I have been working a bit on my book. It involves fire. So I read my books on fire. And about firejumpers, and arson, and Waterbombers. 
As a worker said after I talked for five minutes about how wonderful forest fires were, “You like fire a bit, don’t you?”
Do I tell her how my grandfather taught me how to make fires over two stories tall? How to make them hotter, to create 'Chimney's of air flow'? Naw, leave that for next visit, “Er…yes. I have a bit of ‘pathological fire-setting’, now I don't have 'Pyromania' you understand." Make the 'me nice and not dangerous smile', "See, I prefer the 19th century term, ‘Incendiary Monomania’”
Worker: “Mono…wha?”
Elizabeth: “Monomania, you know, times of total and utter fixation upon that beautiful flame, which really only wants to live and reproduce and just because it happens to want to consume every thing on the planet doesn’t make it ‘bad’ just...hungry.”
Worker: “Eh….er……”
Oh dear, oh dear, they don’t look reassured by my calm logical explanation. I tell them, “Don’t worry, Linda doesn’t let me have matches anymore, or even let me set myself on fire.”
Worker: “Yourself….ON fire..” Their face manages to make it look as if they are backing away even though they have no where to go.
I talk in that ‘trying to talk very fast so they don’t call the police or run and hide’, “Well, there are many substances which burn at less than 98 degrees.”
Worker: “Ahhh!”
“Yes, the important thing is not to Oxidize the fire by moving your arm around a lot when it is on fire, yes, that is bad. Also hair burns at far less than 98 degrees, as do hair bangs, and eyebrows.”
Worker: “Yeah, I think I need to go wash some dishes.”
The important thing is to remember: 1) lots of safety precautions and 2) don’t ever say, “Don’t worry, there’s no way this could get out of control….”
And if you end up looking like Hello Kitty here, then maybe it is time to seek professional help.
At the postcard project yesterday, I got NUKED by nice. Love Bomb asks people once a week to spend five minutes to leave a comment online with a person who is doing good, needing some cheering up, or could use some love. I think it is a brilliant idea so I joined. Confirm your email and they send it right to your inbox. They do the ‘bomb’ on Friday, and I encourage people to sign up: it is part of ‘It Starts With Us’.
I figure that since ‘Love Bomb’ do the heavy lifting of finding someone to reach out to, I can certainly spend five minutes to help remind a person that they matter and what they do matters. Plus, I get to part of an organization that is ‘going to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!’......I mean, ‘change the world’ – Linda says I watched WAY too much 'Pinky and the Brain.'
Still, seems the right way to end the week.
Uggggg……………….heat. It has been ‘nice and sunny’ which means ‘I have high blood pressure, a giant headache and threats of a stroke” – when you can’t sweat, heat is scary: your heart beats faster, the blood pressure rises, all things to increase sweat…which doesn’t happen, so I get more TIA (micro strokes) while I sleep and wake with a huge ‘heat headache’.
I am getting ready for my birthday going out. My birthday falls between the two weekends. I was totally off about Kent State, as I find due to the computer age. I had done those ‘look it up in the newspaper assignments’ and they way they talked about Kent State made me sure it was the day before. It wasn’t, it was almost three weeks earlier. Now, a quick google and I get the whole scope including that this year, a new park where the events took place has been created, a National Park, so one Cheryl has NOT visited (since she works for the National Parks).
Tomorrow I am off on some outings, though I had two doctor’s appointments back to back (along with the encouraging (NOT!) statement, "Don't give up, stem cell research is really advancing for neurodegenerative diseases" - because the amount of Stem Cell DNA Vaccines, translants, or regrowths currently in Victoria=0). I am slept up and pretty much ready to go (ignore the erratic heart).
We brain stormed where to go, “How about a Steak House?”
Linda: “NO!” scoff, “Like we can afford that!”
Me: “Fine, this year you get an ice cream cone for YOUR birthday!”
We are tentatively looking at a Korean BBQ, which is something we tried and liked in Japan and a new one has opened here in town. The back up to that is a South America cuisine place with also serves pitches of Sangria. Technically I was banned from there a long time ago when some people I was with set fire to the table in a odd version of dating ‘one-up-manship’ (I steal the folks, You steal the sugar despenser, I set fire to the table, you add alcohol, etc) – it taught me to avoid taking people with very low inhibition thresholds to restaurants I liked.
I did get in the post a couple things for the postcards this week. One is the Hello Kitty the Pirate stickers (they are very rare and yes, sparkly), where HK has a pirate hat with skull AND a Pirate ship with treasure and all.
The assistant bunnies all seem to be gone by the time the treasure is buried (sing it like pirates of the Caribbean: “dead bunnies tell no tales…….dead bunnies tell no tales..”). The other are a couple of sticker sheets from when Hello Kitty ran away to the circus (She REALLY does get around).
From a seller on livejournal I bought some stickers, which I did not know were being sent….from a person teaching in CHINA. So I have a Chinese envelope and stamps, if someone collects stamps let me know and I can send them to you.
The sticker on the envelope is of a 'ball joint doll' showing you how realistic and complex (And expensive!) they are. A good description of ball joint dolls and getting on from the creators is in the manga book Japan Ai: A Tall Girl's Visit in Japan. The stickers are 1.5 inches by 3 and show Hello kitty with her Winter Court, Hello Kitty out shopping, Hello Kitty selling crack cocaine
(naw, I threw that last one in to fool you!), also some stickers from series ranging from K-ON! (now in season 2), to Lucky Star, Chobits and Fate/Stay Night.
Looking forward to sending them all over the world! Stickers are FUN!
Birthday time outside! Gotta go…
I am still alive…I can tell because parts of me hurt. I finished, just 3 minutes ago, a 4 day marathon of listing items for ebay (92 manga lots!) in hopes for getting some funds to save and enough to pay ebay sellers and get gifts. Sorry I have been not communicating, as it has been: get up, work, take pain pills, sleep, repeat. Over and over I worked until fingers, wrists, arms, forearms, shoulders, back, pelvic bones stopped working, just ached. Until I was not all here.
I don’t know a time where I haven’t known only working and pain...literally, I can remember vague things in the past, but my recorded short term memory can’t believe it is over! Now this is what I WISH Linda and I had been doing. I mean, someone, well two someone’s has to do it, why not let it be us!
Oh wait, I have the lacy thong, woot! I get to be on top! Sorry, fantasy distraction, late night thing.
The items and lots for sale on ebay (was over 90) include Yaoi (which are boy/boy love manga books
come'on they are CUTE, and there is a KITTY! Most of Yaoi are buy it now or choose to bid and hope you get it – postage is included) and Shojo manga lots (Female romance, falling in love stories, couples stories) and Action manga lots like Vampire D’s oversized 200+ page mangas.
I tried to list only complete sets as I know the frustration of buying half of a set and not knowing the rest of the story. Some of these I bought before I got sick, I think, or started. The ebay listings are HERE if anyone is interested. There is quite a lot that younger teens would like, high school romance, even 9th grade romance, plus books for singles in the big city, college romances – Venus in love is that one, where a girl is going after a guy in college, only to have the guy in the dorm next to her, her friend, in love with him too! Lots of Ghost story style ones (3 stories solves a volume or one a volume), and some cult ones like Lunar Legend,
or Eureka Seven (famous anime) or The Girl who Ran through time (an alternate story on the famous Anime Movie: Girl who Leapt through time).
Sorry, it is all I have been staring at for um, days? Weeks? When did I start taking photos? Wow, I have a LOT of Yaoi. But you know most of the Deux Yaoi (and others) are more like fun boy love light romances,
(isn't the build up and the moment of first kiss the tingly 'aww' moment particularly when the uke/femme is trying to be all butch! A "I don't know what you are talking about" - response: KISSED!) often the best yaoi is with no heavy adult scenes (or few), I recommend Manzai Comics, Idol Pleasures and Part Time Pets!
I am off to bed at 4:00 am, and tomorrow to the doctor, and then two more appointments later this week – no sign of any treatment in sight yet. But I keep working at it. The night worker who came on Wednesday and said she would come back told the schedulers she would, and then would not, so we will see tomorrow if it is just a timing conflict and get that changed.
I have been going through a long dark patch. Sort of self harm fantasy, compartmentalized, then lying in bed or when I was alone or with people every night, every afternoon, I thought about setting myself on fire. I believed it was the only way to help Linda and myself and get out of the loop I was in (I didn’t say I was very sane at this point!). I held the bottle of spirits I was going to pour over me, and then over my sheets in the bed before I lay in it and lit it. Now I look back and think that might not have been a very um, (I can’t think of a word that isn’t a horrid pun: ‘bright idea’, ‘illuminated thought’, ‘flash of brilliance’) good.
Sorry, thinking about setting yourself on fire for dozens of hours is NOT GOOD, but it is sort of very ME, which makes me glad I didn’t do it. Got to stop listening to the voices, whether they be inside (like the ‘Bad Beth’ and Guilt Inc. voices) or outside (like the questions, insinuations, harassment, and basically abusive relationship doctors can hold over us: and health officials).
I hope you had a better weekend and I really hope all this work brings me the financial security I am hoping for. Now I really am low on manga! Seriously. I also hope all these doctors appointments bring SOME sort of treatment. Linda got a link to treatment for MS people to give remissions (not a treatment that would be approved here however) – still advances continue, treatments will come but until then, I have to live, to find balance – and to pray that the insanity of Black Friday (Thanksgiving is this Thursday, the day after that, Friday, is the most busy shopping day of the year) crazy spending in the USA spreads to ebay!
I sort of missed Remembrance Day. I wanted to remember on Nov 11th and did and do now, all those who worked as nurses in the field and in the stations all the way back to the home country on both sides of WWI and WWII. These women, who had PTSD and ‘shell shock’ went unrecognized and unappreciated.
Florence Nightengale’s experiences in Crimea left her in bed – Shell Shock, M.E./CFS? I also want to remember all those families and spouses, communities who assisted in the caregiving of those who returned from war with impairments from psychological to the physical: the lungs, the limbs. There are millions to remember those who fought, let me and those who chose to remember those who tended men ripped apart by shrapnel, or who died holding their hands, and they went back to their cot, cried, then got up and went back to work.
Hey, we just got back from the Luminara Festival which takes place once a year. I am beat so I have these few photos, and will give you the full story tomorrow, okay?
First, while I napped, Linda and Cheryl worked together to Bling my wheelchair into an Electric Parade, taking it apart to put glow rope everywhere.
So then I was up and we were off, Cheryl with glow-sticks on her cane and me with my bling chair
(very, very popular with the kids who wanted their parents to get them one).
Luminara is a family friendly, almost accessible event once a year where Victoria does not act like it has a stick up its ass. It is the collective “alternative” for goths, geeks (I was told that “I had the wheelchair from the future!” by one nerd), drug users, Ren girls (in big Ren dresses), pagans, as well as anyone who wants to wear a costume. It is in Beacon Hill Park were across the many ponds are scattered displays, like this Torii on the duck pond.
There are also fixed light displays, like these drummers. 
The festival starts to finish at 11:00 ish but we didn’t get back until midnight (then I had a seizure, yada, yada).
There are also groups which combine costumes or moving events, like the BLUE ANGELS, who are these girls dressed in blue, (lots of Blue) which are lead by drummers which turn it into a giant rave. 
Because crowds, many of them high, follow them. One guy stopped in front of my chair and just kept saying, “The COLOURS! I mean, you have THE COLOURS!” until his friend pulled him away to follow the drummers.
We continued on because earlier in the day at the Moss street market, thanks to the influence of Neil, we talked to some people selling Poi, including Nick Woosley of Playpoi. Well, not a lot of people get into giving advice on how to do fire poi to a girl in a wheelchair in less than five minutes (use kevlar and wear cotton!). He told us he was performing at 10:40 at the Cricket Ground and there we went, stopping to take a picture of the Native Haida Village, with long boat and long house display.
Then stopping to take a picture of a Japanese drum with the reflection in the water (lots more pictures tomorrow!)
Well, Nick and the Poi fire Dancers were pretty darn impressive, like this guy who lit up this wooden staff, started twirling…
Then he throws it into the air….
And catches it going into a double wraparound of his back, his head down, doing spins and wrap arounds on his back with little balls of fire flying off from the speed.
It was pretty impressive.
However, that part was followd by the...um, to be blunt, EROTIC fire dancing. First this is a married couple came out, with dance music, fired wooden staves and then started to dance.
And then WHILE dancing they got..um…close…and starting using each OTHER’s body for wrap-arounds (spinning their staff around their partners back and then back into their opposite hand). 
It was HOT, like erotic hot. And I said, “We could do this at home!”
And Cheryl said, “I don’t think your building manager Fran would be too happy.” Sorry, but fire IS erotic, and a married couple doing an erotic dance WITH fire, I was…um…aroused. And then SHE came.
Remember how I dated “danger girl.”
Well out come this girl with all the raw sexuality of danger girl, barefoot, a couple scraps of clothes on her with a steel hoop at 7 to 8 fire balls on it, and then she starts doing a hula thing with it going around her hips as she belly dances around the field.
“I got to get her number.” I say in a husky voice, eyes transfixed.
Cheryl sort of smacks me upside up the head. “You’re married!”
I look at the girl rotating her hips on the field, a ring of fire rotating in time to music and make a little moaning mewling noise.
So yeah, it was a pretty good night. Tell you the whole story and hopefully a Fire Poi and Fire dancing video tommorow? Have a good one!
As a worker said after I talked for five minutes about how wonderful forest fires were, “You like fire a bit, don’t you?”
I figure that since ‘Love Bomb’ do the heavy lifting of finding someone to reach out to, I can certainly spend five minutes to help remind a person that they matter and what they do matters. Plus, I get to part of an organization that is ‘going to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!’......I mean, ‘change the world’ – Linda says I watched WAY too much 'Pinky and the Brain.'
