Plinky asked, “What’s at the end of a rain­bow?”

Rain­bows

Do they tru­ly end? I’ve nev­er found the end of a rain­bow, so I’m not at all sure. Until I see for myself, I’m not say­ing.

Today’s NaBloPo­Mo prompt:
How do you feel about sky div­ing?
I feel that it is a pur­suit best left to adren­a­line junkies, and peo­ple who have to do it for their careers. I’m glad para­chutes exist, but I sin­cere­ly hope that I won’t ever find myself in need of one! If I board a plane, I intend to stay on it until it makes a nice, safe land­ing.

Today’s NaBloPo­Mo prompt:
Would you ever go bungee jump­ing?

No way! For one thing, I am def­i­nite­ly NOT an adren­a­line junky. For anoth­er, I can­not imag­ine that the JERK when one reach­es the end of the cord and gets pulled back up is a very good feel­ing. I already have chron­ic pain prob­lems, so I don’t think it wise to aggra­vate them by seek­ing out oppor­tu­ni­ty for injury in a gra­tu­itous fash­ion!

Anoth­er NaBloPo­Mo prompt: Do you like scary movies that make you jump?

I’m not old enough to watch scary movies! I find them far too fright­en­ing, indeed, night­mare-induc­ing. Sam required that I watch The Crow with him when we’d just start­ed dat­ing him (I can’t remem­ber why any more) and, like a fool, I did­n’t refuse absolute­ly. Today I would, even in the ear­ly days of a rela­tion­ship. I too eas­i­ly sus­pend my dis­be­lief.

But then, i can’t watch many very vio­lent things, either. They’re too upset­ting for me. The more real­is­tic vio­lence is, the more fright­en­ing it is. I can’t under­stand why any­one else would want to watch such things, either, but I accept that they don’t touch some peo­ple as deeply as they do me. I can watch foren­sics shows, but the vio­lence is usu­al­ly over by the time those shows start. The main char­ac­ters recon­struct the crimes, but the view­er isn’t usu­al­ly sub­ject­ed to the actu­al crime occur­ring, hap­pi­ly. That lets me look at them as puz­zles.

Back to the NaBloPo­Mo prompts:
What do you do to cope when you’re ner­vous?

I have a whole mess of diag­noses, includ­ing post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der and social anx­i­ety dis­or­der, so I feel jumpy and ner­vous fair­ly often. I’m on med­ica­tion that helps, and I have Ati­van that I can take if I must for pan­ic attacks. But I try real­ly hard to use the Ati­van, because 1) it can be addic­tive; and 2) it makes me sleepy. It makes far more sense to take advan­tage of the biofeed­back tech­niques I learned years ago to try to get my heart rate and breath­ing under con­trol. Cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py has also giv­en me some valu­able ways to exam­ine the thought pat­terns that lead to pan­ic attacks, so that I can try to short-cir­cuit them before I get too wound up.

For less crit­i­cal nerves, I find it impor­tant to keep my hands busy. I usu­al­l­ly take a small stitch­ing project with me wher­ev­er I go. Hav­ing my hands busy and keep­ing my mind par­tial­ly occu­pied takes up enough of my ener­gy to keep me from get­ting too wound up in nerves, most of the time. My stitch­ing is the equiv­a­lent of oth­er peo­ples’ doo­dling or fid­get toys.

Plinky asked, “Would you say that you enjoy dri­ving?”

Dri­ving Cars in a Traf­fic Jam

Not real­ly. I’ve nev­er been one of those peo­ple who gets in the car just to go for a dri­ve. I use vehi­cles sole­ly as tools, in order to get from one place to anoth­er. I miss them sore­ly when I don’t have ready access, though.

I hope it was as won­der­ful for y’all as it was for us.

While Dad­dy was tak­ing a nap, I did a lit­tle work on the site here, con­tin­u­ing the process of migrat­ing things from the old for­mat into Word­Press. It’s going to take more time, but even­tu­al­ly all the pages will be uni­form. Real­ly! If you find any­thing that isn’t work­ing, though, please be patient and leave me a com­ment about it?

Plinky asked, “When was the last time you enjoyed the great out­doors?”

Sea-swim­ming (Medi­um)

Does a sub­ur­ban pool count? Because I was in one today, play­ing with my niece and nephews, chat­ting with my broth­er and sis­ter-in-law and par­ents. It was a love­ly part of our Father’s Day week­end cel­e­bra­tion.

It has been a few years since I went out to any­thing that could be called wilder­ness, but I’d like to do so again, now that I’m get­ting stronger and my aller­gies have improved along with the rest of my health. I haven’t been to a beach (oth­er than the import­ed one at Lake Lanier) in almost 20 years, either. That’s anoth­er thing I’d like to do.

Today’s NaBloPo­Mo prompt: “Is the glass half-full or half-emp­ty?”

It’s half-full, and things are get­ting bet­ter all the time.

Last night as I was sleep­ing
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a bee­hive
here inside my heart.
And the gold­en bees
were mak­ing white combs
and sweet hon­ey
from my old fail­ures.
–Anto­nio Macha­do

Plinky asked, “Where do you hope to be in three years?”

The future

I hope that I’m no longer dis­abled, that I’m ful­ly func­tion­al, tak­ing few­er med­ica­tions and see­ing few­er doc­tors. I’m work­ing on that goal now. I plan to be work­ing full time either for myself or in a posi­tion equiv­a­lent to the one I had back in 2000, when I last worked. I want to be attend­ing school, unless I already have my degree. And final­ly, I hope to be liv­ing in a blue state or mak­ing seri­ous progress towards get­ting there or even emi­grat­ing.