Sneezing with abdomen stitches. Yeouch! I hope ND heals quickly and soon.

No be sick ~ma, ND.

meara, you must tell me where you were, because doing that just got added to my Bucket List.

Steph, whoa. Yeah. Photos of past life that happen to have exes in them, sure; nakkeytimes pictures of exes: discard immediately.

bacon:

Oh, and this:

ADD hording

Really? I didn't know that was a characteristic of ADD. The more I learn about ADD, the more convinced I become that I have it. Or am it.

Hello all. I have been away (from most of the internet - e.g. twitter is causing actual pain right now) because withdrawal from antidepressants is proving difficult. (Who could have known I'd have an enormous simultaneous crisis about badly-organized care support, the stress of the past five years of being disabled, and the unbelievably appalling situation that is the way The Girl's family treats us. Well, maybe I could have predicted it if I'd thought a bit harder.) I may or may not go back on the meds. It's somewhat ridiculous, but despite the craziness, I still like myself better off them. I may like my life better with them, of course. Hmph.

Tipping doesn't happen much here, except in restaurants etc. I always try to tip well in food outlets even if there wasn't much service going on, and I definitely tip food delivery people, and cabbies, and occasionally hairdressers (unless I've paid a fortune for a cut). But we wouldn't tip in Starbucks or McDonald's. Would Americans?

Congrats on the job, Nora!

Wishing you fewer migraines and more food and more rest, Steph.

I'm less concerned if any of my Christian friends think homosexuality is a sin, provided they remember it's not our place to point out people's sins. We shouldn't even be noticing them; we (Christians, that is) are each supposed to concentrate on our own. My pride, or hatred, or blah is no cleaner than someone else's stuff.

It's interesting. Yesterday I met up with an old friend from when I was an undergraduate. It's been at least eight years since I last saw her. Neither of us has changed all that much - except I came out and met The Girl within the last eight years. She's still a very evangelical Christian, whereas I've become far more liberal, and not only because of coming out. She was clearly struggling with it, but the fact that neither of us felt any need to 'persuade' the other was a good thing. She at one point said how she has her own "temptations". And I had to say that actually, I'm in a committed, permanent and soon-to-be-official-under-law relationship with another person, and I didn't think that exactly fell under the category of 'temptation'. While I'm mostly OK that some people think I'm a sinner, as long as they know they are too, I also find it frustrating that their relationships are holy while mine is evil. Ultimately, that's where I have trouble with the 'love the sinner' stuff. I'm a terrible sinner. But The Girl is one thing I got right.

Talking of The Girl, it's our five-year anniversary soon. (We may have entirely missed our engagement anniversary this year. We don't have long memories. Which is generally a good thing). I don't know what to get her! I need to get on it.

I rarely swear. It's just not something I do very well. And then I get into the car and everything changes. There are various categories of bad drivers, starting with 'wankers' (who unthinkingly do stupid things), moving up to 'fuckers' (a lot of cabbies fall into that category) and eventually getting to 'bastardy fucking pointless little shitter of a cunt'. Apparently this is funny to people who are used to mild-mannered little me.

And now I'll stop replying to four days worth of posts.

Edit to cut down on rambling.

Really? I didn't know that was a characteristic of ADD. The more I learn about ADD, the more convinced I become that I have it. Or am it.

I believe the "unable to get rid of clutter" ADD thing more complex than the sources of clutter for other sorts of people who cannot part with clutter. Not only are we kings and queens of procrastination, together with being apt to miss social cues (in spite of the keen emotional sensitivity that is fairly common), but we have a heck of a time actually being able to slap reasonable priorities on things. Plus - as my therapist said to me, back when I was working with one, the wonderful thing about the ADD mind is that it can see all the possibilities in something. The hard part is being able to focus on winnowing out the choices down to a reasonable point. So it takes a heck of a lot of practice for someone with ADD to successfully declutter - because it really is a big challenge to go from "I can make something out of that/fix that/clean it up" to "screw it, I know I will never actually get around to it". Plus the call of "But I might need that some day" is a siren song for us, almost as powerful as it is for Depression era babies.

Zenkitty, I wholeheartedly recommend Sari Solden's book, Women with Attention Deficit Disorder [link] It has a questionaire developed specifically for women, and discusses why females are less likely to get diagnosed.

Aw, Seska. I'm sorry you are having a rotten time coming down off the antidepressants.

ETA: I'm also sorry that your Girl's family aren't treating you well. I don't have anything useful to say, really. I'm sad for you and for them that they cannot get past their own blinders.

Thanks, Andi. (Edit) As for the Girl's family, it's been going on for five years. They're not going to change. We're going to have to be the ones who decide what needs to be done about it. Which I'm sure we will eventually.

I believe the "unable to get rid of clutter" ADD thing more complex than the sources of clutter for other sorts of people who cannot part with clutter. Not only are we kings and queens of procrastination, together with being apt to miss social cues (in spite of the keen emotional sensitivity that is fairly common), but we have a heck of a time actually being able to slap reasonable priorities on things.

This sounds very much like my dyspraxic/ASD stuff. There seems to be a lot of overlap with some of these conditions. (And it's always good to hear it's not just me!)

I stumbled upon a phrase at work today that would make an interesting swear word: "spit sock". Try saying that 3 times fast.

(And for those interested, it is an actual tool for law enforcement, tho apparently the patrol cars don't carry them and have to make a special request for the jail to provide one at booking.)

"Spit sock" - bleeurgh! putting me off my breakfast, that one is.

I will leave the defining and discussion of "spit sock" for later this morning because I am not up to starting that right now...

I will hopefully be going back on my meds this week and I can't wait.

I got up early to feed the kittehs and then the plan was to go get donuts at this awesome place I found yesterday, but being out of bed and having the energy to go out on a mission appear to be 2 different things...