I am in awe of this. I don't even know what to say: Family lives for over 40 years in seclusion Except, maybe, Doomsday Preppers, eat your heart out?

Anddddd.....my former rival is sitting next to me at the library. I have loathed her for years, because the threat of her returning to the man I was with at the time was the primary factor in the degeneration of that relationship, even though she had zero interest in doing so. Now I have to take an introspective look and ask myself....was it her fault, or my own jealousy and insecurity that ruined all that? What a fucking waste of emotion, energy and happiness.

Look out, world: I'm getting Hemerocallis fever again. Apparently it was only in remission before....lol.

Won four games and lost one at chess club tonight. Does the lost game count if I was coaching a beginner along, helping them to play a good game so they wouldn't get discouraged...and then they beat me? At any rate, have to go model soon. I am so happy for the work- it's about time.

Holy shit. Alpacas are delicious! Better than deer or goat, better than elk or lamb, in fact, possibly better than bison or moose. Oh yes: it is that good. If I lived near a livestock auction, I'd buy these up to eat. The last time I went, llamas could hardly be given away...

I *must* find a place to grow crops for market as well as personal use, and need to find this place ASAP. Why not where I'm at? Because...even if it were sunny enough with reliable water, and it's neither of those things...the place is being foreclosed on. My goal is to sell at the farmer's market this year...but it ain't happening from my current site, I can tell you that. Meanwhile, there's a beautiful farm for sale for a very good price...and I'd love to farm it (don't care about owning it, just want my hands in the dirt!) but cheap as it is, I can't afford it and haven't been able to find anyone who can/wants to buy it and lease the land and barn to me.

If only I had remembered to bring my new medicine, none of this would have happened. I feel so sick in all sorts of ways.

I wish that I knew the right things to say, the right things to do, the right ways to feel and act. This is the hardest part of being aspie; no matter how I may agonize and plan in an attempt to not screw up, I do. Or, I panic with the anxiety of doing or saying the wrong things, melt down, and then I've really fucked things up. I just cannot seem to get it right....

But tell me, friends, not friends, people whose designated category I can't get right either: why are you folks so hard to please, when I'm clearly trying as hard as I can? Why do you make social interactions into a cruel game of riddles and unspoken clues and then shun those of us who fumble at it? Is it so hard to meet someone halfway, when that someone is wearing themself thin trying to speak this difficilt and foreign language?

And how do you manage to be so terribly lovable in spite of acting that way, when I try with all my heart, and am forever the cast off?

I had to sleep in town last night. My phone is dead because I forgot the charger at home (duh). My laptop won't connect to wifi for some reason. All of this is because I am a fool and should have stayed home yesterday instead of trying to go to town. It is my own fault...but it still hurts.

Slippers are done. Going to go to sleep now.

Anyway...I got a lot done today:

• Finished spinning and plying three skeins of yarn for my youngest son. He wants a rainbow colored scarf + hat + mitten set. I didn't have enough roving in those colors to make all that, so what I did was to ply each rainbow single with a strand of natural black. So each of the three skeins goes sequentially from violet to magenta to red to orange to yellow to green to blue (several shades of blue of course!) to blue-violet. If I'm careful, the items made from this yarn will preserve this order.
• Set the twist in all the rainbow/dark yarn, two big skeins of Shetland, and a skein of merino in cool tones.
• This merino is also spun in such a way as to change gradually from one color to the next. I think it goes from purple to blue to teal to brown to olive green (feels like I'm missing a color). I could have Navajo plyed it to preserve the color order, but that would reduce the amount of yarn by a third and make it nearly three times as thick- unacceptable. However, it was thin and kind of fragile as merino fiber tends to be (although very soft) so instead I fulled it, which is almost like felting and gives the yarn a lot more strength. Setting twist involves a single dip into very hot water. Fulling involved a dip into boiling water, a drizzle of soap and vigorous massaging, thwacking the skein of yarn against the snow several times, dipping it back into hot water, thwacking on snow again, etc, until the strands of yarn began to stick to one another. The rapid temperature changes, combined with soap and friction, cause the wool fiber to felt/full.
• Then I did almost all the dishes....and trust me, that's an accomplishment when you have to melt the snow into hot water first. Also- found out that the dishes can be pre-washed with snow and my trusty institutional style dish brush! The snow combines water and abrasion. This really saved on dish water, as the good hot water didn't get so dirty.
• What else....minor moving stuff around, bringing firewood in, splitting kindling, that sort of thing.Seems like I did something else...at any rate, I got caught up on all the handspinning, plying, and twist-setting. Now just have to calculate the length of each skein and figure out whether I have enough to make certain items.
• Oh, that's right- the wool slippers. I finished one and am almost done with the other, They're really ugly so I hope that they're at least warm!!! Because...my feet are still cold.

C-c-c-c-cold!!!! My feet are damp and freezing...hurrying and crocheting some warm slippers out of a nice heavy, warm wool/mohair yarn. Can't get these things done fast enough....brrrrr......

Emotionally exhausted. I am tired of trying so hard. Tired of feeling, of hurting. Tired of mentally struggling with stuff. Just tired, tired of coping, of things not working, of being inadequate, of always saying or doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. I don't know what else to say.

Wrote about it in another post which was subsequently moved back to drafts for another reason....but one of my favorite two alpacas died during a time period in which I was already pretty stressed and upset. When one animal dies, it's probably bad luck, but you still want to know why. So when in the course of this mess, I discovered that his lungs were bloody to the point of looking more like livers than lungs, I asked questions and sought advice and found out it was probably pneumonia. When goats get pneumonia, it's fairly obvious in my experience. Alpacas are entirely different. I watched the rest of the herd for the next couple of weeks, made sure they had warm/hot water to drink, hay, etc. They seemed ok. They got out once (the only time they'd ever escaped anything) and got into the feed room and ate some grain from a bag whose bottom had gone moldy. Maybe that's part of why the second one died. When two animals die, it's not bad luck anymore; something is wrong.

I was still reeling from this when a guy came and asked about the "abandoned" alpacas. He apparently thought they were abandoned because the place they're on is for sale. He asked if they were OK and like a fool, I told him about the dead ones and was open to input on solving the problem. He immediately styled himself as a "rescuer" and took over....called the vet out...who, after a careful and thorough assessment of the situation, determined that the cause of death was one of the remaining alpacas, who has been a thorn in my side since day one. He's been chasing the others relentlessly, trying to breed them (all four alpacas were intact males) day and night. He was smaller than the others so I had hoped that eventually someone would put their foot down, but instead, he ran two of them to death, literally. The vet examined him, said that he is dangerous not only to other animals, but also to people and advised me to get the remaining nice alpaca out of there before he got killed, too. The alpaca rescuers drove off with the nice one, saying they'd find him a good home. He was my favorite, so I hope he is well loved wherever he ends up at. That left only the last one to be put down, which was the vet's recommendation. I thought the nightmare was pretty much over....but no.

The alpaca people have been badmouthing me, making shit up out of thin air...for example, saying that the alpacas were running on the road (that never happened) and that they were so emaciated that they should all be put down. The nice one was thin, but it wasn't because he hadn't been fed, it was because he was being chased and stressed all the time. Besides which, the second one that died was huge and not thin- he was the biggest one in the herd. He must have weighed close to 200 pounds. Also, the mean alpaca was in very good flesh, not underweight. So now I've been branded in the alpaca community. They are going to really hate me when they hear that I butchered the last one for meat! I just couldn't see wasting perfectly edible meat...I wasn't happy about having to do it but since he had to die, why not utilize what's there? These alpaca people.....I don't think I ever want to own another alpaca again.

Just realized that I hardly remember what things used to be like before all this craziness. Huh.

My current reading list includes five books by Gene Logsdon. I liked All Flesh is Grass, which is about raising grassfed livestock so well that I checked out some of his other books. This guy is so funny...he really cracks me up while still having very useful things to say. For example, on the topic of public hysteria regarding certain plants or plant parts being poisonous:

For instance, there is enough nicotine, more than enough, in a pack of cigarettes to kill you if you drank it all at once- which is certainly an excellent argument for not smoking. However, one pack of the awful things is not going to kill you even if you inhale every puff.

Sheepy links:

Ideal sheep breeds for orchards

Annika Michelson's info on northern European short-tailed sheep

The wikipedia entry on the topic of these landrace breeds....

North Shed

Tired, cold. Van got stuck downhill when I managed to slide front end first into the ditch near my parking spot. Shoveled, tried all sorts of things to get unstuck, shoveled more, the Schwan man stopped and helped me and we made progress but was still stuck, and then another guy came and pulled me out. Geez!

Anyway, I found an entire banana box full of stuff I couldn't find and was upset about. What kind of stuff? Shetland wool, Icelandic wool, kid mohair yarn, some Irish roses I'd crocheted up to go with the mohair yarn, lots and lots of fiber! It's a bit silly but this put a positive spin on the day. I was not being very successful in avoiding obsessing about where that stuff had gone; had been bugging me for several weeks as I wanted some of the stuff in there to work on projects.

I need to find something to do; work, a job, school, find a place in town that can function as a studio, a place that I can farm.....something. It has gotten to where my boyfriend is my primary happy spot in life, the main thing I look forward to. This isn't healthy and it's an unfair burden for anyone. Have to find a balance, other areas of happiness and gratification. Also, frankly, it's kind of a waste to not do anything with myself. Hopefully that doesn't sound self-centered... :-/

Been snowed in for several days. Shoveled my way out....van was out of gas! Such is life. :-) In the time I've been snowed in, have finished up all sorts of fiber arts projects, including a second silk/wool scarf just like the first one, started on a present for my daughter (almost done) and spun and then plied two bobbins of yarn, both laceweight. One is merino wool, cranberry/magenta colored + white suri alpaca. The suri looks like lustrous silk noil against the matte wool...or possibly angora rabbit, nice. The other bobbin was a commercial merino/silk blend, 80% merino to 20% bombyx silk. I'd like to get away from using commercial roving and wasn't very happy to be paying for such a low percentage of silk, but the roving is well made and looks like it has more silk than it does.

Anyway, because of the way the weather's messed up the schedule, it's looking like I'll be seeing my kids the week after Xmas. This is OK; it's just another day to me. Also, I'll have a little more time to make/get presents for them.

And...I was shocked...speechless...to receive an email that one of our Friends has passed away. :-( She is (still trying to wrap my head around the reality of her being gone) older, but still very vibrant, lively, full of love and warmth...a wonderful person. I didn't go to see her at the hospital....mostly because life has been so hectic whenever I manage to get into town. I didn't know her as well as I'd have liked to, but still. :-( Cherish and hold the people you love. Let them know what they mean to you and love them as if it's your last day...because life is unpredictable that way. Sigh. :-( I'm no good at this sort of thing.

Violence and mental illness: the facts, folks.

Here is a well documented source.

As opposed to the mainstream media.....

The truth is that people with developmental disabilities are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.

Yes, it is a tragedy. It's awful. I haven't looked at any media footage regarding it at all, because it will haunt me for a very long time. I am not in any way downplaying what happened; it's clear that there are simply no words for the horror. But that horror and future events like it are not going to be alleviated by painting an entire segment of society with a broad brush in a color they/we don't deserve. We don't lack empathy and feeling. We do often have a hard time expressing our feelings with our face and body language.

I don't know what was wrong with this guy, but if I had to guess, my guesses would include:

• An undiagnosed personality disorder or other co-morbid disorder. Co-mormids are very common with autism spectrum disorders. And if, for example, that disorder was anti-social personality disorder, well, that would certainly explain a lot.
• Medication side effects. I don't think the negative effects of certain meds have received enough attention. Big Pharma will probably see to it that this continues to be the case. Meds can be life-saving, but they need to be monitored and they need to be the right meds for the person and the problem.
• Misdiagnosis. There's more to being aspie than being a highly intelligent social outcast. He may, for example, have been schizoid. Believe it or not, there are people who are really smart and really fucked up who don't have Asperger's.
• Other contributing factors. So, let's say he was an aspie, not on any meds at all even though it sounds like he should have been, without anything else wrong with him (highly unlikely). When a dog snaps and starts biting and ravaging everything in sight, people start squealing, "blame the owner, not the breed!". I don't necessarily agree with this, because disposition is in fact hereditary to some extent, as most livestock breeders will tell you. However.....are we seriously giving dogs more credit than people here?? Some dogs and some people can tolerate being abused and mistreated without getting mean. Most will, in fact, even at their own expense, rather than going nuts. Sometimes though, they don't. That doesn't justify it in any way, shape or form, but this should not be discounted as a possibility.
• The guns. I think it was wildly irresponsible for mom to allow this kid to have access to firearms. It doesn't sound as though he had good coping skills. Guns are a tool and they should be used only as a tool by people who are in a position to use tools responsibly.

Anyway. Not really in a frame of mind to wrap this up concisely. Horrible. :-(

A brief sensory snapshot of an aspie day....

(Yesterday) Have to go to the doctor's office to reschedule my daughter's appt. My path of travel involves a yield sign even though I can only turn right; it isn't actually an intersection: confusing. Whatever. I pause and check for opposing traffic anyway. The first parking spot I see is on the end. This is great! I won't be hemmed in on both sides by other vehicles, will be able to get out of the parking lot with minimal trouble and vehicular claustrophobia. Oh, and I've been singing rather loudly the entire time (Brandi Carlile). It is annoying to turn the car off before the song's done, but I do it anyway and squelch the impulse to continue singing the song as I exit the car.

The plants that flank the entry to the building are in a state of hibernation, so I don't stop to pet or observe them (lavender is among them) but go right through the three doors. I then find myself in front of the receptionist's window, staring at a clipboard with blacked out names and signatures, remind myself that I don't need to write anything on the clipboard this time.... The receptionist looks expectantly at me with a sort of half smile as I attempt to put into words the two reasons I'm there. It looks like she's making fun of me in her head but I can't tell for certain. The taste of coffee is still lingering around in my mouth and I check to see if maybe some of it is on my face and she's smirking at that, but my outer mouth area is dry, so no. She's still smirking. Why? What? I try to convince myself that she's not smirking at me, and look instead at the carpet beyond her while she's going to check on one of the questions I had. The carpet looks like water with tropical fish swimming through seaweed. It's nice. A nurse's feet and legs move into view, standing on the water. Hmmm. A bit disconcerting. Who decided that standing on water with fish in it would be a good idea for carpet? I don't dislike it, but still, a bit odd. I play with the carpet/water visually for a few seconds. She should sink into it! No wait, it's carpet! OK Jen, you're being weird, stop. An appointment card for my daughter is given to me and the receptionist has to go ask someone something if I'll wait. I realize that I shouldn't continue standing in front of the window, and go sit down, card in hand.

The magazines are horrifically boring. Women's stuff: make the most of your shape! And so on, so I sit down. Absent-mindedly, flick the end of the card against the fingernails of the opposing hand. Down, back. Fffllllllt! Flltttttt. Fffllllllt! Flltttttt. Different sounds for each direction. Varying the speed makes a different sound, as does altering the angle of my fingertips. Oh, that's very nice, very soothing. The room more or less fades away and there's just the wonderful sound of this card. Nice...nice... Jen, you're stimming. I don't care. What if the sound bothers them? It's so nice, how could it? Maybe they like it. Probably they don't hear the change in pitch at all. This is wonderful. Why have I not tried this before in this office? Maybe I didn't have a card. Glance at window: nope, no cards on display. The only way to get one is to have an appointment scheduled before you sit down to wait, that's why. The sound and sensation of the card is so incredibly pleasing that it's a bit of a let down when I'm summoned back to the window to be handed a piece of paper and it's then time to go. She's still smirking. Huh...time to go be responsible and carry out remaining errands....