Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Day 21. still sick, venting

Still sick. Fever, exhaustion, weak.
Imageshack now thinks I deleted my account with them. dandy. Swearing.
I sent them an email
but that'd mean every pic I ever put on DoA is now gone.
Every last one. Galleries, comparisons, all those threads and tutorials.
if, as I am betting money, Imageshack mails me back and says Oops must be a glitch, sorry  nothing we can do.
I was having a passable day up til then
they don't even recognize my email as part of their system. I had to use their Help section.

also I need to break something or shoot something.

but I'm still running a fever so I can't do any of those things. Ordinarily this is when I would hit the archery range and shoot  until I can't. Or a good pell, and beat the crap out of it.
But I am flat on my back in bed.

yes other people have it worse but I am just going a little stircrazy right here and now.
I miss cleaning. Chores. I miss them.
I am living in my own mess right now because I can't clean up, this house looks like Hoarders Lite. It's all I can do to keep clean dishes in rotation so I have a way to feed myself. and I shower. That's my energy for the day.

 I tried to work on props stuff but it used too much energy and my hands shake. Same with crafting or sculpting.

Friday, September 25, 2015

Day 17 of the Autumn 2015 Sinus troubles.

I've been sick for 17 days now. Only about 3 of those involved leaving the house at all. I am getting bored of my bedroom. *WHINE* I'm a big baby.

 As I mentioned,  I've been diagnosed with Silent Sinus Syndrome, which is a rare condition where the sinuses in the front of one side of the face close up for as long as several years. I also have a deviated septum. This probably is part of why my allergic reactions turn into painful acute sinus infections within about 48 hours, those infections linger for a month or so, then crawl into my lungs to nest for the winter.

Fixing it requires surgery. I don't know when I get the surgery- I have a consult appointment next week. I don't know how long recovery will take either. This is only upsetting for me in that I am sick right now, and that I was going to get a dog.

 I need a dog. I am a sad piece of misery without one. My house is too quiet. No one wakes me up to go for walks.

There's the catch, though. To have a dog, I have to be healthy enough to move around. I am not, so I can't. I am so lonely without a dog. I won't be able to have one until I am healthy enough to move around again, outdoors. I wear a scarf over my nose and mouth in winter here anyway because I almost always have or am recovering form lung infections in winter, so I can't breathe icy cold air.
I wanted to get a dog and go scootering with him in the mornings. I was healthy enough to do it, too. And then this happened. Foo.

You'd think after years of winter bedrest for months at a time, I'd get used to bedrest. Nope. Still as whiny as ever. I hate not being able to at least sit up and do things, but the more I do anything other than lie down or against pillows in bed, the sicker I get the next day. I have to REST.  Well, tomorrow after I do my online test I am gonna play computer games on the couch downstairs. I can be bundled up down there just as easily as up here.


Yes, online test. Did I mention the awesome side of this?
1. They caught the SSS before my eyeball started to sag. That's right, most people only know they have this thingy when their sinus has imploded so much that the bone under the eye socket is dissolved and their eye starts to droop. NOPE NOPE NOPE. So I am very thankful my CT scan showed that I have it before anything happened to my precious eyes. I am exceedingly visual and I need my eyes.
2. In spite of my brain fog making reading hard, I have found an Audio Dramatization by the BBC of my textbook, (still chortling over that) and that's been letting me "study" for the test I need to to take which is  ONLINE. My History class is at the cutting edge, for a college course, and that means our assignments and tests are all ONLINE. I can take the test from right here in my bed! I don't have to haul my weak butt into the testing center!
This is important because to attend our school you must be healthy and mobile. If you cannot wheel or walk a quarter mile or more from parking lots to classrooms, you cannot attend classes. Elevators and a few ramps do not an Accessible Campus make, not if you're too sick to walk long distances but not actually disabled.


I miss going to Aikido. I miss how cool it was to be healthy enough to work out and work hard.
I really, really miss my dog.

Thursday, September 24, 2015

David Attenborough Voice

*David Attenborough Voice*
Here we have one of nature's rarest creatures! A Raine Artista Introvertus! This solitary creature is endemic to the Chaparral regions of Southern Coastal California, and we aren't quite sure what this one is doing so far out of that range, but the northerly climate does seem to affect its usual habits.
Every Autumn, this rare animal grows sluggish and begins to build a nest of blankets and other soft materials, only emerging periodically, often at night! 

In Autumn, this subspecies of Artista uses its delicate fingers to locate Tylenol, antibiotics and other small prizes buried within nearby cupboards. It then retreats immediately to the safety of its nest! During the day, it can occasionally be enticed to sun itself briefly, in a warm place if lured by pizza, or fresh hot food it didn't have to cook.


I've been diagnosed with acute sinusitis and Silent Sinus Syndrome, for which I require surgery later. Meanwhile I subsist upon tylenol and such food as I can obtain via microwave.

Monday, September 21, 2015

INTJ problems- Not Cold, Pressure Cooker.

I test out on the Myers- Briggs profile, professionally done, as an INTJ/p. That is, I have some times when that last variable is a 50/50 split.

INJT are stereotyped as likely to be cold rational intuitive thinkers, blunt, honest, a bit socially awkward, and stuck kind of pretending to reactions they don’t feel in order to fit in.
All spot on,
except one thing.

I’m not cold. I’ve never been cold unless you mean like Dry Ice is cold. I am a kettle. I am boiling over. I am a slowly seething mass of rage that vents gently and constantly so it doesn’t explode. I am FULL of lots of emotions, lots of loves, lots of empathy for people I’ve never even met, depths of sorrows, lots of old resentments, LOTS of righteous wrath against willful hate.
I am largely full of rage. Yet I do not appear outwardly to have anger issues, and have almost never “taken it out” on someone. Never, in my adult life.
It’s not for lack of knowing how, either- I know a lot of very dangerous stuff including certain martial arts. Or for lack of really, really, wanting to.

Most of my family would be very surprised to learn that I am pretty constantly a roiling pressure cooker of wrath and rage…. under a knitted tea-cozy. “That’s my secret, Cap… I’m always angry.”
…crap. I’m growing up to be either Bruce Banner or Sam Vimes. That’s either really good or really bad.
I sublimate that rage so it never comes out. But I just don’t identify with this stereotype that INTJ people are cold and unfeeling. I have these vast oceans of feelings, not the least of which is this… Anger Thing.

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Thing about Aikido

People often will watch an Aikido demo and say, “Well it’s not realistic, you cooperated with him when he threw you!”

Hahaha, Of course I did! 

My other option was to have my arm dislocated, possibly spiral-fractured (don’t google that), and then to land neck first on the ground with all of my body weight on top of my then-shattered vertebrae. Much safer to go along with it and roll.

Aikido “looks fake” because the people being tossed

protect themselves

from the consequences of having all their momentum hurled into the ground, along with squishy breakable anatomy.

We could resist More, yes, but it would have bad results. we often do try to resist a bit to help our partners practice against an unwilling opponent, but the result is pretty much the same- Wowican’tbendthatwayTHUD…Tap!Tap!

I promise you, if you learn to roll and fall correctly to protect your body, and then get a Sensei to show you some Aikido, you will see how effective it can be. Once your balance and momentum do not belong to you, you are hurtling through the air whether you like it or not. And then you’re on the ground wondering what the heck just happened. And all that happens in less than a second. It’s really, really FUN.

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Smile, No One LIkes A Frown (rant)


The hardest thing sometimes about clinical depression and dating is that people assume you can and must make yourself look happy in order to attract a mate

And then that having a mate will make your medical condition vanish

And most general and universal is that “no one likes a sad face”

Everyone Knows
no one can love someone who isn’t cheerful.

Everyone Knows “Happiness is a choice” and if you can’t make yourself happy no one will love you,
Everyone Knows.

 Everyone knows no one loves a sad face.

Everyone knows people love a smile.

So who will love someone with incurable Clinical Depression? I can choose to be peaceful in my low points. But I am a often medically unable to be really happy. Peace in acceptance is the best I can do some days.

Zen, attainment and goals

A friend asked me,“Do you think more goals come along after achieving hyper-focused goals we’ve had for years? I’ve been chasing my goals so long that I literally do not know what I would do once I achieve these goals. I’m like a dog chasing cars- what would I ever do if I caught one?”

Did you see the Disney film Tangled? We’re like Rapunzel. She had a dream to go see the lights. Along that journey, her experiences stacked up and built her into a new person, so that once she had seen the lights, she realized that seeking that goal had led her to a new goal.

You cannot make a new joy the one thing you set up to seek. A boy dreams of becoming a pilot but when he goes to flight school he finds out it is hard work. He perseveres because he wants to fly. When he does get his dream, he enjoys it for quite some time, and he always does enjoy it, but the novelty does wear off a little. Suddenly he discovers photography and uses his plane for aerial shots. He has a new dream to pursue.

To Seek Joy makes Joy a noun, a thing we can attain or lose. To Enjoy is a verb- it’s a thing we can keep doing over and over again.  I think we can have more Joy in Verbs than in Nouns. I mean: A Thing is passing- Doing is continual.

A man and a woman fall blissfully in love and decide to get married. One morning she wakes up and realizes she no longer feels that “old thrill” about him, and she doesn’t feel the way she did when she married him. She is not “In Love”, but she thinks about how they care for each other, and decides she still loves him, and that she will continue to. She realizes Love as a Noun is a thing you can lose, but To Love as a Verb is something she can do. She talks to her husband, and he agrees- that “spark” is gone, but as they say, nothing lasts.. Should they quit their marriage because they lost a thing they had? They decide instead to find new “sparks.” They take a road trip together, do new activities, spend time together, and discover new ways they can love each other. They spend over 50 years discovering Loving as a Verb, discovering ever new horizons of caring and connection.

People who try to make one pivotal experience last forever and be their true satisfaction are often unhappy because they are trying to make a moment last forever. The true value of those moments is that they are rare and precious- that they do not last. Instead of despairing because we cannot make a moment last, we might find more joy in just savoring the moment. As we savor it, it becomes part of us, and even when it is over, we have it always.

Every joy we do not try to prolong artificially leads us to new joys.
What we grasp and cling at, we lose- what we let go of, we find we can keep forever.

(sourcing CS Lewis more than perhaps a little here, go read Mere Christianity or The Problem of Pain. )

Single life. (rant)

Being Single is not as fun as it seems. People hear that I am Single and immediately respond with, “Whoohoo, single! You can Play the Field!” Nope.

The Field… is barren, pal. When I say Single I don’t mean “unmarried and dating around and having wild girls’ nights out”,
I mean Alone.

Don’t say that kind of thing to Single people unless you know them VERY well.

Your well meaning insinuations that I am some kind of free, happy-go-lucky, party-animal because I am without a commitment, and assuming I clearly desire to be in such a state, is not helpful or asked-for. The fact that I have been unable, for years, to form meaningful relationships or even enter dialogue with potential mates is not something I care to discuss.


Nor do you get to make remarks about me having Standards Too High. Are you saying I should lower them and go out with the first man who’d notice me? Because I made the biggest mistake of my life that way once, and it’s not an option. I do not owe a guy attention just because he singles me out and says “I want that one”. I do get a say, here.

Nor am I “waiting for Prince Charming”. Many people would have me believe I am actively driving him away by getting on with my life. I don’t have time to wait for him if he exists.

Where was this Prince Charming when I was a child being harassed and bullied and abused by boys every day of my sad little school life? Where was this Prince Charming when I was young and looking for love? Where was this Prince Charming when I was failing out of college and could have used a rescue? Where was this Prince Charming when I was finding ways to move out of my parents’ house? Where was this Prince Charming when I was fighting the darkest demons imaginable? Where was this Prince Charming when I was being stalked, in fear for my life, fleeing my home?

They tell you Prince Charming is gonna save you from the monsters, and I believed them. Then all the Princes turned out to be the monsters- or just men. 
I’m okay with the ones who are just men, but now I’ve fought off so many I can’t tell men from monsters anymore. So I’m alone.

I don’t want a Prince Charming. He doesn’t exist. I want a man. A humble, ordinary human man who isn’t there to sweep in and save me. I’d just like him to be …there.

White/Xwayaat

I am what most people would call bi-racial. I come from many ethnicities and histories, but my two major cultures are UK-Celtic “White”,

and on the other side of the family I am very much Native American.

I have very pale skin, and outwardly show no signs of Native heritage but some subtle bone structuring and the thick, nearly black hair of our tribe. Everyone assumes I am “White”.

But the people who give me the most grief about how pale my skin is

who harass me every time I wear a swimsuit, 

with “jokes” and cries of pretending to be blinded by my “undesirable”, “gross”, “ugly” whiteness,

who constantly insist I should be trying to tan more 
so I stop being SOOOO pale

are other “White” people.

Post-dated post: 4th of July Rant

I hate living in a state where anyone can get their hands on fireworks.

Excuse me while I spend the next 48 hours in a state of hypervigilance due to startle response, and stifling bad Firestorm ‘03 Trauma-flashbacks from the smell of ashes and sulfur and plastics burning.
*off to huddle under heavy blanket and weep softly*

I don’t think I Love My Country. I wish I lived in a place that celebrated things with music, or concerts, or folk dances, or candle vigils. Instead of Explosives.

Aikido and Grief

Jul 8. 2015
I had to let my darling dog go “Home” this last week. It was hard for me, but she was losing her ability to do all the things she wanted to do, and her body was quitting on her. She was already aching most of the time, so we let her go before she started to really suffer. I think I’m handling it as best as can be expected. I had a while to get used to the idea and really adjust to it as a huge change in my life. Funny thing was, Aikido helped me through it.

I had told Sensei I might not be at our session on Thursday because that morning we were putting my dear dog ‘to sleep’. He understood and was very kind and sympathetic.

So when I showed up on Thursday afternoon, he raised his eyebrows and said, “I thought you weren’t going come to practice today!”

And I said, “At first I wasn’t going to be here, because I knew how much I’d be dealing with… Then I realized that that’s exactly why I needed to be here.”

He nodded. “That’s right.” Just before he turned away I saw his grin. I think he was trying not to show too much of how proud he was that this week I had grasped a part of Aikido Zen.

Smile and Nod- Advice for the over-educated

..So often the best policy. Especially when you know stuff no one else needs to know.

Person:
“OMG we totally picked the perfect name for our baby, because I looked it up, and this baby name book says it means " Gift from Heaven”!

Me, internally:
OWCH. Ah, No. No it doesn’t.
You gave your daughter a name nicely following two rather popular trends right now, the “UK Surname As a Firstname” trend, and the “Girl named with a syllable ending the in the fashionable, feminine-associeted -ey sound, like Ashley and Brittany” trend.

But it does not mean anything even slightly like Heavenly Gift, it’s a Locative Surname given to tell people where someone was from. It’s just the name of a town, which was in turn named after a geographic feature or famous historical event.

Now, I know whatever name you give your beloved child will forever mean Her, to you, but linguistically and in reality that name does not remotely mean Heaven’s Precious Gift, it means, “This one town in Lancashire with some white trees near it.”

Baby name books lie to you to make you feel good and buy their book.
If the actual linguistic Meaning of a name matters to you for everyone’s sake please do your research….

Me, Outwardly:
*Smile and Nod* Oh, that’s nice.

Sometimes, it's best to keep your mouth shut. Everyone's happier.

Weird Martial arts dreams

"Tell me about your martial arts dreams. Like the ones when you are asleep."
Hoo boy I had a heck of one last night. Lemme get to my laptop and edit it in here.

So I seemed to be high school age again, me and a few friends were attending this conference meeting thing with a bunch of other high schoolers at a big building with lawn around it, right across from my high school. Somehow I was a practicing Aikidoka then. I think in the dream, Sensei’s dojo was based in my high school, not at my college as is reality.

Everyone at this meeting got really angry with our group, I think it was because after the meeting and potluck snacking, we took back the leftover cookies we had brought and we ate the rest that the meeting people had not eaten. For dream reasons, this made them all furious at us. They really wanted to punch our faces in.

We tried to run for our huge white van and leave, but we were missing one of our group, a very shy girl. Outside on the lawn around the building, teens were gathering to work themselves up and get really ready to find us and beat us up. They were standing around in loose groups of twos and threes all over two sides of the building.
So I said to my friends with me in the van, “Drop me off over by all those people. I think I can do something about this. While I have them busy you go into the other side of the building, find *shy girl* and get her out. Then come back around pick me up. I might be running.”

So they drove past the crowded side and I kinda hopped out of the van as it slowed down, and all the angry teens saw me, and I didn’t say anything I just started walking though them. I knew they were all set to attack someone, so it might as well be me. I could keep them occupied.
The first one ran at me and BOOM, Aikido throw. And the next. And the next. It was very gentle. I just grabbed a wrist here, and arm there, and sat them down on the grass. They looked up at me kinda stunned.
I just kept on at a waking pace through the crowd, throw after throw, one after another. It was really hard to keep it up, and I am not very experienced so sometimes it was difficult. I kept saying, “Have you had enough? I have. I’ll stop when you do. I don’t want to fight.” There were at least 40 people.
After a while things slowed down and they were kind of avoiding me, in shock.
My friends swung around and picked me up in the van and we got outta there.

Then I was at school, and suddenly hearing rumors about a big fight, and that I had “beat up a bunch of people”. My heart sank and I knew I was gonna get expelled for violent behavior. Everyone was treating me oddly now that the whole school had heard I “started a big fight and beat up people”.

 I spent the whole day being very quiet, and proving to people who asked that what I had used was gentle and defensive and that I had actually been careful not to harm anyone. Then I felt I had to confess to Sensei all the details of what had happened, and that I had used Aikido in such a manner.

 I was so mortified he would disapprove and tell me I had misused it. I was also very afraid he’d have already heard one of his students had “instigated a big fight and beaten a bunch of people up”, and would be upset and ashamed of me.

At practice, in front of everyone, I made a formal bowed apology for all the disturbance I had been central in, and explained the entire thing as honestly as I could. I don’t know if Sensei was upset, because then the dream shifted and I’ll never know what he though.
And all that was last night.

A Bowl of Mushrooms, or weird cravings.

Content warning: Post contains discussion of slight food related/eating disorder type issues.

My relationship with food is… It’s Complicated.

Food is my Drug, Let’s be honest. Half of what I eat is all about the euphoric high I get from having taste explosion experiences with anything tasty that I eat. I am autistic and in my case that’s why I have tastebuds in severe overdrive and a sensory neural system that is always turned up to 11. When something as common as Food evokes that sort of response, it’s a setup for serious hangups, issues, associations, complexes and neuroses about and around Food. It’s not something one can avoid, so I have to find ways to deal with Food and Eating more healthfully.

To try to get round that, and to eat a bit better, I’ve managed to work out a system where if something is moderately healthy, and I suddenly crave it, I eat it. If something is refined-sugary or exceedingly caloric, and I still crave it, I eat a little of it. That way I don’t ever feel deprived and binge. (in theory. Pizza is still a bit of a problem. ehehehehe)

A lot of people eat this way, they call it “Mindful Eating” or something. I try not to feel guilty about what I eat, but just to eat some of whatever my body thinks it needs, and not too much of any one thing, and to stop eating once I am almost full.
The theory is that body often knows what it needs if you get good at listening. Most sugar cravings are actually me being thirsty, for example.

One time I bought armloads of squash and cooked it all in a single week.

Another time it was bananas. I must have been short for potassium, because I was strolling along with my grocery list and cart when my nose caught a whiff of bananas and wrenched me around in the supermarket aisle and dragged me to the curved fruits section of the Produce Corner, screaming inside my head, “THAT! WE NEED THAT! BUY US THOSE SO WE CAN EAT THEM.”

Whenever I am working my poor sickly muscles back through phys therapy and into health, I get a serious craving for certain types of meat. Dark meat Chicken, beef, shrimp, anything with oils. I think my body needs that to rebuild. So I eat it.


Which leads to Mushrooms.

What the heel is in mushrooms? Is it potassium? Some vitamin? Why can’t I get enough mushrooms? Portabello, if that makes any difference.

"So what do you do for fun?"

You go about thinking, “Yeah, I’m pretty normal, as people go,” until someone asks you what you do for fun…

“Er, well, I shoot a longbow, because I’m training to be a Combat Archer… er, in this Medieval Reenactment Society… Er, and I sculpt articulated art dolls… Um, and I sew things- I’m working on an art quilt for this Native American project I want to do for my tribe….   Why are you looking at me like that?”

Then they’re figuring, Oh, she has weird hobbies, but surely her JOB is normal rite?

“Well, a couple summers ago I was mostly making baskets, we needed like a hundred baskets for a market scene and they found out I could make them so I just sat and tied baskets for like two months, and after that I’ve been mostly either sewing or carving styrene foam.”
..”Styrene…?”
“Yeah, you know, Styrofoam ™. We carve it. Then the other department sculptors put cement over it and paint it and we have faux stone- we’ve been doing this city set with a lot of stone, and I cannot get the foam out of my hair or my set clothes…. You’re giving me that look again.”

"You must be VERY High Functioning!" AUGH.

Okay I just had this discussion (but in much more diplomatic and polite terms)
 with a medical professional
AGAIN.*

 And No, they do not Know Better either, so lemme clear this up for yall.


Stop telling autistic people they are “Sooo High Functioning!” with this congratulatory grin,
like you think it’s some kind of compliment that you, a layperson without knowledge of autism, cannot magically “tell” an autistic person from anyone else. Autism has no physical markers.

 Look by this year and time, we most of us know why it would be bad to say, upon meeting someone who is a racial minority,
“Oh, wow, You’re *race*? I couldn’t even tell! You must be VERY educated! you’re so.. articulate!”
That is how you sound.

That is how you sound.
 
That is how you sound when you try to compliment autistic people by saying, “Ooh you’re so high functioning!”
You sound like a Granny saying, “Oh Dearie I couldn’t even tell you was Colored! You’re so well spoken and hardworking!”

You say those things and what we hear is “Oh you’re almost a real human being like me! You hid your nasty, nasty disadvantage sooo well! Congratulations, I couldn’t even tell you were so subhuman!”
We’re not hiding anything and we’re not happy with your insinuations that we ought to, or with your hints that it’s sooo nice we are Almost Real People Like You.


*
I have met, in an entire lifetime of interacting with Medical professionals, exactly ONE who knew any actual facts about Autism and did not instantly, well-meaningly, try to“compliment” me with patronizing nonsense learned from Autism Speaks billboards.
One.
And I have a series of medical problems meaning I’ve got a kind of networked team of pros that changes every time I move.

Psychiatrists & psychologists sometimes know a little about autism.
Medical professionals generally can be expected to know worse than nothing. (yes I consider misinformation and patronization to be worse. The only plus is that they DO know vaccines cannot cause autism.)

I realize they are not in the mental health field but it might behoove the colleges and courses to take a few weeks of medical schooling to cover some common disabilities and conditions, and how NOT to talk to people who are/have them!  *facepalm*

Had enough of your guff, Pinterest.

Look it has been only a year since I was diagnosed as rather severely Gluten Intolerant. I “pin” only certain foods

for a very good reason.

You do not shove a former addict’s addiction in their face
when consuming it could seriously sicken them for months

And they are doing their best to avoid even looking at things that trigger that WANT IT NEED IT addict’s ‘need-surge’

AND THEN YOU COME ALONG WITH YOUR CINNAMON ROLL “PICKED FOR YOU” PINS.

SCREW YOU PINTEREST. GO STEP ON A LEGO YOU HEARTLESS A.I.

Stranger in a strange land... with weird weeds.

Up to my elbows in Purslane, Mallow, Timothy, Dandelions and Bindweed. And then the absolute scent-bomb that is the lurking Morel mushroom.

Gardens and weeds in this biome are an entire new world to me.

Update:
Also, I am severely allergic to Timothy Grass and should not attempt to weed my own yard no matter how much energy I have that day.

*hackhurkasthmaticcough* See this is why hunting and gathering is my ancestral WAY. I am not made for gardening

A bad combination of cicumstances- silly lil rant

You know what’s fun?

1. I often sleep with my window open so fresh air can circulate. (second story, steel mesh screened, it’s perfectly safe to do this.)

2. I live in a Suburban Wonderland of a town where people frequently barbecue, burn leaves, roast smores, and generally use fire to do quaint Americana Norman-Rockwell Painting type activities.

3. It’s also an area with a college nearby so they do these things at any ol’ hour of the night because Studying is Hard and life is short, and our sleep schedules are shot anyway.

4. I have a new “Fire and CO detector” that is a fragile orchid of delicacy when it comes to any kind of smoke that is NOT matches. If you light candles and wave the match around, it’ll ignore that. Anything else within about 1,000 feet of this thing will make it start screaming.


Now, when all these things line up just so, it creates a hellish Venn diagram of, “Let’s wake her up at one in the morning with the fear that her lil’ home is ON FIRE, she’ll like that!!”
because the fragile and delicate orchid that is my fire alarm,
which, remember, ignores actual wood smoke in the house,
Is picking up traces of smoke on the wind coming in my window.
*facepalm*