I managed to make my way to the local big box store, twice, looking for suitable jeans for one of my girls.  Why twice?  It seems that the only thing they sell in her size is jeggings and super-skinny.  Um, no.  This is not parental cultural control, by the way, although it should be fine even if it were.  No, this girl can’t stand tight pants and has leg muscles which make those “jeans” uncomfortable.  We would have preferred to purchase the straight-leg style of jeans, but only the junior section sells those, and she’s not junior sized yet.  On the third attempt, we finally found some bootcut jeans.

I’m not currently shopping for t-shirts for the girls, but if I were, I would be similarly horrified.  One girl is mildly allergic to polyester, and finding 100% cotton shirts has been challenging.  Then, there’s the problem that almost all of the available shirts have things written on them, or faces with huge disproportionate eyes on them, or are otherwise unsuitable for children.  Why can’t they have a plain t-shirt like the boys have in their section?

Then, there’s the girls’ shorts.  Ugh.  The school’s handbook states that shorts must come down to at least mid-thigh.  The girls’ section only sells shorts that come down to a quarter thigh at best.  They’re really short, and if they bother to have pockets at all, they’re abysmally small.  Now, the boys’ section sells some decent shorts!  We’ve gone back to the knee-length basketball style shorts.  They’re perfect!  Bonus: they don’t have any “sexy” words on the butt.  Even the cargo shorts in the boys’ section are decently long, to prevent grass burn and sunburn up high on the thigh in the summer, and for climbing trees and fences with just enough leg protection.

Meanwhile, I watch the oil prices and gas prices.  There are some financial analysts claiming that oil may have a price shock in the next couple months, again.  I hear rumors of military members understanding what a reduction in available oil would do to their employment prospects, and how their paychecks are tied to it, who are quietly making contingency plans.  All of my doomer friends are quietly staring at their food stores, and topping them up.  They throw around terms like “inverted yield curve” because they remember.  A couple doomer talking heads who have been saying “not yet, slow burn” have very recently changed their story, because they think financial chaos is closer.

This sort of thing makes me wonder if I should learn how to make sturdy durable functional clothing instead of purchasing it.  The trouble with making my own clothing in upper-middle class suburbia, is that I would no longer be hiding in plain sight, and that’s necessary in fedghetto land.  Although, potentially I could claim it as an SCA project, depending on what style I chose.  I’m not sure.  An uneasiness has settled.

While avoiding the topic of Crazy Ivan maneuvers in Syria, perhaps we should discuss privacy instead.  While Sugar Town, um, I mean SuckerBurger tells Congress that if we want to stay out of the CIA’s database, we just need to not use their products, I sit here and think about how untrue that is.  There’s facial recognition software, and all it takes is one friend uploading a picture with you in it to a popular social media database.  Not only that, but some people who avoid social media are still discussed by name on those platforms.  For an obscure example, John Michael Greer has never joined facebook, yet he had a profile page filled with information from Wikipedia.  He didn’t escape having a digital footprint there, despite never having signed a user agreement.

We’ve known for some time now that because you’re not using something doesn’t mean your friends didn’t compromise your privacy instead.  The rich heiresses all learned at some point not to put pictures on Instagram, because it compromises their safety and security.  The poor people are way too busy actually earning money at their two and a half jobs or eating or sleeping to be able to spend much time managing their online profile.  That leaves stay at home soccer moms, artists, intellectuals who write papers, and retired farmers as the majority of hardcore users of social media.

All of these people have time on their hands and nothing better to do with it.  Idle hands make for, um, better societies?  At any rate, how much privacy does the Bilderberg Group have these days?  How much privacy have the Clintons purchased?  These days, secrets get revealed.  It just happens, a lot more than the archons would like.  What do they have to hide?  Indeed, what do I have to hide?  I’m not sure.  Sometimes hiding isn’t the right strategy.  Sometimes, establishing an alibi works better if you’re public about where you’ve been, and what you’ve been up to.

At the same time, I really do have to ask how much time I should spend on various activities versus other activities.  How much time should I spend reading this article, and how much time should I spend on the phone with my friend whose mom just died and is now dealing with the death bureaucracy?  How much time should I spend playing video games with my son, and how much time should I spend reading Captain Underpants to him instead?  How much time should I exercise, and how much time should I spend making sure that my family eats healthy food?

Privacy is not a simple yes or no answer as to whether you want to protect it completely or partially.  What I want to know is how come the Deep State gets more privacy than I do?

At what point are you old enough that you’re allowed to die?  If we’re going to talk about business cycles, and war cycles, and currency cycles, and empire cycles, shouldn’t we also think about life cycles as well?  At what point do you tell your cardiologist, screw it, I’m going to eat that ice cream and cake and chocolate, and if I die of a heart attack tomorrow, don’t resuscitate me?  Do you really have to be 77 years old to start living like that?

At what point are you allowed to enjoy life?  The children are allowed to enjoy life, for a while, until puberty.  Then, not so much.  Then we burden them down with chores, school, after-school activities, jobs, then they have children and have no time to have fun.  Or do they?  Do you know any young adults who really enjoy life?  I do.  Do you really have to wait until you retire to do the things you love and are passionate about?  Do you really have to wait until you are old to spend time with the people you love?

When is the last time you felt that you were worthy of love and attention?  When is the last time somebody hugged you?  Listened to you?  Connected with you instead of judging you or being disappointed in you?  When is the last time you felt sunshine’s warm embrace, as if nature herself was supporting your valued presence, instead of feeling like you are always at war with the world, wrestling to get what you need?

When is the last time you truly relaxed?  When is the last time that you cleared your mind of all of your obligations, and sat there at peace with yourself, letting your thoughts come and go as they pleased?  When is the last time you weren’t in pain?  Remember, there is no mind-body separation, and what we call psychological pain as well as physical pain use the same neurotransmitters to get their message across.  When is the last time you were comfortable?

When is the last time that people told you the truth?  When did information just come to you about what you sought?  When did the obstacles dissolve and move out of your path?  When is the last time that you could see your path, and know what it was?  When is the last time that you just stood still on your path, breathing in the sure knowledge of the meaning you’ve assigned to everything around you?  When is the last time you talked to the rocks, the trees, the hills, the waters, and heard what they had to say about perseverance, integrity, courtesy, and self-control?  When did you last heed their warnings and stay safe when trouble came?

Knowing that peace comes from the barrel of a gun, when did you last feel confident and strong and capable?  When did you last feel utterly competent, yet not allowing hubris to make you slip?  When did you take your anger and shape it into a powerful change?  When did you take your fear, and bravely let it enter you and pass through you, to make you wise?  When did you last ask for help, and receive it?

I’ve been thinking, that the 15-20 minutes of shaking after every vasovagal syncope event are not psychogenic.  There’s a problem with the mind-body separation hypothesis, and it infects the diagnostic criteria for movement disorders.  The mainstream medical establishment wants to know if a non-epileptic seizure is psychogenic or physiologic.  I don’t see the distinction because the mind and body are not separate, but inextricably interactive at all times.

There is no shame in being anxious.  People are afraid of all sorts of things, because we’re human, and because not a single one of us has escaped trauma in our past.  Fear is a gift, when not overwhelming.  When I say I’m not anxious of needles or blood, it doesn’t mean I’m fearless.  Sure, I’ve got white coat syndrome, but that’s not what makes me shake.  It doesn’t help though, and biochemically speaking is something that makes it worse.

I’m going to speculate that the reason my shaking episodes look like parkinsons, and act like parkinsons, with akathisia, and a little dystonia thrown in for good measure, is because of 15-20 minutes of relative dopamine deficiency after an acetylcholine spike.  I’m going to speculate further that some dysautonomia tremors can be fixed with Benadryl, and some can be fixed with beta-blockers.  The medical forum comment cloud of people have already figured out that beta-blockers help sometimes, but I’ve never heard anybody describe a dysautonomia tremor as extrapyramidal, and I’ve never heard anybody try Benadryl, except maybe the mast cell activation syndrome people.

I’m not really interested in hearing that it is a “hysterical psychogenic pseudo-seizure.”  Words matter.  If you called it a transient relative dopamine deficiency instead?  Or a transient extrapyramidal response to neurocardiogenic syncope?  That is a lot better, because I’m not phobic, I’m not faking it, and it has a biochemical basis, which means it is potentially treatable, and even preventable.