(no subject)

So, an e-mail from evalerie yesterday reminded me that I hadn't posted in a while. She was concerned that I might be sick or otherwise in a bad way.

I'm not, not really. I'm not quite right, either, but it's not in an actively bad way, I think. Basically, I've been having trouble concentrating and keep finding that time has gotten away from me. I've read a lot of mediocre fanfic, and I seem to be stressed about a multitude of really minor things. I can't get myself to deal with any of them-- It's sort of like having dozens of flies biting me at once and not being able to figure out which to smack first. Smacking one of them-- any one of them-- would be smart but would also mean leaving the others to keep biting for just a little longer.

::sighs:: Anxiety is not sensible. Or, rather, my reaction to it isn't. I wish my brain worked normally.

At any rate, my goal for this morning is to swat some flies.

First, I need to call Rec & Ed to see what I need to do to get Cordelia on a soccer team that practices at her school. If she ends up on one that practices elsewhere, she can't go. I've no idea what we'll do about games, but there's at least a chance of Scott being available or of getting the coach or some other parent to help.

Second, I need to find out if I can still sign up for the weissday exchange and decide if I'm going to or not. I want to and maybe need to, but I think Scott will be unhappy if I do. At least, he'll be unhappy if I stress out over it or need to ask him to give me some time to write. He's very stressed at the moment. It's hard because I end up both better and worse when I'm doing one of these writing projects. He wants me to get the better part, but the worse part ends up putting a lot of burden on him. I wish I could find a way to write that didn't do that. (I also wish I could get more exchanges/challenges that work for me and involve working on things I've already started.)

Third, I need to look into something to put in the basement for guests to sleep on. My mother may visit this month, and it would be nice to have space for her. (I'm not holding my breath that she'll make it. Things with my grandfather and uncle could still blow up in multiple nasty ways.)

Fourth, I need to nag my step-father about sending us pictures of their dogs. They plan to come to Michigan this summer and to bring their dogs. Cordelia still goes into screaming panic when she's near a dog, and I want to prepare her to see them. My step-father claims it will be all right, that the dogs are friendly and under control, but.... Cordelia doesn't care, and those two dogs are responsible for my mother's shoulder injury a couple of years ago. She was walking them, and they took off running, yanking their leashes to the point that she was badly hurt. This does *not* reassure me.

Fifth, I need to find three pieces of Cordelia's homework and set aside time to do them with her. They're all things that are meant to be done by two people, and I've put each aside thinking that we'd get to it 'later.' We can't keep delaying that, and I'm giving her a poor example on getting assignments done. I simply find myself resenting being asked to do so much work. I keep reminding myself that I signed up for this job by choosing to become a parent. That only helps a little. The first has to do with practicing counting by fives and tens. The second has to do with setting up and continuing patterns. The third is teaching her to play War (the card game) under a less violent name that escapes me right now. None of them are dreadfully hard. Really.

Sixth, I need to call the mother of one of Cordelia's friends to see if the friend is at school today. If the girl is, we'll be having a playdate, and I need to plan for lunch. If the girl isn't, the playdate will be Friday. Either way, I'll need to call a second mother because I tentatively scheduled a playdate with her daughter for Friday with the caveat that there was one scheduling thing I needed to clear up to make it certain.

Seventh, I need to talk to my sister-in-law about scheduling some sleepovers for Cordelia and her slightly older cousin. I've been waiting for Scott's schedule to settle, but that hasn't happened yet and may not for a while. I'm just going to have to tell her that we need to assume he won't be available and that we'll have to work around that.

There's more, but I think that's as much as I can face in one day. I look at it and think that it's not much, but it really is.

(no subject)

I've been skimming LJ and IJ during the last couple of weeks. I keep meaning to give myself more time for it and then choosing mediocre fic (really mediocre fic) over it. I suspect that some of it is whatever in my personal life is making me want to cocoon and that some of it is watching the SF/F racism imbroglio of 2009. (If you haven't run into it yet, that's a link to a compendium of other links. I haven't read everything there by any means and probably won't. I'd suggest starting with the oldest links and going forward. Alternatively, metafandom has had a lot of links, too.)

The latter is something I have opinions on and that I want to be able to talk about. Unfortunately, situations like this hammer hard at the weak points in my personal anxiety coping mechanisms. Since I'm already disabled due to anxiety, looking too hard or for too long at things that increase my anxiety is dangerous even-- as stupidly overdramatic as it sounds-- potentially lethal for me. It's not as immediate as, say, taking the wrong antibiotic, but my brain is broken.

Most of the time, I simply don't let myself think about the ways in which the world is an awful place or the ways in which human beings hurt each other. It's not in a la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you way exactly. It's more in the way that one might focus on finding water before finding food and just not think about how empty one's belly is. The hunger's still there, but dehydration kills faster, and thinking about being hungry gets in the way of the search for water.

The world can be a terrible place. It's also a place with joy. For me, anxiety means that I can't ever forget the terrors and potential hurts. I'm lucky because I don't have to deal with very many of the everyday abrasions that go with surviving lack of privilege (I need a better way to phrase that). I always know the ways in which things *could* go horribly wrong in a split second, but I don't have to live with the certainty that things *will* go wrong. I can reassure myself a bit by looking at the odds of danger and knowing that, probably, almost certainly, today no one will try to hurt me, no one will decide that I'm worthless, no one will deny my right to exist or to have opinions or to assert myself. All of that could happen, but I know it probably won't.

I can only imagine living with the opposite knowledge. I feel the utmost admiration for anybody who can not only live with the baseline threat but also step up and accept the extra risks of saying, 'This, this thing here, is not right. It needs to change.'