Warhead On Legs

Well, I'm exhausted, how about you?

No, seriously. I am full up on emotional trauma, both describing mind and hearing about others'. Bullying because of race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, culture, skin color, hair color, ornamentation, decoration, choice of friends, choice of reading material, or which end you eat your egg from. I do not want to read any more blog posts that make me cry, I do not want to read about any more beatings, rapes, forcible... anything. Even in fiction. I'm done for the moment. And since it's too much to hope that people will sit the fuck down and stop fucking hating on each other for a while, I'm just taking a hiatus from the news in general for a couple of days. Information overload. Unless it's a cute kitty picture with a caption on it, I don't want to know.

(Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but only a slight one. I mean it, folks. The Jag has very little energy left.)

Happy things. I finished the first draft of the damn Desert novel, which means I'm back to hanging around online and doing things in the semi-normal routine. Except Russian this morning, because I'm still fucking exhausted from, well, everything. Japanese and German should go up as per usual, though, and random other stuff. I'm working on a bunch of short stories. I discovered/re-discovered over the last few days that I am way, way out of practice with writing fantasy fiction. I can do urban fantasy; anything that has the backbone of a pre-existing world I can do. Fantasy fiction where I have to make all that shit up? HARD.

So, heh, of course I'm doing that for Nano this year. When have I ever made things easier on myself. I suppose the plus side here is that it's a world I made up years ago, so there's a lot of stuff there

Other happy stuff. They're working on getting the miners from Chile out at the beginning of this week. That'll be good, I'm still worrying a bit about them, but everyone seems hopeful. Yay successful rescues!

I'm doing a couple unprecedented things at work, mostly involving responsibilities with purchase orders. That's cool! I also have to work on the blog posts, which is less cool but also kind of cool. It's more the "yay! work I have to slog through and do but, new work and new responsibilities!" and less the "THIS IS SO AWESOME." I also finished spinning the bamboo over the weekend, which was very very cool. It didn't turn out consistent thickness at all, but it's good practice, I'm getting better, and I don't have to have those samples immediately. And now I have pretty pretty bamboo yarn. That I need to set and soak, but, tonight or tomorrow night.

I have t-shirts for tie-dye experiments. And I need to post all the pictures ever. Pictures from Dragon Con, of my tie-dye, and of the bigass cricket I found in the house the other day. Big as a nickel in the body. We evicted it, because it's warming back up again and because the cats would eat it if it stayed in. Handsome fella, though.

More positive things. I baked cookies over the weekend, because the boy and I were craving cookies, and I taught him how to evaluate an oven before you just set the cookies and the timer and forget about them. We had a fun adventure with charcoal briquette cookies. I got to read Fables, a whole bunch of it thanks to sarcastic_kitty, which was fun and engrossing reading and new to me, which is a whole other level of fun. I now ship Snow and Wolf so hard. And the puppies thing made me think of my own werewolf who's going to be having puppies soon.

So, there's a bunch of happy things. Oh, and I've been indulging in a bit of RP fluff involving Cassie from Push and Murdock from A-Team. There is hugging and cuddling, flying paper airplanes, curling up in trashbags, general lunacy (it's Murdock, if you know anything about the A-Team you know what to expect) and all in all, good fun innocent happy pretendy fun time games. Which is definitely what the doctor ordered right about now.

( 日本語 )

As it turns out, I can, in fact, do stretches and Russian at the same time, as long as it's review. That is just flippin' awesome.

Today is a day of simple pleasures. For instance, the pleasure of being able to pack up and send out people's autographed pictures with materials scavenged from work without having to pay stupid UPS prices for packing materials. No, no one got packing peanuts. Domestic pictures went out today, which is probably the quickest I've ever gotten them out (I still need to send out someone's that I've had since last year. I are bad kitty.) and international ones will probably go out towards the end of the week, on account of needing more frames. Or if you two want to frame them yourselves I can immobilize them in cardboard and send them out. Damn, why do you people all live in the UPS boonies? Also, defy_n_gravity, I don't have an email address for you but since it's relatively close you might actually get yours tomorrow.

Things to do tonight, so I don't forget:
1. Tie-dye
2. Vacuum craft room, if boy hasn't done so already
3. Write my fingers off.
4. German
5. Don't die.
6. So you can rep to your artist.

I'm not sure what to do with this soup. I don't think I'll make it again without going back to the original recipe, because I substituted chunked tomatos for pureed tomatos since that was what I had. And it's tasty, but it's not soup, it's soggy vegetable matter. Tasty soggy vegetable matter! It's like a tiny flood happened in the pantry and a lot of spices and veggies sat together for a few days. Only without the mold. After the second day of experimenting, for future bentos, I think I'll put a bit of wheat flour in when I put it in the bento, and commit adultery on it with a packet of soy sauce when I heat it up at work. That seems to make everything better.

... And that, doctor, was when I realized I have to think at least a little bit in five different languages every weekday. Holy moly mother of fuck. If exercising your brain is good for you and keeps you mentally healthy, I'm training for at least the X games or something.

I really wish being an adult wasn't so hard. Especially an adult in a one-income household. We've got a main room lamp that needs replacing badly, rent is due, and while I'm not financially worried about any of this, we're skating a lot closer to the wire than I really want to be. On the plus side, in a month and a half (two months of billing cycle) my credit card will be entirely paid off, again, so for Christmas I will give me a decent-sized money cushion. But it's still irritating. I'd like to be able to get a new TV, too, so we don't keep running into the problem of wacky aspect ratios for shows that are designed to be watched on the fuckoff big TVs with HD. But that's not going to happen. The other plus side, I guess, is that I've also (apart from the TV) already spent all the fuckloads of money I was going to around the end of the year. And now it's just being very careful, watching what I spend, and paying off the credit card from D*C prep and D*C. ... Ooh, another side effect of prepping this early, not spending 300$ in one month on a costume. Guh. Why is being an adult so hard? She whined, with food on her table and a roof over her head.

Maybe if I ever get caught up at work I can dye my yarn and knit a Dr Who scarf out of it, because that's really about all it's going to be good for. It's first-run spun yarn. On the other hand, I have a wheel now, and I can spin yarn for EVERY FLIPPIN BODY. Why yes, I'm having way too much fun with this.

... Okay, apart from the fact that I still need more work done from the assessment done two years ago (which was after seven years without a dentist visit or dental insurance so, hey) that visit actually wasn't that bad. I am apparently brushing and flossing correctly, because the hygienist had good things to say, didn't spray my mouth with Guck (tm) and show me all the places I had plaque buildup. So it seems I am doing something right. Yay!

I still do not appreciate being woken up at 4 in the morning by my body, though. Or at 5.30 in the morning by my cat. First it was the cramps of doom and yes, you get to read about this. I'm presuming it was the week long ridiculous head flu that did it, but I wound up being three or four days late on my period. Which, hey, I run long anyway, no problem, right? Wrong. My body decided that getting sick was an offense punishable by my uterus tying itself into knots and beating itself against my ovaries. I'm amazed I fell back asleep at all, though this may have been accomplished by the simple expedient of passing out. Then Mikey started walking up and down my back and demanding his breakfast at high volume in my ear. Being the stern and unyielding disciplinarian that I am, I gave him breakfast.

Then I had to get up and go to the damn dentist. Exercise was not accomplished this morning, unless you consider kneeling on the floor doubling over and trying not to vomit exercise. I don't.

The day did start looking up, though. Work wasn't too bad, it's mostly quieted down again although, of course, after UPS left there was a flurry of orders. Now that they can't go anywhere till tomorrow. I discovered that Golden Fluid Flow Release will work, diluted with water, as a thinner for my paints most likely and grabbed a bottle from work for myself, since it will be way way cheaper in the long run than using Vallejo's thinner. I did not fall asleep. I did not go cranky. I will have Human Target and Criminal Minds tonight, and after Criminal Minds I'm just going to turn it off and not bother watching the Useless Robot Show, aka CSI NY. Oh CSI, what have they done to you. I used to adore you and now you're as bad as all the other CSI shows. What happened?

I need to do German, Russian, and my novel tonight, and I think for the last 20 minutes or so of work I'll try and get an essay done. That should be do-able, finish one and maybe outline the rest. I feel so very brain dead. Blame it on my period, that's always good. Stupid body. Why won't you work like you're supposed to.

At some point I'll find another hobby shop that has the couple of extenders that I'm curious about, recommended by Reaper, and then I'll start experimenting with formulae for my own extender/thinner combinations. Look at me, acting like a real professional mini painter. Wow.

So, yeah. Remember the lump above my Mikey's eye that was probably nothing? Apparently it's cancerous. I found this out around 5.30 last night when I called the vet place, they'd sent the scans out to the oncologist for further analysis and suggestions on treatment, and they said they'd give us a call back when they heard back from them. She did hasten to tell me that it's not malignant, but it's right on the edge of his eyelid. Like a kitty stye.

So, yeah. That, on top of LJ-profile wank, which... I can both agree with and disagree with. On top of lingering bitterness about Prop 8, Arkansas, Alabama, and Florida. I'm a little scattered right now. And, either way whether it pulls together or not, I won't be on much next week durign the day at all. Maybe some in the mornings and evenings, but, not on much. Should end Saturday, unlike poor Bria, who has to endure months of crazy-busy.

Tired. I got 5 1/2 hours of sleep last night thanks to either worrying about Mikey or getting woken up by Mikey. The pup adorable helped some with the worrying. There was so much pup adorable. And today looks to be a light day at work, which means I should get off my ass and get my work done so I can sit here and write some. I think I'll do some in gdocs and then copy the pasta into my doc at home, so at least I can get some words for the day done. I just... the cancer doesn't seem to be malignant, yes? And she (the vet) was talking about it like it was an ordinary, fine operation, and the only complication was because of where it was located, which obviously I knew already. But, yeah. I'm fairly well derailed. Sorry, guys.

ETA: But, while I'm at it and thinking of other people with cat problems, the good news is that we have the money to pay for it unless it's hideously exorbitant. Which lump removal surgery... shouldn't be? The boy and I between us are carrying a fraction of our available credit on our cards, literally, I don't think we've used up 20% both of us. We've got steady jobs, and best of all, Mom's sent money to me for my health expenses and she said to go ahead and use it for Mikey if we need to. So. That right there is taken care of, which is good, and isn't always the case when people have vet bills.

Oogh so tired. Stayed up longer than I meant to writing TM prompt responses and the first installment of my La Llorona based fic. Which has become either generic Dresden fanfic instead of the RP plot point originally thought (she popped up in my head and proceeded to creep everyone out, so no big loss there) or just generic fic. Jury's still out. And then proceeded to wake up and write another TM prompt. I have no idea why or where this one is going, it just happened.

( I bring you fic )

Inventory continues, although right now I procrastinate by making this LJ entry and emailing people to tell them their stuff has shipped. So it's not really procrastinating since at least half of that is my job. Hah.

I think I've had a mini revelation regarding writing. It was one thign to write, to try to get published, to continually get rejection letters (which are still fucking depressing) when the only alternative was to go full time at a job I loathed beyond Carrot Top, reality TV, and Dubyah. But it's another thing entirely to write, to try to get published, when writing isn't my best ticket out. When I'm working at a job I actually enjoy with people I love. Sure, getting published would be great. The need isn't half so desperate. And there are other things open to me now, such as eventually (if more people join in because no way in hell am I doing this on my own) taking over the business. In ten or fifteen years.

So, maybe writing will be easier for me now. Less stress. Less pressure. More writing stories and having fun and submitting and polishing and submitting, and less flipping out because I'm almost out of potential agents on my book and no one will publish me.

Um. Mostly that's about it for today. Or at least until lunch, which. Heh. I need to stop running up to the corner market for a sandwich or a cookie. Money's going to be tight this month between bills and rent, and paying down my credit card by large chunks, which, while good for my overall debt? Bad for my pocketbook. I think I'm going to make it through this month paying bills with about 200$ to spare.

But on the other hand I should be free of credit card debt by the end of the year. And that'll be a nice feeling.