Warhead On Legs

kittydesade @ 2023-12-21T00:47:00

2023-12-21T05:49:31Z

As we used to say in college, an action happened that none of you saw.

Anyway. An action happened that none of you saw and now I'm finding myself singing "Once in a Lifetime" and "What's Going On" quite a lot tonight. At a very late hour of the night. I actually meant to go to bed on time tonight, as I'd managed to get up roughly on time and log in to work on time and so on, but then, well, those plans got kind of scuppered. So now I'm up not quite belting classic rock songs in my head and trying to work off some energy so I can go to bed and not wake up my husband. Again.

Anyway. It's good stuff though! I will scream about it when I am authorized to. Notifications have to be done in a proper order.

I did get up on time today, and I got a good chunk of work in, which is good both because I think I did a pretty good job of regulating "no, your brain is starting to melt, go take out the trash or something" and "Okay, you have another hour of work in you and let's see if we can clear this and then tomorrow we can just work on this other thing." There's a chunk of work that I wanted to get done today, ran into problems but got most of it done? And then there's a huge amount of debugging on my slate, so I'll get that done tomorrow. Well, I'll spend all day working on it tomorrow, we'll see how much of it I actually get DONE.

And now I'm just sitting on the couch mouthing the words to "What's Going On" because if I actually give breath to it at all I will end up waking up the husband again. This is almost as good anyway. Projecting my energy through gestures instead of voice.

And if I'm very lucky I can sleep tonight. Tomorrow will be a pretty normal day, working, and then it turns out I was wrong, vacation starts Friday instead of next Monday, so I'll have a bank appointment but nothing else I'm expected to do. So that'll be nice. I picked up another knitting pattern for somewhat frivolous reasons but it wasn't exactly a bank-breaking investment, and I might cast on for that. Or I might just sit and read. I really, really want to finish Plague of Giants. I keep not reading instead of reading, and I want to spend next week just sitting and reading and maybe doing some fiber crafts. Maybe I'll manage to do it instead of ... whatever. I don't know what else I'd end up doing, probably faffing about not deciding what I'm going to do.

I'm still awake faffing about not deciding what I'm going to do. Because I have an excess of energy, an abundance of nerves, and a surfeit of glee. Well, a surfeit of glee for this hour, in general glee is a good thing to have a lot of. More details when I am allowed to give them!

comments

kittydesade @ 2023-12-18T23:14:00

2023-12-19T04:25:18Z

Monday down, tomorrow to go, which will be the most difficult. It's the coldest day of the week for one thing. I have an 8 am dentist appointment. I should have gone to bed, this being the case, an hour ago but since the wind is up my nerves are accordingly rattled and I don't think I'm going to get to sleep before midnight. First the dentist appointment, and then I head home and then I have a work meeting at noon and thankfully I don't have anything after that. I can collapse.

I've been, for no real reason other than that I finally got around to spending money on it, assembling sort of a capsule dark academia wardrobe. I have two tops, three skirts that I haven't yet been brave enough to try on (though they should fit, I took my measurements), and one vest. And then a couple more vests and a blazer incoming, so we're trying blazers again. Maybe it'll work better if I actually get blazers that are already tailored for a woman's form instead of blazers that I always say I'm going to tailor and then never do. Heh. Anyway, I've now reached the point where apart from two colors of tops, maybe an extra white blouse, and a black skirt I have pretty much everything I need and now I just need to exercise enough to achieve my final form. And I don't wanna. I can buy clothes and red hair and jewelry, why can't I buy my fit, martial-artist body back? It's so rude.

(I mean, plastic surgery does exist, but it doesn't confer muscle. It just removes mass and tucks and trims and everything, and what I want is muscle. I want to be able to haul around the bulk bags of cat food and cat litter like they're nothing again. And also to be able to kick people into walls. I really enjoyed having that kind of power in my legs.)

Alas. But I am getting better about exercise. I've managed to keep up on the elliptical, I've managed to fold in some port-de-bras onto that, I did some weights today so maybe I can fold in some weights and a couple more dance exercises. I'd've done it this morning if I'd been better about going to sleep on time last night. (I'm giving up on that tonight, but tomorrow night I'm going to try again.) Slow but steady progress.

So, I should get up and do some dance and another round on the elliptical and then it might be time to take an anti-anxiety pill and at least try to go the fuck to sleep. Stupid wind. Stupid anxiety. Stupid multiple tall trees falling down around my house giving me windstorm anxiety. Do not want. Do not enjoy. Dislike. Strongly.

comments

kittydesade @ 2023-12-16T18:50:00

2023-12-17T01:04:42Z

What an entire fucking week that was.

The heating has indeed been fixed. It's been mostly fixed, which is to say it's safe to run it again and we have the house at a temperature compatible with comfortable life, and if the last piece that needs to be replaced goes the only thing that will happen is the boiler will shut off. As opposed to when the entire panel was blown and we could have had an electrical fire. In this case there's a fuse that needs to be replaced, so the heating guy is going to come on Monday and replace it.The root canal happened. The endodontist was pretty nice, and the practice gave me a free soup to eat afterwards, I assume they have some promo deal with a local kitchen but it was a nice gesture. And good soup. We made the bank appointment as the downtown branch of my bank is closing and now we have to rearrange some things. Stuff happened on Thursday that nobody saw until it resolves, and I had therapy wherein I freaked out and was nervous at my therapist for an hour while he gently reminded me that things are going to be okay.It's been an entire fucking week.

And next week we have This Fucking Week Part 2, which involves another heating appointment, another Unmentioned Thing, another dentist thing, and another bank thing. In fact the only thing that isn't repeating is my therapist appointment, which is sort of a pity. Though at this point I feel steadier, just also very exhausted about everything. Thank goodness after next week I have a whole week off work and no more dentist things for a while, hopefully no more heating things till spring (there's some maintenance been recommended), no more bank thing, and the unmentioned thing will have resolved itself. At which point it will become a Mentioned Thing.

We did some grocery shopping this morning but it still feels like Friday and now I am sulking that I don't have two days off to rest and recover. I want two more days off to rest and recover. (Admittedly I *could* take Monday off but I still have work to do.) I'm also vaguely wondering when I became a person more interested in bananas and peanut butter sandwiches than the cookie in the fridge, but then again I've never exactly willfully eschewed healthy food, I just like cheese and chocolate. I don't know. Maybe it's just that I'm tired and everything is weird and slightly off today. Maybe I need a good long sleep and that'll reset everything and I'll feel better again.

We did watch the first three episodes of Reacher, so that was relaxing and enjoyable. I'm also enjoying the fun they're having with title cards. (Look up "Reacher's Back" for an example.) Then we watched The Batman, and I'm not sure what I think of that except the narration is horrible, and now we're watching the Tom Cruise Mummy movie which has about 90% too much Tom Cruise.

comments

kittydesade @ 2023-12-12T15:58:00

2023-12-12T21:30:37Z

Okay. Well. On Monday I got the call from the heating people that the part either had come in or was on its way in in some verifiable capacity, and was Wednesday morning all right to fix the heat, and obviously I said yes because YES PLEASE GIVE US OUR CLIMATE CONTROL BACK. To a greater degree than we have now, space heaters and all. And I already had a therapy appointment on Thursday and a root canal on Friday and now I have an additional potentially very good thing on Thursday afternoon and it's all either good to neutral but also I am feeling extremely overwhelmed by Things to Do. And a need to be an Adult Human. Who interacts with people in adult human ways and not oversharing or over... what's the opposite of oversharing. Over aggressing?

I'm tired just looking at my schedule for the week ahead, never mind managing it. I think part of that is that it's fucking freezing in the house and if we didn't have so many cats I'd just spend the day in a coffee shop on my laptop or something else, but I want to make sure they're okay. So we all sit and suffer in our space heated home, as my spoons freeze and crack and crumble away. Brr.

I dare say probably on Wednesday after the house starts warming up again I'll feel more up to Thursday and Friday. And then once we've gotten the heating fixed we can consider getting a new washer (it had another power blip the other day) and start shopping around for new cars and so on. Fixing all the less urgent problems. Developing all the less urgent developments. Improving things.

Improving myself, I've managed to be pretty consistent with exercise, writing, languages, in a way I haven't I think since the pandemic started. I'm not sure what changed, the languages have always limped along but the writing kicked off first and now the exercise. Not sure what's going on with me or what caused the sudden shift, but I guess I'm enjoying it. It's hard to find enjoyment right now with so many things cold and broken. I was enjoying it before we lost heat in the house! And I'm rather enjoying that I'm kind of limping along and keeping it up even without heat in the house. Not entirely sure how I'm managing, I think on sheer stubbornness and having a job that allows me to rearrange things to take it easier on myself, such as doing work on my laptop or letting my boss know I'm in a Situation and to take it easy on me. But... well. Keeping up these habits makes me feel good. It makes me feel like I'm back to sculpting myself into the me I want to be.

At any rate. Less than twenty four hours to go before we have heat back on in the house! It'll be fine. We'll get through this. There will, soon, be better days than this.

comments

kittydesade @ 2023-12-10T14:04:00

2023-12-10T19:05:25Z

Boy this is a day we're having. I have a friend who's having some serious and imminent troubles within her family, and the husband tried to do a load of laundry and the washing machine had a sudden unexpected power failure in the middle of the first load. We got it working again but I think the search for a new washing machine is back on, so that's something to deal with. On top of getting a new car (which I have since discovered my husband has done the research and getting a loan for a new car is actually better terms than getting one for a used car, unless you're looking for a beater) and getting the heating fixed. Absolutely none of this pleases me.

There are things that please me. We still have power, we do not appear to be about to lose power, which means we can get somewhat around some things. We have groceries and can cook. I'm about to start a huge batch of cottage pie with ground turkey and another big pot of chicken soup. I've managed to do some form of exercise eight out of ten days so far in December, so I am slowly working on that. The first week or so was making sure to get regular treadmilling in, and now I'm folding in dance exercises. Next step, which was supposed to be this step but the heat conked out and threw everyone for several loops, is to make it a regularly scheduled thing, i.e. all but the treadmill exercises happen at X time in the day. Not sure what time of day that should be, but eh.

(To be honest I'm a little torn about how rigid a schedule to maintain, given that my job, theoretically the biggest part of my day, doesn't exist on a schedule. Should I try to set up a rigid-ish exercise schedule or should I just try to make a specific amount of time, say half an hour, and say "I'm going to do dance exercises for half an hour" and then fit it into my day whenever.)

I've gotten some other things done and I can't remember what they are anymore. I've also been keeping greater track of things in my bullet journal, remembering to enter in the times I do my skin care or my languages or so on. Oh, spice shopping and getting more bananas for the cats and filling my pill container and getting my root canal scheduled. So my bullet journal tells me, I've gotten those things done. Today I think the goal is to get a bunch of cooking and baking done and then get some cleaning done so if the part comes on Monday and the heating guys can come on Tuesday the place doesn't look like a shithole. Yes, for some reason it matters. Also cleaning makes me feel better about all the other crap in the world being out of my control.

I will say, it's a lot easier to manage to get things done or progressing now that my thyroid is seemingly properly medicated. It was extremely overactive, and now it's underactive, so we're testing again in seven weeks now (need to mark that on my calendar too) and we're experimenting with alternating dosages and days to see if that gets me within a normal range, but for the moment I'm not having obstructive thyroid symptoms. I'm sleeping fine, I'm not overheating, I'm not overtired. It's a small blessing.

comments

kittydesade @ 2023-12-08T00:02:00

2023-12-08T05:04:49Z

Well. It's day two of no heat in the house.

Let me back up a little. Yesterday the heating guy came at 9 in the damn morning because our heating was being weird. It didn't feel like our thermostats were always kicking in when they should. And what we thought was, oh, well thermostats are only supposed to last ten years, aren't they? Maybe that's what the burning smell was, the wires from one of the thermostats shorting out, we'll just have him clean up and tune up the boiler and replace the thermostats and it'll be fine.

And he did clean up and tune up the boiler, and he took a look at it and then he found out that in fact it was not the thermostat that was busted. It was in fact the electrical panel on the boiler that processes the sensors and the input and then tells the boiler "hey, the water for the radiators is a little cold, better fire it up and make it hotter" or "hey, we need more hot water in the upstairs boilers, let's go." Those were not at all working. And he gave it something like 90% odds that that panel was what we'd smelled shorting out, which, yeah, probably. And the good news is that that panel, or rather a direct replacement now manufactured, still exists and is easy to come by. The bad news is it's not actually safe to run the boiler until it gets replaced because of risk of electrical fire.

So the good news I guess is that we found out what had caused the electrical fire smell without the house catching on fire, and the bad news is that we have no heat for at least a week. In the middle of winter.. I am not best pleased by this. No one in the house is best pleased, not me, not my husband, not the cats. But then we'd be even less pleased if the house or the boiler or something caught on fire, so I guess needs must.

And this is better than the last time we didn't have heat in the middle of winter. That one was due to a power outage on account of a fallen tree also knocking over a power pole, and that took three days to fix and the winter was even colder than this one. This time we have space heaters and a working oven to make hot food and a working dryer to heat blankets. So it could be a hell of a lot worse. I'm just still unhappy.

But I also met my current root canal dentist, and he seems pretty nice and all that practice does is root canals, so I have to believe they know what they're doing. And we topped up the spices that need topping up, and we got more catnip bananas for the cats because for some reason every single cat in the house is only mildly interested in catnip mice, but will absolutely go wild over catnip bananas. I don't know, I just provide the bananas.

Work has been done, I got to sleep in today which gave me some strength to deal with everything, I get to sleep in tomorrow because I've done everything that doesn't involve taking things to standup meeting and going "I need another pair of eyes on this, it's driving me batshit." I feel like I've accomplished some other things but I can't remember what the hell they are. Got cats fed on time, maybe. Got cats and me fed on time, medicated. Picked up my prescription. I got Christmas presents out, I think all of them except the box for the friend who's not going to be home until later, and that's going out in January. I'm keeping my head above water on things I want to get done even if it doesn't necessarily feel like it. There will be better days than this, and there have been worse. So it's going to be okay.

comments

kittydesade @ 2023-12-04T22:52:00

2023-12-05T03:54:08Z

I am exhausted. Fulfilled, I feel productive, I actually feel a little weirdly calm? Comfortable in myself? But also goddamn exhausted. Let me explain. No, there is too much, let me sum up.

So, I filled out my bullet journal (most of the way) for the year ahead and the month of December. And somehow in the last few days I've actually been keeping up with it, recording things down, and it's having a positive reinforcement effect. So over the weekend I was thinking of ... who I want to be, except I'm already pretty happy with who I am, so maybe more how to optimize myself. And how to do it in a way that doesn't involve fixing things with buying stuff I won't wear or use, or taking on too much at one time. And I went to bed thinking, okay, tomorrow I'm going to get up and throw on some makeup and we're going to go grocery shopping, and then I'll sit down and do this work...

And that would have worked a lot better if I'd been able to get to sleep on time. I lay there going over that, telling myself stories in my head, contemplating "hmm I could knit my own vests and socks", listening to music, trying to get to sleep any which way and failing because every time I started to fall asleep my husband would start snoring, one of the cats would walk over me, or once my husband rolled over and tried to hold my hand. I don't even know if he was awake. But it woke me up, and argh.

And then of course this morning I woke up after, how many hours of sleep? Four. Four and a half hours of sleep maybe, and I did in fact throw on some makeup and went grocery shopping and did the rest of the errands and then got home and went to work and tried to finish up in time to have a nap except I also had to call the endodontist and make an appointment for ~~a secret plan to fight inflation~~ root canal and I didn't get ahold of anyone, so closing time at that office came around and then I decided I was going to go for a nap because clearly no one was going to call me except they did.

So I got a lot done! I feel fulfilled! I feel pretty good in that way! And I am also fucking exhausted. And I resent being this exhausted on a freaking Monday with the whole rest of the week ahead of me. Ugh.

But I am going to wrap this up and note that things are trending in the way that I want them to as far as my me is concerned, and then I am going to top up the kitty food and water bowls and go the fuck to sleep. And hope tomorrow is less chaotic.

comments

kittydesade @ 2023-12-02T20:35:00

2023-12-03T01:37:58Z

It's December. Why is it December. Where does the time even GO?

We still haven't bought a new car, although I think the boy is finally ready to start looking. We were supposed to start looking today but we both got vaccinated yesterday (covid for him and flu for me) and he got the covid vaccine reaction where one feels like one's been hit by a convoy of trucks, so not much happened except for eating and sitting on the couch and occasionally napping. We'll see about tomorrow, or even Monday since he has Monday off.

I'm setting up next year's bullet journal and hoping this time to actually keep track of all the things I'm building trackers for, as opposed to last year when the trackers just sat unfilled in the beginning of the journal. Things like, oh, savings. Garden tasks. Reading lists. I did actually do some reading and gardening and saving money (I've gotten MUCH better about putting money in savings or investments as soon as I get paid) but I never wrote it down. I need to write it down, or make a better try at it anyway.

We had some drama with the electrics last weekend, but the electricians came out and said we did not have an electrical fire brewing in the outlet, and we haven't noticed the fishy smell (I did not know electrical fires smelled like fish) since the one night, so... I have no idea. And then the downstairs thermostat wouldn't kick on the boiler for the heat, though whatever it was didn't seem to affect the upstairs thermostat so we still had heat and now... oddly, it seems to be working. So. A whole lot of drama and I have no idea what to make of all of this. Except that electrical fires are now going to bother me and keep bothering me for a while. I remembered at some point over the week that I'd actually been in an electrical fire at one point, although everyone was evacuated safely and no one got hurt just scared. I'm pretty sure that contributes some to the edginess about the electrics. But, realistically, everything's been fine for years and every time the electricians look at it they go "eh, don't see anything awful" besides whatever it is they've come to fix. Burned outlet. Power box yanked off the wall because a tree took down a power pole. You know, the usual.

I have decided that this year for NaNoEdMo (National Novel Editing Month, which should come some time after National Novel Writing Month, but not necessarily the direct month after) I am in fact scrapping my entire Nano novel and doing it over again for Camp Nanowrimo, this time properly and with an outline. I tried completely pantsing it this year and I don't know if it was the novel I was trying to write or my style or a combination of both but it did NOT work. I ended up with about 2.5 pieces of two different companion novels. Don't like it. Not going to keep it. I do like the world and the characters though, I'm going to keep them. Just, also to start it again with an outline and some sketches and notes and things. In April.

My labs came back, which I didn't expect them to do until Monday. My fasting glucose is fine and I don't have diabetes, which for some reason was also tested this time (maybe it didn't get done at my yearly physical? Or maybe I just didn't notice because usually when I give blood for my thyroid it's in the early morning when I haven't eaten breakfast anyway and this one time it was after lunch) but the bad news is my thyroid is... less active again. What the fuck. It was overactive only eight weeks ago! So annoying. So inexplicable. I'm going to go through my collection of half-full bottles of thyroid pills now to see what the hell my last dosage was and then look up if there's a dose in between or if we're just going to do this dance regularly for months. Ugh.

Not much else of interest going on. Which is fine. I like it when things are only mildly interesting.

comments

kittydesade @ 2023-11-13T01:27:00

2023-11-13T06:28:36Z

I had a realization the other day when I was looking around the "post" feature to see if I'd been using the beta screen or what, if I was going to have to get used to another interface. And that realization is that I joined LJ in either college or just out of college, and I was on DeadJournal before that, meaning I have been on some LiveJournal or another type of site for about twenty years.

That's a lot of years. That's especially a lot of years in Internet Platform time. I don't know what to do with that realization. That's a hell of a lot of years.

Didn't catch up on Nanowrimo as much as I wanted to do over the weekend. Didn't actually get done as much as I wanted to do, but I did get a fair bit done.

(of course now I'm up an hour past my bedtime, but mainly because we had a blood sugar scare with Murdock after his doctor's appointment and I want to be sure his blood sugar isn't tanking after his evening insulin.)

And I'm staying somewhat organized. And... I don't know, things? Stuff? I have so much work to do tomorrow, I meant to get more of it done this weekend and instead I spent yesterday with a head cold.

I tried fussing around with a pasta bake recipe and I think I got it good enough to improve on for a second try without feeling like I'm wasting any ingredients. It'd be better as filled pasta shells, definitely, but I don't have large pasta shells right now. I do still need to make the liquid solution for the macaroni and cheese bake. Which is amazing. I freaking love it. I also got some better cheesees for it. And I didn't get around to trying the spinach dip recipe that I intend to adulterate to take out, what was it? Mushrooms (which are less objectionable, just not to my taste) and fried onion rings (seriously, what even)? Something, there were a few weird things in there. But I can try that either next weekend or later in the week. I'm really enjoying the single serving casserole dishes as hot lunches, especially if half of it's frozen and slowly defrosted over the course of the day. Advantages of working from home.

I don't know, not much else is going on. The wildfires are blessedly coming under control, the closest one to me hasn't grown in days while the containment level has gone steadily up. Another couple fires are either 100% or 95% contained. As of today's summary, the Cherokee fire was reported as having not grown in 24 hours, which is the first day that's happened since it started, and hopefully they can get that under control. I'm having a lot less panic about the whole thing, and it looks like we'll escape without too much loss of structures and I don't think any loss of life? I hope.

At any rate, things are quieter than they have been. I have a dentist appointment later this week and I'm hopeful that's all the excitement we'll have. That's as much excitement as I prefer.

comments

kittydesade @ 2023-11-10T14:23:00

2023-11-10T19:26:30Z

Goddamn I really need to get better about writing in here on a regular basis. Today what spurred this on was the semi-panic rising about tumblr maybe going down. I say semi-panic because for some people it's panic and for other people it's that Ben Affleck smoking a cigarette and looking 1000% done with everything gif.

( A fair bit of rambling, and later on there's a bit about a cat doing what cats do to a mouse. )

comments

kittydesade @ 2023-10-20T23:45:00

2023-10-21T04:14:09Z

Things have been way too hectic this week. Work has indeed picked up, which isn't a bad thing, it's still within the realm of what I can get done, just closer to a full time job in terms of time spent. I'm making as much or a little over what I was given to understand I would make when I started, so that's fine. And my contract was just renewed for two more years! Which is great, I love my job. Being on contract makes me a little skittish, but I love my job.

There's been some awfulness too. ( Pet death, not mine ) Even if it wasn't a personal awfulness, it was still an awfulness. Not really how I wanted to spend my Wednesday.

But. Contract renewed for two years, I'm very excited about that and I need to call my Mom and my aunt and tell them. And I am now eligible to be sponsored to take the CPACC exam, which I have of course promptly started building up a study plan and collecting notebooks and study materials for. There is so freaking much material. There are also practice exams, which I need to figure out how to avail myself of, and courses I could take if I wanted to though I'm not sure I do want to exactly. There's a content outline. There's plenty of stuff to go on. I'm excited! And a little nervous. It's been a long time since I've studied anything that didn't have to do with code. I've collected my pens, I've written up sort of an outline based on their content outline and with some notes about the things I think I'll end up having to learn, and I've ordered a Trapper Keeper to hold all my notes because apparently they still exist. Which just delights me. Trapper Keepers! I'm ten years old again.

The continuing adventures of Felix Doe, International Cat of Mystery point towards it becoming more comfortable around us. It was waiting for us to come out with breakfast this morning, on the front stoop. That's a first. The boy still thinks we can trap it, I think we're going to either need to use a box trap or maybe some kind of fish net, or just do this the slow way and make friends with it. Probably the latter. I think he wants to think we can trap it because if we make friends with it it's never leaving the house. He thinks. I... don't know. What I'd like to do is get it into the house and then bring around the family who thought it might be their lost cat, and see. But so far it's sticking around, it's come to see us as food and shelter, so at least it's not in much danger.

I want to get a bunch of house cleaning and mini painting done this weekend, but after this week it might just end up being a weekend for resting. We'll see. I still have some of Jamestown to watch, I don't know how restful that will be, I need to find a quieter show. Or some cartoons. Or something.

comments

kittydesade @ 2023-10-11T23:38:00

2023-10-12T03:41:31Z

I probably should be working on Treason's Crusade right now in the last hour or so I have before I should go to bed, and yet I'm going to write a Dreamwidth entry because I am very excited about my new dip pens.

So I'm for some reason (friend tides tending that way I think) getting back into fountain pens and fountain pen inks, and while I do have a number of inks and a couple of Platinum Preppy fountain pens that I'd actually forgotten I had, as well as a manuscript cartridge pen with multiple nibs that I may actually just give away, I also have one Manuscript or Speedball (I think it's Speedball) dip pen. I've been using it to try out inks but honestly it's a bit scratchy and now that I've tried other dip pens I'm even more annoyed by the scratchiness. So I purchased a number of other dip pens, both as single unit dip pens (or nibs/holders that came packaged together) and as nibs with one handle.

The first one I tried was the single unit dip pen by Midori, one of their MD Paper line, and holy crap it was my favorite of the bunch even having tried out the other two that also came today. I got several lines written with one dip, a truly impressive amount of writing, and it writes a nice fine line. It is so smooth on the paper. It's simple, it's easy to hold, the only thing is that you can't replace the nib. But, honestly, I'm not sure I even mind that. It's got a price point of $26 which is not bad for a very smooth, very efficient writing utensil, especially one like a dip pen.

The second one I tried was the Kakimori pen nib with a nib holder, and this one ended up being my least favorite of the bunch. It only wrote a few lines before it ran out of ink, I think because it also deposits more ink on the page per stroke than the Midori, if that makes sense. Kakimori does make a couple other pen nibs, a sort of tubular arrow point shape thing, but they were out of stock so I haven't tried them yet. This one was a bit scratchy, though still much less so than the Speedball. I would easily use this over the Speedball. This was also the most disappointing because the nib was $26 and the holder was $33, so all told an impressive almost $60 for a mediocre dip pen experience. Though the holder can be used, I think, for a number of other people's nibs, so that investment may yet prove out.

The third one was between the first two, the Sailor Hocoro. I keep wanting to type Horoco, I think because it reminds me of the wind. The Sailor Hocoro holds about as much ink as the Midori, but it has a nib with a curve to it and a broader point and it definitely takes some getting used to. The design is intended to give the options of various line widths, and it does do that, but it takes some getting used to. I think I figured out how to use it to make the kind of line I want when I'm writing in English cursive, and I may play around with the nib using some other alphabets later. We'll see. This one I got in a special pack with a new Sailor Ink, a sample bottle with a Hocoro pen, for $26. My understanding is that the pen itself is actually cheaper than that.

Overall I'm quite excited about the whole experience. I actually also have no idea what I'll write with dip pens, if anything, primarily I was using my dip pen before for artwork. But it was still fun to play with new toys, especially in two out of three cases pretty frugal toys. I'm quite pleased. And I feel very scholarly, in a writing magic spells on scrolls in a fantasy world kind of a way.

comments

kittydesade @ 2023-10-09T22:01:00

2023-10-10T02:10:39Z

I get the feeling this is the right dose. I woke up, actually I woke up early, ended up getting up with my husband a half hour later, showered, got dressed, had breakfast, did some Duolingo, got the cat medicated, got me medicated, got the outside cat fed, got a couple things picked up. Made some hot chocolate. Passed back out for a couple hours then cleared a handful of things off of my slate that had been lingering last week since I was getting 2-4 hours of sleep a night. Picked up my meds refills, fed the cat again, did laundry, did some exercise, did some more coding, did the daily tarot spread, put some stuff away, and started dinner. I haven't been this productive in definitely more than a couple weeks. I'm not sure how much more, and given that the last couple weeks have involved 1) very overactive thyroid and 2) sudden pet death there are sort of extenuating circumstances for me becoming a potato, but. Well, yeah. This seems to be the right meds dosage.

So at least things are better on that front. I'm trying to drag myself back into the habit of writing daily and in the habit of writing fiction in general, but since it's only been a couple weeks instead of a few years I don't think it'll be that hard. I just. I'm also in the middle of getting caught up on a lot of crap, including Inktober. I meant to have this be WIPtober too, and then I got behind on everything. Maybe it still can be. IDK. Maybe it still can be and I'll just focus on one WIP, like Treason's Crusade, and get that done.

(I'll talk about Treason's Crusade later when it's not 10pm and I'm trying to get things done before bed.)

I also haven't started Inktober technically, but I have the sketch of the first one done, which is a bit of a relief to get that started. My sort of theme for this Inktober is to do biological drawings of Creechurs, as tumblr calls them. Basically I'm mashing two or more animals together visually and making a drawing of it. My first one was a bat/horse/gerbil, which amounts to more of a hammer-headed fruit-bat with dik dik legs? and a round belly? But it looks pretty creechur-like. Second one is going to be more challenging, a peacock/rhino, and then I also have corgi/quokka, a god of worms, an armored bird (so like an anklyosaurus/ or armadillo/bird), and something crossed with a hippo, I wrote that down somewhere. I'm looking forward to trying to sketch it, and I was going to try and ink the first one tonight, but time and things to catch up on got away with me, see also the list upwards of all the things I got done today. So. I'll work on getting sketches done tonight and then take some time tomorrow to ink things. I might fill my rapidographs though, and do some practice drawing with them to see how I feel. I haven't worked with them yet. I inherited a set from my uncle, who used to use them for technical drawing. I've wanted to use them for a while, I've just always been too intimidated to.

Once again hoping that I'll be lucky and I'll have a few weeks to chill and catch up on things, do Inktober, work on what I'm going to do for Nanowrimo, before the next crisis happens. I know we need to buy a new car as this one's slowly giving up the ghost, but as far as I know the rest of us are in good health and there's no other things about to break. Well, my cholesterol keeps worrying my doctor, but other than that I think the rest of us are in good health. Cholesterol schmolesterol anyway. I'm working on eating better though. Less mac and cheese, more vegetable soups. It was more salads, but now it's heading in towards winter and I don't actually want much in the way of cold foods. So, vegetable soups, roast veg, warm soppy grains. Less pizza rolls and velveeta. And less stress. Please, less stress that makes me want to eat like a ninja turtle.

comments

kittydesade @ 2023-10-07T22:29:00

2023-10-08T02:31:04Z

I suppose as weeks go I've had worse, but I could really have used some room to breathe there. Thank you all for your kind comments. I am hugging you all in my mind.

So, last Sunday I had a seemingly random bout with insomnia, which I sort of put down to it had been a week since Maggie-cat had suddenly died and grief will hit you out of nowhere. But then on Monday I started overheating badly in bed, everywhere my body touched the bed felt burning hot. And I itched. A lot. And I couldn't sleep partly because of this and also partly just... I couldn't sleep? It got worse and worse until I finally messaged my doctor and asked about hot flashes and menopause. I figured that was what it was, all things considered and my age and all. It was also only a couple weeks shy of time for my six month bloodwork, so I would go in for that and they'd do a few additional tests and see what was what.

Come to find out it wasn't menopause at all. A normal level of TSH for your average human is between .4 and 4 units. Mine was at .15. Which is unusual because for the last six, seven, something like that years my thyroid has been slowly getting more and more useless, and my synthetic thyroid hormone dosage has been going up and up. And suddenly I was taking too much! Which can cause, wait for it... overheating, itchy skin, and insomnia.

So I took my first of the new dosage today and I do feel rather better, and we'll see how this goes. I go in for a follow up blood check in six weeks. I do kind of feel better, I hope I'm sleeping better tonight too, I've been largely useless for the entire week and I am super behind on Inktober, for which I had grand plans this year. As always? I can still catch up but I really need to get my ass in gear over it. The idea is animal mashups, the first one I'm doing is a bat/gerbil/horse type mashup, and I can even picture it, but I need to sit down and draw it and today's the first day I've felt like I've had any focus. I've spent most of it on doing ink swatches, getting back to practicing my Cherokee, and trying to catch the maybe-feral maybe-stray cat living in and around our house.

But, with any luck, this will be the first in a long string of relax, ordinary, feeling-good days to come and I can get back to working on all the things I want to be working on. Like writing. And drawing. And getting actual day job work done, let us not talk about how many sites I have on my slate right now. Fortunately my boss seems to think I'm handling myself okay. Or rather she hasn't asked if I need any help or what's going on. I don't know if it's TMI to go "um, I need my meds adjusted, but it's fine, everything's fine, we're all fine here." It's been a very long time since I've worked with Not Family.

Oh, and I got the covid vaccine while I was getting my blood checked for hormones. I opted to get just covid rather than covid and flu given how shitty I was already feeling, which, given that the covid vaccine has extremely angered my left lymph node plus a low grade fever, definitely feels like the right answer. Next vaccine can go with the next blood work.

comments

kittydesade @ 2023-09-27T00:06:00

2023-09-27T04:09:01Z

I didn't want to write this entry, but if I'm going to actually keep a presence here I suppose I should talk about it here too. On Sunday night we were naffing around the house, getting ready for a blackout scheduled for Monday so the power company could do some equipment upgrades or something, and I went upstairs to try and find my iPhone batteries. I found Maggie on the floor, legs stretched out like they should be stiff although they weren't very, tongue hanging out of her mouth. For a second I thought she was dead and then I picked her up and she yowled, like she was mad. I'd be mad too in that situation I guess? I called my husband, actually called on the phone because I didn't know if he had his head phones on. He came upstairs and took a look at her and we basically went "ER?" "ER."

We took her to the vet ER and I held her out to the nearest person who came out of the back in scrubs and said "Seizure cat" and they took her back immediately, directing people to take our details and to take a medical history. Within about ten minutes or less they had us back in a room. Within fifteen minutes they said they didn't think she would recover from this. Her blood sugar had indeed tanked, her blood pressure had also tanked, I asked how long it would take to do bloodwork just in case it was another low blood sugar seizure (she'd had one of those in February, which she'd recovered from just fine and she's had excellent quality of life since then as far as we and our regular vet can tell) and then the vet came back from, I guess getting the vials together for bloodwork to tell us that she thought Maggie was trying to pass on, and that she wouldn't survive taking bloodwork. So we gave the okay and we said goodbye to her. When we got back the time elapsed between when I called my husband to come upstairs and when we pulled back into the driveway with an empty carrier was 75 minutes.

It was the ... well, the second easiest euthanasia decision to make, the first easiest was Zeus because he was actually on his way out and if the vet had told us "he can pass naturally, he's not in any pain now" we would have just held him until. But definitely the second easiest, because this seizure did look much worse than the low blood sugar one, she really did feel in my arms like her blood pressure had tanked (which I know from holding Zeus, who also had that, albeit with less seizure and more slowly fading over a few hours). And after the few months of health problems last fall we knew she'd taken some damage from her diabetes going all over the place. First her insulin dosage was too low, then within a couple months it was too HIGH, then it was too low again (although thankfully we didn't find this out with an ER visit, just with a regular checkup). So we knew there were problems, and we knew something like this could happen. We just didn't quite expect it to happen within 75 minutes.

It feels more real today, Tuesday night, than it did on Monday. Monday was hard, and I was glad to take the day off because of power company issues and not have to explain to my boss "yeah my cat died and I'm a bit shattered." I actually think she'd understand, she has dogs herself, but I still feel weird saying I might need a couple days, and having a day of enforced doing nothing, because of course the internet was down completely and I ended up laying on the bed, listening to music, and napping in and out of consciousness. That kind of helped. My husband had to go back to work, but his work demands attention more forcefully and immediately so maybe that helped too?

And there's also Cassius. Maggie never warmed to him the way she bonded to Michelle but he adored her, he bunted her and tried to get her to lick-groom him and tried to get her to accept him lick-grooming her. I found him sitting in the spot where she'd seized tonight, and according to my husband (who sees him more in the evening when he's getting ready for bed earlier) he sits there a lot of an evening. I don't think he's waiting for her to come back, I think he knows she's died, I think he's grieving along with the rest of us and I wish I could do more to help. We're giving him extra cuddles, for now.

(There's also a part of me that's superbly bitter at the universe, wondering if the appearance of Felix Doe, Cat of Mystery is the universe's way of balancing out that sudden loss of one cat. Bitter. And a little bit angry.)

Other than that, not that that isn't a lot of "that", things are going well I guess? But it hurts, and I'm still looking around for her when I turn around after a shower (she used to jump in the tub and catch the water that dripped from the faucet in the last couple seconds), when I go into the kitchen (and she would follow me expecting to be fed wet food), when I'm walking around the water bowl (she used to lay down by it, I think because after two rounds of getting hospitalized for dehydration it was sort of a comfort thing). It hurts. And Cassius hurts and I want to make it better, and it's awful.

comments

kittydesade @ 2023-09-17T17:14:00

2023-09-17T21:23:14Z

Really, really not enjoying the whole covid levels spiking thing right now. I want to be able to go to the grocery store without worrying, I want to be able to feel like I can go to the salon and spend five hours getting my hair dyed again, I want to be able to go to lunch with a friend. Right now I don't feel like I can do any of those things, and yes that may be too much concern but also I haven't spent the last few years plague free by not being careful. And definitely not to finally get it now.

On the plus side and for the salon twitchiness specifically, I have finally opened my shipment from Arda wigs and while a couple of the pieces aren't all that useful to me, the long bright blue piece is pretty much perfect for my uses. I think I'm going to place an order for a couple more in different colors, depending on what my bank account looks like now that I've paid some bills, and then get a few more pieces so when shit like this happens I can just shove a couple pieces of hair extensions in and still have punk rock hair color. Not entirely sure what to do about the bottom of my hair being faded and slightly gross, but maybe I just don't do anything about it and let it go. Save me a fussing at the salon when it turns green or something from the bleach interaction.

Other than the covid levels I guess, on a personal level, things aren't going that badly. I just took a look at my bank account and yeah, okay, I can place a small order for some wig pieces. I did a bunch of stress buying too but before I did any of that I put a chunk of money into my savings, and I'm actually feeling pretty proud about that. I also cut down some on stress buying, I got a couple more notebooks and some inkpads to replace the crappy ones I first bought that don't hold shit, and pre-ordered the tarot journal I have now. Not as bad as it could have been! Plus did I mention I put a chunk of money into savings first? I think that's actually going to be the better habit than to try and curtail grabbing for shinies when I'm stressed. That way the number I'm looking at to determine, can I buy indulgent things or not is after I've saved some and not before.

I really shouldn't be stressed about my job. I am, I shouldn't be, I get top marks in my code evaluations and I get QA people writing on their checks of my work that they love working with me, of course my contract's going to get extended. Right? Of course right. What I should be worrying about is studying for that certification test that I need to take, and ... well, I don't know, I'm worried about all of it. I want my contract to be renewed, i want to get a full time position there actually, and I want to study for my certification, and I'm fussing because it's not a sure thing and we still need to buy a new damn car. Argh.

Not much else is going on. Felix Doe the Mystery Cat seems to know what a trap is, we've put out food three times so far in the trap and it hasn't been sprung, but every time we put out food outside of the trap it comes and eats twice a day at least. So, fine, we'll do this the hard way and try to make friends with it. We do have the advantage that there are places for the cat to hide indoors built into the house, crawlspaces entrances big enough for a cat and so on, and for whatever reason they seem to enjoy running around under there, so we're just feeding it and giving it fresh water and being patient. We've gotten close enough to see a couple distinguishing marks. Hopefully if it isn't someone's it will quickly become someone's. Tailypo is definitely someone's, every time we see it it's all sleek and well fed looking. Probably someone's up the street, we see it walking in a specific direction a lot. I enjoy its visits but I do wish its human would keep it at home, cars go way too fast down this street. This is the most interesting thing in my life: my cats. It makes for boring journal entries, I think, but also a very nice life. (If only that were true, but I feel like the looming threat of covid is in everyone's life, so... something.)

comments

kittydesade @ 2023-09-11T21:27:00

2023-09-12T01:29:21Z

And the cat drama continues! Still largely drama of the outside cat variety, the most drama there is inside the house is one cat getting pissy because another cat wants to play and the first cat doesn't want to, so a corrective slap is issued. Outside, on the other hand, I've come to find there's a second black cat sniffing around the front of the house. The second black cat is not a Felix Doe as far as I can tell, it's known to us as Tailypo because it has a bobbed no-tail. (The tailypo is an Appalachian folktale with a wikipedia entry.) Tailypo came around today, sniffed around the front stoop, and casually walked off towards the neighbor's yard. Tailypo also, to my eyes and considering it came up pretty close to the front door, very healthy looking and well-fed, so I'm less worried about that one needing to get caught and returned or adopted out.

But Felix Doe is still coming around, I saw it with its feathery tail after Tailypo had left, so tomorrow we're going to try and trap it. From there we take it to the 24 hour vet (because by the time there's a car at the house again our regular vet will be closed) and get it wanded for a chip, if there's no chip I'm going to request that they vaccinate the silly bugger, assuming that won't result in adverse effects, and we'll possibly host it long enough to get it fixed. And then we will be adopting it out because there is no more room at the in, Felix Doe, I'm sorry, there just isn't. I'm sure you're very sweet. But no.

Other than that I can't really say much has been going on. I've finished the Singing Hills series as far as it's come, which is good timing because the new book is supposed to come out tomorrow. I'm now on to A Deadly Education, which is the first of Naomi Novik's actual published books that I've ever read. It's all a bit of an odd feeling, but I'm trying to take a more active approach to actually reading books now.

I am also having a problem with going to sleep before 2am, which is partially my fault of staying up till about 12:30 and also partially just I can't seem to actually fall asleep once I go to bed, despite being tired. I lay there and almost drift off and then I jerk back awake again. As a first step I'm going to try throwing some valerian at the problem an hour or two before I actually want to fall asleep. It usually works, and for once I'm not having any trouble staying asleep, so that should be fine.

Yeah. other than that life has largely been boring, which is nice. I like it when the biggest drama in my life is oh no I forgot to take some meat out to defrost for dinner, or, oh shoot the bread I was going to eat for lunch has gone moldy, or oh great a hairball I found with my foot.

I was too tired to do a bunch of things I've meant to do today, so a short list of things I want to get done over the next couple of days (other than trap the cat) and then we'll call it good. Let's see. I want to make a tumblr post to give away some copies of She Wolf and Cub by Lilith Saintcrow. I want to read over another Blasted Lands story and make a list of all the concepts and characters and places I need to write up. I want to draw out the map of the city for Bones of the Labyrinth. I want to make some progress on my American Sign Language course. I want to read some Gatsby for the novella and some Deadly Education for my own pleasure. I want to sit down and paint some minis. I think that's good enough to be going on with for the rest of the week.

comments

kittydesade @ 2023-09-07T20:15:00

2023-09-08T00:17:07Z

More cat drama. My household is just a neverending font of cat drama.

For a surprise, though, this isn't household cats drama. This is the drama where I had put some cat food out in amidst the seeds for the crows and jays, and a couple days ago I was passing by the door and there was a cat going through the seeds and nibbling up the cat food. A freaking cat. Long black hair, pretty skinny.

So I put a small bowl of cat food out and it ate all of it so cleanly not a crumb was left, the bowl was a bit sticky with cat spit. My guess is that it's lost from its humans, given that; we've put up posts on NextDoor and Facebook and a couple other local cat groups with pictures of the poor boy. We've gotten a couple inquiries from people with lost cats but they both think it's too far away from their home for it to be their cat. I think they don't know how far a cat can or will travel (or be driven by hostiles) but we're going to give it a few days, examine the cat's behavior, and then try and humane trap it and take it for chip check and possibly vaccinations. If it doesn't have a chip, well, it's a single cat, it will go to the Humane Society or to one of the local rescue orgs to be adopted out. We are full up on cats. No room at the inn. We have reached cat totality.

Poor kitty, though. I get the feeling it's starving and scared. I also get the impression that it knows where the safe places in the house are, the crawlspace that goes under the house and into the garage. So hopefully it can have a short rest here and get some food and water before we trap it and freak it out and try and reunite it with its people, should it have any.

Other than that I suppose we've been blessedly drama free. Work continues apace, and no sooner have I gotten one pain in the ass site mostly done than another one is upon me. Though this one at least is less than half the size of the other one, so hopefully it won't be that much of a pain in the ass.

I've started a pen and paper (and stamps and stickers and washi tape) reading journal, and unlike the last couple of times I thought about it I've decided not to constrain myself to 'reading journal of this year'. Because I'll get into a reading slump and then I'll feel the pressure of "Oh no I only have six weeks left to read thirty books" and then I just won't do any of it. This way I'll just be filling in little book bingos and writing down words about parts I liked in the books I read, and making cute little drawings and pictures. And that'll be nice.

Less nice: dental cleanings. Car purchases. Well, purchase. Car purchasing. It promises to be a long and twitchy process, especially given the amount of computers that have gone into cars over the last thirteen years. Not looking forward to it. I would like a car that has a limited amount of moving parts and the only computer in it is the radio/mp3 player/cd player maybe. And yet. Somehow I do not think that is an option in our future. Well, we'll see. And in the meantime, I have been making progress on some writing things, which is deeply refreshing. More on that I think when I'm sure it's become an ongoing thing?

comments

kittydesade @ 2023-09-03T19:05:00

2023-09-03T23:07:46Z

Well. This weekend was rather a bust.

I had grand intentions of going to a friend's wedding yesterday, but that definitely didn't happen. Friday evening the boy got news from not one but two co-workers that they'd gotten contacted by the hospital to let them know they'd been exposed to covid. In these cases it usually means that a patient was transferred from intake or the ER or wherever up to their floor before the covid test came back, and then once the patient was ensconced in a bed and checked in they discovered the patient was covid+. And since the patient hadn't been checked in with that knowledge, no one was using the full covid precautions, whatever those are.

So, we told my friend, and she said "Come anyway, mask and distance and we should all be okay." and then in the morning the boy had developed symptoms. So no. We would not be coming after all, we did in fact order grocery for delivery (well, I did), and we would be holing up for the foreseeable. And now I'm just irritated in general. Actually now I'm almost more irritated because it's starting to look as though it was a different virus and not covid at all, although obviously I'm relieved that it might not be covid. And to be fair, a virus is a terrible wedding present whether it's the plague or no. I guess I'm just resentful not to get to see my friends and all.

But it's nice to have a weekend of enforced doing nothing, in a way. A long weekend, I was looking forward to having a good two days of doing nothing anyway. Now I have sort of a weekend of doing nothing but also a weekend of keeping house by myself, sort of. I don't know whether I'm happy or upset about these developments. Especially given the state of the kitchen.

Whatever! I am having a nice weekend of reading Furious Heaven. I am having a nice weekend of reading about the Ottoman Empire and doing some writing work on a couple of projects. I am having a different kind of stress about finishing the stupid Vampire Mosquito story, that's not great but it's not too awful either, I think. I'm writing. I like that I'm writing. I like that I'm coming up with things. (I hate the names I can come up with but I can always fix that in post.) I'm afraid, ironically, that it's a terrible horror story. I feel like I don't know how to write horror anymore. And so I hate it but goddammit I'm going to finish it anyway, and then I can figure out how to fix it.

I think one of the big problems here is while I like horror, it can require a fair bit of emotional strength for me to watch that I just don't have these days. I overempathize with the lead characters, to whom terrible things usually happen, and I have a bad habit of imagining what happens to the offscreen characters like the main characters' pets or loved ones or what will their parents think when their mangled body comes home, or other things like that. I can't just separate horror material out of context and enjoy it as much as I used to. So... less horror intake, less confidence in my ability to write horror. Me going "ugh" a lot at the screen. I'm planning on trying to finish it today though. I hope I can.

Finish that today, do a bit of mini painting tonight. Or tomorrow. I have Labor Day (Monday) off work, even though I technically don't have any kind of set schedule at all as long as I get things done in a timely fashion. But the point being, no one will expect me to turn in anything on Monday, so I can take some time and paint some minis then and do some more writing and some more reading, and relax. And I'm deliberately not listing off all the projects I want to do or the books I want to read or the things I want to work on because I'm relaxing. That means laying down and just reading what I've been reading. Or writing things that make me smile. Or painting minis because it calms me down and it also makes me smile, and then I have painted minis. I painted my nails today, a sort of sparkly reddish pink. These things spark joy, and that's a thing we all need more of these days. I will be mindful of the things that give me joy, and I will do more of them.

comments

kittydesade @ 2023-08-30T18:40:00

2023-08-30T22:41:45Z

I said to myself the other day that I wanted to get a couple good nights' of sleep and wake rested, and when I said that I did not mean "Stay up until 2am comforting Faye and getting her out of the main house, out from under the furniture, and into the office." And then waking up at 6 with the husband's alarm, trying to go back to sleep for an hour and a half, failing because I was too hungry to sleep, eating food, finally falling back to sleep around 9, and then waking up somewhere close to noon. That sucked. I actually did sleep somewhat last night, but I'm still fairly zonked.

(Although having taken a look at my work log/invoice that may not only be the lack of sleep, it may also be that it's been a rough couple of weeks at work. Yikes.)

Spike and Faye have reached a point in the household where, typically, we put a gate up to prevent Murdock from going into the office and peeing over things to let everyone know that they're his (he's the absolute worst about that with new arrivals, and since he's one of our oldest at 14 there have been a number of new arrivals) and then they can jump over the gate or creep out from behind it because it's not wedged in the doors, it's just propped up against the doorway. This keeps Murdock out because he's too old and tired to be inclined to jump anywhere except maybe onto the radiator in winter. It lets Spike and Faye wander around the house, though in Faye's case that usually means "bolt under some furniture" and in Spike's case that usually means "go into the kitchen and take a nap on top of the above-fridge cabinets." When they're not doing that they can stare at the other cats and slowly get used to life in the household. But they get locked up in the office at night when the humans are asleep and can't rapidly intervene in any fight that may occur. And that's very difficult when Faye's being scared out of her wits by a thunderstorm.

Last night in case of thunderstorm I just turned off the desktop when I was heading for bed and closed the door, rather than waiting to see if the predicted storm occurred and crawling out of bed to go turn it off just in case. That's probably the wiser course when there's a storm predicted for the evening, but it didn't occur to me the other night. Live and learn, I suppose.

Now I'm a day or so behind on the chores that I meant to do, but since the essential chores are getting done I don't suppose that matters too much. I've dragged myself through my day job work for a couple days but fortunately I also haven't had much day job work to do. I looked at my invoice for the past couple weeks and thought, hm, actually, that explains the executive dysfunction. There's been a hell of a lot of coding, debugging, testing, examining, poking around, finding problems, writing code, testing the code, tweaking the code. And eventually I need to give myself a break.

(Evidently that break will involve books. A lot of books. Sixteen books, as I count. All non-fiction, histories of various places and things and events and such. I also have more books coming. I have bought a lot of books and I'm going to be very sad when it finally sinks in tomorrow that I don't actually have time to read them all, but right now I'm very happy that I have all of these knowledges at my fingertips.)

Meh, I don't know. I am tired in a way that is more brain tired than sleepy, and here I am trying to force more activity out of my brain. This is a foolish thing and I should stop it right now and just focus on getting the necessary tasks done (like, at the moment, making dinner) and doing whatever it is I want to do at the moment at a gentle pace. Not cramming in all the remaining tasks sideways and trying to speed through everything to get it done. It will get done when it gets done. Blue Wizard Needs Rest Badly.

comments

kittydesade @ 2023-08-28T10:38:00

2023-08-28T14:52:07Z

I know I've been gone for a year or so. Gone completely for a year or so, and only sporadically here before that. There will be no recap of everything that's happened because frankly, a lot of it was pandemic trauma swamped and a lot of it was drowned in either grief or stress or a whole bunch of other things. I marked that it's been a year because I thought, when was the last time I posted? I remember a bunch of condolences when Chelsea died. Oh, I guess it must have been last late July/early August. Well, that's a hell of a way to mark time. Anyway, the point being, I guess over time you will learn about things that have happened. And lately I've been finding myself more in need of setting down a time to ramble into a journal, so hi Dreamwidth! I'm back. I will certainly not be catching up on anything on Dreamwidth and I do not expect anyone to try and catch up with me all at once. Let's do it slowly, over time.

I meant to not go on about how tired I am, but my sleep schedule has been just barely adequate so yes, I am tired. I should probably work a short nap in here somewhere but so far this morning I have done some short gardening while it was cool out, five languages in Duolingo, fed and medicated cats, fed and medicated myself (including with something healthy like an apple and some milk and not just cookie dough made for eating), emptied the new bag of bird food into the bin and then took the bag of trash out, and did it all at a slow pace that would not feel overwhelming. Except for the being tired. I also did take some time to just listen to the birds. That was nice.

( So much rambling, so little inclination to inflict it on others. Yet here I am. )

comments

kittydesade @ 2022-09-13T23:21:00

2022-09-14T04:22:41Z

The problem with living in unprecedented plague-ridden times and also having a thyroid condition is I have no idea if the exhaustion is the lack of sleep from the stress or my thyroid packing it in. I took a trazodone last night to help me sleep but didn't get much more time in the way of sleep, so I'm still not sure if it's lack of sleep or my thyroid. Tonight I have actually managed to get everything I allowed myself to want to do done by now, so I'm going to try and go to bed by midnight, sleep by midnight-thirty, get a good amount of sleep, and see if that helps at all. If it does, probably not my thyroid.

(Even if it is my thyroid my six month checkup is coming up so it shouldn't matter too awfully much.)

The supply chains are freaking me out again, so while I said I was done buying things I did in fact... buy more things. Specifically a few planters/statuary for the office and some more language books for even more languages I have no intention of studying regularly. But I do have intention of studying them. I already have, call it a slightly absurd amount of languages in regular rotation.

comments

kittydesade @ 2022-09-12T23:18:00

2022-09-13T03:29:38Z

I know, I haven't updated in a little while. Nonetheless, DW has done its work in reminding me that six weeks ago (approximate) I found out a friend of mine had suddenly died, and considering the proximity and what's happened since it's not unreasonable for me to have bouts of anxiety, sleeplessness, and emotional exhaustion.

What's happened since? Well, the boy and I both have surgeries scheduled for the next couple of months. One each. My cat Maggie, on the anniversary of her close bonded friend Michelle-kitty's death, decided that drinking regularly was for other cats and ended up in the kitty ER over Labor Day Weekend. We did get her back, though there were a couple of nights we wondered if we'd see her again. They let us say "see you later" (I still refuse to say it was goodbye) before we left her there, after we'd got her checked in, which I appreciated when I thought she was dying and still appreciate, really. But she's better now, her insulin dosage is adjusted and we have a follow-up checkup to make sure she's still doing well. And then, heh, over the weekend I found out a ... friend? Friendly acquaintance? A mutual on Twitter with whom I'd had many conversations, and obviously we knew a bit about each other's lives, he was a comics artist. I say was because he's dead now, too. Abruptly died in his sleep.

So. I'm feeling a little bruised about the brainpan. And I thought I'd had enough time between Events that I'd had time to recuperate, but I guess not.

Have I stopped mini painting since then? I don't think so, but I have stopped a bit, I need to pick it back up again. It's good for me, and I have a huge backlog of things I want to paint, it's just been Hard these last few weeks.

In the meantime I've also been nesting. Since I was pulling out of savings to deal with vet bills and upcoming surgery anyway I pulled a little extra and got some flatpack shelves for books (narrow shelves, so less of a sagging shelf problem) and DVDs/Blu-Rays (much lighter, no sagging problem there), a KVM box so I can also hook up my old computer. I finally got out and set up my portable workstation, which helped when I was at the Emergency Vet's for hours waiting for them to do their thing and decide on a care plan. My keyboard is RGB glowy, my headphones are RGB glowy, I really enjoy it. I've started really cleaning up my office. Drano'd the office sink, which had gotten a bit clogged with cat hair and dirt from knocking over plants. Swept. Scrubbed. Tossed a whole bunch of crap and moved a whole bunch more crap from when I was practically living in here two years ago.

I'm pretty sure the whole nesting and cleaning and entrenching thing is because of the last six weeks worth of death and worry, but ... it's working, I guess? It looks better. It makes me feel better, and I can find stuff easier.

I just want things to calm down. Really, really want things to calm down. I want to go, not weeks, but months with the most exciting thing happening being a new show drops, or a new season of a show. Or I get to do a fun site at work. Or I paint a mini and it comes off really good. That's all the excitement I want in my life right now. Can that happen, universe? Can we do that?

comments

kittydesade @ 2022-07-29T16:50:00

2022-07-29T20:55:35Z

Normally when I say my life is boring right now something happens like a cat gets out for an evening or the boy has an extra special problematic night at work, but this time I said "my life is pleasantly boring" and then Wednesday night I found out that a friend of mine had died in a car crash the day before. The news broke on Facebook and then one of her friends on Facebook brought it to Twitter to let the rest of us know.

It still doesn't feel real. I'd been talking to her a lot more over the last few months than we had in a while, she and her family had gotten kicked out of their house because the landlord wanted to do something else with it, I think, and they spent several months in a motel trying to find a place they could afford. They'd just found a place, were literally on their way there when the accident happened. She was so happy they'd found a place and could have some security for a while. I was going to send her some plants if she had space for a garden or even a window box.

It doesn't feel real, and I can't make sense of any of it, except that it also feels cruel, unfair, and unnecessary.

comments

kittydesade @ 2022-07-27T19:21:00

2022-07-27T23:50:24Z

Only five days between updates this time! And life continues to be not too exciting. The scourge of the menstrual cycle punched me in the stomach on Sunday but the week has been less full of unprecedented system errors and I've been able to get a fair bit of work done. Including some websites that made me scream. Look, all I'm saying is, if you're going to do a site in English for US buyers, you might want to also make sure your back-end code and labels and everything else... is also in English. Not fucking Italian. And ... was that Spanish? Because it really looked like Spanish but for all I know it could look the same in Italian. my Italian isn't THAT good.

The longer I stay in this job the more I scream about people's HTML decisions and yet I know, generally, it isn't an individual decision but the decision of a WYSIWYG website maker. And I don't entirely know how to square that with "make cleaner code you assholes" but well. Strangling gestures.

I'm down to the last four Janissaries to paint, and I've tried out some of the terrain products I have, these gel compounds that I couldn't readily find a recipe to substitute for that are meant to go on a base to quickly mimic sand, lava, dirt, mud, what have you. They do work pretty good, their cure time is not 30 minutes. Vallejo. I am looking at you. But I suspect they meant that as, time to cure enough to be paintable or workable rather than time to cure for full hardness, so I will allow it. Anyway, I am definitely going to use the sand one for most of the janissaries, and put some grass tufts down and maybe a skull of their enemies or something.

I had an exhausted on both our parts conversation with my doctor about what to do with the latest virus making the rounds, what vaccines I should get at my November thyroid check and flu shot. We were both very tired. He tried very hard not to refer to monkeypox guidance as "it's a gay disease so they're only treating gay men" but I get the feeling he, too, was not impressed. But the upshot is no new vaccines for me against anything, unless the guidance changes between now and November. And it wouldn't bother me so much if my husband didn't work in a hospital where periodically he will come home and say "Guess what fun new disease we worked with today!" At least they do have protective gear, and I know he is scrubbing regularly and taking appropriate cleaning precautions.

I have a dentist checkup tomorrow. I don't wanna. I am le tired of humans, this week has made me more tired of humans for some reason and I really don't want to go and deal with some in person. I suppose it's a good idea anyway, being as mouthbones are expensive to maintain and fix after the fact and I do have dental insurance these days. I'm still dealing with the effects from when I didn't, 14-15 years ago. Ugh.

I've also been mainlining murder cozies on various streaming services, this time ones that have been recommended to me. Because I'm out of Midsomer and Death in Paradise and Father Brown and Miss Fisher and ... Grantchester? I think that's it. And I need something nice, predictable-ish, and that isn't trying to push emotional buttons, just give me some decent resting noise for a while. Currently I'm on the Brokenwood Mysteries and while there are aspects of it I'm not really loving, I do love the nearly unique thing they have where the small town characters actually reappear. And there's some continuity of their story, including the gay pharmacist who ran for and if I heard that right was elected mayor, and the bar owner/tender who accidentally murdered someone (just meant to make them sick, not murder them) and is now in jail. And relatives of previous victims have shown up now and again. It's refreshing and kind of nice. And I like the gay pharmacist. I also liked the one guy played by one of the dwarves from The Hobbit who played a Shakespeare-obsessed actor and claimed he'd been in Lord of the Rings with Ian McKellan. Nice bit of meta hilarity there.

So it goes. And so I go to spend the evening painting more Janissaries and probably cackling to myself over whatever they're up to in Brokenwood this time.

comments