd even tricked myself into believing Elon Musk had made it better by making it worse.

😀

But then yesterday, I was randomly, or maybe not so randomly, seized with an urge to close it. So I did. And I looked around the room, suddenly appreciating the relief of reality, and recognized Twitter as just a product, a product I'd become addicted to using and so would need to quit.

As an addict I know there's only cold turkey. If I could moderate my behaviour I'd have done so. I can't. But it's also how when I actually applied myself to write the book I'd been talking about writing for decades, I did it in three weeks.

😀

Speaking of which, I've decided as self help to get to work on another book. I'll blog it or send it to Galaxy Brain as I go. It's going to be the book I originally set out to write when I got sidetracked into telling the story of my two years selling ladieswear at the mall instead. This one is going to be snippets from my life but also the lives of others, the gems they've shared with me over the years, gems I can't not share now with you.

My muse for this book, by the way, is the fellow who got his ship stuck in the Suez Canal.

😀

TGIF

Good Lord it's Good Friday again! TGIGF!

And now Easter Sunday and me with no bonnet!

Cue memory circa mid-60s, walking to either Isobel and Maynard's or Frank & Inez's in an Easter bonnet but actually a hat, while my younger sister wore the bonnet that used to be mine. I didn't like the upgrade. The bonnet was cute, the hat scratchy and wouldn't stay on my head. It must've been a shared Passover and Easter because both couples were Jewish, the food at the house different and spread out buffet-style.

Isobel and Maynard eventually moved to Toronto and I always wondered if Andrea Martin of SCTV met Isobel and modelled "Edith Prickley" after her.

🙇

I really should read Morley Torgov's "A Good Place to Come From" some day, although I've read Harvey Simms' "The Best Man for the Job", also about the Sault, my hometown, the former mayor, Joe Fratezi, who appointed himself Chief Administration Officer, the highest paying job in the city, while still mayor.

💩

You can take the girl out of the Sault but you can't take the Sault out of the girl. I always think I'll return to live there one day, but I won't, will I. My first friends still live there, the twins, one of them in the house he grew up in right next door to mine that still features in all my dreams. He said to me last time I was visiting my mother in the nursing home and he was driving me there from church (he sings in the choir, which is incredibly talented, so I always go to church when I'm in the Sault) "Let's make sure we stay in touch. We're each other's first friends." This was after I told him our older sisters were a couple of bitches to us growing up. D sees life through rose-coloured glasses though so didn't say anything.

His sister died last year which I only found out about recently because we're really only in touch when I go to the Sault. He'd gifted my mother a plate with birds on it when she was in the nursing home. She used to paint pictures of birds when she could still see. Birds and either poppies or sunflowers. Anyway I took it from her room (she couldn't see it and objects on nursing room tables just get in the way of staff looking after the inmates, I mean, patients) with the plan of gifting it back to him at some point.

😇

Speaking of bonnets, I told you about Jo Pete in a previous post "Transspotting". Well, maybe like you, this is my spring to switch it up and go with a new style, but a bit of a return to Jo Pete.

I need to get to the thrift shop for a new old coat. Long and loose with pockets is my jam now.

Yup. I said "jam". The other day I used "miasma" thinking it meant "a bunch of stuff" when it actually means "a big stink". But it's all good because one of my sharp-eyed young readers (who suddenly celebrated her 40th birthday!) looked it up and posted the correction on Twitter. Now we're all the wiser.

👶

My new style is in reaction to my old style, or what used to be my old style, my old style as I imagined it came across, anyway, focused on my body.

Coquettish?

😬

My new style is androgynous, long and loose. Slouchy, but also funky. Layers. Affectations in a nod to older fashionistas with giant glasses and the like. (I've picked up a number of old scarves over the years from various thrift shops that will do the trick for the most part.) I'm undergoing a makeover of sorts, riffing off a couple of lifestyle changes I made to address the panic attacks I started having last spring. How I present myself, what I wear, is part of it.

Clothes make the man, as it were.

All bets are off for winters in Ottawa, though. As My Blond Companion pointed out while we waited for a bus one day in February, it's too hard to look cool in winter, and looking cool is where it's at for me right now. Cool look, cool feel, but winter is winter is winter. The other day we saw a middle aged man in shorts (my friend was regretting not wearing her toque, ffs) headband and sunglasses like he was hanging out in Venice Beach, not Bank and Catherine in Ottawa where the temperature was -5 degrees Celsius.

Cool he did not look. Cold he did.

😱

Transspotting

Subtitled: I See Trans People

So we were out walking Bernie two or three weeks ago now (that's how long I've been mulling this over, having progressed no further than I started, the subject's become so fraught - one doesn't want to get a word wrong) and while he was stealing peanuts from the squirrels I realized why I never weigh in on arguments about people who transcend gender, which is how I like to put it now I just thought of it.

I asked my blond companion, "Can a man have a baby?"

But he was trying to wrestle Bernie away from the squirrels' peanuts and didn't hear me.

For the record, Bernie's allowed two peanuts - only.

So I answered, "Well, I know a very good man, a solid New Democrat, not in the least transphobic or anti-trans, who would argue a definite 'No!'

Biology.

But I know a very good woman, a solid New Democrat and his dear lady friend, who would argue a definite 'Yes!'"

Sociology.

😀

I lived in an apartment building with a trans woman, although not physically transitioned. This was according to her, but since one couldn't believe a word she said, who knows. She lived in the apartment above me and was my eventual reason for moving. I never interacted with her, except to be as pleasant as possible because she was as crazy as a bag of hammers. But she hated me anyway, no matter how pleasant I pretended to be, and for whatever reason told anybody who'd listen (like they had a choice when she cornered them in the tiny laundry room she was constantly in) I'd stolen a pair of her underwear.

Thick and tight to create a smooth look and no doubt not cheap.

She would also pretend she had her period, go on and on to other residents about her cramps, moaning and groaning, daring anyone to contradict her.

No one ever did because, like I said, as crazy as a bag of hammers.

Also 6'2" / 200 lbs.

Alas, she had a master key, our landlord being an idiot who gave her one and a break on rent for showing vacant apartments and pretending to sweep the halls, and once entered my apartment when I was alone. It was likely an accident, but I still had to move. She'd made it clear she hated me, but loved my blond companion, so that was it. I no longer felt safe.

It happens. She was also inconsiderate and woke us up at all hours, fighting with her boyfriend, a teenager I heard yell once, "But I'm gay!" It was fifty shades of not good, but he was more or less a hoodlum who'd tried to stab another tenant at one of her after hours parties, and I just didn't want to get involved.

She'd water her balcony, festooned with flowers meant for the building's front garden, soaking us if we happened to be sitting on ours, enjoying the view of the parking lot, where many of her and her boyfriend's frequent screaming fights took place.

My regret, really, is her being my kids' first introduction to a trans person but, like I said, it happens.

She was a woman, yes. But no, she wasn't having periods.

I know, I know, "Lots of women can't have babies! Menopausal women don't menstruate! Caitlin Jenner's a woman!"

Exactly.

And Elliott Page is a man and Elliott Page can have babies.

It all comes down to us as individuals, really, and this is why I don't weigh in. Pedantic semantics. A word in a sociological context vs a word in a biological context vs no two snowflakes alike, as the principal of my kids' elementary school put it.

😀

I had a temp assignment at Correctional Services a few years ago. A couple came in to do a talk about being trans. They were two men who'd met and married when one of them was a woman. I tried to tell which one but I couldn't. They looked like a couple of middle-aged men. Eventually they clarified which of them had transitioned, why, how, and I could see it then. I wish everyone could have attended, especially R, my co-worker, who wanted no part of it.

He was afraid, the very definition of transphobic, also homophobic. I got to know him quite well. He was in the Sixties Scoop, several foster homes before being adopted into a strict Ukrainian Catholic family. Very well educated with a PhD in something to do with his Cree culture.

PhDs are all the same to me, boring.

We both had sons we were concerned about. Young men are having a hard time finding their sea legs these days. He had a daughter, too, but she was with his ex-wife, and he was annoyed with her character, which was too much like her mother's for his liking.

He had issues with women, at least two ex-wives, an old-fashioned sexist who believed the women in his life were the root of all evils, at least, the evils that had befallen him. He liked men, but he liked me, too, and we got on. I didn't take it personally, rare for me, but he didn't mean it personally, either. In fact, he liked me so much he couldn't bear to come in on my last day to say goodbye.

I'd brought him my homemade butterscotch chip oatmeal cookies he loved as a parting gift, too, left them on his computer with instructions to everybody who passed his desk to leave them be.

They are the best cookies ever. Incredibly addictive. And R wasn't exactly popular with our other co-workers, who were more... up-to-date.

😐

Also, for whatever reason, R had decided because we were the same age and had the same television references (to bore the student working for him with) our childhoods were same/same. Finally, one day when he was out for lunch I told her, "R's childhood was my worst nightmare. I went to overnight camp when I was seven and cried so much with homesickness the orphans from Sudbury started crying with homesickness too. He thinks we had similar childhoods because we both watched The Beverly Hillbillies. The other day he told me one of his sisters - a woman he said he wouldn't turn his back on - took him to meet their birth mother. She was living in a vacant room with a few other people, one of whom went out to gather cigarette butts and Lysol to celebrate the reunion. R told me he recoiled when his mother tried to hug him and left because he doesn't smoke or drink and can't abide people who do. He has several brothers and sisters the youngest of whom was rescued from a dumpster. Oh and his father was of Scottish ancestry, our other commonality, although mine was a lawyer who died of cancer when I was four and his, I'm not sure what he did to make money, but he was murdered in a bar fight."

She was a smart young woman, a precious only child, who reminded me of my oldest. She said, "R's opinions are so different from how he is, too. It's weird. He's been really helpful and understanding. And when we did the presentation he was so supportive, giving me all the credit. He's trying to get me a job here now."

I should say, too, I probably learned more Canadian history from R in six months than I did at four years of university.

Anyway, like I said, I wished he'd attended the presentation. It was probably the second most educational event during a temp assignment in the government I'd attended, the first being a talk from the daughter of a residential school survivor explaining the effect of that part of Canadian history on her present.

😬

Alas, it was voluntary. But wow. And when the partner spoke of his experience within the marriage, wow again. "We used to hold hands, kiss, hug in public. But we're two men now. I'm not gay, but I love him, and he's a man. I'm not comfortable showing affection in public now. It's the reaction of other people. It's a big deal to some of them, so it's a big deal for me, too."

It was a shame having to go back to work, entering data from inmate evaluations of educational programming in our federal institutions no one will ever look at, instead of spending the rest of the day listening and learning from a fascinating couple and how they were navigating their lives together - 31 years at the time and going strong.

Love is love. People are people. If my blond companion decided he was a woman or wanted to present as a woman, live as a woman, or I decided I was a man, we would continue on together as each of us wanted to be. I love my blond companion. My blond companion loves me.

Who knows? Maybe it would have been the change to keep our previous relationships with others together.

I see trans people everywhere now. Or rather, I see people as trans. I look at a woman and turn her into a man. I look at a man and turn him into a woman. Young people especially are androgynous looking to me. I barely have to try to switch their gender. Old people, too. It's wild once you start. Try it.

And when I see a trans person I don't see gender at all. I see an individual. It's very inspiring. Freeing.

Oh to be free!

When I was young I went through a phase wherein I wanted to be seen as a boy. I didn't want to be a boy, exactly, but I also did want to be a boy. Jo Pete was my chosen name. My older sister even helped me sneak off to Mrs. Scott's to get my braids chopped off, not knowing why, of course.

It was always there, still is.

Also the sexual attraction to men. It was always there and still is.

On a Wild Women camping trip I went on several years ago now we were sitting around the campfire singing show tunes no one could remember the lyrics to except me, when I thought to ask, "Is everybody here gay except me?" and K answered, "Oh, you're gay, you're a gay man. You're wearing Ralph Lauren pajamas on a camping trip ferchrissake."

Totally tracked, too. I was a walking stereotype. I thought back to Jo Pete and the cap I insisted my mother buy me. Very natty. How annoyed my older sister was when she realized how she'd facilitated Jo Pete in the natty cap by taking me to Mrs. Scott's to get my braids cut off. Even as I sit here writing this I'm eagerly awaiting the day I can show the world the long loose linen pink shirt I picked up at the thrift shop for a song, which I'll wear over a tee-shirt, ala Miami Vice, maybe hunt down comfortable loafers I can wear without socks for the summer.

😎

I'll leave off now, hoping I didn't get too many words wrong, but also kind of not caring too much if I did. I don't bother keeping track of whether I'm saying gender when I should say sex and vice versa. I won't argue about any of it either. It's stupid. A waste of time and energy. I should add I learned a lot reading "Unmasking Autism" by Devon Price, a trans person, who points out the strong correlation between neurodiverse people and trans people. I identify as neurodiverse myself now thanks to Devon (and my son for sending me the book) and realize I want to transcend gender as so many other people are doing.

Why?

Because I want to be me, not somebody else's idea of me.

Me.

😍

SNAFU

I think if politicians took public transit where they live it would make a big difference in their understanding of what a housing crisis actually looks like. As a citizen who depends on it to get around I can attest to the fact other citizens are depending on it for housing. I bring this up because context matters and having to "sacrifice" a family vacation because the interest rate for the mortgage on your half million dollar plus property has increased is not a crisis. Nor is being unable to afford a mortgage at all.

And if you can afford to pay your rent you're doing just fine. Rent is higher than it should be for sure but it's only a crisis if you can't afford to pay it.

Looking for an apartment in Toronto was always a nightmare. In the 80s we were lined up competing with each other for anything decent. I once had a landlord ask, "How tall is your boyfriend?" When I answered, "About six feet", he shook his head.

"Too tall", he said, and closed the door.

The couples I knew buying homes were double income boomers born in the 50s not 60s. And they were doing it when mortgage rates were closing in on 20%. Certainly my boyfriend and I couldn't afford a home in Toronto in the 80s. Not downtown where we always rented and why live in Toronto if you're not living downtown?

Lots of rose-coloured glasses looking back these days. Not that I don't think it's self-defeating as a society, high rents and the stress of having to compete with each other for a decent apartment. If only politicians had to do it, although I guess they're making six figures now like so many middle-class people and can afford to buy.

Ferfuckssake people have so much money now we have to put adjectives like "uber" in front of rich when discussing our co-citizens we think should have to pay more taxes.

😀

Yesterday I shared public transit with someone I'm pretty sure has to live on it. I watched him get on the bus then mime searching for the fare in empty pockets while the driver looked on. I was about to get up and pay it for him - I even had the exact change (you can't use your Presto card to pay for someone else because once you pay for yourself it's on a timer until you have to pay again) - when I saw the driver give him the nod to sit down.

Nothing like a free ride on OC Transpo.

That's a joke for those of you who've never had the pleasure. Although I have to say, lightrail has worked well every time I've taken it. Sure you have to say a prayer and cross your toes every time it creaks around Derailment Corner, and there's the eye watering stink permeating through a couple of stations, but it's a dream compared to the bus.

Ottawans, so pampered.

😀

But I feel for politicians trying to sort it all out in the wake of the pandemic we're still in. Repeat after me: Everybody and Everything Everywhere is f*cked up. This is how it is. The new normal. So my advice to us all is to make the best of it by mustering patience.

I used to read a book to my kids, Betsy Goes to the Doctor, and there's a line in it: "Be patient, patient." So be patient, although try not to be a patient.

By the way and not to add to it all but I noticed the stress level of my doctor, who I was lucky enough to inherit when my real doctor retired mid-pandemic, and who I've seen twice, was significantly higher on the second visit. Ditto the surgeon who repaired my wrist. I'd put them both in their 40s.

But speaking of kids back there, my son sent me a book recently, "Unmasking Autism" by Devon Price. I can't recommend it enough. Aside from identifying very strongly with its chapter 4, it way upped my empathy quotient for all of us and really brought home the message to be kind because you never know what someone else is going through.

We really need that now, empathy. It's all too too too much. 

Anyway, I'm currently unemployed (there are supposedly jobs going begging but if that's the case then why was I laid off mine?) and so can afford to be patient and will try to set an example for my co-citizens with less time. Nobody is at their best right now. Nobody. We're all struggling in various ways. Our collective anxiety right now is through the roof, never mind our anxiety about the future.

By the way, the next apocalypse forecasting boomer who says "glad I'll be dead" re climate change gets unfriended.

Die now. More oxygen for my grandcat to breathe.

Oops, kindness and patience, this is going to be harder than I thought.

😀

Dream a Little Dream of Me

My last Galaxy Brain assignment was to interpret the meaning of a particular dream, which I did "in character", by way of pointing out how boring the dreams of others are, then making my answer all about me and a scary dream I used to have growing up.

😀

I also mentioned a dream study course a relative took. She told me our dreams are all about ourselves, our subconscious revealing itself in weird and wonderful ways through our dreams.

Since then, though, I've had a couple of therapy sessions to go with the medication I'm on as a result of the panic attacks I started experiencing last spring. She's young, young enough to be my daughter, so it's different than I'd imagined it would be, but what had I imagined?

Magic.

Well it's not magic, it's a process, and she's trained in it, has the skills required to help someone else make the necessary connections between brain, body, thinking, behaviour to calm an over-active flight or fight response. Oh, and freezing. We never mention freezing but it's another reaction to anxiety.

It's all very helpful, even hearing myself tell a familiar tale I remember lost details or recognize overlooked significance. Maybe a pattern. I even learned of a possible approach to the panic attacks called "radical acceptance", which just knowing is a possibility has lowered my anxiety about the next panic attack.

Typing that just reminded me of The Greatest Generation (although surely not as parents) threatening crying children with "Stop that crying before I give you something to cry about!"

Panic attacks sure gave me something to be anxious about.

😀

I found out, too, I'm not alone in needing help after the Freedom Convoy attack on downtown Ottawa last February. It's apparently quite common. I should have known. Three of my panic attacks occurred after encountering people who continue to support it. But here radical acceptance comes into play, doesn't it. There will always be people who do. Accept it. Move on.

Get off Twitter. It won't get you published and it's just another addiction. Either do the work of shopping your book around or don't but stop with the magical thinking. Lots of people write books. The reward is in the writing. Getting published is the work.

😀

Meanwhile, write another one. Find the humour in trading time and effort to make money. The stuff of life some of us find rewarding and some of us don't. At all. Except without doing it, without having done it, what would I have to write about that others can appreciate as a break from being who we're paid to be and not who we are.

My dreams?

😀

The other night I had a dream my mother got better. I went home to visit her and found she'd left the nursing home and was back in our house, healthy, younger looking. Smiling. Happy to see me but a little confused by my concern.

"I quit drinking" she laughed. "That's all it was."

Then I asked her where all her friends were.

"I haven't told them."

Well I told her they'd like to know and she should tell them because they'd been very worried about her. So she did. Then they all showed up, filling the house, and it was a party. Her best friend was there and suggested I move back home, I could drive everybody around because nobody had their licence anymore. They'd pay me to do it. I'd have a job. Then I saw my mother walking up the street with an empty glass. She said she was going for some water. I wasn't sure I believed her but she seemed so happy and confident. I wanted to make sure it all lasted so I decided, yes, I should move back home and look after her. Not even should, I wanted to. Start over at the beginning but all grown up, find fulfillment in keeping this irresponsible mother of mine on the straight and narrow.

😀

Aftershocks

 I had another panic attack yesterday evening. I think I felt it building over the course of the day but I'm not sure. By 7:30 pm though I knew it was happening so I propped myself up in bed, a cold cloth on my forehead, tried to concentrate on my breathing.

The nausea was fairly intense, coming in waves, but I felt less alienated than during other panic attacks. I wanted to lie on the bathroom floor at one point (the attacks are very tiring) and did, briefly, but decided that was falling into back into an earlier pattern, and made myself go back to bed.

Also, while lying on the bathroom floor starting to wish for the crabby hand of death to slap me off this mortal coil, I kicked my rational brain into gear, "you're not going to die of a panic attack, get a grip, let it play out, you will feel better".

My mantra for next time: This too shall pass.

My blond companion lied with me in bed, holding my hand. This too was an improvement on previous attacks when I didn't want anybody around, couldn't (wouldn't?) allow myself to be comforted.

Suffering should be borne in private? Me? Who is this person having panic attacks?

But I get anxious if I think I'm inconveniencing someone, no matter how willing they are to help. It's ironic because my neighbour, of whom I make much fun, won't be beholden to anyone no matter how much he needs the help.

(Just to be mean I make him meat pies he can't resist accepting, even gracing me once with, "it was good".)

Eventually, pill averse me said yes to a couple of gravol. Gravol hasn't been enough in the past, but I figured it was worth a try again, even though I was worried about interactions with the daily medication I've been taking, fluoxetine. I need two gravol (at least) and tried to have faith they would work.

Well of course they did and next time I'll take the gravol as soon as I start feeling nauseous.

After a while of counting breaths, I fell asleep, which I guess is the effect of the gravol.

I always have to get up in the night to pee and when I did I noticed I wasn't nauseous anymore. I also suddenly remembered as a kid having had the stomach flu and being so afraid afterward of being nauseous that my mother took me to Dr. Tiltons (an Estonian who escaped when the Soviets invaded, landing in the Sault and with an accent so strong we often had no idea what the diagnosis was). She prescribed some sort of peppermint concoction, and I insisted on taking a spoonful of it every night before bed.

But here's something, it's the anniversary of the Freedom Convoy attack on us in Ottawa last year and yesterday I'd posted on Facebook about having to avoid seeing or hearing Pierre Poilievre, which is getting harder with the House back. I was listening to CBC radio and all of a sudden there was his whiny drone assaulting my ears. In my post I joked about him making me nauseous, which I'd forgotten about until my blond companion reminded me of it this morning.

Surely hearing Pierre Poilievre's voice on the radio (I mute CBC news on television if he's in a clip from the House or elsewhere) didn't spark a panic attack a couple of hours later, but I suppose it's possible. In any case, he's not going away so I'm going to have to figure out how to avoid being exposed to him.

(I just remembered that episode of Seinfeld where Mary Hart's voice sets off seizures? in Kramer.)

(Also, today I read an interview with Erin O'Toole in which he complained about Conservative MPs having gone down internet rabbit holes, and I wondered why then he'd wanted to lead them to power.)

Anyway, I think today will be my last day (re)posting Freedom Convoy memories as they pop up on Facebook. I tend to think it's my duty to bear witness but I did it already and belabouring it isn't healthy. Time to trust in the process and let it go.

Maybe time to ditch a habit or two and establish some new routines, too. If I'm going to have panic attacks I want to at least learn from them. In the meantime, I wrote out a list of tips for dealing with anxiety, although not necessarily panic attacks, that I'll share here.

1.    2 inhales, 1 long exhale (I like this one because I have to think about it to do it).

2.    Focus on right now, the lack of need for action, and bring your attention to breathing.

3.    Exercise, preferably fresh air exercise, move your body (not possible in a panic attack for me).

4.    Eat good food (I include my baking in this now I'm on medication because I only want a small portion).

5.    Prioritize sleep (I sleep better and more than I used to because as soon as I'm even a bit tired I go to bed).

6.    Overcome catastrophizing and keep perspective (well, good luck - #7 helps with this).

7.    Make peace with the worst case scenario (this one has been good for me and came in handy last night).

8.    Use the anxiety decision tree: What's making you anxious? Can you do something about it? If so, do it. If no, distract yourself by doing something else productive. (this is a tricky one, at least, I find it hard, partly because not being pro-active enough is partly why I'm anxious, sort of a chicken/egg thing.)

If anybody has any other tips let me know.

Also, I don't think the panic attacks are menopause related, but they could be.