01
Aug
2020

In which I read and mull throwing my hat in…

categories: books, personal; word count: 390 words

I’m continuing to make progress reading Satanic literature, although my focus on ritual reading is being narrowed to reading that has been published or written by members of The Satanic Temple. I’m also thinking of writing manuscripts for NaNoWriMo this year, never having thrown my hat in the ring — there have been several years where I have wanted to, but have either never had the time or haven’t had a clear idea what I wanted to write, but am now considering planning out months in advance what I would like to write (especially if we are still quarantining, or otherwise limited, in some fashion before then), and if maximally successful, letting a whole bunch of completed manuscripts start to pile up, beginning to edit them after each year’s NaNoWriMo, and go from there depending on what each of them are about. I’m thinking that I may start out with nonfiction works since those have always been what I have been the best at. I mean, no wonder, I did get a two-year STEM degree, didn’t I? APA is in my blood. This is what I do. Maybe I can try…

After all, NaNoWriMo doesn’t historically start until November. This gives me plenty of months to mull it over.

However, given that I may one day want to publish something, I do have to go into NaNoWriMo with that in mind, which is exactly what I’m going to do, both in the “write for the sake of a word count” phase (the actual month of November) and the actual editing phase, which I’ve heard are historically the months of January, February, and so on. IF I’m going to write about Satanism in any capacity and attach my name to it, which I have no problem doing at this time, I need to be careful how I go about doing that. I’ve also considered using a pen name (Meg Masters from Supernatural would be a nice pen name), but if I want Satanism to be taken more seriously and to be something that future generations can speak out about without apprehension or fear, I feel like I need to put some of that leg work in myself during this generation.

So what I’m saying here is that I need to be careful enough to be taken seriously, but not foolish and reckless.

31
Jul
2020

Did I say that this is going to keep me busy?

categories: personal; word count: 285 words

Since I now have a ring light and tripod for our camcorder, I’ve been in the process of setting those up in my room trying to find the best possible places for them… and I think I’ve actually found a decent place for my ring light. It was a bit awkward at first, but I finally found a good place for it on my desk. The fun thing is going to be setting the tripod up. That’s going to involve some work, and I’m going to be busy for awhile setting that up and then finding a good shot to record, because I’ll have to keep looking at the camera’s view, move the tripod, look at the camera’s view, move the tripod… yeah, this is going to be fun until I get the shot.

I did set the controls for the ring light up right next to my laptop, though. And I do want the ring light on my desk, and everything set up “in front of” my desk, because that will most optimally work for me. I can quickly edit everything this way too. Just take the camera off of the tripod, hook it up to the computer via the cord…

The most busy part about everything will be setting up the tripod and getting the initial, most workable shot.

And probably making sure that Bub doesn’t actually touch anything, but I’m also going to be getting a lock that will allow me to lock my bedroom door from the outside so that he can not get into my bedroom while I am elsewhere in the house and not in or near my room. This way, I won’t actually have to babysit my room…

29
Jul
2020

A form of abuse not frequently talked about.

categories: personal; word count: 541 words

Having mentioned “Father’s Rights Activism” here before, and seeing more and more pages pop up where men (and various allies of theirs) congregate together claiming to want as close to a 50/50 time share of their children — which I’m not even going to dissect other than to say that a lot of the men that I see affiliating with these pages for this reason want that time share to try and “get out” of having to pay, or owe, child support to their exes, and many of them make it extremely obvious in their words and their actions — I’ve begun to see one thing stick out like a sore thumb: “if she’s getting my child support, I want receipts”. “I want to know exactly how she’s spending my money”. Calling it “leech support”, as though their children must be the leeches that benefit, supposing they consistently pay. Calling it “extortion money”. Practically screaming that she must be spending it on her hair, her nails, her new boyfriend, her other children, sometimes getting hostile in how they word this. (Some of these pages I don’t interact with for this reason.)

There’s a word for this, and something that is being studied more frequently now: financial abuse.

If they can no longer control their exes through their relationships with her, they’ll control her through financial support of their children if they can’t avoid their obligation to pay. In certain circumstances, I honestly think that child support should not even be drawn up, and I think that this should go beyond the non-custodial parent being disabled and having that “on record” — that, barring incarceration for the entire length of time that the child will spend a minor, is currently the only circumstance wherein child support is either not drawn up or is “recorded” as owed at $0 (depending on where you live and how this is handled). Some lawyers will say, “Oh, but the judge won’t sign off on a custody order or divorce decree if something isn’t ordered! You can just elect not to ever have the child support case worked!” Some of the people that participate on these sorts of pages write in with “success stories” of how they “got 50/50 and no child support ordered”, but assuming that these stories are even true, this apparently involves a lot of judge shopping and basically forcing the judge’s hand with no one being on any sort of public assistance… or it being made clear that if this isn’t ordered, the non-custodial parent (usually a him in this circumstance, it’s almost always a him in this circumstance) is going to fight the system as hard as he can and little to nothing is going to get paid anyway, the custodial parent for whatever reason is fine with this, so why bother fighting it by refusing to sign the “agreed upon” order. But it stands: asking for receipts is financial abuse.

These men trust these women with their children, or else CPS/DHS would have been called, or they would have fought harder in court to obtain primary custody of their children. It wouldn’t have been impossible.

They just need to admit that if they want receipts so badly they are financial abusers and leave it at that.

28
Jul
2020

Just another day in our house, I guess.

categories: personal; word count: 316 words

For some reason, Bub has been making it a point to sneak into my room when I’m not in it and take my bookmarks out of the books that I have sitting on my nightstand, and he’s also been making it a point to damage possessions of mine, sometimes even going so far as to throw items of mine at my wall. I am still not sure what is motivating him to actually do this, although we have had several conversations about why he should not do this, and he is not allowed in my room until I am positive that these behaviors are actually going to stop. His response to that was to go into his room and begin slamming his door, slamming it so hard and so often that he might have sprung it. I noticed when I went to get up to check on him and see if I could help him calm down that it wasn’t quite… closing normally, and then opening and closing my own door for comparison kind of confirmed that for me. Right now, it doesn’t seem like it’s anything major, but when he has meltdowns this is something that I definitely have to watch out for. If he starts to make a habit out of slamming his door — which he does for some reason — I have to be prepared to stop him from doing that so he doesn’t damage something, just like I have to be close enough to his bedroom when he’s in there melting down to make sure that he doesn’t kick or punch the door or any of the walls in his room to cause damage…

This is just another day in our household, though. He’s just the kind of kid that has meltdowns, even when his environment is tailored to minimize them. And that it does, but he still has frequent, fairly severe ones.

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