1) Family conclave actually went FAR smoother than expected. One short Aunt Linda getting defensive but we rerouted it with my suggested, 'let's all just agree on mutually agreeable protocol for future -- how about what EMT do if they find someone unmoving on ground can't get up as protocol." and then her three brothers outvoted her, 3 to 1.  But she didn't feel ambushed which was my worst fear....

Mostly it was quite productive and good though and everyone's on the same page. Which was the goal. Not to make decisions for grandma without her, but to get all the helpers/careteakers on the same page and  figure out what we need to watch so it won't want to fall through the cracks.

Also Aunt Linda was so livid with grandma for canceling that doctor appointment then not letting in the speech therapist (code for cognitive analyst) then laughed at me yelling at grandma over it because it takes a LOT to push me there then hurt grandma didn't mention it to her but then even more entertained when i told her grandma wouldn't have told her because if I lit into her so hard and brutally honest, what would Linda have done?! She's brutally hoenst to the point of abrasive picking a fight -- always has been.

2) Today was 50F and sunny and not a speck of snow on the ground. it's staying highs in mid to upper 40s and up to 50 through Saturday when we get rain. So no snow for Christmas, no physical way to have it here in Madison WI. An hour or so north of here there's snow -- but not here. Hasn't been snow since early November. Will definitively not have snow here for Christmas.....and I can't go anywhere else for Christmas because of family Christmas Day celebration at Aunt Sondra & Uncle Steve's house.

I've still never had a Christmas without snow without someone on my dad's side of the family dying on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I think it will be Aunt Gail* given the deterioration, but there's a non-zero chance it'll be Shauna^ and I can't shake a certain inner certainty that this internally feels like who I'm internally coming to terms with losing..

* Short Version: Two years ago Gail found a lump in her breasts, told her minor kids (Teddy & Maddie) but Gail didn't go in for it. Teh kids got scared, told their dad. Uncle Jeff contacted Gail's older adult kids from previous failed marriages to ask them about it. They contacted Gail to henpeck her to go in and Gail had a HUGE fight with Jeff over pulling them into it. Gail never went in or brought it up at her annual physical. She then let her health insurance lapse (which was ALSO her minor kids health insurance.) Gail fell and fractured her leg in early September, in multiple places. During Maddie's senior year. Scans showed that she had cancer riddled through all her bones, metastisized stage 4 only palliative for her pain to ease her passing but nothing to make it better. Oh and no insurance to cover any of this. Yeah. Adult kids stepped in for the medical bills and somehow they pushed through our state version of medicaid called Badgercare. But she's in hospital, pulmonary embolism on Saturday. Not expected to be released ever again.....

^ Short Version: Shauna got entangled in an intensely abusive relationship with a manipulative narcissist with a history of beating nearly killing the women he's with. She was hospitalized after nearly dying (and not for the first time)and he was incarcerated after a particularly bad bout that a neighbor called the cops on him a little over a year ago and then her parents brought her back here intensely broken. She stayed with me for a while after burning her bridges (of her own volition) at her parents and continuously trying to call the cops on them over nothing. (Literally nothing -- one of the times was because she left 3 frozen impossible burgers in their freezer she wanted to have the cops get for her and I told her that was  ridiculous, we could go to the store and if she called them for something so trivial the cops might put her on 24 hours psych hold.) Anyway, she left here broken still insisted on getting back to Los Angeles for his trial. She broke the police restraining order, moved back into his place while he was in custody, then out, then back to him as soon as he was out of jail and has been with him on and off but mostly on except  when someone else has called the cops on him. Also, she refuses to get a job because she gave up music because he hated it took up acing (as an extra) and refuses to take a job that would interfere with her ability to be on call BUT her parents have refused to send her any further money since it was enabling the relationship so she's using lack of money as excuse for why she "has" to go back to him or live on the street.... So, y'know, I'm constantly expecting a call she's dead at his hands and of her own choice.

 Also, likely this part will be edited out removed because those aren't really my stories to tell.

3) I don't think acting out or manifesting during eclipse season is a good idea, as a general rule. I like to observe but not act on eclipses. It's a time when things you do tend to turn in your hand to cut you and I quite firmly am of the opinion that manifesting or making big actions/decisions during eclipse season is like attacking yourself.

So I don't intend to act on anything til the second half of the eclipse is past in 6 weeks but I do intend to take the time to reflect and probably go a bit silent.

Which means not letting myself act precipitously in either direction.  Which is why I have chosen to not let myself be triggered. Thus the not watching any of Eric's stories decision. If he shows up as unwatched stories that I refuse to watch, then I can't be triggered if those stories turn out to be from an account that blocked me for having been honest that the country music causes me physical pain would stop me attending shows. (A truth which is STILL my truth, even if it's not applicable to the current parameters of the band's choices or hwo thoroughly the girls fucked everything up, it's still true that country music causes me physical pain due to my synesthesia and will chase me away -- it's as true now as it ever was and always will be.) It means I miss any content he puts in his stories (though he's been posting a lot of things as posts over the last week or so. a LOT; reason is not something I know, but it means I do see the things he makes as actual posts that I'd not see if he just put them in his stories) but it means I remove that relational bullying from triggering me to just say "fuck it I'm done" then cut and run. (Which is what it pushes me to EVERY time he shares something from an account that I'm blocked on, such as the official band account.)

But, it also means I'm training myself to have the self-control to not see what he's sharing or doing. I'm training myself to be okay with not knowing and not letting myself care about what he does or if I know or have any part of it. It's a slow form of disengaging mental and emotional attachments to him by seeing it and teaching myself not to click, to be okay with not knowing/seeing.

But it stops his behavior (which is totally normal and right and what he SHOULD be doing -- except that it's all poisoned by how the girls behaved a year ago) from triggering me and making me reactionary. So that's my choice, to take back my control and not let the toxicity that has been created by the defensive choices the girls made for how to deal with being told that the country music was going to stop me attending shows. He didn't create the toxicity, but he has continued to perpetuate it and make it worse (whether he meant to or not) as a result of how the girls behaved a year ago and the fact nobody has ever even acknowledged it (let alone set about fixing it.) So my choice was to stop it triggering me if he wouldn't stop behaving in the ways that were triggering my "fuck it I'm done" response. I acknowledge there are consequences to my decision to top watching his stories, but it has stopped the triggering from him making me reactionary go "fuck it I'm done."

4) The last not quite week or so, that boy has been all up in my dream space. Just for the record. Quite constantly and consistently.Not always in a positive situation/interaction, sometimes pretty damn scared and upset and fed up wit my stubbornness, but quite constantly  there in my dream space trying to fix it in any/every way (except fixing the source of the problem itself.)

5) I need more introvert recharge time then I've been getting and I don't foresee how to get it. Especially between family Christmas Day, grandma appointments, my mom being an extrovert and taking it personal EVERY time I tell her to just give me space stop talking/thinking so loud then being hurt every time I need to be alone, and Mikaela off school this coming week and half of the following week.  But it's making my temper short and making me bail on plans with people whose fault it isn't and making me tap out my energy I have to give people and it's causing me headaches/migraines.

But that's part of me not writing here. I'm not getting enough introvert recharge time right now so when I have it, the LAST thing I want to do is spend it here where I put out as much energy as I recoup. I'd rather spending my introvert recharge time in something that will recharge me faster.....