Prince Henry's test results came back yesterday, and he got a clean bill of health. He got to fly with everyone else for the first time. Sir Dubbins freaked out and had to go back to his cage, but the budgies didn't seem mind him much. None of the budgies approached him too closely, but it was evident Skye wanted to. We're not going to have Prince Henry and Sir Dubbins out at the same time until they get a little more used to the idea of each other.

I went to a equinox dinner yesterday at lady_babalon's and sophiaserpentia's. I must say that sophiaserpentia makes the most excellent apple crisps. I was happy to see that x_bluerose_x was there to. We sat around the table and discussed what we viewed as our "harvests" this year, however I'm more planning for the spring then harvesting now. Of course, there were other topics, but that was the planned topic. I wish I could have stayed longer, but I had fun while I was there.

After leaving the equinox dinner, I went over to merryperseis's place, where I ate again. I knew that we would be having roasted cauliflower, so I intentionally ate sparingly at the early dinner. I brought her my serpent staff. I've known that my bird staff is what I'm meant to use at this point, and merryperseis told me she needed something that symbolized a serpent: so the transfer seemed right. I wanted to do it on the equinox for balance. There wasn't really any ceremony about the transfer, it was just done.

The weekend before last, I lost the cane that Christian had given me. I left it in the shopping cart at the Super 88 and it was gone.

This past weekend, my serpent staff broke. The cane I can brush off as being spacy when I got in purpleglitter's car, but when something happens to the serpent staff it is generally means I've strayed off course. It broke in an entirely new place than it did before - after I repair it, it will have three different sections. I lost my spiritual path of late, life has overwhelmed me.

Life has overwhelmed me because I've let it overwhelm me. I've become frustrated and impatient with things that don't matter, and have been neglecting things that do. I need to be more mindful of my thoughts, actions, and intents. I need to right my path and fix my staff.

I was quite productive yesterday, well more productive than average for me at least. In addition to my daily chores (animal care and cooking), I reglued the twine on my staff, I did a much needed load of laundry, and did an good hour of cleaning the downstairs of the house_of_clocks with recoiling.

Yeah, it's kind of pathetic what I consider a good and productive day. But, I want to surf this wave and see if it builds. After Skye's vet appointment at 3pm, I want to do some more cleaning at the house_of_clocks and do some crafting. Perhaps I'm on the verge of at least getting my surroundings and activities in order. I've been on this precipice for a long time, so I'm not going to get to carried away with optimism.

I have been using my staff/cane to get around again. The gorilla glue works well holding it together, but fails when the staff is subjected to lateral forces. To strengthen the break in this regard, I tightly wound twine around it. I then coated the twine with wood glue to keep it from unraveling. I'm contemplating staining the twine, because it is much lighter than the rest of the staff. I have the stain, I just haven't decided if I want to.

I've been getting comments that my staff looks like a shillelagh. I have heard "Nice shillelagh." several times the past couple days. While I never intended it to be a shillelagh, the comparison is oddly pleasing to me.

I accidentally banged my staff against the curb, and in the winter's cold it snapped roughly in the same place that it broke last time. It is a reminder to keep mindful and not to take things for granted as this happens again when I am becoming lost.

I will put my staff back together again, as I have put myself back together so many times. I have again used gorilla glue, and it is setting in the playroom clamped with the færie wire. I plan to put a bolt through the fracture in the very near future to better secure it. My staff will then be a merging of the city and the wild. A unity in nature.

The gorilla glue seems to be doing a good job keeping my staff held together. I can even put my weight on it. For a long time I've had a sense that those things around me that I most considered truly mine have been broken and put back together, sometime precariously. I've always felt a connection with such things, because I have put myself back together from the shattered remnants of long ago. I remember when I was around 13 (give or take a year), I had a Commodore 64 and the floppy drive didn't work. I repaired it using rubberbands, and it worked well for many years until I got a 386. I've always felt that I'm running on rubberbands and duct tape. Now my staff is this way too. Perhaps this will serve not only to be more mindful of its care, but also to increase my connection to it and my commitment to understanding the meaning behind it.

I broke my staff. I had put it on my bed and I sat on it. I am such an idiot. I need to remember that it is just a thing. That it was mine when it needed to be mine and now maybe i don't need it. Maybe it was meant for me for a small period of time and then it is gone. Maybe something else. I haven't been meditating and praying enough. I feel like I'm slipping back into the fog of the everyday. Maybe I need to capture back that sacred space of the soul that seems to be slipping away. It is something that needs to be fought for. A constant effort. Maybe the breaking staff tells me I'm losing my way. I've made an attempt to fix the staff with gorilla glue held down by a bolt of wire i bought to make færie wings. Oddly symbolic as I've left to the faeries to supervise the mending of my gift from the færies. Maybe I should be less beating myself up over breaking the staff and looking to the symbolism of what is occurring. Find the meaning in this. There is too much here for their not to be meaning.

I haven't fallen down once since the rapture I experience a little over a week ago. Not once. Something was awakening. The unwinding of the Kundalini. I have noted much symbolic significance in what I have called my cane. It is more than a cane, it is my staff. I realize now that I did not need my staff because I had trouble walking, but that I had trouble walking because I needed my staff. Now I have found it and seen what it is, I do not need it to walk around, but I do need it for my journey. It was meant for me.

I have come to see my staff in the form of a serpent, the handle being the serpent head. The serpent is not an animal I would have picked out to associate myself with. The squirrel, the skunk, the Canadian goose, and the raccoon. Those have been the animals I have felt kinship with. But now I walk a new path. Not really new a new path, as I've always walked my path, it's just I realized before that I was walking.

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Today is the first day I have been able to take my staff outside since I sealed it with polyurethane 6 days ago. I put the coating on it so that I would not have to worry about taking it outside in the elements. I was worried that snow and rain would take their toll on it, and it would not be long before it crumbled of rot.

Putting the polyurethane on proved to be more adventure than I had anticipated. More accurately: putting the polyurethane on the staff was easy, getting it off myself was difficult. I don't have any paint thinner, and not much else works as a solvent for polyurethane. I tried water and soap. I tried rum. My hands were sticky and the stick was spreading. The brushes I placed in a plastic bowl of soapy water and I hope that they are still able to be fully cleaned when I do get paint thinner. However, my hands and my arms were my more immediate concern and I lacked the correct solvent.

It then occurred to me that there was another approach to solve the problem. I needed the polyurethane would take hold of rather than something that would take hold of the polyurethane: flour. I worked the flour over my hands and arms and between my fingers letting it form a thick paste with the polyurethane. That paste I could then simply scrape off my skin. It worked, and I am now free of the stick of the polyurethane. I will, however, make sure I have paint thinner on hand if I try this again, so that I can do the clean-up the proper way.

zarthon slept over at purpleglitter's last night so he wouldn't have to commute out to Arlington in the morning to give me a ride to my neurology appointment this morning. We arrived on time, at 8:30am. We waited about 10 or 15 minutes and were brought back to one of the exam rooms. After waiting another 15 minutes we were told that they never received the EEG results from SleepMed. They said to wait and they'd have SleepMed send over the results. We waited. Nothing. We waited. Nothing. Finally the doctor came in and said that we could leave and he'd call me with the results. When zarthon asked what would happen if I needed a prescription, he stated that if that was necessary he would then make another appointment. I told him that I wanted another appointment to be set now, and that I did not want to discuss this over the phone, I wanted to discuss it in person. So now I have an appointment for 4:00pm tomorrow, which zarthon has generously agreed to drive me to.

I did make one error today. I left my cane in the car. I didn't trust the neurologist not to chastise me for using one before he said I needed one. I wish I had brought it, because it turned out I could have used it. I had to rest against the wall a couple times going up to the office and at one point I had difficulty getting out of my seat. Both were relatively minor incidents that would have been made somewhat easier if I had my cane. Luckily I had no major episodes while movement was necessary.

I'm worried about what to do with the cane tomorrow. If I go up with the cane they may think it just for show because I didn't have it yesterday. But if I don't, I may need it again and have to deal with not having it. I don't trust these people, and I know there is a very good chance already don't believe there is anything medically wrong with me because of my psych history. It would fit with the pattern of medical care I've been receiving. We'll see what happens tomorrow, if anything actually does.

I went to meet scattermew at the Diesel yesterday. I got there on time, sitting along the wall towards the back. I waited for about an hour occasionally looking for her. I never saw her. Once I arrived home, I called her and asked her what happened. Apparently she was only a couple seats down from me, arriving just shortly after I did, but I never saw her. That's understandable, because while I was fine when i arrived at the diesel, I became progressively more out of it as I sat there. My looking around for her was not done efficiently because I didn't have the focus (visually or mentally) to do an efficient scan.

On my way home my cane broke in two. I knew it was going to happen soon, but it still made me much sad. I am now using the cane I'm making from the windfall branch I found by Spy Pond. I am far from done working on it, but it is all I have for now, so even in it's transitional state it will have to do. I will continue to work on it and hopefully finish the job in the near future.

These things happen, but it disheartens me because I only have a limited amount of funds and physical stamina to go out and meet people, and while I like being social I'm beginning to think that at this point it may be more trouble than it's worth.

There is a 50/50 chance that my therapist will suggest that I check myself in to the hospital today. What still a possibility, the chance that she'll actually force me to go into the hospital is much less than that. She has shown herself to be very reluctant to commit forced psychiatry, and I really like that. I don't know what I feel about a hospital visit. Many of those around me think I need one, but I don't trust that it'll make me feel better. I think they'll try to give me thorazine and I won't feel better, I'll just feel immobile. And more immobile is definitely not what I need to feel right now.

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If I don't end up in the asylum today, I'm going to go to work making the branch I found under the trees along the shore of spy pond into my new cane. I need to finish it before my current cane gives out. I hate that I destroyed what purpleglitter so thoughtfully gave me. I feel very very awful about it, I loved that cane - it has even whiskey flask and a now-dead compass! It was stylish and went with my wardrobe perfectly. I can't believe I destroyed it. But, in the words of Plautus, "factum est illud, fieri infectum non potest" – done is done, it cannot be made undone. My new cane will be more sturdy and crafted by myself out of a gift from the winterclad tree færies.

My cane is dying. The wood is cracking more and more. It is only a matter of time before it snaps in half. It is my own fault, as I damaged it hitting myself with it. My anger is getting out of hand. I feel very trapped, and with the amount of falling down I'm doing I'm afraid that I'll feel even more trapped without a cane. I can't afford to get myself a new one.

I went out very upset. I was originally going to do bad suicidal things, but I looked over to Spy Pond and something hit me. I could find a new cane under the trees behind the fence. I walked along the fence on the muddy slope on the shore of Spy Pond. Nothing approaching anything suitable. Something told me to go a little further. There I found a twisted fallen branch. A bit too long, but it is very sturdy and just the right shape. It feels right. It feels meant to be. I thanked the tree then headed back to purpleglitter's house. I need to take the branch to the house_of_clocks and fix it up in the playroom and I will have my new cane.