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April 12: to the Ex

Write a short letter to your first ex to send back in time to the day after you met, telling them what your relationship is going to be like and giving them advice concerning that. No word limit, but don’t beat a dead horse.

Dear Fuckface,

I’d like to say “stay home”, but then certain other positive things would never have happened, so I’m just going to continue with this:  A lot of things are about to go down over the next six months that you are going to horrifically regret in the long run.  You think you’re being clever, hiding the drugs and partners and everything, but it’s not worth it.  In fact, you already looked like an asshole, and after all that denying, you’re going to prove that you don’t look like an asshole, you really are, down deep to the core of your being.

In the end, you’ll think you have the prize, and maybe you do, for a little while, but your own views are going to come back to haunt you.  I’m not going to be there to point and laugh, or even to gloat.

I’m only telling you this right now because I know you won’t listen.  A lot of heartache and pain is coming to me at your hands, and your ego is screaming at you that I must clearly be mistaken, because you’re such a fucking prince, such a fucking catch…

You go on and think that, but remember this:  There are three distinct moments when I contemplate your murder and have ready opportunity and motive.  It takes a lot to get me to that point.  Recognize each of those, and you’ll live and I’ll stay out of prison.

That is literally the best that either of us can hope for out of this.  Circumstance won’t let us avoid the event itself, but our choices in the end… that’s on us.

Also, your taste in scotch, women, and drugs suck.  You have never been nearly as cool as you think you are.

 

ASIDE: If there was a way to get to where I am now without having gone through that, I’d do it.  Time and history does not work that way, and I’m grateful enough for where I am now that I can’t bring myself to regret it.

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April 11: Let me count the ways…

Describe your current relationship status (and views) in haiku, 17 stanzas.

In all fairness, this
is a special exercise
just for my husband.

When we got married,
we exchanged vows just like this,
seventeen haiku.

But why seventeen?
That’s how many syllables
are in each stanza.

That was a few years
back, in his mother’s backyard,
the sun was shining.

I was terrified
because I loved him, wanted
him more than my life.

I knew it’d be rough,
especially the first years,
but my faith stayed strong.

There were nights I would
have cut out my heart, if I
could stop hurting so.

There were days when my
heart wasn’t big enough to
hold the love I felt.

I have learned so much
about things I thought were just
silly fantasies.

He’s shown me support
means more than just some nice words,
but real commitment.

Even in the hours
when he is at his darkest,
I can see his love.

He is my go-to
when I am struggling in
my own deepest dark.

He is the first one
to hear my goofiest jokes
– and they’re all goofy.

He is my blanket,
keeping me warm in the cold
of the crazy world.

He is my cool lake,
calming my frantic, nervous,
spastic, anxious mind.

The moment when I
asked him to marry me was
the best choice ever.

The words “in love with”
aren’t big enough to describe
what he means to me.

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April 10: You put your weeeeeed in there

Tell your thoughts on mind-altering substances (alcohol, drugs, etc.). Do you like them? Which ones? Why? You don’t like them? Why not? Limit 500 words.

I’m a bit weird on this one.  I’m not a big pot fan, or rather, I’m not a big fan of getting stoned.  I’ve done it with a fair amount of regularity (every few years, does that count?), but it’s not been a go-to.

For normal, every-day use, a glass of wine is just fine… except it really isn’t.  I have a genetic abnormality that makes drinking alcohol kind of a crap-shoot.  If a certain number of factors come together – like going outside – I can end up with a massive attack where my skin feels like it has glass in it and my head is going to explode and all the things and smells and sounds and existing just hurts too much.  But a glass of wine or two is usually okay.

Hands down my very favorite thing in the world is to trip mushrooms.  I don’t get to do it often, but when I do, it’s an enormous treat.  It used to be that my preferred method was to trip alone.  Of the handful of times I’ve done it with a significant other, the experience has highlighted why the person was a Bad Idea.  The last time, though, was with my husband.  I was very nervous about that, afraid that maybe just the act of tripping mushrooms made me think bad things about the other.  Turns out, no, it really was just the company.  We had a glorious time together.

I’m all for the legalization of drugs in general, with the understanding that no one becomes an addict just because drugs are available.  It’s a complex problem, and reducing supply and access makes it worse.

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April 9: F**king off in style

Use at least 1500 500 words to describe your favorite way(s) to waste time. Your time-waster cannot produce anything useful.

This one is a big challenge because it comes with a minimum word requirement instead of a maximum.  I might just fail at this, only because I have a shit-ton of other things to do today besides this.

So, my biggest time-waster (that isn’t actually a time-waster, but kind of is) is clicker games.

Crank

I was playing one recently, Crank, that has no tutorial, no guide, and yet is a weirdly compelling story.  You have to hold down the left mouse key to turn the crank in order to make power.  With that power, you make scrap metal, and with the scrap metal, you can make more cranks, crankbots to crank for you, batteries to story your energy, and more and more complex things.  You have to research your technologies and upgrade them accordingly, working towards maximum efficiency and energy production.

But, as you move around the (limited space) galaxy, you run into weird little fuzzy spots, and they have pieces of a message.  You have to decrypt them – they come in a specific order – and then they tell a bit of backstory.  You build up your tech to be able to decrypt, to beat the raiders and other enemies, and to destroy the station bases in each system.  When you beat a system’s base station, you can set up a factory to make you more materials.

I had it kind of running in the background while I was doing other things, and I found that it actually improved my productivity.  Well, having “fidget games” in general improves my focus, I think.  I’m not sure why that is, but it’s working for me.  I think I was playing it for a few weeks before I found the “final answer”, including restarting it at least once.  I will probably play it again eventually.

ClickerHeroes

This one is pretty popular, I think.  ClickerHeroes is available in your browser (that’s where I play it), through Steam as a free game, and on your mobile device.  For all that it refers to clicking, I tend to think the most effective way to play it is with an “idle-property build”.

So, you click on the monster to get gold.  You buy Hero upgrades with the gold.  The more gold you have, the more heroes you can buy and the more you can upgrade those heroes.  The heroes also come with special powers that you purchase as they level up.  Some improve your click damage, and some (most) improve your DPS.

You get a number of different ways to power up, too.  You’ve got achievements for a wide variety of things, from number of monsters to amount of gold collected.  You can purchase Ancients that grant you extra powers, like increasing DPS or gold when idle (no clicks for 60 seconds) or extending the time of activated click powers.  Those special activated powers improve gold collection, critical hits, and overall damage.  Then there are Relics which boost the powers of Ancients, even if you don’t have any.  So, if I have a relic that gives me a boost to, say, the Ancient of Silver (10x gold drops), but I haven’t actually purchased that Ancient, the bonus still counts as though I do have it.  You also get Mercenaries who do things like collect extra gold, collected extra rubies, or activate skills.

Your main purpose is to collect Hero Souls so that after you “Ascend” (restart the game), you are starting with extra boosts.  You buy and power up the Ancients with Hero Souls as well, but that also takes away your overall damage when you spend those souls – it’s 10% for every soul you retain.

For all that it’s a game where you basically do absolutely nothing – there’s no skill, though maybe a little calculation – there’s a lot going on.  There are different concepts for how to create your build (which Ancients to buy and power up, how best to advance your levels), and when you’ve reached the pinnacle of your accomplishment, you can do something called “Transcend”, which is an Ascension on steroids:  It resets the ENTIRE game – so no Ancients, no Hero Souls, no Relics – except for your purchased auto-clickers and rubies, and you start over.  Except this time, you have access to Transcendent Ancients and their powers, which are even more badass than the regular Ancients.

And then there’s the puns.

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April 8: What’s to worry?

Describe something you’re currently worrying about and imagine how it gets resolved involving a mythical beast, limit 1000 words.

It’s kind of obvious, but I’m mostly worried about Daniel right now.  His surgery is in eleven days (from the posting of this entry), and it’s a big one.  It’s major brain surgery, and while that’s kind of an obvious “well, duh” thing to worry about… I don’t know.  I can’t shake a bigger feeling.

And trust me, I’ve tried.  I’m tapping almost daily on obsessing over his death, over his recovery time, over the changes that will happen if he lives through the surgery… I want to be pleasantly surprised, but not remembering how to walk is common.  Having wholesale personality changes is common.  Being someone else when he comes out of rehab is common.

I don’t want someone else, I want my son.  I can’t let myself be selfish enough to want my-son-like-he-was-before, my son who sang the ABC song and was learning basic math at two years old.  That would be unnecessarily cruel.  I do want my smiley boy who crushes my cheek in his hugs and plays “cookie, no cookie” on the way home and develops new repeating games every day.

If I could call on any mythical creature to help, it would be a Caladrius, a bird said to be able to take the sickness or disease away from a person and get rid of it altogether.  At the same time, maybe I need a Unicorn that can cure any ailment.  Or maybe I need the centaur Chiron, who traveled the world and collected all the wisdom of the medicines in an effort to save himself.

And maybe none of that would work because this is just how he’s supposed to be.  Maybe there was never going to be any other child than the one we have now, and nothing went “wrong”, it just caught up.

I know that sounds dour and sad, but as an autie – someone who is frequently identified as being “disabled” or “broken” – I would be crushed to not be an autie suddenly.  I do not have a disease, I am merely another type of human.

The epilepsy, though.  Any of those beasts should be able to fix the epilepsy.