• mood: awake
• listening: the latest RedHanded

wow, reading my last entry, I sure do feel like a big, stupid idiot. first of all, my memory and cognition problems have pretty much all resolved. I implemented the following changes throughout March:

• playing Flesh and Blood every weekend. I do think that the combination of strategy and community--i.e. actually having to use my brain and be around people in real life--have done me a lot of good.
• drinking coffee again--like, actual coffee, and not just a matcha latte here or there. I started drinking coffee again when I saw Acid Bath (put a pin in that; I'm about to get there).
• changing my work schedule to where I now have two days off each week instead of one. the way it worked before, I had four full work days and two half work days. I thought this would be the right move, but I basically just felt like I only had one day off each week to attend to chores... which meant I did not have any days off.

the differences have been palpable. I feel like I have my brain back--well, mostly. I mean, I still have days where I'm a total space alien with brain fog and haze, but that's to be expected with migraines. I am no longer scared whatsoever, because I feel I've been thinking more clearly and with focus.

another thing that's changed is I began using a CPAP for my obstructive sleep apnea, which I stupidly did not realize that people who are 4'11" and 120lbs can have, but I have apparently had it my whole life, even when I was 40lbs lighter--even when I was a little kid. growing up, I constantly woke up tired. if I got less than eight hours of sleep, my parents would tell me that it was because I didn't get enough sleep; if I got eight or more hours, I was warned that I slept too much. I've spent my entire life wondering how many sleeps I need to feel normal.

sleep apnea is quite common in people with EDS. I just woke up after seven-and-a-half hours of genuinely restful sleep and I feel like I was just offered new drugs to try. evidently, I have never gotten a good night's sleep in my life, because I've never woken up feeling like this before. I had perfectly pleasant dreams as opposed to violent nightmares, only stopped breathing once per hour according to my app (usually it's 6-7), and woke up feeling refreshed. I can't believe this is how most people sleep. it's incredible.

returning to what I said earlier: I saw Acid Bath live in a cave in the middle of rural Tennessee. it was without question one of the most transformative experiences of my life. I've always been a big metal fan, especially doom, stoner, and sludge metal, but I didn't actually get into Acid Bath until my pregnancy, when my ex's old road dog from his traveling days put on "Scream of the Butterfly" and barked, "You gotta listen to this! It's about a girl getting an abortion!" it seemed thematically appropriate, so I bit. since then, they've been in my top five all-time favorite bands. but, of course, this was in 2012, so I never thought I'd have a saint's chance in Hell to see them ever again.

The Country Pat and I first drove to Murfreesboro to go stay with our old bandmates from when we still played folk punk. catching up with them was great. then we drove another hour the next day to go set up camp on The Caverns vast property. I'm not even gonna cap a little bit: I was absolutely fucking terrified the whole time. I hate caves, crowds, and anything that I can't escape from. I pictured all manner of disasters occurring in the cave: a mass shooting, fire, or the cave somehow engulfing all of us, and either being killed by the ensuing crowd crush or whatever the crowd was running from. The Country Pat was gently encouraging me to get a bit closer but respecting how difficult this was for me.

the lineup was impeccable: Saint Avangeline, Herakleion, Obituary, and, of course, Acid Bath. I was almost as interested in seeing Saint Avangeline as I was in seeing Acid Bath but, unfortunately, we quickly took to the merch booth line upon getting through security, and the line was so long and moved so slowly that it took all of Saint Avangeline's set. it was what it was. I was less disappointed that I missed Saint Avangeline live and more disappointed at feeling like the experience was so commercialized. it felt, at that point, like I was at Disneyland but for metalheads, just spending a lot of money on merch and waiting in lines. once we got merch off Acid Bath, I went into the cave itself and saw where Saint Avangeline herself was selling merch; I bought a shirt, which I asked her to autograph. like I said: Disneyland for metalheads.

we ate tacos--which were gas, and also led to literal gas--during Herakleion before going and watching Obituary. you really don't understand the acoustics of listening to death metal in a cave until you have the opportunity to do so yourself. it's like listening to explosions, only the explosions roundly permeate the airwaves in ways you'd never expect. it's surround sound on another level: music that you never knew could exist. I stood there absorbing the bass and double-kick drums and big huge stacks the way a flower absorbs sun.

finally, it was time for Acid Bath. here's how The Caverns works: it's a cave. most stages in the world have a way for performers to get through from the rear, so that they can emerge onto the stage. not so at The Caverns; performers have to be led to the stage from the audience. only the audience was so packed, literally with over a thousand people, that the Grundy County sheriff's had to lead Acid Bath through the audience. and guess who was right behind them as they were chaperoned? we were. The Country Pat and I, for a split second of our lives, were within un-social distance of the legends themselves: Acid Bath. nearly as close to my own partner did I see Dax Riggs, bespectacled with sunglasses--how the fuck could he see through them in a cave?!--and two of the bandmates he'd called brothers since high school, tragically sans Audie Pitre, their late bassist. in Audie's place was Shane Wesley, the bassist from Crowbar: another legendary Louisiana sludge metal band. on drums was Zack Simmons from Goatwhore, who are also from Louisiana.

they immediately began with a Sabbath cover before starting their originals, the first of which is my favorite song: "Tranquilized." then it was "Bleed Me an Ocean," followed by "Venus Blue," which they dedicated to Pitre. I thought of my and The Country Pat's own late bandmate during "Venus Blue," in the aftermath of seeing a now-50-something Riggs soberly dedicate the song to "our brother." this year will mark eight years since we lost Dylan, and "Venus Blue" made me realize that we're never gonna not miss him; the surviving members of Acid Bath have now grieved Pitre for longer than Pitre's entire lifespan, and they're still sad about it, so I guess we will be, too.

naturally, they played fan favorites like "New Death Sensation" and "Scream of the Butterfly," but the biggest surprise came at the end. throughout Acid Bath's tour, they have been closing with "Dr. Seuss is Dead." in the cave, though, and for the first time since they disbanded in the late '90s, Acid Bath played "The Blue." an entire audience of metalheads screaming "eat my dead cock" permeated the cave, surrendering ourselves to Dax Riggs' world of allegory and imagery: coprophagia, abortion, rabies. we screamed along to the same nightmare we've all had, apparently.

thus concluded one of the greatest nights of my life. I rank it in the same tier as the birth of my child.

the problem with lately is that I totally relapsed on social media. I'm on Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest all the time again. I even tried to watch TikTok but with timestamps to make sure I was watching videos longer than three minutes--the few studies we have about "shortform content" and its effects on the brain define it as less than three minutes long start-to-finish--but I hated it because it was a thrift haul video and it felt like I was watching an ad. so here's what I'm doing now: I have StayFree downloaded to my phone so that it limits me to ten minutes each on my phone of Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. I can choose to waste these whenever I want. then, I've got my SurfPal Chrome extension on my laptop that continues to essentially hold my browser for ransom if I try to use Facebook for 15 minutes, Instagram for 30, or Reddit for 60. I also have an extension that blocks the Facebook feed entirely, so I can't just scroll mindlessly; I have to actually be on there for a reason, like I need to buy something off Marketplace or look up someone's contact info. all in all, let's say that I have a day where I am really wasting a lot of time on my devices, usually something like a bad pain or migraine day, I can only waste about two-and-a-quarter hours on the platforms I get the most hooked on. (and yes, I am actively promoting both StayFree and SurfPal for anyone else who struggles with being hooked on apps.)

I think it started in Madison that I got hooked back on my phone, then it just got worse and worse when I got back, depressed and trying to reconfigure my brain. so I'm taking the steps to reclaim my time. I'm back on here. I'm gonna start using my point-and-shoot digital camera again (lowkey I wish I had the same one from when I was a kid: the Kodak EasyShare Z700). I've started sewing again, which is really fun. I'm trying to arse myself into playing on my Miyoo again, but I'm stuck in winter in Harvest Moon and sucking ass at it. but I did recently throw down on the Sims 1 Complete Collection on Steam and have been enjoying throwbacking my childhood.

having Flesh and Blood on a weekly basis to look forward to has been really awesome as well. I feel pretty well comfortable with my Bravo deck and I started watching about Puffin deck construction last night before bed, so I'll be headed that route soon. I think I will actually probably enjoy playing Puffin more than Bravo because Puffin relies on consistent token creation and Bravo is a big swingy hitter, and it was hard at first for me to get used to the idea of big hits. it's like getting paid daily with tips from serving (or DoorDashing or stripping or whatever), versus a biweekly check. like, no one likes a biweekly check lmao. (can you believe I used to work somewhere that paid monthly? do you die?!) plus, Monday is Draft Day at the card shop, and I'm bringing the mac and cheese bar. hella.

I'm currently on my lunch break from work. I think I'll use my point-and-shoot to take some sample photos of my food and see how it does with food photography; then I will do the same for fit pics. it has a bunch of filters, and I need to get used to them.