i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

So fucking exhausted and frustrated-- kinda at "bang head against wall" mood, though I didn't actually.

My sister and niblings are in town for a few days. She's moving here in a few months (yaaaaay) so had stuff to do with finalizingt house purchase etc. It's the first time seeing any of them since January 2020.

...it's been a chaotic few days.

Theory: they'd drive in Tuesday and stay through Sunday.
Reality: hotel reservation shenanigans mean leaving Friday; packing took longer than expected so by 11pm Tuesday the new plan was for them to get up hella early Wednesday.

Theory: my sister had arranged babysitters so that e.g. in the afternoon babysitter 1 could be with youngest kid for nap time, babysitter 2 could be at park with older kiddos and Aunt Me, and my sister could go tour a daycare. Or a babysitter could do dinner with kids while my mom and sister and I went somewhere for Adult Time
Reality: both babysitters canceled last minute (one sick and one exposed) and the kids were melting down and hyper, so my sister was stuck at the hotel getting nothing done except for keeping any of them from killing each other. Needless to say, AT dinner didn't happen.

Adapted theory: I'd go over to the hotel for a bit and say hi, maybe if I'm lucky get a hug from Youngest (who has never met me)
Reality: Eldest was absorbed in Minecraft when not fighting with Middle, who was running around turning the lights on and then off and then on and then off, and while Youngest decided my aide was her new BFF (complete with tears when we left), I didn't merit anything.

Theory: today we'd get together for dinner, probably pizza in the hotel.
Revised theory: pizza in the park, because a friend of my sisters (B) has a kid (O) who was umpiring a softball game (players mostly 7) and invited her to come with Eldest to watch the game and see if Eldest would be interested in softball. And B was okay with it turning into all the kids plus mom and sister and pizza.
Reality: ...oof where to start.

It was cold and hella windy, and I wasn't dressed right.

The pizza places had like 90+ minute wait and also didn't deliver to parks, just street addresses, so plan changed to doing pizza after, but my mom and I didn't find out until we were there

My mom drove me so I couldn't bail without dragging her away

Eldest was more invested in ladybugs than the game

Also. I usually eat dinner around 6, go to bed right after (for comfort), toilet again at 8:30, and then am in bed for good, though sleep time varies. We didn't leave for the park until 5:45. We didn't leave *from* the park until 7. I didn't get into bed at all until 9:20.

Also my mom wanted to stop ON THE WAY at CVS to pick up meds. I said sure but probably not in a very cheerful tone, and really wanted to bang my head against a wall and/or make unhappy shrieking noises. She didn't stop after all.

(do normal people get bang-head-on-wall urges, or is that another mark in the "maybe autistic but well masked" column?)

It is better now that I've eaten pizza, am in bed, and have had an edible. But aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

1. Not dead. This seems more relevant a disclaimer given pandemic.

2. Am, however, having a FOP flare up in both legs -- down the sides of both thighs but also under the right thigh and pelvis. The last six days have been miserable during the day, in that there are NO comfortable positions to sit in. I've been tilting my chair back enough that my calf is starting to hurt from the pressure (the edge of the seat presses against my leg, in part because the seat pan is *too fucking long* because the wheelchair people ~didn't like~ how unsupported my legs looked in a shallower seat). It's also made dressing harder; I used to be able to "sit forward" on the edge of the seat and balance there, ao my torso and arms were free of the seat. But now I can't really balance and keep tipping over backwards -- not a dangerous thing because I'm just ending up in the chair, but I can't stay upright unless my left elbow is against the chair arm, but that means that trying to get my shirt on might end up giving me friction burns there. Argh. Also, pain fucking sucks.

3. On the bright side, thanks to some very generous friends, I currently have both an Oculus Go VR headset (I can't get 100% use because I can't turn my head, but turning my chair has the same effect, as long as I have someone around to let me know if I'm close to running into anything; one of MyChart favorite games is a roller coaster app. All the fun visual effect of roller coasters with no risk!) and a Switch with Animal Crossing (which I only got this week so it's not a spectacular island), so there are things I can do to distract myself from the pain.

3. I have a long and kind of teal-deer post to make on this subject but summary is I'm becoming really fairly certain that I'm somewhere on the (autism) spectrum, with a lot of masking going on. A lot of stuff from my memories suddenly make way more sense from that angle. And it makes it easier somehow to not beat up on myself for failing at things, because it's brain wiring and not me being lazy or whatever.

4. I miss having choir, so fucking much. I did send in a video submission for http://www.virtualchoir6.com (which is currently in the processing stages, and will probably take a while because they have 17.5k videos to smush together), but a) I strongly dislike videos of myself, and b) it's not the same. I don't even know if the choir I'm in will start back up in the fall ... and if they do I don't know if it will be advisable for me to avoid it (I don't think I'm high-risk for *catching* Covid-19 but if I get it there's a good chance it'll kill me, so I'm trying not to get it) ... but damn I miss it. Also miss orchestra stuff, even though I haven't been able to play violin in like 20 years. Some of that may be because I've been watching way too many two set violin videos, but. I think more it's just missing communal music.

5. I'm an aunt again! My sister had another baby, another girl, who is all of like three weeks old right now. It was a bit more complicated trying to juggle everything given pandemic, which she hadn't been expecting when she got pregnant, but everyone got through it with all bits intact. Oddly, there are fewer baby pictures this time than there were when her first was born 🤣 almost like she's busy or something.

6. I have been eating way too much sugar and carbs. I should probably cut back, but it's so yummy...

1) had shower tonight. They are a pain in the ass but feel so good omg.

2) am all cozy in bed now, yay

3) have set up a tentative system for letting me access water while in bed (it's a setup similar to camelbak, meant for hiking but seems to work for my situation; I will post more about the setup once I've given it a few days to work out the kinks)

4) a hat I bought -- basically this rainbow ombré beanie but with the colors reversed so the purple is at the brim, because purple -- arrived today and it is awesome and makes me ridiculously happy

(the fact that both my mom and one of my aides had a general reaction of "wtf why did you buy something you could make yourself" -- which is kind of a hilarious inversion of the "why knit socks when you can buy them for a dollar at Walmart", but never mind that -- makes me a wee bit cranky. Yes, I could have made it; once I saw the picture I knew pretty much exactly how it was made. But I would have had to buy yarn because I don't have all the necessary colors, plus my rate of finishing stuff is beyond abysmal, and I wanted happy rainbow hat now dangit.)

5) I have cute pets and a cute niecelet who has figured out how to smile and she is the adorablest baby ever, or at least my adorablest niecelet

6) I do not at the moment hurt as much as I sometimes do

Today has ended up being a pretty good day.