I had a really, really, really lengthy blog planned for today. As much about family stuff as I could think of (the guy who fell is fine, by the way, thankfully enough), but also a lengthy blog about a couple of things I've been toying around with. As a reminder, we leave tomorrow. We're supposed to be gone by 10 local time (which is 8 my time), which means being clear before then which means eating breakfast, packing, and leaving before then. Probably in six or so hours by my guess.

I wanted to stay up for like four of said hours, so I thought I had the time to blog here--even when going on the best date with my girlfriend as is humanly possible given the circumstances (no sound available to me). But while I want to sleep as much as is humanly possible on the trip tomorrow...I'm not sure I can pull it off. I'm fighting off the urge to sleep as is, and have been since before midnight.

Kinda sucks. I feel like in spite of not having set my watch to local time (I've deliberately kept it at my time). In spite of going to bed after midnight my time (which is after 2 am local time) and waking up as late as was humanly practical. That somehow, in spite of me taking every precaution against it. My body has acclimated to the new timezone and is treating this as 2:45 instead of 12:45.

That, or being sick leads to tiredness and tiredness leads to continued sickness and sickness leads to more tiredness...

Butstill. I shouldn't be falling asleep so easily so early. And yet here I am, struggling to stay awake.

Oh well.

Won't get the blog I wanted to give and given my track record, doubt I ever will. But it's the thought which counts.

A common traveler pitfall. Normally, you'd associate said pitfall with flights; they are known to be the breeding ground of the perfect recipe of bacteria. Environment's right even if they sanitize everything...and they sanitize nothing. But most of those conditions? Still apply to traveling in a car across half the country in 28 hours' time continuously. So it should be no surprise that I am siiiiiiick.

Annoyingly enough. My vitamin C pill's one of the few pills I did not bring. It's a pill I don't take daily, but have at home to take whenever I suspect sickness, to help shorten the duration of it and the strength of it. Normally have it; today I do not. So the only treatment I have is time...and in this foreign environment, not the best of things there, either, considering we leave on Monday. 

All in all, socializing seems to be so-so at this event. I was miserable when I had to constantly run from the smokers, but later in the day that proved to be less of a problem. There was an incident at the gathering, though. One of the steel benches tipped over after a couple sat down on them...and they went down with the bench. The guy hit his back hard, as well as bumping his head on the back of another nearby bench.

I am trained to respond to spinals, even on land. This was a textbook spinal. But I felt powerless to help him. The extent of my training for spinals, after all, is pretty much "stabilize the spine, and wait for EMS to arrive for them to take over care". There's a little more to it than that, asking questions and whatnot, monitoring the patient, and so on and so forth, butstill. In practice, I didn't feel like I could do much.

After EMS came, he declined to go to the hospital eventually, but some time after they left, other family members there managed to talk him into it. A good thing, too, because while I can't diagnose him for certain...he was showing symptoms of something being wrong. Possibilities include having suffered from a heart attack (possible if the sudden impact caused a type of ventricular fibrillation), or more likely in my opinion, shock...a possible body response to internal bleeding (something an EMS responder might not notice but which they would probably see at the hospital).

When the injury happened, while he remained conscious, initially, he couldn't talk; his hands seemed to not be able to make full motion; he was incredibly shaky; he was sweating profusely; he later said that he was having trouble breathing. Like I said, my contribution was mostly minimal, in strongly recommending to go to the doctor, helping him out, monitoring him between the time EMS left and he was talked into going, the like, but I still feel like I should've been more decisive, more helpful, voiced my opinion on things to someone who could relay it on, something more than what little I did.

Ultimately, I know it doesn't matter much; he still ended up going to the hospital, there was a hospital less than five minutes away so I'm pretty sure he's got good treatment, there's probably nothing I could have done which would have helped him more than he got help especially given his initial stubbornness (he really didn't want to go to the hospital and my training basically tells me to respect patient's wishes so I am trained to not try and push them, more or less), but it still makes me feel kinda like a fraud.

I've got training in first aid. I've got training in how to deal with spinals, and deal with spinals at every staff meeting. (Speaking of which, there was one today that I couldn't attend for obvious reasons. I'm considering cheekily/half-jokingly telling my supervisors that in spite of not having been at the staff meeting I still got practice in spinals.) But if that training doesn't allow me to help someone when it's actually happening for real outside of training...it's kinda disheartening. 

I was asked afterwards since I was the closest one to the incident and saw it unfold start to finish if I was okay, the expected concern being that as a witness I'd be traumatized. The trauma isn't in the event having happened; I am trained for things like that happening. The trauma is in knowing I am trained and yet feeling like a bystander who is untrained. Which makes me feel like a failure, to be honest.

Guess that means I get to blog today. I won't be able to blog every day I'm guessing, but at least today I get to blog. Took us 28 hours to reach our destination. We traveled along I-90 and stopped for rest stops, gas, and food along the way so if you were anywhere near Interstate 90 between Washington and South Dakota, in the time period of Thursday to Friday...you had a chance of seeing us!

I wouldn't be able to name the locations, tho. Just a vague awareness of Dairy Queen for lunch in our time, Burger King in mountain time at local-10 or local-11 pm with it being our-9 or our-10 at the time, and McDonald's for breakfast today at some town with a 20 mile an hour speed limit, speed traps, a sense of patriotism, perhaps maybe proximity to an air force base (just a guess on my part), and close proximity to the Missouri river, at about 11 am our time/1 pm local time.

At the meeting where we ate, they served spaghetti and meatballs. I had it with the spaghetti sauce. Mistake; the sauce kinda ruined it. It was edible, but not very palatable; I ate my share and no more than what I could actually stomach. Once, I was approached by someone, who commented on how I didn't seem to be socializing; I said I basically don't do talking well and pretty much killed the conversation.

Once back from the event, once more someone (probably one of my cousins) chastised me for being on my computer and not interacting with people. I don't think she really got that I was spending time as I wanted to be, with my girlfriend, rather than just pretending to pay attention to a conversation I still wouldn't have given input on.

So that was basically my day today.

​Seeya tomorrow.

I ended up playing Gauntlet Dark Legacy: the arcade version. Found out it's quite streamlined compared to the console version, which makes sense. I played it through the cloud level, and was facing the dragon (boss of the next level, the mountain kingdom) when there was a glitch with the coin machine; it would put the coins into the machine but then immediately spit them out the bottom, so I died because I couldn't restore my health.

Then came food, which we ate out at Denny's.
Then nothing, basically; we just...did normal stuff. By which I mean "family talked, while I gamed".

So we had guests over for the first time that I can recall; my younger sister's boyfriend and two of her friends came over. The day was fairly standard; we shopped for our fireworks the day of, we ate our dinner (it was more of a different holiday's dinner though...is it Memorial Day we have it? I dunno, but this isn't usually a fourth of July meal as far as I can recall), shot off the parachutes (TNT was sold out so we got a different brand, which shot out instead of one parachute...a whole bunch), watched Independence Day, had s'mores, and then shot off our fireworks.

Said fireworks had a couple of instances where we're pretty sure something which was meant to launch up into the air detonated inside the tube, but nothing exploded violently, so no harm no foul. What was a foul but thankfully still no harm was when a firework tipped over...resulting in us needing to run, run, run, and pray that the shots wouldn't set off any other fireworks because we were too busy being as far as humanly possible away from the barrage of explosions.

Exciting stuff.

Unfortunately, I do have work tomorrow, so that's about all I have for tonight.

I am also pretty sure that when I opened up my tab to blog a couple hours ago, that is not what I was going to blog about. I remember having a moment specific to today that was an "oh hey that's actually a blog-worthy moment!" to talk about, where I would have something to speak about.

Unfortunately.

We are having family night tonight.

Which was sufficient distraction, as we watched It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Well, I half-watched it, half-watched the rerun of the league stream covering matches I wasn't awake for. Butyeah. About the sickness: I woke up with it, tried sleeping more...and more...and more...and it didn't go away and eventually I just realized it wasn't going away so I might as well get up.

And it's still here, now.

Soyeah.

I am sick.

Silver lining: my dreams last night were the best dreams I've had in a long time. Almost a full 12 hours later, I've since forgotten them and that's a shame because I know that they involved some sort of epic adventure (I vaguely seem to recall a dream about a two guys one girl trio where they started as ordinary three individuals, but became badasses, and yet somewhere along the line the guys got separated from the girl, where the guys kept fighting but the girl was forced into nobility life and when reuniting was disappointed that she'd fallen behind in badassery, but the guys felt that she just kept up in her own way because she was an utter badass in the royal court or something of that sort and the guys ended up officially being her bodyguards but her being badass enough to not really need bodyguards), but the details beyond that elude me.

God I hate how I feel so inadequate in these blogs.

Granted, that's probably in large part due to not having much OF a day. I played League of Legends last night with my girlfriend for seven hours...starting after midnight. I was honestly surprised when I woke up after only six or so hours of sleep; I thought I'd get eight, but I guess my body couldn't stand being asleep that long. Oh well.

After that came breakfast and a shower, which...pretty much takes me to right now, time-wise. I don't really expect family night to generate any blog-worthy content (well, it could, it's just that I tend to be too slow on the uptake in transcribing events), so this is probably my only entry today even though it's a little lackluster.

Sorry!

Can't make five lengthy, meaty blog entries every single day. I'd love to, and yeah I sure as heck would want to, but no, it's absolutely in no way shape or form something I can actually pull off. It's subject entirely to my whims and right now I don't have that kind of creative muse within me.

Aside from how I have work tomorrow and need to get up at 6 am (so there's pragmatic reasons for it as well), I simply am feeling really really tired. I can't drink coffee, I can't nap without screwing up my sleep, and words are having that blend-together effect, soooooooo.

I'll need to hold on for an hour yet.

Wait, me making an entry before midnight?

Why yes. Yes, I am indeed making an entry before midnight, to help facilitate the process of going to bed at midnight. Usually when I say "bed at midnight", by the time I run all my errands (blogging, pills, and petting the kitteh), it's usually 10-30 minutes past midnight.

Soyeah, earlier blog today.

Today was obviously mother's day and doubled as our birthday celebration for my younger sister. There were plenty of good times to be had (ha I typo'd that as 'bed' nice subconscious telling me what I already know I want), and we watched Spaceballs.

I always wish that I had a way of sharing the events of a typical family night with those that I'd want to share them with, especially on days where the family doesn't end up discussing stuff like politics. (Which is usually done really late at night when my older sister and I are both out of the conversation and usually when my younger sister isn't in attendance, i.e., mostly done between my brother and my dad.) Especially the full family nights with all six members rather than partial ones with four or five of them.

They are just...special family moments, hilarious, fun, unique, irreplaceable. It's something that if you have it in your life, you just know it, you just get what I am referring to, but if it's something you haven't had, it's literally impossible to get, to experience, to understand it even if given vivid descriptions.

Families have in-jokes and those in-jokes aren't understood by outsiders, but even without in-jokes involved, even on a night to night basis, you just have to be there to appreciate it all, and even when I sleep, even when I park myself on the computer (a place where I am usually seen--not entirely unjustifiably so--as "out of it"), I legitimately do.

Also it helps that tonight during family night I felt particularly sexy. In a feminine way. I don't know why, I'm pretty sure I looked anything but, but I felt that way and feeling that way while with family is a rarity to be treasured, given how it normally doesn't--can't--exist.

Speaking of femininity, I felt fairly feminine today at work, too. It's kinda weird. When I first started wearing my underarmor shirt and pants, I felt incredibly feminine when doing so. However, today was the first time I was without, and I felt more feminine without than I was with, in spite of me being quite positive that I got a boost to my femininity when I initially started wearing the look.

Similarly, I am quite positive that when I initially started wearing my V-neck + sweatshirt combo at work for warmth, I felt more feminine...but when I stopped using that look, when I went back to the t-shirt, there was that very same boost in femininity.

It's weird. Rationally, logically, it's probably that the change from the norm feels different and that difference feels empowering, feels feminine to me. But I personally like to hold the theory--however implausible it may be--that each and every time is a permanent increase in femininity. That I was feminine when I began, and slightly more feminine when I wore the sweatshirt, then became more feminine when I removed the sweatshirt, and became more feminine when I started wearing the underarmor, and became even more feminine today when removing it and going back to just the t-shirt as I was before.

It's a nice thought to be having, anyway.

Apparently, when I'm tired like this, my mind wanders more easily. While that isn't very productive for making a coherent blog and leaves each subject in less detail than I intended, I believe a fortunate side-effect of it is an overall longer blog from multiple thoughts I'd otherwise have not blogged about; I thought this blog would be a paragraph or two and just look at what it is now.

Butyeah. That's my blog for today. Will probably also have my pills a bit early, so I can instantly plop down to sleep the second midnight rolls around.

Treading on four days now.

I guess I could mention other stuff?

Like how I recently finished Worm.

You might think that was a steady pace from when I began.

It wasn't.

I got to the Simurgh/Doctor Mother/etc. interlude in like 1-2 months after starting reading Worm...
...And then didn't read anything for the remaining 1-2 months, until like 2-3 days, where I powered through it in the course of less than 48 hours.

The gap was because I was too busy doing other things, the civ mod among them, and the few times I was in the mood to read rather than do other things (mafia, watch videos, play video games, etc.), I didn't have the time.

Admittedly.
I still didn't have the time to do it a couple days ago, but in spite of that the mood was there and I had the illusion I had the time to do it a couple days ago.

So I did it in spite of really not having the time to do it.
Meaning I'm behind on everything else.

OH WELL.

Was most definitively worth it.
Have now begun minor TVTropes browsing.
Nothing too addicting, though overnight I did an entire archive binge of a webcomic, Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki. (There's lots of aspects of the comic that are kinda cringe and I'm not too fond of a lot of it, but there are some elements in the comic that I am actually really invested in. Not the fanservice, believe it or not, that's one of the annoying things because occasional fanservice that feels like it has a plot purpose is excellent to me but constant overt fanservice which feels like it's fanservice for the sake of fanservice is just kinda annoying, and while the comic has elements of the former the latter is definitively more prominent. The elements I'm more interested in are more the world, the lineage of Yuuki, the characters, etc. Those're solid enough to make it worth at least a skimread.)

And I do mean "overnight", because my night went as so:
Family night.
Then midway through the moment I could, playing League of Legends with my girlfriend.
Then browsing TVTropes on Worm because I finished Worm not today but on a prior day (Thursday? Probably, was up late enough that it's certainly something I had time for).
Then as a result of that browsing, finding a trope--ability absorbsion--linking to the comic, and having previously attempted a binge but failed because of some stupid reason wanted to try again. (Said original binge was in fact inspired by the very pages I was linked to in fact.)

So with it being past 6:30.

In spite of me not really being that tired.

I know that I need​ to go to bed now.

The hunt proceeded about the way I'd expect it to--every year, we say we need to make it easier (especially on me and my brother). Every year, in spite of insisting that has been done, it proves to not be the case. This year, my older sister swore she made it easy, yet almost every single hiding spot was of a difficulty rating I'd associate with being a hiding spot for my younger sister--the one who she's allowed to be mean to with hiding.

At least three of my eggs were duck taped to surfaces.
At least twice, I ran into the problem of having correctly identified where the egg was, searched for it, and not having found it, and thus making the obvious conclusion; I searched it, it wasn't there, so it wasn't hidden there--except it was.

Suffice to say.
Once. again.

I finished last.

I didn't find a single egg on my own.

Not. one.

Not a single egg, I could locate without a hint.

Normally?

Normally, people can find 2-4 eggs on their own.

Not. one. Could I find without basically being told the answer.
Because the answers were absolute bs hiding spots--hard enough that my younger sister would have trouble with a fair number of them.

My younger sister, the one who my older sister will pull evil stunts like hiding an egg inside of the refrigerator light (okay so that was my younger sister hiding my older sister's egg, butstill), who hid an egg inside of an empty orange juice container, who's hidden eggs inside of salt shakers, from light fixtures, inside the garbage can (with protection), the list goes on and on.

Evil spots like that.

She gave to me.

Suffice to say.

I was not amused.

I have specifically told her.
Time and time again.
Easier.
Easier.
Make it easier.

So I don't always finish dead last.

Yet each year.

Instead of easier.

It's getting harder.

In spite of her saying she made it easier.

She's not telling a deliberate lie, but she's absolutely lying to herself if she thinks that the spots she gave me this year were in any way easy.

The easiest thing to find was my basket, and that's mostly because baskets come in only two hiding varieties: nigh-impossible, or ridiculously easy; last year (or was it two years ago?), she learned that the nigh-impossible way simply wasn't something I'd handle well.

Yes, I am incredibly bitter, why do you ask?
It's not the dead last bit, honestly. It's that there's the sheer level of dissonance between what she said and what she gave me. She said it was easier; what she gave me was something which, egg after egg. I kept saying. "This isn't an egg for my difficulty level!" It was hard enough last year, but this year was ten times harder. 

If you keep on.
Time and time again.
Finishing last.
And time and time again.
You say.
"It needs to be easier."
And you are told.
It is.
Only to find it harder.

You'd be pretty miffed, too!

That I have, so consistently, finished last is a testament to how unskilled I am--yet she consistently is treating me like I should be getting better, rather than worse, and I am getting exactly that. This egg hunt, I wasn't functioning brain-wise for the first half of it. That wasn't what made it hard, though. I knew that even functioning at 100%, I'd never have found those eggs on my own, because they are simply not eggs that are my level; they are things way too hard for me to find in the best of conditions.

Me NOT in the best of conditions, though, made the impossible task just...laughable. Like. Pathetic. I am just entirely frustrated by the whole thing, because the hunt is meant to be equal parts fun and challenging--yet with each. and every. single. passing. failure. There's no fun. There's no thrill. There's no reward.

There's no exhilaration in being hand-fed the answers--which was what every single egg was.
There's no exhilaration from finishing last every single year.
There's no reward in. consistently. failing. Because in spite of saying it needs to be easier. It never actually getting easier.

My younger sister, hiding for my brother? She knows how to succeed at making it easier. My brother found some eggs on his own, without help, and none of the eggs he had were at sister-level difficulty. I saw all of them and went, "yep. For us two, that's an appropriate level difficulty for an egg".

She nailed it.

She did what needed to be done for him.

My sisters hiding each others' eggs are deliberately as evil as humanly possible--that's fine for them, because knowing each other as they do, they can usually find most of their eggs without hints because they simply are that good.

But when my sister hides my eggs at that difficulty level.
Instead of the difficulty level appropriate for me.
Instead of the difficulty level which my brother's eggs were at.

It's not fun.
It's a joke.
A bad one.

It's just...

...How could she just.
Be that blind.
To what I am actually able to do?

I literally can't do it at that level.
How could she think what she gave me was at the level my brother's eggs were at.
When the level my brother's eggs were at--the level which my eggs should have been at--was leagues easier than what I actually got?

It turns what should be a fun even into just a pile of pure frustration.
Losing when I feel I legitimately deserved to lose is one thing. If my eggs were hidden in places akin to the places my brother's eggs were hidden, I'd deserve to have lost and there'd be no bitter feelings. Disappointment, sure, yeah, but not bitterness because I'd know that I lost because of stupidity.

Losing because I could never have ever possibly won?
Because the difficulty level was not something appropriate for me?

It's just...why. It's not like I didn't stress it enough. Easier; I said to make it easier. I emphasized that I had lost last time, I emphasized that it took me longest to find mine last time, I said that I needed it to be particularly easy in comparison. Quite explicitly. Clear as could be. E a s i e r.

...Instead? I got eggs that were hidden in fairly creative spots, most never-before-used, never-before-checked; the times they had been used/checked, it wasn't meant for me and I wasn't acutely aware of most of them. And the two eggs which I believe were repeats of mine in previous years? As mentioned, I searched the spots, and when I didn't find an egg after searching them wrote them off because of course when you search thoroughly a spot and find nothing you're going to assume the spot wasn't used.

It's one thing to just casually search through an area and not find it--we miss eggs doing that all the time, par for the course. It's another thing to literally be running your fingers through where the egg is and not feel it and not see it and with the texture feeling like there's no egg there and the visualization feeling like there's no egg there, concluding that there is no egg there...except there was.

I am just...not impressed. There's a difference between making it challenging, and making it impossible-without-handholding-help. Challenging for me is still simple stuff. Challenging for me is still cliched stuff which has been done before. In casual searches I am prone to missing things. It doesn't take much to fool me, but I can usually realize, "oh I didn't look here well", go back, and if there's an egg there, find it. Because I knew I hadn't searched it as well as I should, and going back, give it the proper attention it needs to find it.

Simple stuff--but still enough to give it a hunt.

When I miss an egg because I did look there well, when I did look thoroughly, or when I miss an egg because I've just given up on it on the sheer inability of me to have so much as a clue as to where it could possibly be because there's just nowhere left I could so much as fathom.

That's not difficult.
That's not challenging.

That's just sheer cruelty. And as I said--my sisters can be evil to each other as much as they want to be, but they're not supposed to be that way to the other two, me and my brother, when hiding ours.

...Yet that is exactly what I got put through.

After having had a thoroughly miserable time last year, for much the same reason.
And maybe the year before that, too.

She's not learning the lesson, and the only lesson I'm learning is that I'm a worthless piece of junk.

This is just.

The polar opposite of what our egg hunt is supposed to instill.

It's supposed to be entertainment.
It's supposed to be uplifting.
But every year.
I am just...increasingly more and more dejected.
Because all I am getting.
​Is how trash I am.