Week 8 - 2013-11-26 Tue.

2013-11-26 Tue.

This is a little early as it's only 13:45. I went to see Don. We met at Così in Falls Church, closer to his house than mine but still between us. Probably takes the same amount of time to get there but I drive faster than he does. One things he likes about me is that I'm able to keep my logic and emotions apart. I think this has to be the fifth or tenth time we've talked about this and every time I have to explain to him I'm making lemonade (if life s a pile of lemons you make lemonade).

I just had fun (Dripping Sarcasm). I'm not sure why copy Test 2013-11-21 I gave Jeanne was missing the most of the last paragraph, so I printed her a new copy. The copy I had on here did have the whole last paragraph. I then went through all of the new batches of Test and made sure that they are all there. Which was a good thing because Test 2013-10-29 was missing all but the first paragraph here on the Samsung. Fortunately I had already copied it to my Windows 8 box (computer). I now have copies of all but this paragraph on both the Apple and on the Windows 8 box. I haven't decided whether the problems I'm having are me or this silly little box. O'well.

Time for bed it's 1:10 tomorrow already.

2013-11-27 Wed.

Yesterday I talked to Jeanne about seeing Don (the missing portion of the previous Test) and, she read the first paragraph of this already. However, since I was going to write about it in here I might as well do it now. One of the other things Don and I talked about was that we're good for each other. I can talk in ways that he needs to hear and needs to be able to understand, kind of his words. I need to get out of my dungeon more often. I like to think of this as interdependent, a healthy sharing relationship, as oppose to codependent . . . Also he helps me learn different was of saying things. We know this woman Susanne who has been a problem for Don for years. She's always getting herself into situations that are harmful to her and then running Don to help her figure a way out of them. The other day he was talking to a friend of his who explained that Susanne is a masochist. I feel kind of dumb (not beat myself up dumb maybe duh dumb) about this because I didn't think of that way of explaining to him. I also made the point that a lot of masochists are also in a way sadists because they tend to draw others into their pain. Actually I think all masochists are sadists and all sadists are masochists, no overtly of course but . . . Anyway we help each other, strengths and weaknesses.

By the way, in case you haven't figured it out, I am really bothered about the missing parts of Test 2013-11-21. This is what I call a borderline frustration. I'm almost as curious as I am angry about it.

Actually this is a good way of explaining my different levels of frustration. Curious Frustration is like when I programming and I just can't figure it out but, I know it's just out of reach, a searching thing but, not like where are my car keys. Borderline Frustration is a mixture of curiosity and anger, though more often on the angry side. Lastly, Real Frustration, almost exclusively reserved for people who can't/won't see what is right in front of their eyes or listen to an explanation of some thing.  Basically bang your head against the wall frustration. This is why I don't get into the "too cold enough to snow" argument anymore, the only good reason to bang your head against he wall is it feels good when you stop.

Today I had more fun with this program, though to be honest it may have been my fault. While at Jeanne's (on 17^th St.) I couldn't find this copy of 2013-11-26 even though I looked in both possible places. However when I got home I found it in the directory that I back it up to. Who knows, it might be this program I didn't use the file manager to look for it earlier.

It's funny in a way since I started writing again I haven't been watching as much video. I had held on to two DVDs from from Netflix for something like two months. I got two new ones on Monday watched them and put them in the mail yesterday and, I'll get two more on Friday. However I'm down to some thing like one streaming video a week. This is rather amazing considering I was watching at least five to ten hours a day from something like January through August and, into September. Which is when I started to get my concentration back but, then books just took the place of videos for a few weeks. I got this (the Samsung) on or before September the sixth which is when I started reading again. The first new Test was started on Monday 2013-09-30. The day my Medicaid should have been re-certified. I guess I just got bored with the videos, though I'm still reading.

2013-11-28 Thu.

It's a nice quite boring Thanksgiving Day. Hopefully it stays this way. I haven't decided what I going to do with any of my time yet. I ordered two DVDs:

2012 The world floods but the major nations have built arks it Tibet. It ends up with Africa being the highest land mass left. The date of 12/21/2012 in my opinion was just a good reason to make a good movie.

The Terminator I'm sure just about anyone reading this knows this movie.

I've seen both of these movies many time but I like them very much.

I won my 75^th Batsford II (a double deck variant of Klondike) solitaire game in a row. My previous record was 64 games in a row. I'm not sure how impressive this is as the game is fairly easy though the original Batsford odds of winning are 1 in 5. I really like it but, I call it a cheating version. I just like to win and, there are some that I have to go back to the beginning two or three times. I've made a rule for myself about games. I can only play, at most, five games then I have to do something else, even if for only five minutes. This way if I have other things to do I will really look at the clock and, be able to figure out how much time I really have, so I'm not going crazy rushing to get out on time. That happened on Monday the 25th. I drove to Potomac in less than 25 minutes, to get Pat to Jenny's, her therapist, on time.

On Wednesday the 27th, I was talking to Jeanne about how I morph paragraphs on to different concepts, or ideas. I realized while I was writing this, these are stream of conscious paragraphs. This last paragraph is a perfect example of how I do it. It starts about the enjoyment of my accomplishment of breaking my record. Then, how hard the game is or isn't, but that I still enjoy playing it. Next, I go into having had to make a rule about the amount of time I play to break up my hyperfocus. Lastly, the fact that when I hyperfocus I can end up doing rash and or dangerous things.

In the process of explaining all of that I realized that a lot of the time when I go back and review what I wrote I break up these stream of conscious paragraphs when I catch them. Sometimes I leave them unbroken on purpose because of the difficulty of having to restructure them. In this case I would have been easy, "I've mad a rule" would be the beginning of the new paragraph. Also, to some extent, I don't break them because you're not suppose to write one sentence paragraphs. I'm intentionally not breaking up this one because it's a good example of what I was talking about. Also it took me something like five to six times longer to write about it than it did to write.

Most of the time it a wonder that these stream of conscious paragraphs are even intelligible. The spelling, missing or not finished words and lack of punctuation, can make them unreadable. Even I have a hard time with them and, sometimes, though not often, I have to rewrite more than half of them. "It's just words", as I have often said.

Now for a total change of subject.

The concepts of "both, and" or "either, or" have often bothered me. For what ever reason, it just occurred that in Boolean logic they're the same, though I'm not sure why they're not in psychology though I think they are. I have had this problem since the first time the concepts were presented to me, maybe in the late '60's. However, I believe it was in '87 I learned Boolean logic, at least as it applies to digital electronics. Here are two of the "truth tables" used in gate (basically digital) logic.

Now some words need to be added to make this work so I'll put the digital logic words in square brackets [ ].

[AND] BOTH				[OR] EITHER
INPUT		OUTPUT		INPUT		OUTPUT
A	B	A AND B		A	B	A OR B
0	0	0		0	0	0	This line doesn't really count but, it's part of the table.
0	1	0		0	1	1
1	0	0		1	0	1
1	1	1		1	1	1

BOTH: two inputs gives an output. To have both an A "and" a B you need an A and a B or it doesn't work.

EITHER: any input gives an output. You can have something "or" nothing or you can have A "or" B.

So "both, and" and "either, or" each have their places the world. Maybe it's just that some people think that everything is "both, and" or "either, or" which makes no sense to me. So I wonder way is it that all of my therapist, except Jeanne, have had me go through this with them. Maybe it's because they don't understand what I'm saying and, maybe I'm cutting this one off at the pass with Jeanne. Though I think she already knows this about me.

Well my "nice quite boring Thanksgiving Day" was disturbed, Pat called a while ago to make sure I was going out there tomorrow, I was expecting this. I've decided for my Thanksgiving dinner I'm going to have pizza, the oven's warming right now.

Off to play solitaire and, maybe more for a while.

It's about two to two and a half hours later and I won ten more (a total of 85) games of Batsford II, one game of Limited (kind of like FreeCell) and five levels of BrickShooter (too complicated to explain here without pictures).

2013-11-29 Sat.

Well, I was thinking of writing some even though it's kind of late. So now I've sort of lost the urge but... TextMaker, my favorite word processor has decided, with their latest update, to put a 5/16" title bar at the top of the screen. My effective screen height is only 3 3/8" high. That's a little more than 1/11^th of the screen. I'm sure I won't be the only one complaining about this one on Monday. This just really ruined my night.

It's already 22:45 so I guess I'll just read for a while and go to sleep.

2013-11-30 Sun.

While I was waking up I thought of a better way of describing the size of the updated title bar in TextMaker. It's roughly three times higher than it was before. It has no purpose except to make their Icon and Product name larger. The product name isn't large enough to be politely read over ones shoulder. Honestly I've only met one other person, besides myself, who would even ask a stranger what software their using. The title text is slightly larger than my document text as I type, Times New Roman 10pt., at 85% so I can see the margins. They could make it half this size and not change the font size. I could live with that. I really value my document real estate, how much of the document I can see on the screen.

Turn off rant mode.

This is something that makes me angry. This is somewhere around half scale angry. The only reason for not ranting about it more is that I will start get redundant. Redundancy won't keep me from ranting about it again and again at different times to different people though. It's going to take a while to get this anger anxiety to wear off.

Besides all of that I don't like this kind of change. This is the kind of thing that will have me looking for a new word processing program.

This next part might be very pertinent to therapy stuff but there is some things of value in it. Besides if it's not read how can we know when I get back to the good stuff *¿*.

I just downloaded AndrOpen Office or Android OpenOffice and so far I like it, or at least I can work with it. I have more document space than I do with TextMaker. Basically it looks just like OpenOffice on Windows or Mac. OpenOffice is a free open source version of Microsoft Office.  It does has some pretty big problems still but, I think it's going in the right direction.

• It's main problem is the menus don't scroll.
• I can't scroll with my finger or stylus. However, it does have scroll bars.
• I can still type at 87% zoom which works nicely for me. In TextMaker when I scroll the screen moves from side to side so I have to keep it at 85% so I don't lose the margins.
• It doesn't remember all of the display settings, zoom, rulers and some extra buttons.
• It does bullets really nice, the little bullet menu opens up.
• It doesn't hyphenate yet. Though I can hyphenate manually for the time being.
• Spell checking would be handy for me, also because I often don't get spaces between words. I think it's this keyboard. I also seem to be missing a lot of first letters.

For this to really be an effective program I'm going to have to know what his menus look like since I can't see them. There really very few things that I need them for, this is the first time I've used bullets in a personal document. I can get a lot of the menu option by looking at OpenOffice, I did to turn off the auto complete for typing.

I'm thinking of asking if he, the person who is writing this, might like some help with documentation and, stuff like that. It would be a good thing for me to get involved with something and, this is something I'd be pretty good at. There of course would be time factors involved that I'd have to keep up with. But as I don't think he was thinking of people using this on a seven inch screen having a PDF file or some-such for quick help could be handy. I would want to do them for myself anyways.

I just found out I can do Ctrl+ shortcut keys (hot keys) with the on screen keyboard (kb) even though I can't do them with the external kb. I can do Ctrl+C (command+C on a Mac) for copy but, not Ctrl+S for save on the external kb. I take that back, I just did a Ctrl+Z for undo than a Ctrl+Shift+Z to restore the undo. This program is getting better and better all the time. I can even do a F1 on the on screen kb to get help (what I really get is "The help for this topic is not installed").

Oh yes this is the word processor I've been looking for. The funny thing about it is I might have to start using OpenOffice on my desktop now.

End of the computer talk.

Well I wrote them and told them I think a lot of what they're doing and asked for the menu information. I also told them I'd even put up a link on the web to a copy if the PDF file I make from the menus. Also, I insinuated that I've done some technical writing, which is true though limited. And, I told them they wouldn't want me to help with the programming. I forgot to keep a copy of what I wrote. Oh well.

I just found out that all of the fancy keyboarding only works if I have the on-screen kb set to Hacker's Keyboard. There is one problem with this for some reason the Samsung decides I have to use their kb with the bluetooth kb. God I wish these companies would stop deciding what I want to do with the equipment I buy from them. This is one of those things that sometimes make me think I wish I had never gotten into computers. Though I never really think this very seriously I don't know what I would do without these stupid boxes. By the way there is no such thing as a stupid computer, because that implies there could be intelligent computers and, they just haven't gotten that far yet.

I was thinking earlier, after I told Jeanne about writing more, that I hope I don't get bored with writing. Though that's not what happened last time I quit writing. That was a combination of things, including moving across the country and back in a very short period of time.

That's what I get for trying to be part of a family after all they had done to me. More than just money, I had owned a lot of things I would just as soon have kept. Though in another sense I'm just as happy most of it's gone. I've lost some of my pack-ratery because of it.

Sometimes it's so strange to think what my life is like. One of the reasons I have so much trouble with the ten point scales is that they're subjective. Well subjectively most of what I remember was pretty much normal to me. I mean I knew some of the crap that happened to me was wrong when it was happening but, how wrong. Some of what I knew was wrong I knew because it didn't happen to everyone in my family, not as much as to me anyway.

I can feel this, sad, hurt, lonely, angry even the withdrawal but, I can't tell you what it is, where it comes from, other than the shit I had to put up with. These things don't make sense. Why all the hurt tonight? I know there's nothing wrong with what I'm feeling. It can't be too amazing that I learned to cut all of this shit off. Who in a normal mind could put up with it. Yet, I had to day after day, year after year.

Now it's time to let this go for the time being before I start to get depressed more than I am. It's 22:50 so I'm going to lay down and finish Neq the sword. In some ways a depressing story but, it takes me away from my depression so that' good. Good night. I smoked two or three less cigarettes today than Thursday which is good. I can't compare today's smoking to yesterday's because I was out with Pat.

2013-12-01 Sun.

Just woke up, I've had a few sips of tea and that's it. I am sort of becoming obsessed with writing. Which means I need to keep an eye on my reactions. I know I wrote something about this yesterday but in the words of Procol Harum "Still write it down, it might be read. Nothing's better left unsaid". From Shine On Brightly side 2 In Held 'Twas In I, Glimpses of Nirvana part 2, Lyrics by Keith Reid.

From Wikipedia:

Shine On Brightly, by the UK band Procol Harum, was released in 1968 and consolidated the success of their debut album; it was influential in the development of progressive rock by breaking all pop and rock music standards with the 17:39 minute epic "In Held 'Twas in I", which marked the beginning of the lengthy progressive rock suites that would occur later in the 1970s. The epic's title is an acrostic, putting the first word of each movement's lyrics into it as shown:

In "Glimpses of Nirvana", part 1

Held "Glimpses of Nirvana", part 2

'Twas "'Twas Teatime at the Circus"

In "In the Autumn of My Madness"

I "Look to Your Soul"

"Glimpses of Nirvana Part 2"

Held close by that which some despise

Which some call fate, and others lies

And somewhat small for one so tall

A doubting Thomas? Who would be?

It's written plain for all to see

For one who I am with no more

It's hard at times, it's awful wrong

They say that Jesus healed the sick and helped the poor

And those unsure believed his eyes - a strange disguise

Still write it down, it might be read

Nothing's better left unsaid

Only sometimes, still no doubt

It's hard to say, it all works out

For the best rendition go You Tube and search for Procol Harum - Held 'Twas In I [Live With The Edmonton Symphony]. It's 19:03 minutes but they also have the entire album and, it's worth the listen. Search for Procol Harum – live in Canada, 1971

I've been online with Jeanie since about 11:30 (it's 14:13) and, spent most of that time poking around finding the complete lyrics to In Held 'Twas in I which was a lot harder than one might think. I was also looking at some other stuff of so little importance I don't remember what it was. I like hanging out with Jeanie. She's not here right now. She's off talking to her house mates, I can hear Christy-Lynn and Larry in the background, and I can see the top of Jeanie's bookcase. She has a boom-box and a dart board up there. The Skype connection has this funny buzz kind of noise that sometimes sounds like someone is breathing off screen, and of course I can hear all of the background noises in their house. Even though I not there it kind of like having company.

Last night when my emotions were getting all riled up, I had to take a break. I'm not sure I want to go back there again today but, there are somethings I might be able to write about. When I started to think about it just now, I realized that Jeanne's explanation about my having a small (maybe very small) area to fit all of my emotions into makes a lot of sense. It is like everything is so crammed together in there that even trying to get myself out of it is difficult.

Andy, at The Center for Post-traumatic Disorders Program (The Center), use to draw this picture in the Knowledge and Skills group of a hole with tapering sides that gradually got steeper ans steeper. He would say, when you find yourself falling down that dark hole in your mind, sometimes let yourself go down some but, catch yourself before it's too late to climb back out.

I went off to eat and haven't gotten back here for about an hour.

So to see if I can get emotional again, without going too far again. Kind of like Andy's falling down the dark hole. It's an interesting metaphor, I never think of "falling" in a dark hole but, I know what it is to be in the bottom of a dark pit. It's the falling part I think. I have learned to back up once I start to feel like I'm going to lose it, to a very small extent. When I'm writing it's easier because I have to think about it so much, I have time to see what is happening. Even so, I can still get in far enough that the only thing I can do is watch video. Reading is out to the question if I let it go to far my concentration is shoot. Like before I took my break to eat, and win my 110th game in a row, I was starting to feel like it was getting to me. I was beginning to hurt, so I took a break.

I think this is why I learned to be an emotionally amnesiac. I couldn't take the pain anymore so I just cut it off. Eventually it became totally unconscious. I haven't had this happen for several years now. Hopefully it I have no more losses in real time again. So I'll only be left the old ones. Like when Jennie cut a lock of her hair and, I almost got blamed for it. The only emotions I can feel from back then was being cornered under the tub by Bud (my father) when I was eight. That one's easy pure terror, knowing that if he got hold of me I was gone for, yet I have to make an effort to go there. One I'm almost not willing to make. I think it's borderline re-traumatizing when I get that far into it. By the way, Bud never did get me that night but, it was still terrifying.

2013-12-02 Mon.

I got a call from Pat this morning saying she wanted to see me. So since she pays for it I'll go out and see her. I need to make sure she knows that this is something we shouldn't and can't afford to be doing a lot. I wish we didn't have to go through this. I hope she isn't going to ask me to move her out of there again. She really doesn't understand what it's like in most places, she wouldn't last a month in a regular nursing home. Even if I were to clean out one of my the bedrooms she couldn't afford to live here, forget about that it just wouldn't work.

Just got home from seeing Pat. There were no problems she was just lonely. I think that she also missed seeing Jenny. When you get to be where she is I guess you really need to have a really regular schedule. So on Thursday we will go off to see Jenny and, hopefully I won't have any more calls until a week from Thursday.

Tomorrow I find out how poor/rich I am this month. Though I did borrow $20.00 from Pat to take advantage of a Cyber Monday sale. I got another power supply and a cigarette lighter adapter for the Samsung. The place I ordered it from gives points. 1 point per dollar spent, 1 point is worth 0.1 cents They had given me 1,000 points as a promotional deal. So I got $10.17 off of my $24.21 bill. These little electronic gizmos are expensive.

Oh, there is one advantage to not having spell check. I copy this over to the big computer more often to run spell check on it. It also re-enforces my spelling since I have to pay more attention to what I'm writing. Even though I do go back and read what I wrote I don't read of it all. Mostly, I only read the stream of consciousness stuff.

Last night I decided to be lazy and ask Jeanie how to spell "conscious", she's usually a really good speller, but she forgot the first "s" so I had to do it the hard way try and figure it out with the dictionary. After about five minutes of trying con... I gave up and entered "awake". Sometimes using the dictionary is all about being sneaky. I got the idea from a guy I knew, Nathan Hall, when people had any trouble with his last name he would say "Hall as in corridor". Which doesn't work with my computer's dictionary, I use WordWeb it's free. I take that back you have to change one of the tabs, I never tried changing tabs before, I'll have to remember it. I'll have to try it on here. It does do it on the Samsung version, without changing tabs, there are no tabs to change. They also make a version for the iPod/iPad but not for Mac.

I just check how big this is going to be. Without extra line spacing it's a little over six and a half pages. With 1.5 line spacing it”s about seven and four fifths pages. Maybe I should stop now or I won't have any therapy time. Jeanne will spend the whole hour reading this.