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This little guy is just too cute to put away just because it's not winter anymore!

God, please let the green tea help me wake up!

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Just another day I had planned to do all kinds of things, but woke up with more fatigue than usual and abdominal cramping,.. so I've gotten almost nothing done today except watching a few episodes of repeats of NCIS...

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This is what DMH funded Community Mental Health agencies are like in New Hampshire. Yeah it's a beautiful forest of recovery if you can survive the gatekeeping and get inside!

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Born January 5, 2025

Height 18"

Weight 6lbs

(Laya Bél means "She is beautiful" in Haitian Creole)

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Business Insider: Gen Z is flocking to the one social media platform millennials didn't ruin.

Wow, I've been here long enough I'm cool again? 😆

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#MusicIsLife

#MusicTherapy

Assorted shots from the Open Mic Benefit to end human trafficking at Freedom Care, just a short walk from the University of NH campus in Durham, NH USA

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1/29/25

Today is Wednesday, January 29th of the Year 2025, although I suspect that history will remember it as Day 10. I also hope that someday saying “It was on Day 10” will be enough to cause American hearts to recall how close we came to losing our great nation, and pause and say a prayer of gratitude for heroes and saints that will be studied in schools. But I also know that there is still a chance…

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It's my 9 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

Glad we made it this far. Never imagined being around this long, to be honest.

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Amen. Pain control is so important yet so unavailable to so many of us complex spoonies!

[Text id:

"“Do I want to take pain medications? The simple answer is no. Just like I don’t want to take any of the medications I am prescribed. But equally I know that those same drugs keep me functioning. That without them I would not be able to write this post, or stand, or walk the few steps to my toilet. Similarly, adequate pain control gives me the ability to drive 3 hours to the city for my medical appointments and to sit on the couch with my family without tears. But access is complex. And there is a pervasive idea of the drug-seeker, seen in every patient who has chronic pain. That those who simply don’t get over pain and require ongoing pharmaceutical management are weak. Friends who have used pain clinics tell stories of dismissal and blame. That they are not trying hard enough when they don’t recover, when I know the lengths they have gone to to try and alleviate their pain. And compassionate pain doctors who become the exception not the rule.”

- "When ‘Suck it Up’ Becomes the Only Pain Treatment You Are Offered" (via chronic-illness-support ) ]

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Wheelchair Woes

Broken cement & cobblestone sidewalks aren't very #spoonie friendly, so my nice cool 14 mile ride in the early morning landed me instead at the local ER for a sick Permobile wheelchair.

Using the chapel/meditation room as a repair bay because in order to reconnect the one battery connector that had gotten bumped loose, I had to practically take the entire tear apart. This will not surprise any other wheelchair users as power wheelchairs and notorious for being difficult to maintain and repair.

What amused me was realizing that there is a heavier duty fully Steel bracket holding on my luggage rack which is just big enough and mind to hold five cans of beer.

As opposed to a whole bunch of the parts on the wheelchair, including said luggage rack, that are made of plastic that vibrates like crazy if you're not on a completely smooth roadway.

*sigh*

Priorities, I guess. Gotta be able to travel with your alcohol, right?

😂😂😂

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The progression of my taste in music to deal with stress changed over time....from blues to jazz to rock to rap to country to techno to viking folk to heavy to metal to, of course, dark wave was a direct reflection of the crumbling of the society of end stage American capitalism....

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Out Of Spoons

Spoon Depletion

https://www.tumblr.com/fibro-memes/741144825549701120?source=share You know you are tired when you don’t even have the energy to screenshot the cute graphic to link it to the tumbler you found it at. Can I mention how great it is that Tumblr survived the pandemic and is just as bizarre as it’s ever been?

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Yeah one of the ways you can keep an eye on the more dysfunctional parts of America without completely dipping into the cesspool that is Trump's truth Channel is by staying on Twitter.

Granted, it's another cesspool thanks to Elon, but it does provide me with massive amounts of hysterically funny things to write about. Of course trolls and thoughts abound and this one had a single tweet tagging a bunch of us with the single word "engage".

It's been a long painful couple of weeks, and my ...shall we say unusual sense of warped humor erupted...

Yup, I projectile tumblr'd all over Elon's sandbox.

And it felt awesome!

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The Bipartisan Misstep

ABC News: House passes bipartisan tax bill that would expand child tax credit “It includes new low-income housing tax credits..” Hello?! Sorry, but somehow I feel this is going to be far short of what is needed in the US housing crisis. The section 8 wait-list in New Hampshire is 7 to 10 years, and in Strafford County in 2023 only 1 new development (Easter Seals in Rochester) had any new…

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I experience a big difference between fatigue tiredness and lassitude.

Tiredness is that mild sensation that your batteries are running low, that yawn interrupts your afternoon on a busy day, or that feeling of being semi asleep when you first wake up if you haven't been able to get enough rest.

Fatigue is deeper and stronger. When you're tired you may yawn, or feel a need to stretch, or feel a little bit laggy like you are walking a little bit in slow motion. Fatigue on the other hand is feeling like you are expending a huge amount of effort keep doing whatever you're doing, to be yawning and to have eyes drooping and to have that headache that tells you you are beyond tired. When I experience fatigue, I'll frequently say out loud that all I want is to lay down and take a short nap.

The unique kind of fatigue from fibromyalgia is usually easiest to describe to able-bodied people by having them call the last time they were coming down with the flu and how no matter how much sleep you got you just kept getting sicker. Fibromyalgia fatigue to me comes in waves and it can be so distracting to fight against it, and keep doing the things that I want or need to do. It is possible to push through fibromyalgia fatigue, but no one who has lived with that disease would ever recommend it because it saps as much of your mental energy, your cognitive abilities, and your mental health abilities t as does your body physically.

Lassitude, especially as I define it in regards to multiple sclerosis, is truly evil and heartbreaking. When lassitude hits, it is like a wall of a fatigue so profound that your knees begin to buckle, your eyes start closing, and it literally takes every ounce of energy you have left in your body to force yourself to stay awake even for a few more seconds. When lassitude hits, I usually must rely on my wheelchair or whatever surface I'm resting on to support me because it almost always makes me weak as well as exhausted.

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Sometimes this complex spoonie runs out of 🥄spoons to do cognitive tasks like "use a 🎮 controller to play a complicated video game"... But I still want to relax and play something.

Back in 2020 I discovered Gems Of War - a kind of tongue in cheek, humorous mashup of Android's JewelQuest match 3 game and the classic card game Magic The Gathering.

The first thing I like is that (if I have to) I can play it with only one hand ( but that works best if you velcro the controller to a flat surface ). This is especially handy but I am ignoring all my gastroparesis diet rules and eating the greasy forbidden Margarita popcorn.

The second thing I like is that it has multiple levels of complexity I can enjoy on my good days, but on the days that TBI brain fog or MS cognitive issues are really bad? I can just wait for the game to prompt me with where to move a jewel instead of trying to figure it out on my own. There is even a mini game called treasure hunt that instead of being a strategy battle between teams you just compete against yourself to see how much treasure you can accumulate.

The third thing that I like about this game is that it doesn't take itself all that seriously. There are all sorts of humorous puns and jokes in the descriptions, comic strip type dialogue, and even in the way things are drawn.

I can't show you the HUD (because the only TV we own is broken and doesn't show the top inch and a half on the screen), but it's fairly clear and useful. Gem support is actually a very deep role-playing game with lots of seasonal components so there's a lot more depth to it than just a simple match three game, and there's a lot of the detailed complexity that classic battle card games are famous for. The HUD actually wraps all around the four edges for much of the game which greatly reduces the amount of sub menus someone has to drill through for the more advanced gameplay features.

I'm less happy about the way the most recent update has changed some of the fonts and their sizes, as it may make it a bit difficult on a small screen for those with vision issues, but overall it's an excellent way to spend your free time if you are a casual gamer looking for something different than the usual hack and slash type genres.

I started playing it while taking care of my husband in 2020 and never intended for it to replace my deep abiding love for all things Elder Scrolls related but here I am 4 years later still playing it several times a week!

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LORD OF THE LOST - Waiting For You To Die (Official Lyric Video) | Napal...

My comment at YouTube...

September will be the 40th anniversary of the first time I was traumatized by a concussion from #DomesticViolence.

October will be the 30th anniversary of the day I escaped from that monster's physical abuse.

Having a TBI has irrevocably altered my life, my relationships, and my abilities - but I survive, at least in some small part by knowing that someday I (or my heirs) will see justice served, even if not in a courtroom.

Thank you, Chris for poetry that so eloquently expresses what us survivors feel - especially those of us who were traumatised before there were laws making domestic violence a crime.

Thank you, LOTL, all of you & your crew for music and film that can speak so powerfully for so many...

Brenda Eckels, aMGC 👩🏼‍🦼

Strafford County, New Hampshire, 🇺🇲USA