How do you like my new banner?  JadedFey
made it for me and posted a link to it in my guestbook over a week
ago.  I just saw it today.  I lost all my routines, such as
checking email and my Xanga feedback log daily, while we were waiting
for our new comp.  I suppose eventually I’ll get back into
the swing of things and maybe even start surfing Xanga again
someday.  That should properly wait until I can spare the time
from the neglected and delayed work I have to do, both around the
homestead and online, but the temptation to catch up on events in your
lives might overcome my shaky work ethic.

Back to that banner:  Sarah knows me, knew better than to suggest
I do a big makeover of my site.  That’s not my style.  I only
rearrange the furniture when I get something new I need to make room
for, or when something old disintegrates and has to be gotten
out.  I like the new banner, not because it is new but because the
title is even more eccentric than the old one, it includes my moniker,
and has that 3D shaded effect.  Thank you, Anam Cara.

Mind Stuff

Several of you left provocative comments to the blog a few days ago, about Theta brainwave state.  I was in Beta, not Theta when I read the comments, or this one probably wouldn’t have provoked me:

…the curse of genius and the bane of modesty
Posted 7/27/2005 at 3:53 PM by dingus6

Ever the master of ambiguity, dingus leaves me unsure whether he is
implying that modesty is a bane, or if he means that having a
well-functioning brain is a bane and modesty a virtue.  After
prolonged semantic observation, I’ve concluded that in general usage,
“modesty” tends to refer to feigned humility.   In case my
meaning is obscure, I mean that in my experience most people whose
speech and behavior is said to display modesty are in fact displaying
false humility because they don’t want to risk social disapproval for
boasting or incur God’s wrath for their hubris.

Whatever was meant by dingus’s comment, it did get me to thinking about
humility.  I won’t pretend to be stupid, nor conceal the
intelligence of other members of my family, even though we all know
that talking about a high IQ is inviting hostility from those who
didn’t score as highly on their tests.  Nor will I try to hide the
fact that I often do stupid things, and that my ability to learn new
skills, languages, etc., is slowing down with age.  Maybe nobody
but God knows how truly humble I am.  If I take any pride in my
mental abilities, it’s a pathetic form of compensation for my physical
disabilities.  In general, my attitude toward my mental talents
and skills is one of gratitude.

The “genius” to which I referred in that post is the jargon of
psychometrics, a label generally applied to those of us who score in
the top one or two percent on IQ tests.  It doesn’t imply anything
other than a certain IQ score.  It’s a simple documented fact that
both Greyfox and I have earned the label.  Both of us are past
members of Mensa (top 2 percent) and Intertel (1%).  I took the
so-called “World’s Hardest IQ Test” to see if I qualified for the Four
Sigma Society (top one-hundredth of one percent) and failed with a
score of 99.94.  See, even though I’m called a “genius” by those
who make and administer IQ tests, I’m not so smart.  Out of every
10,000 people, theoretically, according to that one test, there are 5
who are smarter than I am.

Not “getting it” is perfectly normal for someone reared and educated in
Western society.  Our culture values and rewards the kinds of
thinking that are done in Beta brainwave state:  logical
problem-solving for example.  Public schools don’t train people to
slow down their brainwaves.  To the contrary, they work at making
children maintain the Beta state, focused on language and logical
thought.  The brains of young children tend to produce many more
Alpha and Theta wave patterns than adult brains do.  This might
account for children’s facility with daydreaming and their superior
ability to communicate with “lesser” animals compared to adults. 
It also can account for the phenomenon of “adolescent amnesia”, which
causes most people to have difficulty recalling childhood experiences
after they reach biological maturity.

That last phenomenon is related to state-bound memory.  Memories
recorded in one state are difficult to recall in a different
state.  Drug users among my readers may be familiar with this
phenomenon.  It also might ring a bell with those who have had a
flood of forgotten traumatic memories emerge in the wake of a new
trauma.  Many people who read my memoirs comment on the detailed
recall I have of very early childhood events.  I didn’t have that
detailed recall until after I began tinkering with my brainwave
states.  I use psychoactive sound to induce Theta state when I’m
writing my memoirs.

Neuroscientists have been recording the brainwaves of various people
for several decades.  In addition to what I mentioned in the
earlier blog about the finding that experienced meditators produce
Theta waves, it has also been found that “creative” thought, the state
described by pyramidtermite above, in which “inspiration” (whatever
that is) just flows, involves Theta waves.  The brains of shamans
in the “shamanic trance”, where they do their prophetic, divinatory,
and healing work, produce a predominately Theta pattern.  Another
interesting finding from some research done on war veterans with PTSD
in VA hospitals, showed that the Theta state was therapeutic. 
When those men had Theta waves induced by sound-and-light technology,
they became able to discuss and process their traumatic experiences,
and their conditions improved.

Several of you suggested you’d like to know more about the subject:

The following is from Intelegen, Inc., a website that sells brainwave entrainment tools.

I’d be in business, but…

There was a check-box on the application form for my new business
license that I neglected to check.  In today’s mail, I got back a
Xerox copy of my application with the relevant area highlighted, and a
cover letter I was instructed to return with my completed
application.  Ah, well, I’ve waited this long….

There were several comments and questions to the recent blog I did
about Theta brainwave state that deserve a response.  That will be
forthcoming sometime soon.  Today, Doug and I will work on the
roof again.  We laid the first tarp of three yesterday.  This
year’s roofing job is going much more quickly than the previous
one.  Having done it once before helps, but it is also speeding
things up having only three 16′ x 20′ tarps to lay instead of the five
12′ x 16′ tarps we used last time. 

That time, our choice was dictated by economy.  Five smaller tarps
were cheaper than three bigger ones.  This time, the three tarps
were essentially free.  Greyfox had won a $100 gift card in a
contest the newspaper was running, and his gift card happened to be
from a building supply business.  I’ll have story and pictures of
the roofing job for you later.

Today, as promised, the muskeg through the months:

That first shot, which I’ve posted previously, shows how the muskeg
looked on a frosty morning late in April.  I think it’s worth the
time and effort to click for the larger view, to see the detail in the
ice.  I’ve done that several times myself, and I took the picture
even.

When that shot was taken the days were warm and nights were
freezing.  The muskeg was full and flooding over the edges of the
road from snowmelt and runoff from rains.

The second shot, above, was taken in May.  Nights weren’t freezing
by then and continuing runoff had kept the water level high.  On
sunny days, jillions of mosquito larvae and a few tiny tadpoles could
be seen at the edges of the muskeg, being preyed upon by diving
beetles.  They might have been there on cloudy days, too, but
remained unseen because all that was visible on the water’s surface was
the reflection of the sky.

Before the middle of June, the first swamp grass had begun to show as a
sparse haze of green above the surface of the water in the shallows
around the edges of the muskeg.  The sun penetrated the water and
we could see at least two species of beetles as well as other larvae
besides mosquitoes, and there were water striders on the surface,
attracting the violet-green swallows that had recently migrated back
north.  The tadpoles were bigger, no longer prey to beetles.

By late June, the grass was thick around the edge of the muskeg, and
the water level had receded so that a haze of green could be seen in
places in the middle of the muskeg, too.  The tadpoles were huge,
bigger than the frogs are that they eventually morphed into. 
Violet-green swallows were still swooping and catching insects out
there, and the dragonflies were finally out, helping the birds keep the
mosquito population down.

By the middle of July, the only open water that could be seen was in
the four-wheeler ruts, and there were no more tadpoles, just a few shy
frogs hopping away when we approached the amphibian observation
area.  That, (the A.O.A.) is our POV in this shot, the spot where
the four-wheeler trail leaves the road and crosses the muskeg — it’s
where I sat for many hours during those eleven weeks when I had little
of interest to do indoors with no computer.  Tadpoles, frogs,
dragonflies, swallows, hawks and a stray pair of phalaropes, were some
of the silver lining attached to that cloud.

A three-blog day.  I must be getting back into the blog habit,
making up for lost time, or something.  It’s my son Doug’s
birthday, he’s 24.  I thought about scanning and posting some of
his baby pics, but just don’t have the energy after everything else.

Theta… and me

I go through periods when I seem to work at keeping my brainwaves in

Beta frequency:  I play solitaire, read, listen to talk and
news

radio, game on the PS2 and think, think, think.  One thing I

seldom think about during these times is meditation.

There, my deepest and most shameful secret is out!

It truly is a shame, because for me Beta is mostly a waste of

time.  None of the things I do best are done in
Beta.  I do

my best writing in Theta.  Sitting down with my jewelry tools
and

stones, wire, beads and things, I just naturally drift into Theta as I

start to work.  To think of trying to do a reading in Beta is
to

laugh.

Is the urge that makes me “forget” to meditate the same sort of urge

that makes me “forget” to take my vitamins?  At this moment,
high

in Theta, it feels that way.  It is, in the words of my mentor
E.

J. Gold, “identifying with the sleep of the machine.”

Meditation comes up at every twelve-step meeting.  It’s in
the

opening readings of the meeting format:  “We sought through
prayer

and meditation to maintain our constant contact with God….” 
But

many members when they speak of prayer are speaking of petitioning,
and

when they speak of meditation I think they mean reflective
thought.

Most human beings think that when they’ve slowed their brainwaves down

to Alpha they are in the Euphoria Zone.  I suppose, compared
to

being in Beta 24/7, Alpha is euphoric.  Theta is beyond that,

opening vistas of enlightening visions and creative inspiration few

people ever know.  Theta is the brainwave state achieved by
Yoga

adepts and practiced meditators.

Few of the people with whom I associate in real life practice

meditation or the form of prayer that is seeking communion with
Spirit.

 Even fewer of those people understand the brainwave states

involved, the deeper amplitude, lower frequency waves of
Theta. 

One of the very few people I know who has the vocabulary and knowledge

base to discuss these things is my husband Greyfox, but like me he

often gets stuck for long periods of time in Beta.

Maybe that’s the curse of genius, of having a brain that functions so

well in that state.  There are more ego points available in
Beta

than in Theta.  Try getting into a game of one-upmanship or a

shouting match or a bitch session in Theta and you’ll find your

biological machine back in Beta in no time.

Decades ago I began learning to tune my brainwaves like a
radio. 

I used biofeedback devices at first and then the brainwave entrainment

techniques such as drumming, chant and dance, before the myriad of

psychoactive sound recordings began becoming available.  My
little

CD tower here on the computer desk holds sixteen of them. 
Right

now Robert Monroe’s Inner Journey is coming through
my headphones.

I no more understand why I chose to listen to this now than I

understand why I sometimes go so long between Theta-inducing

sessions.  “Why?”  That’s a question I often ask in

Beta.  It becomes irrelevant in Theta. It’s trivial. 
In this

state, I often see how things came about; I also understand that how
is

not the same as why.

I confessed here last week to having been “influenced” by people
around

me.  It happens, and it makes me wonder if I have any such

influence on others.  I suspect that one must be open in order
to

be influenced.  I suppose I am more open than most. 
When I

think about it (not often), I know that I prefer being open to being

closed.  For one thing, the readings I’d do if I were closed
off

from the thoughts and feelings of my clients would not be of much use

to the clients and would do nothing for my professional
reputation.

I hope that when I reopen KaiOaty’s Klinic, there are lots of readings

to be done, many reasons to slip the headphones on and drift into

Theta.  Beyond whatever benefit this does for clients and any

material rewards I receive for that, Theta is the healing zone for

me.  My long periods spent in Beta state seem to build up

encrustations of psychic debris:  the sorry, fearful news I
hear

on the radio; frustrations and failures from my daily activities,

etc.  In Theta I can clear all that away and free my mind from
the

mundane.

So, why the hell don’t I do this more often?  Who
knows?  Who cares?  I’m doing it now, and now is all
there is.

One of the things that summer means up here in the formerly-frozen
north (global warming, y’know?) is relatively cheap fruit.  In
winter, we can get Chilean apricots, blueberries and raspberries, but
the prices are way steep.  For anyone who lives in the Lower 48
States, the summer prices we pay for California, Oregon and Washington
produce would seem high, too. 

Apricots at five dollars a pound, peaches three dollars a pound, plums
two dollars a pound, cherries seven dollars a pound, it’s enough to
sicken a California girl.  But at the peak of the season when the
merchants’ philosophy is, “Sell ‘em quick before they rot!”, we can
find some bargains.  I take advantage of such bargains.  Last
week, Fred Meyer had blueberries in two-pound boxes for $5.99 and
Safeway had seven-pound boxes for $7.99.  Which do you think I
bought?

Wrong!  I bought one of each.  I got a big box and shared it
with Greyfox, who shared his share with Mike, his landlord.  On my
next trip to town, since the leftovers from my big box were looking a
bit shriveled and I still wasn’t sick of berries in my cereal, berries
in pancakes and berries by themselves, I bought a smaller box.  It
was time for a new batch of muffins (all my long-time readers know I
live on these gluten-free muffins, bake several dozen at a time and
freeze them, then nuke them for breakfast and snacks) and so –

Gluten-Free Blueberry Muffins


Preheat oven to 425°F.  Line muffin pans with paper baking cups or
grease pans.  Recipe makes about 44 regular-size (1/4 cup of
batter) muffins.

Whisk together dry ingredients in a large bowl until thoroughly blended:

In a separate bowl, beat:

Add to beaten eggs, beating after each addition:

Add liquid to dry ingredients and blend with a few swift strokes until
flour is moistened.  Just before blending is complete, add
blueberries.  I used about three-quarters of a pound, which gives
me three or four berries per muffin.

Bake at 425°F for fifteen minutes, cool pans on racks for about five to
ten minutes then remove muffins to racks until cooled to room temp,
pack in freezer containers (I use big coffee cans) and freeze.

Two muffins make a meal.  Three muffins make an overdose for me,
meaning blood sugar spike followed by too-rapid drop in blood
sugar:  reactive hypoglycemia.  These are dangerously
good.  I must restrain myself.

The new, before the old…

I’m working on a photo blog showing how the muskeg changed over those
eleven weeks from late April to mid-July while we were without a
computer.  Meanwhile, I keep taking new pics, and I don’t want
them to grow stale while I’m posting the old stuff.  These are
from my latest trip to town, last Thursday.

In the flower garden beside the Willow Public Library, this lily stands out.  It caught my eye from across the parking lot.

In Greyfox’s tiny cabin, to get this shot, I had to move his laundry
hamper so I could crawl under the foot of his bed to scoop the kittens
up from their hidden nest.  Then I had to keep them from squirming
off the chair while I moved it in front of the door where the light was
adequate.  Three shots for insurance, and then they were scooped
back into their nest and barricaded behind the hamper.

The next shot, I took yesterday below my back steps.  I was headed
to the outhouse when some movement caught my eye.  First to flash
into my mind was, “grasshopper,” but a closer look revealed that it was
one of the little Arctic wood frogs I’ve been watching mature from
tadpoles in the muskeg across the road.

Out of focus because I held the camera too close, and zoomed to the max
because it’s so tiny (size of my fingernail) there it is, one of the
famous froggies that survive Arctic winters buried in frozen mud. 
Can’t see it?  The head is at the upper end of the yellowed leaf
at lower right.

Bear Hair?

A few nights ago, there was a bear in the neighborhood.  I didn’t
see it, hear the commotion, or even smell the bear.  I slept
through the excitement.

Doug told me about it later.  When he described Koji’s behavior, I
had no doubt it had been a bear.  The dog was doing quiet little
woofs in the house and going back and forth anxiously from window to
door.  Our routine around here when there is something outside
that Koji wants to bark at, we put him out on his chain to bark. 
When Doug put Koji out that night, he didn’t bark and he slunk right
back into the house.

I’ve been observing our dogs’ behavior and that of neighbors’ dogs for
a couple of decades here.  I hear a difference between their
barking when the intruder is a moose, a stray dog, a fox, or a musher
with a team of dogs in harness.  When they are agitated as Koji
was that night, but not making a lot of noise, that signals a
bear.  Doug clinched it by saying that when he stuck his head out
the door he could hear it scratching on a tree.  He was sure
enough of it that he carried the .44 mag. when he carried out the
trash, and he body-guarded Koji when he had to go out.

Yesterday, driving home from a trip over to Charley’s place, I saw
further evidence.  Snagged on a bush beside the road was a clump
of something that looked like black bear hair and nothing else. 
I’ve seen those scraggly clumps beside trails in the woods before.

A clinical social worker in Scammon Bay, Sandy Klevin, first
encountered Jaye Ulak when he was contemplating suicide.  His
cousin Jimmy Walker came into contact with her soon afterward, after he
had attempted suicide.  Teenage suicide is a big problem in rural
Alaska.  Some small villages have lost as much as three quarters of their
teen population to suicide.  Sandy learned that both boys rap, and
she asked each of them to show her what they do.  Impressed by
their words about village life and teen angst, she brought them
together and suggested that they go with her to a social work
conference in Seattle.

At
the time, she didn’t know how she could make it happen, but the state
provided transportation to get the boys to Bethel, and private
individuals donated airline miles to get them to Seattle, where
conference organizers provided lodging and food.  The two cousins
made an impression on the conferees and got some publicity back home
which has led to several personal appearances.  The next logical
step would be a recording, right?

Today, they spoke on public radio here, and rapped a little with their
positive message.  One caller to the program asked how she could
help them spread the message.  Jaye (on the left here) said, “I
don’t know.  Just keep encouraging us…”  Sandy broke in and
mentioned that the duo, Blood Family, wants to do some recording and
are hoping to make the necessary connections.  The caller said,
“Well, I know some people here in Anchorage at Surreal Studios… and there’s the native music group, Pamyua… I know some of them.”  Neat!  I’m hoping it all works out for Jaye and Jimmy, and everyone gets to hear them.

Confessions and Confrontations

Mama always said, “confession is good for the soul.”  I hate
that

word, “soul” (I’ve been in a snit all day about the inadequacy of
words

in general, must be Mercury Retrograde), about as much as I hate the

word, “psychic”.  Both of them mean so many different things
to so

many different people, and so many people don’t even believe they
stand

for anything real, that the words are meaningless.  I know
from

experience that confession can free the mind and lighten the emotions,

unless it gets you in so much trouble that it has the opposite
effect.

Confrontation is another thing about which there is broad general

disagreement and misunderstanding.  Many people try to avoid
it,

and tend to avoid the people (aggressive, hostile assholes) who tend
to

practice it.  I consider myself fortunate indeed to have
learned

that confrontation doesn’t need to be hostile even when done

aggressively.  The junkies who ran the Family House heroin
rehab

program in Anchorage turned my life around by confronting me

unrelentingly on my bullshit until my defense mechanisms crumbled and
I

was able to be honest with myself and them.  I became a
convert to

therapeutic confrontation.

In response to my blog yesterday about my cupcake
and pizza binge, rosabelle

suggested that the binge was connected with the issues I had
confronted

with Greyfox the night before.  In my finite observable
universe,

everything is connected.  Her comment set me to thinking
about

what those connections might be.  I knew immediately that the

confrontation didn’t have any causal connection to the binge, and I

could immediately see that both events, food binge and confrontation,

had proceeded from causes that were related to each other in various

ways.  Now I’ll try to marshall my thoughts and verbalize some
of

those connections.

First of all, addicts don’t need reasons to do the stuff of their

addictions, whether that may be drugs, food, or “process” (that’s

treatment-psych jargon) activities such as sex or gambling. 
We do

the things we do addictively because it feels good.  Dopamine
in

the brain is all the reason we need.  As a group we tend to
be

good at finding excuses for our destructive and self-destructive

behavior and we often lay it off on other people whose behavior we

don’t like.  In 12-step groups we call that “getting loaded
at”

someone.  I certainly wasn’t pigging out on pizza, chocolate
cake

and butter cream icing AT Greyfox.  Thursday night his
response to

my confrontation had been so supportive and gratifying that I wondered

why I’d waited so long to confront.  I wasn’t doing it out of
any

celebratory or self-congratulatory urge, either.  I’d as soon
bash

myself in the face with a rock to celebrate or reward myself, and

that’s something I’m not likely to do.

My waiting, my having put off the therapeutic confrontation, probably

was a contributory factor in my food binge.  Twelve step
dogma

would have it so, anyhow.  The program contends that we need
to

maintain high self-esteem, enough regard for ourselves to stay

clean.  My avoidance of the issues between Greyfox and me had
been

detrimental to my self-esteem and my peace of mind.  After my

education in psychology and the programming by those Family House

junkies, I can’t feel

really good about myself if I’m not dealing with my
feelings. 

That’s one reason my avoidance was getting me down.  Another
one

was the strong convictions I have regarding the inadvisability of

allowing fear to influence my actions.  I had been backing
off

from that confrontation out of both fear and resentment, as well as

some other, more logical reasons I’ll go into later.  Fear
and

resentment are both feelings I know to be self-defeating.

Maybe… probably, the lowered self-regard was related to my missing

some doses of my nutritional supplements (hereinafter called “meds”
for

short — I just want to specify that my meds are supplements and I’m

not on any anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, etc.).  Missing
my

meds most likely contributed to the foggy state of mind that led me

into the binge.  It’s a classic love-hate relationship I have
with

my pills:  I love the improved function I experience when my

biochemistry is balanced, and I hate taking pills.  I have to

psych myself up by telling myself I’m worth the trouble.  If
I

don’t bother with the pep talk, I often don’t bother with the

pills. 

I had been skipping doses occasionally, for weeks.  I had
also

been eating an occasional gluteny wheat hamburger bun or slice of

pizza, but hadn’t slipped over into binge mode from those

indulgences.  It started small and escalated.  I
think I’d

gone two full days without my regular meds yesterday when I opened
that

transparent cupcake box, “just for a taste of the frosting.” 

Maybe if my neurotransmitters had been in balance from the amino acid

supplements and if I’d had my DMAE and all, I’d have seen the fallacy

in that.  Today, after a few doses of the meds, I know that
one

taste of butter cream frosting, scraped with a fingertip from the top

of a chocolate cupcake, is an invitation to disaster.  I
tasted

the frosting, then I ate the cupcake, then I ate the other

cupcake.  Doug hadn’t wanted any of the dumpster-derived
pizza, so

throughout the day yesterday I ate almost the whole thing. 
Today, my stomach roils at the thought.

Today, I’m back on track nutritionally.  I’ve reflected on the
path that led to

the binge.  I’d been drinking diet Coke (sweetened with
Splenda)

instead of the herbal (maté) tea I usually drink.  The weather
has

been hot.  The Coke was cold, and its sweetness was
qualitatively

different from the sweetness of the Stevia in my tea.  Stevia

helps stabilize my blood sugar, and low blood sugar was one of the

factors that led me to eat those chocolate cupcakes for

breakfast.  I was hungry and they were right there. 
Today, I’m drinking iced maté and

Stevia tea, and I’m eating healthful natural foods in frequent small
quantities to get my blood

sugar stabilizied again.

Another factor I cannot ignore is that the cupcakes were THERE, right

on my worktable beside the computer in a clear plastic box, inviting
me

to indulge.  I’d salvaged them from the garbage for
Doug. 

I’d felt a twinge of parental guilt at the time, knowing they weren’t

good for him even though he likes that sort of stuff and will go out
to

the local store for ice cream and candy if he has cash on
hand. 

The kid is about to experience another of the periodic absences of his

mother’s forbidden foods that he has been subjected to from time to

time throughout his life.  If it’s not around here for him,
it’s

not avaiable to me.

In my confrontation with Greyfox Thursday, I was confronting myself,

not him.  We were confronting the issues together, which is

something we had agreed to do after his last drug binge two years and

two months ago, during those initial months of better communication

than we’d ever experienced in our dozen-plus years together. 
We

had done very well at that, confronting issues together, up until last

fall.  The major issue we had to confront was his NPD

(narcissistic personality disorder).  I’d been acting, at his

request, as his therapist. 

Expert opinion gives NPD a poor

prognosis in talk therapy (in any therapy, actually) because the

narcissist is unlikely to feel motivated to continue the therapy since

its aim is to destroy the defense mechanisms the N depends

on.  If the client doesn’t walk out of therapy, often the

therapist quits because all narcissists are assholes
difficult

clients.  Their

disorder is characterized by grandiose lies and cruel behavior toward

others.  The therapist’s job is to dispel the N’s false belief
in

his own infallibility.  Each therapeutic success is likely to
give

the client a narcissistic
injury, which in turn can and usually does trigger narcissistic
rage.

That is what happened to us last fall.  I’d been blogging all

along about our therapeutic efforts, and Greyfox had also done a
series

of blogs about the therapy from his perspective.  I think I
had

referred to him as an asshole

a difficult client one time too many.  Greyfox came on in a

towering rage and left a four-paragraph comment to my blog, filled
with

venomous invective.  In it, among other absurdities, he said
that

I have NPD.  That’s false on the face of it because one of the
N’s

defining characteristics is a lack of empathy and empathy is something

I’ve no lack of.  I don’t know how many people read that
comment before I deleted it.  Only lupa had commented on it,
and hers was something like, “Wow!” or “Sheesh!”, terse and
non-committal.

Greyfox‘s

reaction blindsided me.  We’d gone through many cycles of

narcissitic injury and rage in our years together, because I’d often

shone a light on those aspects of his true self he preferred to hide

and deny.  After he had diagnosed his own NPD and committed

himself to therapy for it, we had been allies facing a common

adversary, rather than being in an adversarial relationship. 
One

of the things he said in that comment and reiterated in a later phone

conversation was that he was firing me as his therapist. 
Since I

had told him from the start that our arrangement was his choice, his
to

keep and his to break, being “fired” put me in a psychological bind

that I resolved for myself by telling him I would lay off the

therapeutic confrontation unless and until his NPD “stepped on my

toes,” and he agreed to that.

Greyfox’s actions undertaken in that time of rage had scared
me. 

My biggest fear was that he’d get loaded at me.  He had done
it

many times before.  My telling him my honest thoughts and
feelings

had often given him what he thought was a good excuse to
drink. 

In his rage he had also decided to keep his little cabin at Felony

Flats through the winter instead of moving back in here as he had the

previous winter, and he opened a new checking account and stopped

depositing money to our joint account.  Within days, however,
he

was back to acting as if nothing had happened.  It has always
been

that way with him and he had always resented it when I had reminded
him

of his explosive rages and the extravagant threats he made and the

insults and abuse he had heaped on Doug and me.  That time,
my

being fired as his therapist put me in a bind.  He needed to
be

confronted but I was constrained from doing it.

This Thursday, I’d run to the end of my ability to keep quiet about
it.  Greyfox had continued to progress at transcending the NPD
and
his addictions, and I felt myself sliding backwards in regards to my
food addictions and my resolve not to let my fears dictate my
behavior.  I said I needed to talk to him and proceeded to
spill
my guts (as I’d tried and failed to do in a blog here earlier in the
week).  When I mentioned his firing me as his therapist, he
said,
“I did?” and any trepidation I’d had about broaching the issue then
evaporated.  We talked it out, and then as I was leaving he
decided to browse the dumpster and I went with him.  That was
my
big mistake… well, browsing the dumpster wasn’t a mistake, but
taking
the cupcakes and pizza home was really stupid.  I hadn’t learned a
thing from all those times Greyfox told me about finding booze in the
dumpster, and leaving it there.

Meaningful Human Contact

This week’s full moon followed closely by the Mercury retrograde station seems to have shaken my world.  The chart 
for the full moon reveals that at that moment, Sun, Moon, Venus, Mars,
Uranus and Pluto were all aspecting my fascinating (to me and possibly,
as a peculiar case study, to astrologers) curse/blessing intensity pattern. 
Figuratively speaking, I’m jumping all over the place — forward leaps,
backward slides, jogging in place, treading water, going down
*glub*.  I confronted some longstanding issues with Greyfox last
night, and will write about that sometime soon.

Writing, rather than the usual easy flow, is like swimming through
molasses, but I feel compelled to do it.  Gotta get the stuff out
there.  It will feel so good when it’s done.  Today I can
really relate to that hisssss of creative/communicative steam Sarah talks about.  I feel that if I don’t let it out I’ll explode. 

I’m a mess of conflicting drives.  I want nothing more than to veg
out with the PS2, unless it would be to pig out on an orgy of forbidden
sugary foods.  Breakfast this morning was two stale chocolate
cupcakes I scrounged last night from the dumpster at felony flats (and
I’ve promised myself all along that if/when I relapsed it would be on
some exquisite gourmet goodies).  The only thing keeping me from
turning it into a full-fledged chocolate binge is that they were the
only bits of sweet chocolate in the house.  Thank all the gods
that Doug ate most of them before he went to bed.  Along with the
meat machine’s nagging me to get dressed and drive to the bakery for
more, and the lower mind’s craving for the engaging routine of gaming,
both curiosity and a sense of obligation are drawing me towards Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. 
That was the package waiting for me at the post office yesterday, and
theoretically neither Doug nor Greyfox will get to read it until I
finish it, because I started it first.  Doug will probably end up
inserting his own bookmark into it and passing it back and forth with
me until one of us finishes it.

Aaarrgh!  So, with all those conflicting pressures, what do I
do?  I blog, of course — right after I get up and nuke a slice of
the pizza we found in that same dumpster.  No, I’m not
kidding.  *sigh*  Addicts in relapse are pathetic.  I’ve
no clue how old the pizza is.  There’s no date on the Pizza Hut
box, but the sell-by date on the cupcakes was six days ago. 
Puh-thetic, I tell you!

Last night’s NA meeting was… different.  Going over it in my
mind, I can’t recall any of the men sharing.  The topic from Just for Today
was surrender.  I read the meditation and was asked to elaborate
on it, but couldn’t manage to get my thoughts on-topic.   I
rambled and tried to edge in that direction, but mostly failed. 
None of the rest of the women who spoke was on topic, either.  In
fact, surrender was either irrelevant or antithetical to just about
everything anyone said.  One woman made a rambling impassioned
speech about “principles before personalities” and how no personalities
around there were going to make her feel unqualified to be in those
meetings and keep her away.  It was HER program as much as
anyone’s, DAMMIT!  The chairwoman cut her off mid-spiel, for
time.  I was hoping to speak to her after the meeting and thank
her, because that matter of qualification is one that bothers me a lot,
but she left before the closing prayer.

But wait!  One man did speak, briefly.  He cut in during the
opening part when the chair was asking if anyone had a program
“birthday”.  He said he had 35 days free of tobacco and announced
a new group of Nicotine Anonymous meeting there on Tuesdays now. 
He asked for a thirty-day key tag, but the man who is our group’s
treasurer and who takes a proprietary stance regarding the whole
organization, refused.  Although official Narcotics Anonymous
literature defines “drug” as, “any mood-changing, mind-altering
substance,”  nicotine, caffeine, and sugar, for example, 
clearly and indubitably drugs by that definition and in the opinions of
many authorities, are apparently just too hard to kick, and so are
accepted and condoned.  On the bright side, I guess, the program’s
hypocrisy means I won’t have to start over as a “newcomer” after
today’s cupcake and pizza binge.  Gluten is a drug, a peptide that
has similar biophysical effects to heroin, y’know?  Pizza is
loaded with it, as well as other similar peptides in the tomatoes and
peppers, plus the sugar in the sauce…..

When I really examine my feelings about 12-step groups, I feel like the
gambler whose friend asked if he knew that the game he kept going back
to was crooked.  He said, “sure, but it’s the only game in
town.”  I detest the institutionalized hypocrisy, the blatant
disregard of nearly a century of neuro-science, and the cult-like
adherence to a party line that a few of the members feel compelled to
parrot with passion whenever anyone voices dissent.  I go back
again and again, partly because of my volunteer commitment to drive
that van and get those inmates out of the rehab joint for an hour or
two, and partly for some meaningful human contact.  Sometimes the
meetings rise above the milieu and become extremely meaningful.  I
guess it’s unreasonable to expect much on a Mercury station. 
Meanwhile, last night I took on a new sponsee.  **heavy,
whimpering sigh**

It’s Thursday.
SuSu is online.
Ha!

I didn’t sleep much last night, was awake until 4 AM.  When I said
something (from my corner where I was trying futilely to read myself to
sleep with a page-turner –not such a good idea) about my unusually
late wakefulness, to Doug who was here at the computer, his response
struck me as impatient bordering on resentful, as if he was waiting for
me to go to sleep.  The evidence of a few pubic hairs on the
keyboard this morning suggests that he was waiting for me to go to
sleep so he could get into (really get INTO) some hentai tentacle
stuff.  So kinky, my kid.  The other day as I worked in the
kitchen some kids in his fanfic chat were discussing the obvious
absence of gay relationships in Harry Potter books.  Doug said in
an aside to me that some of them had written gay scenes involving Harry
and Draco Malfoy.  I gave a twisted grin and said I just couldn’t
see those two getting together, but could see Harry with
Dumbledore.  I guessed from the rapid clicking of the keyboard
that he was passing along my comment to the room.  Then he laughed
and said that someone posted, “Now we see where you get some of
it.”  Yeah the kinky apple doesn’t fall far from the twisted tree.

I will be headed down the valley in a while, after I’ve showered and
got the stuff I’m spozed to take to town together.  There’s a big
yogurt tub full of beans and ham hocks and half a dozen cornbread
mega-muffins for Greyfox (a microwave is his only way to cook in that
tiny cabin, and he appreciates a break from frozen dinners and
lunchmeat sandwiches sometimes), plus glue and shampoo and one straight
pin I stuck in his mail so it won’t get lost — he needs it to repair
some bit of defective merchandise.  He just phoned and left an
“urgent” message on the internet answering machine.  His cell was
breaking up badly, but I’m pretty sure after a couple of rehearings of
the
message that he’s asking for a roll of toilet paper, “for
nosewipe.”  I could take him a box of Kleenex, but he asked for
tubular tissue, so TP is what he’ll get.  He’ll also get a haircut
if circumstances and weather conditions permit.  I trimmed his
beard a couple of weeks ago, but it was too windy for a decent haircut.

I will be stopping at the post office in Willow on my way to Wasilla.  There was a pickup notice
in the box yesterday.  It could be some knives Greyfox ordered (ArmsMerchant isn’t just an online nic, it’s his business) or the package LuckyStars
told me to be watching for, or it might be the new Harry Potter book
from Amazon.  I love surprises, I just don’t enjoy suspense. 
I wanna know what it is, and I have to wait until I get there to find
out.  *sigh*

I also need to stop at the library.  I have books and a DVD to
return.  I wonder if I’ll be tempted to sit down at one of their
computers for an hour?  I can see myself now in my mind’s eye,
strolling past the little clutch of computers, casting a scornful
glance their way (my new system is certainly superior, and I can use it
without interruption whenever Doug is asleep), maybe blowing a quiet
little library raspberry. *pbttt*

I’m chaotic good.  What’s your alignment?

The man who taught me about alignments never mentioned D&D. 
Since I’d never played the game or been around gamers, some time
elapsed before I found out that the alignment system apparently
originated there.  As I learned it from my half-Romany friend, it was a divinatory method
(using dowsing rods or a pendulum with a diagram) to determine a
person’s basic habitual pattern of action and reaction. 
Regardless of where and how the system originated, I’ve found it to
encompass every nuance of human personality (even if somewhat
oversimplified), and the divinatory use of it has never misled me.

Comments to my previous blog, from pyramidtermite, blissed0and0gone, and my Old Fart, reminded me that my alignment
is chaotic good.  I won’t take the time here to go into the
permutations of the good-neutral-evil / lawful-neutral-chaotic
alignment system to enlighten the uninformed.  That’s why I put
that link in the first sentence of this paragraph

 Being chaotic
good means that I respect the lives, feelings, and rights of others but
don’t
follow the official rules of law.  I tend to follow my
conscience.   I also tend to appreciate chaos.  I
consider it to be beneficial for a Virgo to immerse herself in chaos
and endeavor to organize it — good exercise.  Hail Eris!

On the aforementioned topic of divination, my business license
application is in the mail and I will soon be back in business at KaiOaty.

Now, the pics of the day:

I think I mentioned in one of my updates from a library computer that
we were bringing home one of the two “orange” (ginger) kittens born to
Greyfox’s adopted stray cat Frankie.  (BTW, Frankie currently has
a brand new litter of six assorted colors under the Old Fart’s
bed.)  Greyfox had named our kitten Ginger and her brother
Peachy.  “Ginger” just didn’t suit her (and I kept forgetting her
name) so Doug and I renamed her.  We went through every orange
thing we could think of and almost settled on Kumquat but couldn’t
quite allow ourselves to saddle the innocent critter with that. 
Eventually, we started calling her Muchos Nombres, and then settled on
Nemo, Latin for “nameless”.

We had earlier taken home the only female kitten from Greyfox’s first
adopted stray, Silky.  To refresh your memory, here’s that kitten
Hilary (named for the mountaineer) with our dog Koji:

Hilary has grown some since then.  She’s pregnant now — surprised
us during our discussions of the best time to get her spayed. 
Perhaps subconsciously we just like kittens, eh?

Doug caught the two kittens napping together in the chair that was
Greyfox’s before he moved out.  This was taken about a month and a
half ago.  Both cats have grown some since then.

A few days after that, I captured Nemo in the same chair, this time with grumpy old Granny Mousebreath.

Later, all.  The PS2 awaits… yeah, I revived that old addiction
while the computer was down.  So, sue me.  I do so love my
little demon horde!