Category: blahblahblah

Get a haircut (not in this ecconomy)

When I lived in Canberra, I’d go to Jus Cuts every school holidays for a hair cut. Often in a lunch break to Woden Plaza, while my schedule was quiet. It wasn’t a luxury, I just didn’t care much for fuss, so it was enough. Then I’d do my box colour, slightly plum or purple and be right for 3 months.

Going to the mall in my lunch break was one of the weird things I needed to do for my autistic coping, though I didn’t know it til I moved to Sydney and my manager told me I needed to have lunch with the other members of the therapy team and I baulked, realising that that 30-60 minutes of lunch was needed for me to reset so I could deal with people for the rest of the day.

This is why stable employment is important for the Autistic or ADHD adult. We need to know it’s okay to spend our lunch breaks regathering, or that Fridays are casual, we need to know we can keep that routine and have that time to decompress before performing our craft (for me Speech Pathology – I was good at it) for the world.

I had an OT colleague who went for a run around the oval next to the old school we worked in, self-regulating, so she could be the professional all the parents needed once we clocked back on.

I loved my misfit, public servant colleagues.

So I got my hair cut today, and my face waxed, as is needed when you’re a  stepgramma. $100 or so down, but I feel better for it. It’s nice to look after yourself, even if it’s painful.

I think I’ll get my sister to repurple me this time, so she can do the bleach. I need to be there for her, given the NDIA being cunts and not even respecting her request for an appointment to be made before calling her to reject the extra support we wanted for my nephew.

100 days left in 2025

One of the many emails I deleted this morning said there’s 100 day left in 2025. Unless the rapture’s tomorrow, but then I’ll still be here and you probably will be too, so we might as well plan as if there’s still 100 days to go.

I lost another month through other things, not sure if it’s worth even looking back at what I was hoping to achieve for September, we’re already in the downslide – I’ll be supervising HSC exams again this year, including some that will be on computers at the school. So I’m doing some of the training to make sure I’m across that. Which should be fine. But that will all come and go.

I’m making sure I get my meds and appointments all sorted. Making sure my dinners are ordered. I still haven’t gotten to the optometrist this year even though I first planned to in January. I’ll probably also come up on the public dental waitlist in December or Jan, hopefully they’ll agree to take the other wisdom tooth out and that will hopefully go more smoothly.

We got to sign on for another year at this house, so we’ve got a least til end of November 2026. Which means I can think about fun things like fairy lights for Xmas, and putting out my meerkats. We also replaces the corflute in the window with the air con with some wood so that should help with cooling efficiency this summer.

White mug of milo with purple text speak because your voice shakes
Speak because your voice shakes

So yeah, just touching base.

How are you?

Help a girl out or treat me?

I just lost a month (and had my first tooth out)

Like seriously, a few days after my birthday I broke a wisdom tooth. I only even had the bottom two, and broke the other one a month before that but since it didn’t give me any pain I wasn’t eligible to get into the public dentist earlier so was just leaving it since aside from being a tongue magnet since it felt different, it was fine. But then I broke the left one, and damn that one hurt. So I called up public dental and got an emergency voucher for a local private clinic for the next week.

Had a fun few days trying to balance pain relief, but then I got seen, and she recommended extraction and said she could do it right then. So I agreed and off we went.

Problem is, I’m apparently a bleeder. And she’d gotten partway through and the blood just started and wouldn’t stop. So she stitched me up with 1/4 of a tooth left there so she could focus on the bleeding :/ Said she nearly got the Ambulance. Yeah that wasn’t fun, nor was the two weeks after til it’d healed enough to go back in for the rest.

But it’s gone now. And I’m gonna hold off til I come up on the general public dental waitlist and then will probably get the other (also broken but not painful at this stage) tooth out. Yay.

I’d also got blood tests the week of my birthday one going on the Friday after failing on the Thursday. Going back with 2 litres of water in me after getting up for fasting tests. Just tried to get some blood out of me now to check out what might be behind the extra bleeding, but no dice – I’ll go through the week after drinking a tonne of water again. At least this doesn’t have to be fasting. I reckon maybe my veins fear I could bleed out so they wanna protect me.

Ugh.

Anyways. Raging against the NDIS changes, and all the news about mutual obligations/TCF illegality but now my tooth is settled I may have capacity to blog about them

Maybe.

In the meantime I’ve spent 77 hours in Hello Kitty Island adventure, mostly streamed if you wanna check it out!

Self care / self soothing

Love yas!

The last V-Set ran to Newcastle last night

Vet train at Newcastle interchange station

I was born in 1982, a couple years before the line was electrified all the way to Newcastle, so I’ve been catching V-sets since 1984. To Sydney, for day trips with my parents, my Aunty and cousin. Back where there were smoking carriages and I remember trips so full I sat on my Aunty’s lap in the smoking carriage all the way from Fassifern to Central.

I used to be terrified of crossing between the carriages. Something you had to do to find a seat or visit the extremely cramped toilets. I had to overcome that fear when I started catching them to highschool in 1995. But then we’d hang out the carriage doors and windows of the old single decker electrics that you could see the fast moving sleepers through the holes in the floor.

A classmate jumped out of one of the diesels up Maitland way and was lucky to live. Ahh the fun of manual doors.

I’ve ridden the new ones a few times. Here’s some footage from the inside. I don’t like the fixed one-directional seats. I do like the charging ports. They should have given us wifi. Oh and I liked that they tell you which side to exit, but apparently they get it wrong sometimes so that’s kinda worse than not saying it at all!

Routine and Pacing – staying sane when you get a little off

Touch grass they say – but don’t repeatedly kick the same toe on things, it gets tiring after awhile, and it doesn’t give it a chance to heal and somehow you’re still hobbling weeks later.

So I got overloaded, took on too much mental load, spread myself too thin, so I’m cutting back on somethings, to make life sustainable.

I’m ensuring I follow my little routine, that includes meds and white hot chocolates, and winding down after dinner. This means I’ll be declining after 6pm meetings from now til the conference in June. I’ll be showered and onesied on time, meds around nine, white hot chocolate before that. Breakfast has gone back to porridge sachets for winter – except this week since my partner bought a dozen hot cross buns I’m trying to get through!

I’m going to go back to (close to) daily Japanese practice and streaming. Started on a new vocab game yesterday. So, the plan is an hour of practice followed by variety game streaming a few mornings a week, no real schedule it’ll depend on everything going on around me and of course it’s more about getting back into good habits that nourish me – and the Japanese language has always been that for me. Recommendations for websites and programs to use are more than welcome – I know Duolingo did that things with more AI use since I was last using it, so while I’ll probably tap into that a little, I’m all for a scattered approach. I’ll set up my second cam for colouring and kana practice, and perhaps my cheap graphics tablet if I can find a kanji program that would work well with pen input rather than mouse. There was a program I had on an emulator that I was going to use with that but then I did a system reinstall and it’s gone.

Also keen to fill this board with stuff – Amazon slips or pictures from frens or whatever may come. I’m pleased to say I’ve a couple of regular monthly supporters here, and it’s such a mood boost even though one’s for $1/month!