B.log

2022-08-10 wednesday

• It has certainly been nine days since I last wrote here - filled with more rain than I'd like, and more sadness too. Dad's birthday would have been on the thirteenth, a few days from now, and nine days later would be when he passed. It's probably for the best that Mom did not live to see another of his birthday's, I don't know if she would have been able to bear that neurological explosion.

• Sleep and waking have been troublesome for me lately - seems as though my pain acts up during these times. Tried to sleep on a very supportive couch, but that didn't really do much for the waking portion. Oh well, another thing attempted. Woke up with the cat next to me in bed, so that's not all bad. Certainly warms my morning up to see her friendly face, purring away (waiting for food).

• I made brownies last night at midnight. They are very chewy, and quite delicious. Enjoying one with my coffee currently. No rain forecasted today, perhaps I will be able to get back into the garden and breaking down some decaying branches. I am trying to build a garden mound! This is hopefully going to aid me in re-creating some motions I have trouble with (forward bending, using arms etc.) and give use to the massive pile of decaying tree-bits out back. I am attempting to build a ( ( Hugelkultur ) ). Goal will be to plant August/September things here, and perhaps have some harvest (even a tiny one would do).

• Spending a lot of time lately just zoning out, staring into walls - mostly when I am done what I can for the house and property that day. Really hard to focus on anything aside from.... staring. My grief counsellor has told me this is normal, especially after losing two parents in the span of a year, both to pretty shitty and painful ways. So I keep reminding myself this. I send my mom messages on Facebook Messenger, still. She will never read them, but it's the closest I have. The comfort feels hollow, though, and like I am just filling a vial of sand with no bottom.

• It wouldn't be as bad if I was physically able - I should be able to get the gardening done no issue, especially with all this time. I find myself reaching an unfortunately familiar "zone" of fatigue, pain, and "headfullness" (head gets foggy, full, have to squint eyes, very annoying). Once here, I have to stop or later in the night, pain increases. The worst of it is in the fingers - there is no escape from that pain - the thumb being the worst culprit. Feeling of slicing, pounding, at the cuticle and edge of the thumb itself. Sometimes, I can position myself or utilize my right hand to grasp part of my left arm, shoulder, or neck, and attempt a manual therapy manoeuvre. Rarely does this ever help, except in a fleeting fashion; Gives me something to do during the pain, though, aside from cry out.

• One day at a time, yeah? That's what my father would always tell me - and thank god I am not in the same league of pain he was in. Cursed for the last twenty-five years of life with unending electrical pain is not how I ever want to live. He taught me that resilience is a defining feature of humanity; he never killed himself, left, or otherwise ceased to try. A lot of processing has gone into the last year for me and, while I wish I could have done more for him (and Mom), I cannot change the previous year's events. what I would give to do so, though.

• I've got a boon of knowledge, a decade of work in the field of manual therapy. My focus was on people like my father, in horrible pain with seemingly no "reason". One thing I am glad I know: Pain isn't from the tissues, it's from the brain. Like any sense our brain is actively making up what is "going on" by taking in way more information than we can know. There is no pain fibers - there are nociocepters. These relay information of the environment to the brain, and it's something that we grow and learn with every day - things that caused great pain the first experience may not cause the same level of pain the next. Having this knowledge is very helpful for me and the pain I've got.

• Just hope, one day, it won't stop me from being me. I don't even have the heart for art, right now. As always, I hope you are doing well, whoever you are! Go enjoy the day, if you can!

2022-08-01 monday

• We had friends over, and I was Dungeon Master for our first session of Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos (a Dungeons and Dragons campaign). If you are familiar with Hogwarts, it's like that. Also, if you have played some of the Persona games it's also like that. The players (my friends) are university students attending the magical Strixhaven.

• The campaign is broken up into weeks, with Orientation being day 1 (of a 10-day week cycle). They then go through a checklist of some things (classes, homework, interactions etc.) before closing out the week, and starting the next. In the first day, they fought off three Mimics - magical shapeshifters who disguised themselves as a Barrel, a Bookcase, and a Mirror. Later that week, while helping two of the party catch-up on some homework they did poorly with (day 8 of the week), a Basilisk chased four other first-year students into the players Laboratory. Two instantly where turned to stone, not getting out of the creatures ability range in time. Basilisks can turn you to stone with their gaze!

• The players, and remaining other student Non-Player-Characters (NPCs), defeated the creature and summoned a Professor. The word is, one stone-bound student was freed, while one remains in stasis - something about the Basilisk's magic wasn't.. natural. Not that Basilisk's are usually considered natural, but that's for another discussion.

• All-in-all; none of the player characters died - but - two did go down in the Basilisk combat. The creature was on 1hp the turn the second player fell, but neither died as a result of their companions quick thinking.

• I had a lot of fun planning this start out to what I hope is a long adventure - the Strixhaven book gives 4 adventures, each a "year" (which is Roughly 25-52 weeks depending how you want to run it). Right now, I have the school "year" set to 25 weeks (the essential weeks for the campaign, and then off-weeks with random encounter chances, roleplaying, etc.). There is the option to expand with more weeks between major events, especially while using the "milestone system" for EXP --- players level up when certain story beats are completed/passed. So if my friends want to go on a summer vacation to a beach and have an adventure there, we can make that happen.

• The Tabaxi (cat-person) already tried breaking into the restricted-area of the Library from outside. Clever thing. The Owlin (owl-person) never stops flying - I will need to find a way to make combat challenging for them, so they aren't just going up 30ft and hovering the whole fight; I'd like them to feel engaged and use the aerial space more, would love to give them the feeling of freedom here. The Loxodon (Elephant-person) did what they did best, hurt things and heal! The Goblin threw some sick spells, and did not invoke Wild Magic effects, though this was attempted twice. Finally, the love-able Warforged (robot-person) aided the group in distracting enemies, and bringing joy.

• I am looking forward to the future meetings of this group. I hope I can grow as a DM, and run more games for my friends and others. It is really fun to help a story come to life while interacting with others --- and eating delicious food ( we had pork roast and potatoes with green beans)

2022-07-31 sunday

• Started this website, blog and other things. Named this page B.log, because I wanted to be fancy. It stands for Boring Log; as this will mostly be boring. I am going to chronicle my garden/landscaping adventures here. Mostly for myself however, I would like to add my noise to the internet. Maybe I will learn something along the way.

• Spent 8am 'til roughly 9:20am weeding the last walking-section of the back vegetable gardens. Mom and us didn't get around to weeding in the spring, and when she passed things quickly developed - we never got her that last garden. My goal is to make her proud, and turn the space into a functional vegetable garden. Maybe even greenhouse... I would like to feed my family and friends; become a full-time vegetable salesperson.

• Had to stop when I did due to discomfort, and fatigue. Still working through a workplace injury and using my left arm, shoulder, is troublesome. I am thankful for my medical team, PT/OT/NP/Counselling - they have helped me get from daily, frequent, electrical shocks to less or none. Now if we could get the usage of the arm back that'd be grand. There is a lot of work that needs done, and I have to split my time up - 20min break here and there. Never enough time, and if I do too much then I need to take longer breaks, or a whole next day off. I hate this --- hopefully as time goes on, this gets better.

• There are now five or six Blackberry plants out back - the three that started seemed to have spread a bit. More berries for us, I guess! Tied them to a post and encouraged (hopefully) them to grow towards the flowerbed, and not the walking path. Those thorns are sumsabishes.

• Last night, baked Cinnamon bread (two loaves) and 42 mini Oatmeal-Raisin muffins. We've got DnD tomrorow, my third time DMing. Excited, but worried. Also going to make a Roast at the end of it for my friends. We are running Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos - set in the Magic the Gathering world. It's essentially Harry Potter in DnD.

• Several invasive plants found while weeding over the last few weeks. - had to try my best to get the roots. Likely they will come back, but hopefully by then I can have a better solution - or enough cloth that it doesn't matter. If we can get the whole backyard (around 2Ksq.ft.) into a Greenhouse then we can not worry about weeds - just use planter boxes for control!

• There's a pool in the backyard that needs to be utilized or removed - hopefully we can create a greenhouse around it/the yard and use it as a Cool-Sink, drainage!

• This site is likely just going to slowly come to life. B.log posts every so often, otherwise don't expect much! Hope you have a great day. I am going to give my cat, Nibs, some belly rubs in the sunshine.