I made the slightly short-sighted decision to try my hand at a new website coding project. At the moment, I'm elated because I got a datum that I needed into the code where I needed it. I'm not an experienced programmer by any stretch, so I'm going to leave that unborked code alone until tomorrow and ride the high of "it did a thing yay!" for today. Whew! Now that my foot is in the door, I think the remainder the the project shouldn't be too bad. It won't be something I can slap together in 15 minutes, not at all, but it should be fully doable. The worst part would be if I decide to get all fancy and check user groups (which would require additional coding) but that isn't at all necessary for the immediate future.

I made a thing and it worked. Wheeeeee. Feels good.

Speaking of feeling good, I spent the weekend before the last laid up with a sore throat, and when I was feeling better, I went for a long walk in bitter cold wind. Guess what happened then! Yup, Return of the Sore Throat! I was still sick this past weekend. Ick. But it did give me plenty of time to collect information about my project while I felt too ill to actually get into the coding, which likely helped a great deal. Information is good to have.

Got messages off to a few people online who were/are going through assorted Not Fun. I can't change their circumstances, but I can offer a listening ear and some sympathy. There was a time when my own life was too much for me, leaving me nothing to offer to anyone else in need; I was not a good friend then. I'm glad that I'm doing well enough now to extend a hand to those around me, even while I wish they didn't need it, because I want all the good things for my friends and none of the bad. And I wish it didn't all hit the fan when I was still shaking off that stupid throat bug.

Looking forward to stuff.

I'mma wring a few words out of myself today.

I'm so tired. Night before the last, I couldn't sleep until after two; I haven't recouped entirely.

I would like to hop onto IRC and chat a bit, but I think I had better not. Chat is very good at distracting me from household tasks, and I've already let myself slip over the weekend. Best to stay on task today, sans distraction, and leave the socializing for tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be more alert then.

My latest little online project is driving me bananas. I thought I could replace one thing with another, so I did, and only then discovered that the replacement code doesn't work the way I thought it would, so nothing works as expected. Ugh. On the other hand, I seem to have worked the last kinks out of the skin I'm using for it, so all the text in all areas is readable now, unless I missed something. I should remember to check it against some web accessibility tool, in case the color contrast is too low; I'm having no difficulty, but I am not always a good barometer of such things.

....guess who spent the last two hours looking up and trying out different contrast tools? Oh, you bet your life it was me. I never cease being amazed at my own laziness. It's not all bad - assuming everything I'm about to pull out of the dryer is actually dry, that's two loads of laundry done in between internet fiddlings. Progress!

It's easier to get distracted when I'm sleepy, and the internet is a very effective distraction. I think I'll post this, then exit the browser so that I can apply my meager focus to more important things. I am confident that the internet will still be there when my to-dos have dwindled.

Still fighting off a cold that caught up with me last week, a nasty sore throat/stuffed sinuses combo. I can't tell if the pressure on my eardrums has to do with the drippy skies or my drippy nose. Yech.

And that's about all the words I can today.

Yesterday, my browser engaged in a rather impressive show of repeatedly crashing whenever I tried to do anything. Also when I didn't do anything. Frustrating as that was, I have to admire the sort of commitment involved.

Eventually I abandoned the computer, fired up ye olde PSP, and sank my teeth into some Darkstalkers instead. Still not sure why Jedah Dohma dresses like a Japanese high school student, but oh well. I beat him anyway.

It's one of those nights where the words eke out like the last blobs of toothpaste in the tube: they'll come, all right, but they'll make you work to have them. You have to twist and crank and squeeze, and if you don't do it just so, you'll have to start all over, and you may waste what little you were able to get.

I'm frustrated. I wanted to get back into roleplaying again, but so far I feel like I'm mostly making a hash of it. A friend and I got one shared story going again, which was nice. It's a bit stalled at the moment, and I don't want to push anybody to write when/if they aren't able to get into it, but I have a good feeling about it. It make take some more discussion, but I think we can keep things rolling along.

Unfortunately, something in me wants more than one story. As I said, I don't want to push anybody, so I thought it would work if I went to a community I was part of years back that was still going, and just tried to see if I could slot myself into their activity.

That would work a whole lot better if I had the guts to post, oh, frigging anything.

I feel wholly inadequate. These people have this big site and all these stories they've written together, and what do I have to bring to the table? All I've got is sporadic bursts of creativity and a large lump of fear, which situates itself firmly in my throat whenever I so much as think about jumping in. Not that I know where to jump, either, but even if I did...

I don't know what would help, either. A site mentor to guide me by the hand? A boot to the head? A map? A ghostwriter to have my fun for me?

It's not all bad. I can feel my characters again, after years of stillness on that front. I'm not sure what I can do about that, given my difficulties finding enough roleplay to suit me. Maybe they can keep prodding me internally until I finally work up the gumption to do something.

The really strange part is that a new character showed up, name in hand, and informed me that she's a relative to an existing ancillary character and also not the species she looks like. She won't tell me what she is, just what she isn't. I gotta figure out where I can put her to work with her. I wanna find out who she really is!

It wouldn't be roleplaying if the characters didn't frustrate me, I suppose.

This isn't going to fun to write, but I aim to do it so I can move on.

I learned young that friends leave; I could only rely on my family to stay. Come 1999-2000, my parents split and filed for divorce. I was also due to move away from my hometown. I was alone with a broken support system.

That was when I really found SciFiSites, which is long dead now. Back then, it was a revelation. I'd had a account before, but no steady internet service with which to use it. In my new home, I had no friends or family - but I had SciFiSites, where there was always something to read or do.

I made that site my life. I would wake up at night (so I didn't have to see anybody all day), get online, stay up all night, and all day, and all night, and then sleep all day. I was a profoundly unhappy person. I used the site like a drug to dull my pain. It didn't fix anything, but it let me pretend I was okay.

On January 17, 2000, my SciFiSites character was adopted into the House of Elf. It made my day - my month, even. I felt like I had a new family to replace my broken real one. This was right around the time my parents' divorce became final, crushing my feeble hope that they would somehow get back together. But that didn't matter, because I had a new family, a better one that was there for me at all hours. They never told me I was sick and needed help (even though that was true). They "understood" me, or at least they didn't push me to better myself.

This unhealthy behavior lasted until SciFiSites, later theSciFiVine (TSFV), died around 2002. I tried all the imitator sites, but none of them were family to me, the way I wanted them to be. I got frustrated with them, irrationally angry that my coping mechanism had been yanked away form me. Bit by bit, I had to find healthier ways to deal.

I've been thinking a lot about TSFV lately. January 17 became jainajade's birthday. This year will be 14 years since her adoption - even taking her adoption date as a birth date, she would be old enough to drive! (In South Dakota, kids can drive at 14. Rural life occasionally has benefits.) I loved TSFV dearly and bitterly grieved its loss. It took me much, much longer to grieve the death of my actual family unit as I had known it, or imagined it to be.

Over the intervening years, I'd had a lot of frustration with various TSFV successors. Only recently have I realized and acknowledged that this frustration (and sometimes hot rage) has nothing at all to do with the newer sites - it's all me, furious that anyone would expect me to be a grownup and deal with my own demons. I wanted a ready-made online family again, refused to acknowledge what I wanted, and then raged endlessly when I didn't get the thing I couldn't articulate. How dare they. Didn't I have a "right" to have all my emotions soothed, just because I wanted them to be, even if I lashed out in the process?

Oh.... no. No, I didn't; no, I don't; no, it's not okay to hurt other people just because I'm already hurting.

But I did, then. I raged; I took every inch I was given; I strove to take more, as if it were due me.

It was not.

Nobody said so much as an unkind word to me, and I tried to make out like they were mean to me. No, Ree. Nobody was cruel except me.

So I'm trying to consciously get myself over this. I am working to recognize each of my fellow roleplayers as individuals instead of a single hiveminded entity. I've failed this in the past, been called on it, and ignored the well-meaning warnings. This will not stand. I can't let it.

I have started carefully looking around the most TSFV-like site, doing my best to accept what it is and what they offer my account level. I know I have some strikes against me, due to my past shitheadedness. That said, nobody has said a single unkind word to me there, however well-deserved; they have been unfailingly kind. I don't know if I can actually fit into the sort of writing they do there, but I want to try. I want to know that I tried, and if it doesn't work, I want to be able to identify the difference: if I can't keep up with their posting rate, if the writers I fit best with are in timezones/schedules too far from my own, if I skew too PG for their tastes or they too NC-17 for mine. Differences are honest and fine.

Letting myself act like a group of people don't deserve respect, just because they don't want the same things out of writing that I do? That is not fine. That is not honest.

So I am looking around there, remaining watchful lest my past misdeeds try to rise up within me again. If I can't treat the people there like people, then I need to wish them the best and get myself gone from there, 100%. Nobody there has done a single thing to deserve me running roughshod over them.

But if I can comport myself like the daughter my mother raised, a decent human being, then I might actually form some sort of human connection with those people. Maybe even learn something about the drive that keeps them going: new content, every single day; stories begun, stories actually ended and in frigging print - good stuff.

I need to at least try.

My morning workout had plateaued a bit, but over the last week or two I've managed to kick it up a notch. Yay, endorphins!

I have a plush frog the size of a schoolchild and it lives next to my dinner table, posed like a cat waiting to pounce. A frog would not pounce that way. I do not care. My frog is soft and huggable.

I asked my husband what he liked or didn't like for meals. Turns our he would like more pasta. I love pasta, more than the average person, so I'd been holding back on fixing it too often. All pasta, all the time I feel freed to indulge a little more often from now on.

There's this old Apple II game (Transylvania) I used to play on school computers in free moments. I never got very far because Reasons. Turns out, there was a DOS port and the programmer has it freely available on his website and I beat it! Well. I got past the main sticking point I'd had so, so many times before, and then I realized that I had absolutely no idea what I should do next, so I used a walkthrough. (Bite me.) I've been gleefully booting it up and doing All The Things in a single playthrough, just because I can now. Bwahahahaha. There are sequels....

Life is good.

I got new shoes two weeks ago. They're comfy and sturdy, with plenty of traction. No more slipping on the floor due to worn-out shoes!

Except I lost them within the first week of having them. I took them off at my mother's house, carefully set them out of the way in the first place I'd look for them, and later they weren't there. Nor were they anywhere else I could think to look.

Fantastic.

Today my aunt texted me, saying she and her granddaughter were in town and needed something to do for a bit; could they come over? Well, yeah, of course they could!

I'd gotten the idea to get rid of my PS1. I never used it (my husband and I have two PS2s between us, both of which can play PS1 games, so the PS1 is utterly redundant). I should get rid of it.

I also had a PS1 Dance Dance Revolution game (Konamix) that I couldn't play on our TV, due to display lag, but it still works fine with any CRT TV. I even had an extra DDR controller to go with the set. I thought maybe I'd see if my aunt was interested in having her own DDR game, since she'd tried it at my place before and seemed intrigued by it. It was worth a shot, anyway.

My aunt and her granddaughter barely got in my door before they asked if I had movies, or video games, or did I happen to still have a DDR game? Could they play that?

My usual DDR game (SuperNova) has a setting that lets it get along with the flatscreen TV (Konamix doesn't have this setting). I got everything set up with Supernova and chatted with my aunt while my cousin quickly picked up the gameplay.

My aunt started off the conversation by asking what all she would need to play DDR at her home: an Xbox, she asked, was what I had? And a dance mat, clearly, but how would she know which one would work for which game, or which system, or how did that work?

Thus assured of her interest, I politely stopped her and asked if she would like my old DDR setup: console, cables, DDR controller, and game, everything required, none of which I had any use for.

That was awesome and made us all very happy! Whereupon we grinned a lot.

I'd kept my PS1 in storage at my mother's, so we went over there. I got into the room, slid off my shoes so I could stand furniture to reach it, and found a second pair of shoes waiting there: my mislaid new pair, right where I'd forgotten them the last time I looked at my PS1.

Aha. Okay!

So I don't have a PS1 anymore, but it's going to a good home. And I got my good shoes back. I have tread again.

Life is good.

I dismantled Fort Kickass and rebuilt it into a tower, but that didn't give me as much floor space as I was hoping. Also, the thing I hoped to could shove into the reclaimed space turns out to be 2 inches too wide to fit. Annoying. I hope something useful comes of it.

Still, I did laundry and I washed dishes and I vacuumed the stairs, even though I hate vacuuming (so noisy!) and I especially hate lugging a vacuum cleaner step to step. But it's done, hurray!

In the process of trying for a homier home, I have discovered that it doesn't really feel like home until my Super Nintendo is there, is connected to an appropriate TV, and has been played a little. (Or a lot - after getting the SNES settled, I spent the next week or so playing Illusion of Gaia start to finish. And getting all 50 Red Jewels hidden within. And beating the bonus boss — the first time in my life I've managed to do so.)

I like my Super Nintendo, and Illusion of Gaia. A lot.

I still need to figure out where I can stuff my PSP and accessories when I'm not using it/them, but that seems relatively small and do-able. I'll get this whipped yet.

When the biggest thing on my mind is "My PSP is fine where it is, but it needs a good year-round home", you know that I'm doing wonderfully. Yay me!

When my husband and I moved, our new living room was dominated by a small but very heavy computer desk. I can barely move the thing if I throw all my body weight against it, so even with my husband's help, we weren't going to get the thing drudged upstairs to the computer room.

My brother stepped up, and those two fellows (my brother and my husband) got their burden upstairs as easily as if it were an oversize basket of laundry. Utterly amazing. I'm actually typing this from my station at that desk.

Of course, now we need an actual coffee table, because our remotes-and-beverages holder is no longer there. Heh. For the moment, we have an upturned apple box (!) holding up the remotes, but I have something a bit nicer than cardboard in mind.

Not sure what else. If we can get some help disconnecting a rusted-on washing machine hose, I can stop schlepping my laundry places, but for Reasons, that hose is going to take an expert to remove. There's also my old video games and books to get set up here. Just need to co-ordinate some measurements and align stuff, one piece of furniture at a time.

I think I have forgotten how to journal, a little. I'm out of practice. Well, I know the solution to being out of practice: get back into it!