1406 Or Are They?

Well, I’m back. I’m still not fully recovered, but I had enough time to build a little buffer and, godwilling, I won’t have any more major health problems and caqn get back to working properly. I’m working through a month or so’s backlog of stuff I was supposed to do, so please be patient with me. I also have a story for another Muffintop anthology that I committed to, which has qa deadline I need to meet, so I’ll be putting that ahead of things as needed. That said, please feel free to send me your requests for things you earned via Patreon, or the go fund me. I can plan better if I have an idea of what all I need to do. I promise not to let myself get overwhelmed. (Mostly…)

At some point I’ll get back to putting drawings on Ebay, but for now I’m going to focus on anyone who wants one from the go fund me thing. AND the ones I was working on for Patreon when I got sick again.

Right now I can go out for a little while, but it becomes a race against time to get back home. I start to lose power at a little under 30 minutes, less if I start to overheat. It takes about 15 just to get to town and my truck doesn’t have AC. In the daylight I can’t even get to the overpass without having issues. The problem with all of that is that the vague nature of how long I can keep moving is triggering my agoraphobia, which usually manifests in a panic attack. Of course the symptoms cause by the panic are basically identical to what happens when I actually am in real physical distress, so I have to guess if they are real, or just in my head.

My family is generally not sympathetic to this. I’m not even sure the Teen is mentally capable of picking up on my signs of distress. Even when I tell her outright that I’m not doing okay she doesn’t seem to grasp it. Of course the feeling of helplessness makes me tetchy which doesn’t help anything because I lose all tolerance for irritating things and want people to instantly understand what I’m trying to tell them. While losing a certain level of eloquence that the situation calls for.

It’s troubling. I’ve tried to go out on a couple of occasions with varying degrees of success. Lack of sleep from trying to adapt to the sleep breathing machine is also contributing to the situation. I’m sleeping much longer than I should because at least 4 hours of any sleep time is basically wasted on having the mask on. I don’t seem to actually sleep while I wear it, so I’m unconscious, but not getting any rest. Then I take the damn thing off and sleep for 6 hours of actual sleep. Making my grand total ten hours of fairly shitty sleep. I aslo think the hose isn’t getting cleaned properly because it smells odd, but nothing I try seems to take the odor away. The mask cleans up just fine, but I think the hose isn’t drying right.

The fucking thing also blows the breaker every so often and I have to go through this whole fucking rigamarole to get the breaker to stay on while it’s plugged in. It only uses 3 amps but the power cord for it draws 12 when it starts. I don’t know why because 12 amps is way higher than anything else I own. It seems like a design flaw to me.

In other news, Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, died. He was only 55. It’s incredibly sad because he helped make, or programmed outright some of my favorite games of all time. Earthbound and Animal Crossing in particular, but the list is longer. I played Animal Crossing: City Folk every day for a year while I was having that bout of really insane depression after the first arc of the comic ended. It was an important part of my therapy. This little town where nothing bad ever happened, and everyone was basically nice, gave me a place to center myself every night. Earthbound is just one of my favorite games of all time. There’s nothing else quite like it except for the other games in the series.
Apart from that he was the human face of Nintendo for the last few years. When he started doing the Nintendo Directs he became real in a way that other company presidents never do. He and Reggie make Nintendo human. They made us a family, which is why Nintendo fans make memes of the shit they do, and did. He was in on all the jokes. He was one of us.

The Empty Chair

Eulogy for a Gamer
There is an empty chair,
at the table this day.
A hallowed place where,
a friend once played.
The roll of his dice,
my ears long to hear.
Or perhaps it would suffice,
if he should suddenly appear.
With character sheet in hand,
and a bag of Cheeze-doodles to share.
All his friends would stand,
as he sat in the empty chair.
I hear his voice a-callin’,
and it ties my heart in a knot.
For he cries, “Though a comrade has fallen,
You must play for those who cannot.”
We conquered worlds on the run,
he and I in the name of fun.
And as others may come and go,
I make both both friend and foe.
But what I long for most,
is our past now long a ghost.