It's All About Me

The Collage

2012-01-23T01:36:00.000-06:00

I finally got my act together and assembled the collage for the story I'm doing for Fast Draft! Here's the picture:

I'm sure the text is too small to read, so the top one is a quote from the beginning of The Hobbit. It says:

This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected. He may have lost the neighbors' respect, but he gained-- well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end.

The other one says:

"Nothing Happens without risk." Anne Packard

It's on a magnetic board, and the round things are all magnets I made for the collage. Some are just pictures, but most of them say something, like "Keep Calm and Rock On" or "Keep Calm and Do It Anyway". A couple are Big Bag quotes, including "I'm clearly too evolved for driving" and "I am not crazy, my mother had me tested".

The pictures all represent a character or group of characters or some aspect of the story. The big 3 is to remind me that in stories, things often happen in threes. So if I'm stuck, look for something that needs to repeat.

I guess that's it. If you have any questions about any of the images, or can't tell what they are (the overall picture may be a little small if you don't already know what you're looking at), just ask.

I've already procrastinated the day away, so I'm going to go poke at a blank page and see if I can't at least rack up a few words before bed.

Lip Balm of the Day: White Cranberry

Jumping In, Head First

2012-01-16T03:21:00.000-06:00

I've been amping myself up, in secret, for doing Fast Draft.

In secret because I can't stand the idea of my parents knowing about my writing. 1. Because it immediately comes with the high pressure nagging to start submitting stories to publishers. (Bugging someone to submit before they're ready is not helpful.) And 2. Because I know that they would thoroughly disapprove of what I plan to write. It would be a hard enough secret to keep if I wasn't living with them and I got a story published. But, emotionally, living with my parents is like living as an exhibit at the zoo. Everything is know and noticed. There's no mental privacy. If they knew I was writing, they'd want to read it. If they knew it was published they'd want to buy it and read it and tell their friends. And while I feel no shame at all in what I read and intend to write, they'd be deeply ashamed of it, which gets in my head and scrambles it.

So, anyway, I was telling you how I was getting myself mentally prepared for Fast Draft. That's two weeks of pedal-to-the-metal writing. 5,000 words a day is the goal. (Although I give myself full permission to do less if that's beyond my limits. But I want to stretch myself and see if that's possible. If not, less is more than none.) I've been mostly just *thinking* about writing. Thinking about what music is inspiring me right now, looking at images that I might want to add to a collage. Stuff like that.

And then last week, out of the blue, my parents start hassling me at dinner about my writing. Now I admit, I have a pretty thin skin when it comes to anything that I'm trying to do and keep to myself. If I hadn't been thinking about trying to write again it probably would have rolled right off my back. But with that writing desire so close to the surface it upset me a lot. My immediate response (which I did not voice, because even if they'd just "ruined it" for me, I still didn't want them to know what I was thinking about doing) was to not do it. To give up. I was pretty pissed for a while.

Today I said, "screw it," and I signed up for Fast Draft anyway. I'm just going to have to find a way to put up steel bars, castle walls, and a moat all around me, to protect what I need to be intensely private from the intrusion of the unwelcome. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to manage that without creating A Thing in the house. Like the Mom in Everybody Loves Raymond, my mother has a very limited sense of boundaries, and feels that everything is her business. I don't particularly want to deal with butt hurt while simultaneously attempting to write a novel.

So that's my frustration at the moment. In lighter news, I did a bit of pre-work today by poking around looking for songs for the soundtrack and images for the collage. I'm loving it all, although the whole thing is a bit schizophrenic. Tone and imagery are all over the place. I'm hoping that some of this settles into a semi-coherent something between now and next Sunday, when the class starts.

Like I said before, the goal is 5,000 words a day. That's 70,000 words over the course of two weeks. Not unheard of, but quite a bit longer than the average m/m story. So I'm thinking, if the 5,000 words per day turns out to be doable, I'll end up writing two stories. The first one I'm thinking of is the riff on The Hobbit that I toyed around with and wrote a few lines for last November during NaNo. I plan to read The Hobbit this week, as soon as I find my old copy, make it to the used bookstore to get another copy, or break down and pay the outrageous $10.99 that Penguin is asking for a Kindle copy. I really want a digital copy, but not at that price.

The idea for the second story came directly out of all the image searching I did today. I'm thinking either A Rare Duck or An Odd Duck for the title. A guy who collects rubber ducks is searching for one particular, rare duckie, and another guy is trying to block him from having it. First thought was that something was smuggled into the country inside the duck. Second thought is that maybe he's on some weird, Amazing Race type hunt, and he's looking for a clue hidden in the duckie. I'm not sure, but I've got a week to figure this stuff out.

As a thank you for making your way through all this rambling mess, here is a video with one of the songs I've picked for the soundtrack and a few of the images I have so far. You'll see what I mean about them not fitting together in tone AT ALL. But this is what it is, so I've got to work with it.

Sarah Jarosz is a relatively new discovery of mine, and I completely adore her. So talented.

Eyeliner Dude

I was going to put the crazy guys in the Hobbit story in a
van with a wizard painted on the side, but I thought that
was a little on the nose. So maybe they'll drive one painted
like the A Team van. Or maybe the Mystery Machine, who knows.

Cool Joe Duck

Love Duck

Vintage airplanes. Not sure where I'm going with this one
*at all*.

Disco Ducks!

Someone in this story has a dog?
Who knew?

Rockin' duck toilet seat

Christmas cookies, because who ever heard of too many
Christmas cookies?

And now, some more pretty boys.

I have him labeled as "Brad". Not sure
who Brad is, but I'll figure it out eventually.

This lovely specimen is apparently "Ethan".

Not sure who this is yet, but he's got
attitude to spare.

Gotta love a kiss.

And this guy is just hot and wearing
a scarf.

Pick a Color, Any Color

2012-01-13T02:36:00.001-06:00

I've bleached a stripe in my hair for maximum color impact. Now I just need to settle on which color I want to use! (Bear in mind that the rest of my hair is now a deep auburn. She went more chocolate brown and less red this time. Next time I think I'll have her scale back on the brown and add a bit more red.)

So, here are the choices I'm looking at.

After Midnight Blue

Purple Haze

Ultra Violet

Electric Lizard

Shocking Blue

New Rose

Pretty Flamingo

I know I want the green, but I'm torn on the others. I like them ALL, but several of them are pretty close, and it wouldn't necessarily make sense to buy them all at once. What do you think? Which ones should I go for?

Update: Just for Julie (and her sister), I've edited so that we're talking about hair color, not dye. The weather has been yuck, so I haven't had a chance to go out and get anything yet. I know I definitely want Electric Lizard and Shocking Blue, but I'm thinking I might go for some Purple Haze or Pretty Flamingo, too. Kind of depends on what I can find and how expensive it all is.

2011 Wordle

2012-01-09T12:11:00.001-06:00

I meant to post this last week sometime, but you know how stuff gets away from me. It's a Wordle of the titles and authors of all the books I read in 2011. Pretty clear who made my "most read" list, huh?

Sorry it's so small. If you click on it, you'll go to the Wordle page with a larger image.

Coolest Card EVAR!

2012-01-05T22:47:00.000-06:00

Check this out! I got the coolest card in the mail today.

Does that not just rock? I think this one is going to have to go on my permanent magnet board, once I get the damn thing hung again.

In other news, I don't have much news. I'm reading A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant, which is pretty amazing so far. There's been a lot of buzz about this one, and if the rest stays as good as what I've read so far, it will be totally deserving. I'll let you know how it goes.

I saw on twitter that Candace Havens is getting ready to run another Fast Draft class, and I'm seriously considering signing up. Has anyone taken it? Any advice? Apparently the idea of the class is that you're supposed to write 5,000 words a day, so at the end of the two weeks, you should have a 70,000 word first draft. That's one unusually long m/m romance, or quite possibly two average-ish length ones. I'm not sure if I'm up for that kind of pressure, but it sure would be a kick in the ass to get writing. And the class is only $20, so it's not like it's a huge financial investment. (Although a significant time investment if I'm really going to do it.)

As far as the rest of my resolutions go, the cleaning one isn't going exactly as I planned, but I am making progress. Today was trash day, and I managed to ditch a whole trash bag full of crap.

I have the next knitting project for myself planned out, but I'm trying to wrap up a few ongoing projects before I start it.

The "read less" resolution is in the toilet. I looked at my little red book, and as of the first of the year I only had 295 books to read to reach 1,000 since I started logging them. I think I'd rather hit 1,000 this year, so 295 is my new goal. I have, however, managed to not buy a book for 5 whole days. That's pretty good for me lately.

Let's see. What else? I haven't done any exercise since that little bout on the Wii last week. I haven't bothered with the picture a day thing, either, although I'm still enjoying taking pictures with my Samsung thingie. Mostly of the cat.

I think that's everything new and interesting. Or even not so interesting. I'm not even wearing any lip balm today!

What I Want

2012-01-02T03:23:00.000-06:00

I think this picture expresses pretty perfectly what I want for myself in 2012.

I used to dream. I dreamed that I'd at least walk, if not run, the Disney marathon. I dreamed of settling down and raising a family. I dreamed of being a published author someday. And I worked toward those dreams. I trained for that marathon, and I did a lot of 5k's and even one 10k, although the marathon never happened for me. I kept my eyes open for the right guy, the one I'd want to raise a family with, and I never found him. Or, I should say. I haven't found him yet, although the hard realities of my life make never having had those kids more of a blessing than a regret. And until I got sick and discouraged and, let's face it, depressed, I worked on my writing, too.

It's time for me to discover what my dreams are again, to believe in them, and to start working toward making them a reality. I know I still want to be a published author, maybe more now than before, with some of those other dreams gone. So that's the one I'm going to work on right now. I'm not entirely sure *how* I'm going to work on it. I feel like I've got a whole set of muscles that have forgotten how to move. Is there such a thing as author's therapy? Writer's rehab? If so, I need to check myself in for an inpatient program! Short of that, I need to start flexing those creative muscles again, playing with ideas and possibilities, laying the groundwork in my head for putting words on paper.

I'm going to wear those pendants as much as possible this year, to remind myself to Dream and Believe. Dream and Believe and then Act. It doesn't get you where you want to be if you don't have all three.

The Book List- 2011

2011-12-31T22:05:00.000-06:00

Here it comes. The hairy, scary list of over 300 books that I read this year. (There are a fair number of category and novella length stories in here, so it's not quite as impressive as it sounds at first.) I've bolded my favorites. The ones that are both bolded and starred *** were my very most favorite. I've reread many of the starred ones a time or two already.

1. How to Marry a Duke- Vicky Dreiling
2. Desperate Choices- Kathy Ivan
3. Doctor Who: Snowfall- Gavin Collinson and Mark B. Oliver
4. Midnight Crystal- Jayne Castle
5. The Sevenfold Spell- Tia Nevitt
6. The Awakening- L.J. Smith
7. Waking the Witch- Kelley Armstrong
8. Not Just the Nanny- Christine Ridgway
9. Like Clockwork- Bonnie Dee
10. Warrior- Zoe Archer
11. Treasured- Crystal Jordan
12. Physical Therapy- Z.A. Maxfield
13. Coin Operated- Ginny Glass
14. In Too Deep- Jayne Ann Krentz
15. Ladies Man- Suzanne Brockmann
16. A Discovery of Witches- Deborah Harkness
17. Somebody Killed His Editor- Josh Lanyon
18. Fatal Shadows- Josh Lanyon***
19. A Dangerous Thing- Josh Lanyon***
20. The Hell You Say- Josh Lanyon***
21. Death of a Pirate King- Josh Lanyon***
22. The Dark Tide- Josh Lanyon***
23. Among the Living- Jordan Castillo Price
24. Criss Cross- Jordan Castillo Price
25. The Dickens With Love- Josh Lanyon
26. His Convenient Husband- J.L. Langley
27. Hemovore- Jordan Castillo Price
28. Erias Menage- Alice Gaines
29. All She Wrote- Josh Lanyon
30. Crux: Southern Arcana, Book 1- Moira Rogers
31. Lessons in Love: A Cambridge Fellows Mystery- Charlie Cochrane
32. Mercy Blade- Faith Hunter
33. Duck!- Kim Dare
34. The One That Got Away- Rhianne Aile and Madeleine Urban
35. Whisper Falls- Toni Blake
36. Body & Soul- Jordan Castillo Price
37. The Spurned Viscountess- Shelley Munro
38. Blinded By Our Eyes- Clare London
39. Undeniably Yours- Shanon Stacey
40. Fair Game- Josh Lanyon
41. The Happy Onion- Ally Blue
42. Blameless- Gail Carriger
43. Burning Up- Angela Knight, Nalini Singh, Virginia Kantra, Meljean Brook
44. His at Night- Sherry Thomas
45. Lead Me On- Victoria Dahl
46. Heaven- Jet Mykles
47. Court Appointed- Annmarie McKenna
48. Strawberries For Dessert- Marie Sexton***
49. Purgatory- Jet Mykles
50. Hell- Jet Mykles***
51. The Iron Duke- Meljean Brook
52. Holiday Sparks- Shannon Stacey
53. Catch Me If You Can- L.B. Gregg
54. Black Gold- Clancy Nacht, Thursday Euclid
55. Bareback- Chris Owen
56. Here Comes the Groom- Karina Bliss
57. Motor City Witch- Cindy Spencer Pape
58. Amethyst Bound- L. Shannon
59. Talk Dirty to Me- Ginny Glass, Inez Kelley
60. Call Me Irresistible- Susan Elizabeth Phillips
61. Bring the Heat- M.L. Rhodes
62. Shadowfever- Karen Marie Moning
63. Touch Me Gently- J.R. Loveless
64. Blue Ruin 1: Some Kind of Stranger- Katrina Strauss
65. Coming Undone- Susan Andersen
66. Tech Support- Jet Mykles
67. Yours, Mine, and Howls- Kinsey W. Holley
68. Handcuffs and Spreader Bars- Kim Dare
69. Mind F*cked- Mia Watts
70. Pretty Man- Ryan Field
71. Sex and the Single Earl- Vanessa Kelly
72. Coming Clean- Inez Kelley
73. Blood, Smoke, and Mirrors- Robyn Bachar
74. Texas Tangle- Leah Braemel
75. Strange Fortune- Josh Lanyon
76. Promises- Marie Sexton
77. Faith & Fidelity- Tere Michaels
78. Overnight- E.C. Sheedy
79. One Con Glory- Sarah Kuhn
80. Drawn Together- Z.A. Maxfield
81. The Charlie Factor- Diana DeRicci
82. Slave Boy- Evangeline Anderson
83. Slave to Sensation- Nalini Singh
84. Snowed In- Rhianne Aile and Madeleine Urban
85. Brier's Bargain- Carol Lynne
86. Seb's Surrender- Carol Lynne
87. I Love Rock N Roll- Carol Lynne
88. Cryoburn- Lois McMaster Bujold
89. No One Lives Twice- Julie Moffett
90. Whistling in the Dark- Tamara Allen
91. Anna and the French Kiss- Stephanie Perkins
92. The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks- Josh Lanyon***
93. Sno Ho- Ethan Day
94. Truly, Madly- Heather Webber
95. Just For You- Jet Mykles
96. Faith- Jet Mykles
97. Genesis- Jet Mykles
98. Revelations- Jet Mykles
99. The Peach Keeper- Sarah Addison Allen
100. William's House- Amber Kell
101. Talker- Amy Lane
102. Talker's Redemption- Amy Lane
103. The Girl For Me- Failte***
104. Quicksilver- Amanda Quick
105. Striking Sparks- Jordan Castillo Price
106. Handcuffs and Leather- Kim Dare
107. Truth in the Dark- Amy Lane
108. Badlands- Seleste deLaney
109. Gambling On Maybe- Fae Sutherland
110. If I Must- Amy Lane***
111. Making His List- Devon Rhodes
112. Scoundrel- Zoe Archer
113. Wrong Number, Right Guy- Mia Watts
114. Hunters- Michelle Marquis
115. Three Wrong Turns in the Desert- Neil Plakcy
116. Shadow Touch- Marjorie M. Liu
117. Love & Scandal- Donna Lea Simpson
118. Rosemary and Rue- Seanan McGuire
119. Lord Scandal- Kalen Hughes
120. The Panther's Lair- Esmerelda Bishop
121. Infernal Devices- Abigail Barnette
122. Trash Course- Penny Drake
123. The Ghost on My Couch- L.A. Gilbert
124. Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings- Helene Boudreau
125. Hot Pursuit- Suzanne Brockmann
126. Magic Slays- Ilona Andrews
127. The Debutante's Dilemma- Elyse Mady
128. All Play & No Work- Carol Lynne
129. Breaking the Rules- Suzanne Brockmann
130. Edward Unconditionally- Lynn Lorenz
131. Always the Baker Never the Bride- Sandra D. Bricker
132. Fireflies- Ally Blue
133. With the Band- L.A. Witt
134. Everything and the Moon- Julia Quinn
135. Come Unto These Yellow Sands- Josh Lanyon***
136. The Hood of Justice- Mark Alders
137. Tabloid Star- T.A. Chase
138. The Red Pyramid- Rick Riordan
139. Yours to Keep- Shannon Stacey
140. Conquest- S.J. Frost
141. Do Over- Mari Carr
142. What I Did For a Duke- Julie Anne Long
143. Details of the Hunt- Laura Baumbach
144. Cry Sanctuary- Moira Rogers
145. A to Z- Marie Sexton
146. Silver Bound- Ella Drake
147. Should We Drown in Feathered Sleep- Michael Merriam
148. Camwolf- J.L. Merrow
149. The Dark Enquiry- Deanna Raybourn
150. Threadbare- Clare London
151. Pricks and Pragmatism- J.L. Merrow
152. When Tony Met Adam- Suzanne Brockmann
153. River Marked- Patricia Briggs
154. Hot Head- Damon Suede
155. Chasing AllieCat- Rebecca Fjelland Davis
156. My So-Called Love Life- Allie Pleiter
157. Steam & Sorcery- Cindy Spencer Pape
158. The Missing Butterfly- Megan Derr
159. Love Ahead: Expect Delays- Astrid Amara
160. With This Ring- T.A. Chase
161. How to Keep the Love of Your Life- Maureen Willmann
162. Hex Hall- Rachel Hawkins
163. Tin Star- J.L. Langley
164. Heartless- Gail Carriger
165. Call Me Sir, Boy- Kim Dare
166. Tempest Rising- Nicole Peeler
167. Side Jobs- Jim Butcher
168. Off the Beaten Path- Katrina Strauss
169. Ghost Story- Jim Butcher
170. Diving in Deep- K.A. Mitchell
171. Just-You Eyes- Clare London
172. We're Both Straight, Right?- Jamie Fessenden
173. Hard Fall- James Buchanan
174. Making Waves- Tawna Fenske
175. Dead Reckoning- Charlaine Harris
176. The Thief- Megan Whalen Turner
177. Man, oh Man!- Josh Lanyon
178. Muscling Through- J.L. Merrow
179. Lover Avenged- J.R. Ward
180. Collision Course- K.A. Mitchell
181. Buried Sins- Marta Perry
182. Spice n Solace- K.C. Burn
183. Stone Kissed- Keri Stevens
184. Jump First- Charles Edwards
185. A Dog Named Slugger- Leigh Brill
186. Under Fire- Jo Davis
187. Mistletoe at Midnight- L.B. Gregg
188. The Fortune Quilt- Lani Diane Rich
189. Life, Over Easy- K.A. Mitchell
190. Secrets- Jordan Castillo Price
191. Accidentally His- Shawn Lane
192. Sex, Lies, and Online Dating-Rachel Gibson
193. The Last Pure Human- Twisted Hilarity
194. Camp Hell- Jordan Castillo Price
195. In a Dark Wood- Josh Lanyon
196. Yakuza Pride- H.J. Brues
197. Artie the Good Witch- Scarlet Hyacinth
198. Devon Cream- Jet Mykles
199. Half Pass- Astrid Amara
200. Marry Me- Jo Goodman
201. A Nanny For Nate- Lisa Worrall
202. Canyons of Night- Jayne Castle
203. Keeping House- Lee Brazil
204. Devlin and Garrick- Cameron Dane
205. The Book of Bright Ideas- Sandra Kring
206. The Gentleman and the Rogue- Bonnie Dee
207. Maritime Men- Janey Chapel
208. The Shattered Gates- Ginn Hale
209. Ticket to Ride- Shawn Lane
210. Crazy Wind- Xara X. Xanakas
211. When Irish Eyes Are Smiling- Tom Collins
212. Mind Fuck- Manna Francis
213. Wooing Master Jones- Amber Kell
214. Snagged- Jet Mykles
215. Servant of the Crossed Arrows- Ginn Hale
216. Horizons- Mickie B. Ashling
217. Taste- Mickie B. Ashling
218. India Black- Carol K. Carr
219. Finding Forgiveness- Dana Marie Bell
220. The Broken H- J.L. Langley
221. Mummy Dearest- Josh Lanyon***
222. Wolfsbane (MIA Case Files, #1)- K.C. Burn
223. ePistols at Dawn- Z.A. Maxfield
224. Dressed to Thrill- Kimberly Gardner
225. Spin Out- James Buchanan
226. GhosTV- Jordan Castillo Price***
227. He Completes Me- Cardeno C.
228. precious_boy- K.Z. Snow
229. Catching a Buzz- Ally Blue
230. And Call Me in the Morning- Willa Okati
231. Foxe Tail- Haley Walsh
232. Cut & Run- Madeleine Urban and Abigail Roux
233. Spell Bound- Kelley Armstrong
234. Squire- Jet Mykles
235. Like a Sparrow Through the Heart- Aggy Bird
236. A Change of Tune- J.M. Cartwright
237. Wicked Gentlemen- Ginn Hale
238. Barging In- Josephine Myles
239. Bent- Sean Michael
240. Cherry Pie- Samantha Kane
241. Cooking With Ergo- Luisa Prieto
242. Love & Loyalty- Tere Michaels
243. Anything For You- Ethan Day
244. When Irish Eyes Are Sparkling- Tom Collins
245. Some Kind of Magic- R. Cooper
246. Oleander House- Ally Blue
247. Libra: Outlined in Ink- Vivien Dean
248. Brindisi Bedfellows- Jamie Craig
249. Shades of Gray- Brooke McKinley
250. An Uncommon Whore- Belinda McBride
251. Like Coffee and Doughnuts- Ellie Parker
252. Bad Company- K.A. Mitchell
253. The Curtis Reincarnation- Zathyn Priest
254. His Hearth- Mary Calmes
255. Sursein Judgment- Jet Mykles
256. Just Hit Send- Grasshopper
257. Rhapsody For Piano and Ghost- Z.A. Maxfield
258. The Assignment- Evangeline Anderson
259. Litha's Constant Whim- Amy Lane
260. Between Sinners and Saints- Marie Sexton***
261. The Dark Horse- Josh Lanyon
262. Scorpio: The Heart to Help- Jamie Craig
263. Quinn's Hart- Cassandra Gold
264. Long Tall Drink- L.C. Chase
265. Not Knowing Jack- K.A. Mitchell
266. Bear, Otter, and the Kid- T.J. Klune***
267. One Real Thing- Anah Crow
268. Handcuffs and Pretty Things- Kim Dare
269. Gobsmacked- L.B. Gregg
270. Stolen Hearts- Sasha L. Miller
271. Crossing Borders- Z.A. Maxfield
272. The Cards of Life and Death- Colleen Gleason
273. Aquarius: He Said, He Said- Jamie Craig
274. Sonoran Heat- Katrina Strauss
275. Men Under the Mistletoe- Josh Lanyon, Harper Fox, Ava March, K.A. Mitchell
276. Goldilocks and His Three Bears- A.M. Riley
277. Grand Jete- Diana Copland
278. Submission- Chris Owen
279. The Locker Room- Amy Lane
280. Christmas With Danny Fit- Amy Lane***
281. Holiday Outing- Astrid Amara
282. Got Mistletoe?- Andi Anderson
283. Del Fantasma: Duck Fart- Jade Buchanan
284. Counterpoint- Rachel Haimowitz
285. And Playing the Role of Herself- K.E. Lane
286. Hide Out- Katie Allen
287. Primal Red- Nicole Kimberling
288. Baby It's Cold Outside- Nicole Kimberling
289. GI Joe Holiday- Amberly Smith
290. Winter Warmers- Chrissy Munder, Clare London, JL Merrow, Josephine Myles, Lou Harper
291. Mistletoe & Margaritas- Shannon Stacey
292. The Plot Bunny- Scarlet Hyacinth
293. Icecapade- Josh Lanyon
294. Someone Special- T.C. Blue
295. Black Cat Ink- Nicole Kimberling
296. All Snug- B.G. Thomas
297. The Winter Courtship Rituals of Fur-Bearing Critters- Amy Lane
298. Batteries Not Included- J.L. Merrow
299. Hue, Tint, and Shade- Jordan Castillo Price
300. Simple Gifts- L.B. Gregg
301. Carol of the Bellskis- Astrid Amara
302. Twinkle, Twinkle- Josephine Myles
303. The Elf, the Cat, and the Human- Sasha L. Miller
304. The Larton Chronicles- James Anson

This is a Little Embarrassing

2011-12-29T01:19:00.001-06:00

As I mentioned the other day, I'm getting started on my 2012 New Year's resolutions. (Why wait to make positive changes in your life, right?) So, I'm going to kill two birds with one stone here-- post some pictures and talk about the cleaning and organizing I need to do.

Here they come, the embarrassing pictures.

This is the giant pile of crap that completely blocks access to my closet. There are a couple of tubs and boxes on the bottom, with clean clothes, yarn, shipping boxes, and God knows what else in the mix. I haven't measured it or anything, but it's probably 5 feet long, 2 feet deep, and waist high at one end. This is probably my most daunting challenge. A lot of this stuff needs to go into the closet, somehow. But I can't *get to* the closet with the pile in the way. And I don't have the energy or the space to move the pile so I can get to the closet and put it all away. It's a conundrum. But I'll figure something out.

This is one end of the pile, and also the little table I use as my nightstand.

This is the other end of the pile, as well as my dresser, which is thoroughly cluttered and covered in about a quarter inch of dust. On the positive side, you can see my Christmas cards hanging on the door!

This is the set of plastic drawers that I use as my other nightstand. See the pink/white/black thing under the tissue box? That's the sack sock I mentioned a couple posts ago. It's coming along nicely!

As you can see, the whole room is piled, packed, choked with stuff. Part of the problem is me. I have a hard time letting go of stuff that I think I might need. Or I set something aside, and then it disappears from my mind. It just doesn't exist for me anymore. It does, however, continue to collect dust for the next 6 months until I finally throw it away.

But a really big part of the problem is I have no organizational tools or system. That blue tub at the bottom of the first picture is filled with CDs. But I have no place to put them. There are two or three boxes of books taking up space on the floor of my closet, but I have no shelves to put them on. That big ol' dresser? Holds a lot less stuff than you might think. (But to be fair, I really need to go through some of it and either pack it up for winter or just let it go all together.)

I haven't started doing my one song of cleaning a day. I was thinking about doing that today, but I did 11 minutes on the Wii instead (first time in *months*), and between that and MTX day, I am pretty well worn out. But I have started thinking about how I want to arrange things as I get them put away.

Shelves and such are not an option right now. The room desperately needs to be painted (the walls are scuffed up and full of nail holes, and one wall is painted a horrible gray-purple), and I don't want to put anything big and heavy in the room that will have to be moved to get to the walls. And since it's January, it's going to be months before the weather is really appropriate for painting. I'm looking at probably 6 months, minimum, before I can put in shelves. (Also, I want to put in some sort of entertainment system to hold my TV and for storage.)

All this listing of what's wrong, and what I need and can't get right now is starting to feel like a novel. A long, boring, Russian novel. Something by Turgid. (Points to anyone who gets the reference!) I think I'm going to leave this here and come back tomorrow with what I see as my specific requirements for my room, and what I'm going to try to do to meet them in the short run, even if I can't have my dream room right now.

Lip balm of the day: Pick Me Up Peach! (And boy did I need it.)

Wii, Wii, Wii All the Way Home

2011-12-28T02:00:00.001-06:00

Karen asked what Wii games I play for exercise. I have lots to say on this subject, so I'm going to go ahead and write a new post. (Thanks for the topic, Karen!) My comments and recommendations come from the perspective of someone who is significantly overweight (I was around 290 the last time I checked), very inactive, and has underlying health problems that cause pain and fatigue. So gentle, low impact exercise is much more important to me than your standard exerciser.

My first exer-game, and the whole reason I bought the Wii in the first place, was the Wii Fit Plus. You've got to have a Wii balance board to play this one. It looks like a scale, but without the readout. The best thing about the Wii Fit is that it's really just a bunch of fun mini games. You can hula hoop. You can box. You can bike or ski or ride a Segway or navigate rapids. Each little game only takes a minute or two to play. So you do a little of this and a little of that until you've done as much as you want to do. You can set a calories burned goal (this one is fun-- you pick a slice of cheese or a piece of cake or one of a half dozen other food items, and then it lets you know when your combined calories burned in your session has worked off that particular item). Wii Fit also has yoga, strength, and balance activities, so you can work on all aspects of physical activity. If you poke around in all the different areas you can get a nicely balanced workout at any level.

The second game that I have and love is Walk it Out. WiO is (surprise!) a walking game. The idea is to step to the beat of the music as you move around Rhythm Island. The landscape starts out pretty blank, but you get a point for every step that you make on the beat, and then you can "zap" things as you go. You can add everything from little stuff like benches and trees and lampposts to big stuff like shops and houses. You can gather clock pieces, and then reset the time within the game to any time of day. (The game has a 24 hour clock that generally lines up with the time in the real world. So if you play at noon every day, you play in sunshine. If you play at 9 o'clock at night, it will be dark out.) You can gather CDs and earn new songs. (You start out with a limited number of songs. The variety of songs in the game is pretty impressive, many with original artists.) You can also collect "rainbow spheres" (big colored balls), and once you've got all 7, a rainbow will appear over the island. (This one resets every day, so you have to keep earning it. Everything else, once you've earned it, it will be there the next time you play.) This one is addictive! There's always just one more thing you want to earn, so it's great for me to get a steady, low impact cardio workout.

I got Active Life Explorer for Christmas last year, and it's fun! It was created as an active game for kids, but it's a fun way for adults to get some movement in, too. Like Wii Fit Plus, it's made up of a lot of different mini games, with an Indiana Jonesy, adventure theme. For me, at the time, it was a little too active. Too much bending and jumping and such. I really want to get into the swing again with Wii Fit and Walk it Out, and then slowly add Active Life Explorer into the rotation. (The great thing about using a game console as exercise equipment is that fun is an important part of the process. If you're not having a good time, why play the game?)

I also got one of the many versions of Dance Dance Revolution for Christmas last year. This one is more energetic than Wii Fit or Walk it Out, but not as much as Active Life Explorer. My problem is that A, I'm not very good at it, and B, I wear out pretty quickly. This is one I'm going to have to work my way up to getting the most out of. Getting better at figuring out how to respond to the directions and working with the controller mat would help, too.

Oh, and I almost forgot, I have one called We Cheer. You're a cheerleader, and you have to learn to accurately do the moves of different dance routines. You'd think this would be really demanding physically, but it depends on how you do it. If you try to do the whole body moves like the cartoon cheerleaders on the screen, there's no way I could do it. But if you just try to keep up with the arm movements (you hold a controller in one or both hands, and that's how the game is scored), it's not too bad. And it's fun! The music is a bit teeny bopperish, but that doesn't bother me.

There are other games I'd like to be able to play, like Just Dance or Zumba Fitness. But I know that those are well beyond anything I could do right now, so I haven't bothered to buy them. Even with regular exercise I'm not sure if my body will *ever* be willing to move the way it would need to to play those games. I'll be happy just to get to the point where I can fully take advantage of the games I already have.

In the down time, when no one is exercising with it, we play Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, and one called Big Brain Academy to help with cognitive function and reaction time. And when we're being really lazy, we use the Wii to watch streaming movies from Netflix! So the Wii gets a workout, even if we don't. :p

In Flux

2011-12-27T04:14:00.000-06:00

I don't know about you, but for me the week between Christmas and New Year's is always an odd one. The old year is over, but the new one hasn't started yet. It's a time for wrapping up old business and gearing up for the new.

For the old business, I'm mostly making sure that my book and knitting records are up-to-date, bills are paid, that kind of thing. Reading the last of the holiday stories-- tonight's is Carol of the Bellskis, a m/m Hanukkah story. And wrapping up a stray knitting project-- a hat made from the leftover yarn from my brother's Christmas socks that I intend to donate to a local homeless shelter.

For new business, I've started my first knitting project for myself. It's this sack sock to collect all the random plastic bags that I keep finding all over my room. (For someone who rarely leaves the house and shops almost exclusively online, I have a shocking number of plastic bags floating around the place.) (Bonus, it will help me keep my room clean!) I've picked up a couple of songs that inspire me for the beginning of a writing soundtrack. I'm not working hard yet, but I'm poking in that direction. And I've got my eye on a reading challenge over at Goodreads that should help me control the ebook buying issue. I felt like crap today (monthly surge in symptoms, plus I'm just worn out from the past week or so), so no activity whatsoever, and no cleaning. I think I might need the same for tomorrow. But Wednesday, look out! I'll poke around and do something or other. My favorite Wii game encourages me to compete against myself, to always go just a little further, so once I get into it again that should help keep me motivated.

So, progress.

And with that, I will leave you with a picture. I got up to go to the bathroom, and when I came back I discovered someone had stolen my spot.

It's a little hard to tell, because the bed is so cluttered. But that green thing is the hat, almost finished then, and completed now. There's also a cone of white/black/pink yarn that I'm using to make my sack sock. I'm getting an interesting swirling stripe effect as it knits up. I'll take a picture in a day or two, when I'm further along and it's easier to see what's going on.

'Night, all!

Christmas Pictures

2011-12-26T03:43:00.000-06:00

We had a lovely Christmas Day, and I hope you all had the same. Relaxing, with lots of fun and laughter. I'm too tired to write a real post, so here are some pictures of our Christmas decorations.

It's Coming

2011-12-20T04:08:00.000-06:00

It's almost here. No, not Christmas. 2012. I've been thinking a lot in the last few weeks about what I want to happen, what I want to do, in 2012. The first decision I made was that I want to cut my reading way back.

I'll give you a moment to recover from that bombshell.

Right now I'm on target to read 300 books in 2011. That's a lot of books, and I've enjoyed all that reading thoroughly. But I want to expand a few horizons in 2012, which means I'm going to have to spend less time reading. My goal is to cut the reading in half-- I'm aiming for 150 books in 2012.

The big reason I want to cut the reading time is that I want to significantly increase the writing time. As in, actually do some. My goal is a little fuzzy in this area, but I think I want to go for two completed pieces in 2012, with at least one of those stories polished up and ready for submission. (I know that sounds massive, but I'm thinking novella length, not 80,000+ word novels.)

I really want to knit some stuff this year. It's been fun getting back to knitting after taking off most of 2011. (Depression and joint pain pretty much killed my interest in it for a while.) I'm thinking about doing a 12 in 12. That is, 12 projects completed in 2012. But not just any projects. I want them to be stuff for ME. I knit things for other people all the time, but I don't remember the last project I made for myself. I have a boat load of sock yarn, with one slow going sock on the needles. I have a *gorgeous* beaded scarf that I started like two years ago and have never finished. I have a wacky shawl that I started a few months ago and had to set aside for other projects. I just want to do some stuff for myself.

I want to get into the habit of gentle, regular exercise. I know it will help me significantly. Exercise is one of the major recommendations for people with Fibromyalgia. Physical activity kills me right now, and it probably will for quite a while once I get started. But I can't use that as an excuse anymore. I have to do it.

Part of the reason I want to improve my condition and stamina is that there is not just one, but *two* conventions I'd really like to go to in 2012. RT (Romantic Times) is in Chicago in April. That's too close to miss if there's any way I can make it. If I want to do anything other than sleep in my room all week, I've got to get my body used to moving and doing again. The other convention is Gay Rom Lit, which is in October in Albuquerque. Getting there will be a bit of a pain in the ass. Either I'll have to fly, which will be quick and hopefully painless. (Minus any body cavity searches security might decide to run.) My other option would be to take the train. Which actually sounds fun and romantic, riding the rails and all. But it adds at least two days of travel both directions, and that might do me in. (If I get a room with a bed, which I would absolutely do on a trip of this length, the price will be about the same as flying first class, which I kind of need to do for the larger seat size. So pricing isn't the issue so much as how hard each travel option is likely to be on me.)

My thought process right now is that I'll try RT and see how it goes. If I have a major problem, well, home is only a couple of hours away. If I make it through RT without a hitch, then I have a better idea if I'll be up to the trip to Albuquerque in October.

You didn't think I would make it all the way through a list of goals without saying something about my disaster area, did you? I want to do a little bit of cleaning every single day. I'm not up to big stuff. Just the thought of tackling the whole thing is enough to make me roll over and go back to sleep. What I'm going to do is put on some music and clean to at least one song every day. If I clean to one 3-5 minute song a day, it adds up to 20-35 minutes of cleaning time a week. That will make at least a small dent in the disaster every week. There are plenty of things I can do for 3-5 minutes without even leaving my bed. Like clearing all the accumulated junk off my nightstands. I think clearing out the crap and clutter will make me feel better emotionally. It will probably help physically, too, because we've gotten well beyond the "write your finger in the dust" stage in spots. (I give the computer screen and a short set of shelves by the bed a quick swipe with a Swiffer duster when I think about it, which isn't often. Everything else is on its own.)

Finally, this is kind of a new idea to me, and I'm a little unsure about it. But I think I might want to try the 365 Project. If you're unfamiliar, the idea is to take a picture every day for 365 days, and post them. I've really enjoyed snapping pictures with my Samsung thingy, and it might be fun to challenge myself to find something interesting to take a picture of every day for a year. The challenge would be that I rarely leave the house. At least 320 pictures would need to be taken from inside the house. (And that may be a slightly generous on the side of how many out-in-the-world pictures I actually manage to take.) I feel like this might push me a little, in a good way. So I think I'm going to do it.

So, there you go. Seven sections of goals for the new year. (I'm also considering a book buying cap. I have enough TBR books on the Kindle right now that I could make my 150 books goal and still have some left over. But not buying books that I want is HARD, especially when you've got gift certificates or there's a sale on. I'll be contemplating this one a bit more.) Will I make them all? Who knows. But it feels like they're all pretty reasonable. They're all action in a positive direction. So I think for now they'll do.

Check Out My Dealie Boppers!

2011-12-16T01:25:00.000-06:00

Delia reminded me that I haven't posted a picture of my birthday dealie boppers yet, so here it is! I apologize for the moon pajamas and my total unwillingness to put on a bra. That's hard work, and I just wasn't up for it tonight.

You can't see it in the picture, but there are flashing lights on the dealie boppers. Also, check out my red hair! I talked to my mom about the green hair thing, and decided not to do it right now. I'm planning to go to Christmas Eve services with them (I never go to church, so it's kind of a big deal to Mom), and I know it would completely humiliate them for me to show up with green hair. I know that's silly, but I'll respect their feelings about it.

Also, I talked to the hairstylist, and apparently maintaining an unusual color is a hell of a lot of work. I'd probably be re-dying my hair every week to two weeks. I am so not up for that right now. So I'll be sticking with the fiery, but longer lasting, red.

And since you can't really see them in that first photo, here are the giant hoop earrings that I talked about a million years ago but never posted a picture of.

Aren't they fantastic? They looked good with the scraggly blond mop that I used to have, but they really work with the red.

Also, taking clear pictures of myself, one handed, with that thing was a serious pain in the butt. Definitely not designed for taking pictures of yourself one handed.

In other news, there are two jars of cherries draining in the refrigerator right now. Tomorrow is chocolate covered cherry day! Messy, but fun. And the results are worth it. Better than any chocolate covered cherry you'll buy in the store. The recipe I use is in the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook. (Also available online here.) They're a little harder to find, but if you decide to make this recipe, take the time to find cherries with stems. Your results will be much better. (Especially if you're not an experienced candy maker.)

I think that's all the news and pictures for today. I've started my brother's socks, but just barely. I need to get trucking on them if he's going to get something more than an IOU in his stocking. And I haven't finished embellishing my peanut, but maybe I'll have pics of that tomorrow!

Lip balm of the day: a very festive and seasonal White Cranberry. (It's way yummy!)

Toffee!

2011-12-14T00:25:00.000-06:00

As you may have noticed, there have been a lot more pictures around here lately. I bought that Samsung Galaxy Player a couple of weeks ago, and I'm having much fun snapping pictures of everything around me. The pictures are much better than what I was getting from my cheapo digital camera, too!

Anyway, tonight I made toffee. My uncle really enjoys it, so I send him a batch for Christmas every year. It's really easy to make, too. (The recipe I use is from the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook. Here's the recipe from their website.)

On to the pictures!

This is the toffee cooking. It's approximately at firm ball stage. Hur.

Here's the toffee poured out and cooling.

And this is the finished product. Toffee covered with semi-sweet chocolate and pecans! I'll make another batch tomorrow or the next day without the nuts. Dad can't have them, and they're a pretty bad idea for me, too, because of the Crohn's. I would be shocked if Mom doesn't manage to sneak a piece or two of the be-nutted batch, though. She really enjoys them.

Mmm, Stollen

2011-12-13T13:27:00.000-06:00

I wish someone would get on the ball and invent smell-o-vision. (Or smell-o-internet, I guess.) Because, seriously? Best smell in the world!

Christmas Cookies!

2011-12-11T20:50:00.000-06:00

My brother and SIL came over for dinner tonight, and this was the after dinner entertainment.

Here Comes Trouble

2011-12-02T02:09:00.000-06:00

This is his "woman, get that flash out of my face" look. It is perhaps more adorable to me than to others.

Meow!

Occupy My Bed

2011-11-25T14:15:00.000-06:00

It's been a tough couple of days. My body has apparently decided that sleep is off the menu. I haven't managed to fall asleep before 4am since Sunday night. Morning. Whatever.

Which really isn't so far out there for me. I'm mostly up all night these days. The problem has been that I had places to be on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Tuesday I had a massage appointment, Wednesday my cousin and her 3 kids spent the day with us, and Thursday we drove down to my SIL's parents' house (an hour and a half away) for Thanksgiving.

I don't do well with changes in my routine. I *really* don't do well with noise and commotion and crowds. And I *especially* don't deal well with stacking those things together for several days in a row and then asking my body to do it on about 2 hours of sleep a night. I feel like I was run over by a bus. And then the bus backed up and ran over me again. My whole body hurts, and my legs are so weak that I feel wobbly when I try to stagger to the bathroom or, god forbid, across the house to the kitchen.

So the only thing I will be Occupying is my bed. It's not like I was planning to go out into the mayhem that is Black Friday, anyway. At three o'clock in the afternoon I'm probably safe from being knocked over in a stampede and trampled to death or crushed into jelly against locked store doors by a deal-maddened crowd. But there are still all those people out there, with all those germs. No, thank you.

I will lay in bed and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and read. Maybe in a little bit I'll watch some TV. That's about as Black as I can handle.

Hello World

2011-11-16T19:44:00.001-06:00

The last couple of weeks have been unhappy ones in the m/m (male/male) romance community. Frankly, I haven't had the stomach, or the heart, to follow it all. What it boils down to is that a male author was "outed" as being female. The author then said, "actually, I'm transgendered." And then it all got dicey.

Some people were livid that this author had been "lying" to them, and didn't feel they could believe the transgender claim. Other transgendered authors were frightened by the public exposure, and horrified by the demands that other "women" writing in the genre declare themselves. The charge of lying was particularly hurtful to the trans community, since the identity of a transgendered person hangs on who they know themselves to be, and how they choose to present themselves to others, not necessarily what's between their legs. The whole thing was complicated by the fact that the author in question most definitely did lie by using a male model friend's picture as his author photo and even sending this friend out once to do a signing as the author. (And there was some other fishy stuff that I'm not really clear on.)

A hell of a mess, huh?

The ignorance and transphobia revealed by the whole situation has been enlightening, and not in a good way. The m/m romance community has always seen itself as being a welcoming, accepting place. Suddenly the transgendered and genderqueer members are feeling attacked, and a lot of other people are offended and confused by the charges of bigotry. The whole thing makes my heart hurt.

Other than a general dislike of bigotry in all shapes, why is this kerfluffle so upsetting to me? Because I am genderqueer.

You hear a lot of gay people say, "I've always known I was gay." For me, this is the same. I've always known I was genderqueer. I just never had a name for it until this summer.

Let me back up a minute and explain what this all means. There are a lot of different ways to define genderqueer. For me, it means that I don't think of myself as being a woman. I don't particularly think of myself as a man, either, and I have no desire to have gender reassignment surgery to become one. I am just... me. An individual floating somewhere in the middle, taking whatever I want from both traditionally male and traditionally female identities.

I discovered the term this past summer, and had about 5 minutes worth of panic over the whole thing. Oh, no! I'm genderqueer! What am I going to do? Then I settled down and realized, hello, dumbass. You're going to keep going just like you always have. Because while I may suddenly have had a word for what I've always felt, that didn't mean anything was going to change. I've always interacted with the world as a genderqueer person. I've never tried to pretend that I was anything other than who I am. Acknowledging the label doesn't make me any more or less than I've always been.

I know that I'm very lucky in this. For some people, acknowledging their trans or genderqueer identity means big changes. Or painful hiding in a public identity that doesn't match their inner reality. I could go along for the rest of my life and never say a word. Just "pass" as cisgendered (another nifty word I learned this summer which means that your identity/behavior matches your sex). Let the world make their assumptions and skate on by.

But after seeing all the hurt and anger of the last few weeks, I felt like I needed to say something. Maybe if people know someone who is different, they won't be so quick to judge. Maybe they won't be so quick to fear or hate, because there's already one perfectly ordinary genderqueer person in their life, even if it's only their online/blogging life. So here it is:

I'm genderqueer. I'm not lying. I'm exactly who I've always been-- I just never before had the courage or felt the need to throw that label out there. I'm perfectly normal. And my transgendered and genderqueer brothers, sisters, and others are just as deserving of respect as our cisgendered brethren. We're all just folks. So let's approach each other with a little more love, OK?

In Which Our Heroine Forgets to Read Her Own Blog Post

2011-11-03T02:02:00.001-05:00

I made a little bit of progress on the NaNo story today. 85 words. Which is really only about two paragraphs. So it's minimal progress. But I'll take what I can get.

Last night I went to bed with two characters in my head-- Ethan and Harry. I don't really know anything about these guys yet, but I figure if I stick with it I'll get to know them this month. And then I woke up this morning with two paragraphs in my head about Mark and his bowel habits. Who Mark is, what his relationship to Ethan and Harry is, and why he (or I) think anyone cares about his bowel habits is completely beyond me. But I'm going with it. hur.

I think, and I could be totally wrong here but it seems about right, that Mark is a bit of a Sheldonesque character. (From The Big Bang Theory) And I think that Ethan and Harry come in and disrupt his life in ways large and small. In fact, I think Ethan and Harry are sort of modern day Gandalfs, and Mark is Bilbo, and the story is going to end up being a riff on The Hobbit. Ethan and Harry drag Mark along with them on a Big Gay Adventure.

Hmm. Ideas are churning. This is good. I'm supposed to be getting ready for my mom's Mary Kay Holiday Open House that starts on Friday (I have a few hand knit things that I'm putting out), but I may spend the day putting together a collage and soundtrack instead. If I'm lucky I may even add another 85 words to my story. At this rate I should hit the 50,000 word mark on June 13, 2013.

In goofy news, I was very proud of a new In Which statement that I came up with this morning, and I mentioned it in a comment on the last post. And then I went back and re-read the post and discovered that I'd put it in the body of the post when I wrote it yesterday, and then promptly forgot it. Because that is how my brain works. (Julie's smooth brain has nothin' on me.)

So that's my progress so far. And now, I think my sleeping pill is finally kicking in, so I'm going to post this and then go to bed.

'Night All!

In Which a Plan Is Born

2011-11-02T05:59:00.000-05:00

Just in case you've been living under a rock (or, you know, you don't run in the same writerly circles I do), it's NaNo time again. In honor of this annual event, I've changed my blog theme again. Isn't it nice? Much less shocking than the fall foliage.

So, we're over 24 hours into the grand event. How many words have I written? Nothing, nada, el zippo. Despite spending the last two months in Lani's writing classes, preparing for this moment, there is nothing in my head. (Totally not Lani's fault. The lack of firing synopses in my brain is my problem alone.) It's echoing in there like the inside of an empty 55 gallon drum.

But I did get an idea a few minutes ago. In fact, I shamelessly stole it from Deanna Raybourn and her blog. Every post starts with, "In Which". Examples from the last week are: "In which we were just talking about Nora", "In which this is just BIZARRE", "In which I am out and about", and "In which I'm leaving on the proverbial jet plane".

So, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to start every section with an "In Which". The first one will be, "In Which Our Two Heroes Meet". I have not the slightest idea who these fellows are or what they're going to do. But I like this "In Which" idea, so I'm going to run with it. Or, more realistically, waddle with it.

Next challenge: come up with enough "In Which" statements to keep me moving for the rest of the month. I have a few more off the top of my head:

In Which a Good Time Is Had By All
In Which Our Heroes Encounter a Problem
In Which Our Heroes Are In For a Bit of a Surprise

But I need a bunch more than that. If you've got any ideas for "In Which" statements, please share them in the comments. I'm hoping to have one for every day of writing, and that they'll help steer the story along, because right now I don't have a flipping clue.

Lip Balm of the Day: Shamrock Shake

Halloween Pizza

2011-10-26T00:24:00.000-05:00

Here in Indiana we have a take-and-bake pizza place called Papa Murphy's. An Irish pizza joint. This delights me. In the last few days they've been running ads for a special Jack-o-Lantern pizza.

Isn't that the goofiest thing ever? I love it. I'm going to push for a Jack-o-Pizza for dinner on Friday night. I know Halloween isn't Friday, but Friday is Pizza Night. I'm thinking this and one of the Ghostbusters movies that my brother lent us (he has both I and II on DVD, but who in their right mind wants to watch Ghostbusters II?) would make for a very satisfying Halloween celebration. Maybe with the Charlie Brown Halloween special while the pizza is baking. Because what's a holiday without a Charlie Brown special?

I may be about 25 years too old for trick-or-treating, but never let it be said that I don't know how to have a good time.

Lip Balm of the Day: Lavender Lemonade

Any Techies Out There?

2011-10-22T15:29:00.000-05:00

I'm seriously considering attending a couple of book conventions next year. (Scared as hell about whether I'll be able to manage it physically, and concerned about the cost, but still really thinking about it.) If I'm going to do this, I think that a portable way to tweet/text/email would be smart, to give me an easy way to catch up with people I know online. (You know, "I'm in the lobby, where are you?") Also, something that will take decent pictures. And if I could keep the phone/data charges down, that would be very, very good. Because I can't imagine myself using it much outside of trips like this.

Can anyone recommend a good device?

I was looking at the iPod touch, but I have some reservations. It looks like it operates on wifi and does not require a service contract, which is a major point in its favor. And, it works as an mp3 player, which is another major point in its favor. (My current mp3 player, which I love, is pretty well maxed out. If I'm going to add more music to my collection, I need something with more memory.) But being an Apple product, I also have some deep reservations. First of all, I generally find Apple products to be way over priced. Is there something that will give me more or less the same functions for less money? Am I tied to iTunes on this device, or can I download music from Amazon? Most of my music has been downloaded piecemeal, a song at a time from Amazon. I don't want to have to jump through hoops to put the music I've already purchased on my new mp3 player. Plus, I have never had a positive experience with iTunes, and I don't want to start beating my head against that wall now. Does the iPod touch take decent pictures? Are they easy to transfer to the computer so that I can blog them?

Probably, I have other questions, but those are the ones I can think of right now. Price, ease of use, access. Anyone have any experience with this device or recommendations for other devices that might suit my needs better?

Thanks, y'all.

Lip Balm of the Day: Peach Melba

New Look

2011-10-21T20:49:00.001-05:00

The leaves have changed, and after almost a week of winds and some rain, a lot of them are off their trees and all over everyone's yards. We're supposed to dry up and warm up over the weekend, and I'm looking forward to it. We should have this kind of chilly weather for another month or two. I'm not prepared for it. (It takes a lot of mental preparation, doncha know.) And then it will get really cold.

I'm not 100% sold on this new look for the blog. But at least it's seasonal 'n stuff. It'll probably change again soon.

Wake Me Up

2011-10-18T22:03:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, people are shitty. Sometimes, on the internet the drama is so thick it's hard to tell which side is the shitty side, or if both are well intentioned, or if they're all just shitty.

So I'm posting a happy song.

And if there's ever any question, pay attention to the tshirt and Choose Life.

Ya Wore Me Out, Kid

2011-10-15T22:52:00.000-05:00

My best friend, her husband, and her son were here this afternoon for a visit. The hubs has family here in Indiana, so they were able to carve out a little bit of time on their grand tour. (That's not even a joke. They've been on the road since Monday, and other than me they've seen/will see another friend, both sets of his grandparents, his father, and his sister. All in different cities, as far as I know.)

It was nice to see Keli and Eric, but the real highlight was London. The last time I saw him, he was about 3 months old. He's 17 months now, and the cuteness factor was overwhelming. We had presents for him, and once he got in the groove he really enjoyed ripping the paper. And then once each package was completely unwrapped he had to be sure each of his parents got a good look. The funniest thing to me was when London opened one of the packages (a book), and Eric got all excited. "Richard Scarry!" Keli was like, huh? Apparently, she never read Richard Scarry as a kid (how is this possible?), so we had to explain to her that he was an author, and that his books always had a million fun things to look at. Once the presents were all unwrapped, Eric grabbed London and immediately started reading it to him. I have a feeling that's going to be the go to book when it's Dad's turn to read to him before bed from now on.

And then we sat down for some lunch. Mom had made some potato soup, because it's one of those things that is really flexible and forgiving as far as timing goes. It can sit on the stove and simmer for a while with no harm done. (We weren't sure exactly when they were going to get here.) I wasn't sure that London would go for it, but he loved it! There was a smile and a "yum!" after almost every bite. And he got very put out when Keli would sneak a spoonful for herself. That was his soup, damn it! There were also rolls, and London loves rolls. So he was stuffing bites of bread in his mouth between little bits of potato and carrot from the soup. Then his mom had what was apparently the Best. Idea. Ever! She grabbed a little piece of his roll and dipped it in the soup. He immediately made a dive for the soup bowl to try to do it himself.

Mom was practically incandescent with pleasure watching all this. Especially every time he said, "Yum!" It really was unbearably cute.

And then we all went outside so he could run around and play in the backyard. And we could all run around after him. I did very minimal chasing or picking up and swinging. I would have liked to have done more, but frankly, I'm beat to my socks with what I did manage to do. We had rain a couple of days ago, and it knocked a lot of leaves off the trees. So Eric and London played in the leaves for awhile, which was also way adorable. We have an old lobster trap under a tree in our backyard as decoration. London spotted it and tried to crawl in. Again, the cuteness factor was about 1000. Dad managed to get pictures of some of it, although London gets weird in front of cameras and won't smile. If he knew Dad was taking a picture there was no smile. But there were quite a few of him playing and totally unaware of the camera.

And then it was time for them to move on. :( They've got a lot more miles to drive and people to see before they get home at the end of next week. I was so glad to see them. It was with my parents the whole time, and I didn't really get to talk to Keli about anything other than kid stuff and general chatter. It was kind of like a 5 minute visit from an old life. Very odd.

And now I'm all worn out. For a good reason for once. I took my sleeping pill early, and I hope to be crashing soon. Night night!

Lip Balm of the Day: Gummy Bears

Something Crazy

2011-10-14T01:30:00.000-05:00

I'm really, seriously thinking about taking on a new project. There's a book I've read in the last few months, and it's stuck with me a bit. Even better, it has a gorgeous cover.

Delish, don't you agree?

What I'm thinking of doing is knitting a shawl inspired by the book. (No, there is no knitting in this book. Just hot, macho, New York firefighters. But knitting is my medium.)

There's a very popular shawl pattern called Clapotis. (Pronounced clap-o-tee, or so I'm told.) I like the concept of the shawl, but it's a rectangular, and I really prefer triangle shawls. So right now I'm doing a bit of sketching and calculating (well, it's too late for calculating tonight, but definitely sketching) to see if I can convert it. Several other people have done so, but not quite the way I'd like to do it. So this will be a Becky Original, as well as my first attempt at knit design.

I've been looking for yarns to make this in, because I have a very particular idea in my head of what colors I want and how they should be used. No dice, of course. So I have two options as I see it. First, I find an experienced dyer, try to explain my insane vision, and hope that whatever they come up with is in the ballpark. Option two would be to buy some undyed yarn and all the pots and chemicals and try my hand at it myself. While I think it would be great fun to say, "See this? I created the design, dyed the yarn, and knit it, all by myself!" in not sure it's practical. I keep getting hung up on the pots and chemicals (and face masks) and mess and expense of trying to dye it myself. I've never done any dyeing, and I can't guarantee that my results would be any closer to what I see in my head than what an experienced dyer could do. So there's that.

What I see is a shawl with lots of smokey black (they are fire fighters after all, and one of the heroes is Italian with gorgeous black hair) and splashes of red and yellow and orange. Something that screams heat and fire. (And also the orangey red is the hair color of the other hero.) I want to make sure I get that smoke and fire theme across, because it would be very easy for these colors to get Halloweenie. I don't want the yarn colors to mingle too much, or stripe. I want what we in the fiber arts community call pooling or flashing. Pooling is when you get, well, a pool of one color. It can line up funny that way some times. Flashing is like pooling, except that it zig zags across the piece creating a lightning bolt-ish effect.

If all works out as planned, I'll call the pattern Not Clap (because it borrows the theme from the Clapotis, and it's know casually amongst the knitting community as the Clap). And then my particular shawl will be the Hot Clap-- a reference both to the pattern and the book that inspired me to knit it.

What do you think? Too crazy or what?

Oh, and the Lip Balm of the Day is Pink Cake. Too lazy to look up what all is in it right now, but it's yummy!

Grab a Boob Today

2011-10-08T18:34:00.000-05:00

This totally cracks me up. But it's also an important reminder. So watch this video, and then grab a boob. (Preferably one of your own.) Practice a little self-love, ladies!

I know we spend a lot of time focusing on women and breast cancer in the month of October, but men really ought to be doing these self-exams, too. If you've got nipples, you can get breast cancer. So, men, give 'em a little fondle, too!

September Gurls

2011-10-06T22:04:00.000-05:00

I've been on a serious Bangles kick the last few days, and it finally dawned on me-- it's Jack music. I'm going to have to take a look at some astrology references, but I think Ethan has a September birthday and Jack is December. 'Cause Jack seems to be associating this song strongly with the two of them.

On a purely aesthetic note (har), I don't like Susanna Hoffs' background vocals on this song at all. (It's not so obvious in this live version, but her voice is a real kick in the teeth on the album version.) She's too distinctive for background vocal and ends up standing out like a sore thumb.

The only other songs on Jack's soundtrack so far are Hazy Shade of Winter and If She Knew What She Wants. (Jack is the "She" in that one. He wouldn't even be offended at the idea. He'd be the first to admit his head wasn't on quite straight (har) when he walked out on Ethan.) So. All Bangles. I'm not sure if he's just a major Bangles fan, or if things will even out eventually. I wasn't planning to start on his soundtrack yet. In fact, I've been exceptionally lazy in the Magic/Discovery/writing department in the last couple weeks. But I guess Jack is impatient. He wants his happily ever after!

On a different topic, I have to admit I was wrong. The garage sale went really well today. Over $200 in sales and a full box less stuff packed up at the end of the day than went out this morning. That's way better than I was expecting. Mom is thrilled.

Oy

2011-10-04T13:41:00.000-05:00

My mother is subject to... enthusiasms. She gets an idea in her head, and suddenly she's off and running in 15 directions. (Of course, I am, too. But in me it's fun and charming.) I wouldn't mind if it was just her. But when Mom gets an enthusiasm, she drags Dad and I along after her, whether we want to be dragged or not.

Her latest enthusiasm is to have a garage sale. She decided on it just this past weekend. We're having it on Thursday. Never mind that there's probably enough ~~shit~~ ~~junk~~ ~~crap~~ stuff in the garage for a professional auction house to come in and do an estate sale. Apparently, we're going to do this one small stack of boxes at a time. I'd be overwhelmed with joy if we could just get Goodwill or someone to come empty out the garage. Take it! It's free! But no, this is all precious ~~shit~~ ~~junk~~ ~~crap~~ stuff, and must be sold for top dollar.

I understand, to a certain extent. There are antiques and such in there. Mom and Dad have somehow become the storage repository for all of *their* parents' stuff. (Even though they both have siblings who could have, and should have, taken responsibility for some of it.) Mom sees it all as a potential source of extra cash-- which we could certainly use. But what Mom insists on being blind to is the fact that she lives with two people with exhausting, chronic diseases. I can't speak for Dad, but as far as I'm concerned, the energy expended in this ridiculousness is not worth the measly buck seventy-five we're going to make on it. A good garage sale requires preparation and advertising. Since we're doing this last minute and on the fly, there is time for neither. Her goal is $50. Fifty dollars for days worth of work, and if we're lucky we'll gain an extra 2 square feet of space in the garage. Sigh. Considering what she's willing to part with (barely), I think we'll be lucky to get $10 out of it.

What I haven't been quite willing to tell her yet, is whatever she doesn't get rid of now, I'm tossing when she's dead. A few sentimental items? Sure I'll keep. But I'm not hanging on to boxes of "antique" linens. Furniture. For God's sake-- there are still baby clothes in there! (My brother and I are both in our 30s!) I don't want it, I don't want the hassle of it. It's gone. If we could get rid of some of this stuff now we'd all have a better quality of life, and my brother and I won't get stuck with the burden of disposing of at least two generations worth of junk when they're gone. Mom complained all last winter that they couldn't park in the garage because it was completely full of boxes and junk (stacked 7 feet high, with only a narrow, take-your-life-into-your-hands, walk way). Dad has lumber in there that we moved to Indiana with us when we came here the *first* time. That was 1989! He won't let go of any of that, either. It's not just Mom who is clinging to this crap for all she's worth.

And what really frosts my cookies is that Mom suggested to me last night that I go through the two-- two!-- tubs in the garage that are mine to see if I can get rid of anything. Probably I can. But two rubbermaid tubs vs the whole rest of the garage (plus a rented storage space-- did I mention that yet?). Which one of these is really the problem? And she keeps coming in to ask me if I'm really sure that I don't mind if she puts out this piece of crap, or that pile of junk. I finally just told her that I'm really, really sure that she can get rid of all of it. Please!

OK, I think I better go now. I'm getting even more annoyed than I was when I started this post, and I still have to go write up the Craigslist ad. Damn it.

24 Hours Later

2011-10-02T02:23:00.000-05:00

It's been 24 hours since Penny arrived (at this point, more like 36-40 hours), and things are going well.

Oh, wait a minute. I didn't tell you about this part, did I? I named my new Kindle Penny. She shipped from Pennsylvania (I know this because I checked the tracking every 5 minutes from the time I ordered her until she showed up on my doorstep on Friday), and I thought, "Pennsylvania. Penny. Perfect!" I'm from Pennsylvania originally, too, so we started out with a lot in common. :p

It is different from my original Kindle, and there's been a little bit of an adjustment period. The page turn buttons operate differently. These click out (which is how I expected the K2's buttons to work, so I guess this is more of an un-adjustment), while the K2's buttons click on the inside edge. I think I'm mostly used to the change in the buttons, but it is still weird every once in a while. Also, there is now a page back button on both the left and right hand sides. On the K2 the back button was on the left, and the button in that position on the right was the Home button. I'm still reaching for that right hand back button when I want Home.

I don't miss the keyboard at all. The only time I used it was when I would create a collection, and I'd type in the name. (TBR, freebies, read, etc.) Now there's a keyboard that pops up on the screen, and you use the up, down, left, right key to pick the letters one at a time. Tedious, but creating new collections isn't exactly a daily project.

The funny thing about the change in size and button location is that I sometimes try to navigate as if I'm reading on my Sony Pocket. They have 10 buttons down the right side that allow you to pick which book you want off the list. With the Kindle you still have to use navigation buttons at the bottom center of the device to pick your book. You basically do it the same way you do on the old Kindle, except the button is in a different place-- coincidentally the same spot that it's in on the Pocket, so that probably assists in the brain glitch.

So those are the things that are weird or different or that I just plain have to adjust to.

I'm loving that it is significantly lighter than the old Kindle. The screen looks really good, and even though the overall unit is much smaller the screen is the same size. The advanced e-ink gives a sharper image, and there's greater contrast between the text and the background, which makes it easier on the eyes. There's none of the screen "flash" that so many people hated in earlier versions. And it's much faster. Sometimes, with the old Kindle, I would give it a command-- click the Home button for instance-- and then I'd sit and wait. And wait. And WAIT for it to finally take me there. There's no waiting with the Penny. I hit the Home button, and I'm on the Home screen. No waiting. It's lovely. Even transferring stuff is faster. The K2 was on Whispernet (Sprint, I believe), and signal strength isn't always so great. Penny operates off of my home wifi, and so far it's worked like a dream.

To wrap up, there are some things that are different, and I'm adjusting. There are some other things that work really well-- better than my original-- and I'm thrilled about that. At 24 hours into our relationship (or 36-40 hours, whatever) I'm very happy with my purchase. And at $79 I feel it was an excellent deal.

Oh, and the lip balm of the day is: Gummy Bear. Yum!

Today Was a Good Day

2011-10-01T01:49:00.000-05:00

I had an excellent day today. First of all, I had the house to myself all day long. Mom and Dad went with their Sunday School class to some sort of Jesus museum. (It had dinosaurs. I don't even pretend to understand that one.) Anyway, this place was a couple hours away, so between driving there, touring, having lunch and dinner, and driving home again, I didn't see them until 9pm. It was lovely and peaceful.

And then the thing that I'd been waiting for since Wednesday finally happened. My brand new Kindle arrived! It's light and little and adorable. I spent some time loading books for the quarterly reading challenge that started at midnight, and then I started a library book that I was able to download wirelessly onto the new Kindle.

As if all of that wasn't happy making enough, my name was drawn in a contest on twitter. I got a free advance copy of Carina Press's holiday m/m anthology! In it is a new story by one of my very favorite authors-- Josh Lanyon. Woo hoo!

Some craft supplies that I'd ordered were delivered, and I ate queso dip and tortilla chips for dinner. (I'm a grown up, I can eat whatever I want for dinner. Also, my mommy wasn't here to say no.)

After that, Mom and Dad came home, and we talked about their trip, and then we watched about half an episode of Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives, which happened to feature a place here in Indianapolis and another place in Bucks County, PA (which is where we're from originally). And then we all retreated to our rooms, Mom and Dad to zonk out in exhaustion, and me to watch some random stuff off the dvr and write this post.

Really, it was a fantastic day!

I'm Magic, Baby

2011-09-25T22:43:00.000-05:00

Today was the last day of Lani's Making Magic class. We talked about Discovery and how important that is to your writing. Very inspiring stuff. (I'm still a little unclear about the difference between Magic and Discovery, especially since two of the homework assignments are the same, but if it gets the juices flowing I guess it doesn't matter.) I have lots of ideas bouncing around in my head, and I'm pretty sure those ideas are going to lead to other ideas which will eventually lead to a good story.

Yay, me!

Next weekend the Discovery class starts. The first lesson is Soundtracks. I might refine the one I've already put together in Magic. I've already done a little bit of fiddling with it. But mostly I want to poke around in tropes and with my collage (which is still 99% in my head and 0% assembled.)

Have I shared my soundtrack yet? Here it is:

Back to December- Taylor Swift
Fuck You- Cee Lo Green
Hit the Road Jack- Ray Charles
Human Heart- Carey Ott
If We Ever Meet Again- Katy Perry/Timbaland
Last Christmas- Glee Cast
Lush Life- Natalie Cole
Make You Feel My Love- Adele
Need You Now- Lady Antebellum
Turning Tables- Adele
Valerie- Amy Winehouse
What'll I Do- Rosemary Clooney
Breathe- Melissa Etheridge
Come On Up To the House- Sarah Jarosz
St. Patrick's Day- John Mayer
Big Bang Theory- Barenaked Ladies

St. Patrick's Day and Big Bang Theory are new additions. St. Patrick's Day sparked a thought about structure (believe it or not), and led to some interesting (IMO) changes and plans. I'm not 100% sure Big Bang Theory really belongs, although it sort of feels like it does. Don't know why yet. Mostly I just added it because I started watching the show this week (one of the local channels started airing two episodes a day during the "everyone else is running the evening news" time slot). I don't know how I missed this show before. It's very funny, and the theme song is fucking addictive. I figured, if I'm going to be humming the damn thing constantly anyway, might as well add it to the soundtrack. I'd been thinking that Ethan was perhaps a tad bit nerdy, and this just reinforces it. (Oh, please God, tell me I'm not going to have to learn how to play some table top, roll playing, 20 sided die game as research. I love me some nerd boy, but that is totally not my thing.)

I think Breathe is going to have to come off the soundtrack, though. The more I listen to all of it, the more I think that it's the other guy's song, not Ethan's. And while some of those songs speak to the relationship as a whole, this is mostly Ethan's soundtrack. The other guy will have his own soundtrack later.

Oh, oh, oh! Good news! The Other Guy has a name! He's Jack. It was right there, staring me in the face, and I finally got it. (Hit the Road Jack.)

I think that's about all the writing news I have at the moment. Eventually I'll get the collage done(ish), and I'll post a picture of that. Oh, and while we're supposed to be working on soundtracks, which I feel pretty solid about at the moment, I'll be working on Kelley Armstrong's Outlining 101. It's fabulous. This is the program I followed (in my own special, Becky-ish way) in 2007, which was by far my best, most productive NaNo year. (National Novel Writing Month for anyone unfamiliar.) I want to mesh some of Lani's Magic/Discovery work with Kelley's Outlining 101 to hopefully get me on the right track and revved up for November 1st. (I hadn't been planning to NaNo this year, but what the hell. And since I'm off in my own world, doing my own thing and making it up as I go along, I might just start before Nov 1! I know. I'm such a rebel!)

If you're interested in checking out Kelley's writing info, go to her website, kelleyarmstrong.com, and join her forum and the OWG (Online Writing Group). That's where you'll find her NaNo prep stuff, as well as lots of talented and welcoming fellow writers.

And now I think I really am done. Pretty jazzed about all the work ahead of me. But it's fun work. Fwerk!

I Think I Broke Myself

2011-09-22T21:41:00.000-05:00

Ouch.

From now on my parents aren't allowed to have birthdays a week apart anymore. I've been out of the house more in the last two weeks than probably the last six months. Today should be the last for a while. Mom and I went to Walmart so that I could pick up a Wii game for Dad. And I needed some OTC meds, and a birthday card, and some conditioner.

Basically, it was the first time I've been to Walmart with my own money in over a year. So I bought stuff. And I wore myself out. I'd just barely recovered from all the running around last week, and now I'm going to be spending the next couple of days in bed and in pain again. I got all sweaty (a major sign that I'm over doing it), and I'm too tired and too ouchy to get a shower. So I guess I'm just going to have to sleep sticky tonight and hope that I can manage it tomorrow.

And then Saturday is Dad's birthday dinner.

I'm taking my sleeping pill early tonight. If I'm lucky maybe I'll sleep 'til Tuesday.

Ow.

It Breaks My Heart

2011-09-20T21:03:00.009-05:00

Another gay teen has committed suicide, at least in part due to bullying. Jamey Rodemeyer was subjected to online harassment such as: " JAMIE IS STUPID, GAY, FAT ANND UGLY. HE MUST DIE!" and "I wouldn't care if you died. No one would. So just do it :) It would make everyone WAY more happier!"

How is this happening? Bullying isn't exactly a new problem. I went through some fairly significant harassment as a kid, although it had nothing to do with my sexuality. But this is so vicious. I can't imagine any reason, any justification for telling someone to go kill themselves. Where is the human decency? It takes purpose and energy to be this horrible. These aren't careless statements. It's not dragging someone else down to make yourself feel better. This is just evil.

What can be done about this? How do you stop the evil? I suspect it's going to take updating laws to hold people responsible for their online behavior. That takes time and probably won't help the next Jamey Rodemeyer, who is being harassed right this minute. The only thing I can think of that can make a difference right now is to support, with your money and your time, the various anti-bullying and gay-support groups out there. The Trevor Project is a national organization specifically working on the problem of gay teen suicide. GLAAD and PFLAG are working on all kinds of issues in the gay community. There are also lots of local organizations. ALSO Out Youth is a group in Sarasota, FL that is doing good work with teens and could really use your support. And the Gay & Lesbian Youth Services of Western New York is the group in Jamey Rodemeyer's hometown.

If you've got other ideas about how to fix this problem, please share them. Because something must be done. And if there's a group in your area doing good work with at risk teens, please spread the word. These groups need all the support they can get.

Here's an article with more info about Jamey: teenager struggled with bullying before taking his life.

Brainstorming

2011-09-17T11:07:00.000-05:00

I don't remember if I told you this or not (I started to write a post about it, fairly sure that I never finished), but I'm taking one of Lani's writing classes, Making Magic. Last week we worked on soundtracks, this week we're doing collages. I'm not visually artistic, so I'm struggling a bit. (Well, except for knitting, but that's more about following a pattern and mastering the mechanics. You're on your own with collage.)

I'm supposed to be picking placeholders-- pictures of people, often actors, who represent the characters. Sometimes it's the look, sometimes it's about the attitude or personality. Whatever you need to help you make that person real in your head, until they take over and become their own person. (People who've done much in the way of fiction writing will know what I mean.)

One of my characters, Ethan, is coming in pretty strong for me right now. This is his story, told from his point of view. He had this great boyfriend who dumped him suddenly right before Christmas, and he can't get over it. He's bitter. He doesn't understand why. And now Christmas is coming around again, and so is the ex. My big problem with Ethan is that I can't settle on what he looks like. He's kind of an amorphous blob at the moment. He shifts every time I look too close. I can feel what he's feeling and know what he's thinking, but he won't let me see his face.

I have an image for the ex. He's a pilot, I think. I don't know what his name is yet. So far he's been Dave, Dan, and Brad. None of them fit. So I'm just going to keep playing the "what name pops into my mind first" game periodically, and see what else comes up. My biggest problem with Dave/Dan/Brad is that I don't know what is motivating him. He basically walked out on Ethan, completely gone, out of his life, a couple days before Christmas. Why? What made him do that? As far as Ethan is concerned, it was a douchey thing to do. I know Dave/Dan/Brad had a reason for behaving that way. It's got to be realistic, understandable, and redeemable. Because I want these two guys together again. But I don't know what the reason is.

What could make someone walk out on a relationship so suddenly? What would make them change their mind a year later? In my mind it feels like commitment phobia. But does anyone want a hero who walks away utterly, no contact at all, and then appears a year later and says he wants you back? How do you justify it? How do you forgive it?

I did have one big revelation today. It has to do with the structure of the story. The first part is unquestionably Ethan's. He's a teacher, so the story starts off at the beginning of the school year. As the school year progresses, he finds himself rehashing the relationship. Remembering the good times, re-examining those moments that might have been warning signs of what was to come. Because he was really hit out of the blue when Dave/Dan/Brad walked away. As we get closer to Christmas and the one year anniversary of the break up, Ethan gets madder. The story ends with Dave/Dan/Brad knocking on the door a year after he left. (You can play with stuff like this in m/m. There's a lot more flexibility. But it would never fly in mainstream romance.)

The second part of the story picks up from there. It's all told from Dave/Dan/Brad's point of view. (I really need to get a name for this guy.) It will also cover two parallel time lines, his build up to walking out a year ago and his present struggle to get Ethan to take him back, with a little dash of how much he missed him after walking out.

So for the immediate future, I'm not too bad. Ethan's story is first, and while I can't see him very well, I can feel him. My biggest concern is that without knowing for sure what's going on with the Other Guy (I just can't type that list of names again-- it's getting depressing), I can't layer it in at all. But then, Ethan is also clueless about what happened, so maybe it's not too bad. More a question of whether or not I want to clue the reader in before Ethan figures everything out. (That balance between letting the reader feel smart for figuring it out without making the character look dumb for not figuring it out.)

So. Thoughts? Why do people just get up and walk out one day, and what changes inside to let them come back?

Where No Blog Has Gone Before

2011-09-15T04:38:00.000-05:00

There are many subjects I've addressed on this blog that have had certain readers reaching for the brain bleach. My hemorrhoids. Farkle the Friendly Carbuncle. Probably some other stuff that's not coming to mind at the moment. But there's one thing I haven't addressed: sex.

That's hard for me. Although you may doubt this considering some of the other things I've chosen to share, I really am a very private person. I have a hard time putting myself out there, expressing my desires, and I think it's the biggest reason why at 36 I still have limited relationship experience. I hide it all behind a wall, and I've been told that reserve can be pretty intimidating. That boggles my mind, because I often feel too intimidated to reach out. (Actually, that bit crosses over into platonic relationships. It's scary for me sometimes even to hold a hand out in friendship. Once I push through that self-imposed barrier I usually do OK. But making first contact is *hard*. And it's almost as hard to reach out a second time if for some reason communication peters off.)

I'm not quite sure how I ended up on that tangent. That's not where I was heading with this. I guess maybe I just wanted to say that this is an area that I'm not the most comfortable getting personal about.

My current situation-- disabled, mid-thirties, living with puritanical parents-- doesn't make having a sex life easy, even the kind that doesn't require a partner. It's a pretty neglected area of my life.

The last few days have been unusual to say the least. In the normal run of things I leave the house about once a month. In the last three days I've been to Michaels, Hobby Lobby (twice), Meijer, the vet, my brother's house (briefly), Buca di Beppo to pick up dinner, and then Mom's birthday dinner at home last night. By the time my brother and sister-in-law left around 10 I was completely exhausted and in major pain.

And then I got online. I got a wild hair and wandered over to a personals site that I poke around at every once in a while. I had a couple of lovely, raunchy conversations, and by the time I logged off I was a new woman. I was relaxed. I felt good, with far less pain than I'd had in days. My feel good still isn't normal. If I think about it I realize that I have a low-level, nagging headache, and my body still hurts. But the change is amazing.

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here. Maybe I just needed to tell someone how wonderful this was. Maybe I need to start cracking open this part of my life. It's not something that I plan to go into intimate detail about. But just acknowledging that I have sexual desires instead of keeping it all locked down tight feels like a good first step. It helps that I still feel, for me, fucking fantastic.

Oh, Lawsy

2011-09-12T23:21:00.000-05:00

It's been an oh, lawsy kind of day.

I've got a friend who is scheduled to pop sometime in October. She's been on bedrest for a while now, and she had to see the doctor today for possible preeclampsia. (For anyone unfamiliar with pregnancy stuff, that's not good.) I was very happy to hear just a little bit ago that the baby is a-ok. They are talking about inducing her on the 27th, but the doc thinks the baby may come sooner.

Oh, lawsy. I'm going to have to get it in gear if I'm going to get my gift to the baby before she arrives. We call her mama Diva, and it surprises me not at all that her Sweet Pea is looking to make a grand entrance.

I got an email from my sister-in-law late this evening. She's invited me to join a Bible study that starts tomorrow. Oh, lawsy. I want to be social. I appreciate the invitation and that she wants to include me. But a once a week Bible study is pretty much the exact last thing I want to do.

Suggestion on this one would be much appreciated. Do I politely decline the first away-from-the-rest-of-the-family overture from her, or do I say yes and spend 2 hours a week for the next month studying something I'm actively resistant to learning?

Wednesday is my mother's birthday. Got an email from Amazon. Estimated delivery date on her present is Thursday. Oh, lawsy.

This morning I went out for the first time in a month to check out craft supplies for the collage I'm supposed to be making for my writing class. First place I go is Michaels, with 50% off coupons in hand. I can't find a single thing I'm looking for, and every single employee is in a staff meeting at the back of the store, so I can't find anyone to help me. Oh, lawsy.

So I slog next door to Hobby Lobby, where they have exactly what I want, well organized and all in the same section, and multiple staff members in the aisles, ready to help me find stuff. I spent some money, got exactly what I wanted, and got out. But not before becoming completely exhausted and overheated. Oh. lawsy. Too much. Next time I'm skipping Michaels, I don't care how good the coupons are.

See what I mean? It was an oh, lawsy kind of day.

Lip Balm of the Day: Orange Snowballs

Check Out My Giant Balls!

2011-09-02T23:07:00.000-05:00

Ha, ha! Made you look!

I've been making pretty good progress on my shawl, and I got my dad to take a picture of it this evening. (Still haven't found my camera.)

It starts really small in the middle (in the pink section) and grows by a couple of stitches every other row. At this point there are too many stitches to stretch it out on the cord and let you get a good look. But the pattern makes it wavy-- it's called feather & fan-- it's not because it's all crunched up

This is the result of my first, slightly larger than fist-sized, ball of yarn. I spent a good chunk of yesterday afternoon and evening winding two more, and here's the result:

My giant balls!

It's hard to tell, because there's nothing to give you a sense of scale. But these are approximately the size of large grapefruit. And the yarn is sock yarn, also known as fingering weight. That's much thicker than thread, but on the finer end for yarn. Which means that there's a hell of a lot of yardage in each ball. I don't think that there's enough here to finish my shawl (I want the long edge, the wing span if you will, to be 5'7), but it should probably keep me knitting for a week and a half to two weeks. And then it will be time to wind more balls.

Balls!

Oh, and the lip balm of the day is Peacock Puffs. That translates to lime, blueberry, and cake flavor. (I always have to look that one up.)

If You're Happy and You Know It

2011-08-31T01:27:00.000-05:00

OK, as much as I enjoy rubbernecking, it's time to attempt to be A Better Person again. So I decided it was time to do another post about things that are making me happy right now. We haven't had one of those lately, and I have more reason to be happy than I have in a while.

The first thing that's making me happy right now is I Am a Paleontologist by They Might Be Giants. Someone is using it in a commercial right now, and it makes me want to boogie every time I hear it.

Something else that had me whooping and bouncing on the bed recently was Monday night's episode of The Closer. Captain Raydor (Mary McDonnell) was first presented in the show as a nemesis to Brenda. Then she shifted to an unlikely ally. This season she's been revealed to be a pretty valuable supporter, even if Brenda doesn't always know it. (Chief Pope can seriously bite me.)

Anyway, I loved seeing Raydor lead that chase last night. And then when she whips out that shotgun? Whoa, momma. You go girl! Definitely one of the most badass moments of the series so far. And I absolutely loved the look Tao gave her as she was walking away.

If you haven't ever watched The Closer, and you at all enjoy cop shows, I suggest you do what I did a few years ago and rent season one. It's a fantastic series, and well worth watching. (Although I'm bummed that this is the last season.)

Happy Thing #3 is that it's looking like I've got at least a little bit of my knitting mojo back! I hadn't touched the needles in months, until this past weekend. I poked around on Rav until I found a pattern that looked promising (of course I changed my mind and did something different when the needles actually kissed yarn), and then I hauled out all my sock yarn scrap. Y'all, I have a boat load of sock yarn scrap. Three big, overflowing bags of the stuff, and then some.

I sorted out all the scrap, and most of it was sufficiently bright. So then I sat and watched TV and wound a ginormous ball of scrap yarn, tying on a new color when I came to the end of each scrap. This thing was easily half again the size of my fist. When you consider how thin sock yarn is, that's a LOT. And then I cast on my Shawl of Many Colors. (It'll probably change names a few times, but that's what it is for the moment.)

After a couple of days, the SoMC is on row 87 or so, and growing all the time. This pattern isn't super specific. You get to a certain point and then they give you a general recipe to continue, because the size needed on something like this can vary so much, depending on who it's for an how they want to use it. I could probably stop right now and have a respectable head scarf. But I want a full size shawl, which means the wings span is equal to the height of the wearer. I'm 5'7, so I've got a ways to go. Fortunately, I'm pretty sure I've got enough sock yarn scrap to make it happen. But at some point in the not too distant future I'm going to have to start rolling another ball of yarn.

I'd planned to post a picture of this grand masterpiece, but I can't find my camera. Or the batteries that go in it. So that's going to have to wait for a day or two. By then it will be bigger and more colorful and more impressive anyway.

One more thing that I'm really excited about. There's a challenge coming up in my M/M reading group called the Quarterly Gang Bang. (Trust me, not as kinky as it sounds.) Every person who signs up picks a book for each other member, and they all pick books for you. By the time the picking is done you could have 50-60 titles on your list. The idea is to read all those books in the next quarter. The reading part doesn't actually start until October, but sign ups start on Thursday. I've been wanting to do this for MONTHS, but I felt like I needed to clear out some of the mainstream romance I'd managed to accumulate but not read in the last several years. I did get some of it read (89 out of 198 books read so far this year were non-m/m), and I hope to knock out a few more in September. And then the rest of the year will be dedicated to reading as much delicious m/m lovin' as I can handle. I even have a few holiday reads lined up already. I've been looking forward to this for a long time, and I can't wait to dive in.

So that's all the happy stuff. And I know I said I wasn't going to gossip any more, but I just have to mention that we've had our first official *flounce*! Someone who, by her own admission, left the group for a while and only recently came back, felt the need to declare us all terrible people and announce that she was leaving the group again. So there! It was kind of funny, because a) although she claimed we were all rude, her post was by far the most obnoxious one to date, and b)... oh, hell. I forget what b was. But anyway, you know you haven't had a good internet kerfluffle until someone loudly declares that they're taking their ball and going home. I suspect the whole thing will have petered out to nothing by this time tomorrow.

It was all amazingly civil for an internet dust up. If this had happened on my knitting forum there would have been a pile on, and by the time the mods stepped in the offending parties (not always the original offenders, either) would be ripped to shreds. A half dozen people would dramatically flounce (only to quietly return next week), and whoever is left when the dust settles would be quietly knitting sweaters from the remains of the deceased.

Knitters are Hardcore.

I couldn't imagine it happening in the Betties. I mean, I know it could happen anywhere, and we certainly aren't immune to petty scandals. But accusations? Histrionics? I don't see it.

Anyway, that's what's going on with me for the mo. I'll try to control myself in the future. And I'll let you know about positive developments. I'm not quite ready to say anything about them yet (besides, this post is ridiculously long already), but I'll update you when the shift from "things I intend to do" to "things I'm actively doing". Intention is important, but if you don't follow it up with action you won't get very far.

Lip balm flavor of the day: Gummy Bear

I'm a rotten person

2011-08-29T22:30:00.001-05:00

There's an online group that I follow (for the handful of people who actually read my blog-- it's not the one you're thinking of), and it's experiencing a bit of a crisis. It turns out that two very popular members have been at best misrepresenting themselves and at worst may be completely fictional. And now a third, equally popular member has just announced he's going radio silent for a while. Not that that's not a perfectly legit thing to do. Shit happens, and real life always trumps internet life. But the timing is suspicious. (And now I've discovered there is a fourth member who is supposedly related to guy number three, so if Three is a fake, Four is most assuredly one, too.)

I can hear you all now. "How does any of this make you a bad person, Becky?" It makes me a bad person because I'm enjoying the whole thing way too much.

Look, here's the deal. These three people were all wildly popular. The darlings of the group, with lots of attention heaped upon them. Two of the three posted pictures that showed them to be incredibly good looking. (It was the pictures that started the whole thing-- they were found to be a professional photographer's copyrighted work.) All three claim to be young (18-19) and in incredibly mature, loving relationships. All three are extremely articulate, sounding much more wise and mature than the typical 18 or 19 year old. All three have families who are completely accepting of their homosexuality. Only good things happen to them. Any bad things happened in the past and are straight out of an after school special.

Do you see where I'm going with all this? We're talking about teenagers who have it all figured out. (And not in that annoying, you don't know anything yet kid, teenagerish way.) Kids who have perfect lives, perfect relationships, and nothing but sunshine and rainbows in their future. There's no way that it's real. And yet a whole bunch of otherwise intelligent adults have been taken in by it. Now everyone's scrambling around, some condemning them, in the politest language possible, for lying, while others are getting progressively more upset because they see it as a whole bunch of adults ganging up on a couple of kids who made a mistake.

But the thing is, I don't think these are kids. My pet theory, and I'm starting to doubt that there will ever be any clear truth to match it up with, is that this is a big prank. I think Dudes #1 and #2 (who are supposedly a couple) are actually one person creating a story, maybe for the fun of creating a story, maybe for attention or the fun of pulling one over on a bunch of people too willing to take a story at face value. Maybe just for the hell of it. I think Dude #3 is possibly a little more on the level. I think he really is a 19 year old. I think some of what he's said is true. I think his relationship is probably an invention, possibly because he saw all the attention that Dudes #1 and #2 were getting, possibly because he's a 19 year old who desperately wishes he had that perfect relationship. If that's the case, then Dude #4 is probably a sock puppet invented to prop up the stories of Dude #3.

Other than being kind of amused by the lengths some people will go to for a bit of attention, I don't really care that they've done this. It was so obviously not the truth, or at least not the whole truth, that I have nothing invested in these people or their stories. But there are other people who do, and who are really upset about all this. (See, bad person.) I'm just hoping that the bad feelings blow over soon, because this really is a good group, if a little too willing to believe whatever random internet bs they're fed.

In completely unrelated news, Dad has been running a low grade fever all day, and now I am, too. And the lip balm flavor of the day is peppermint. Yum!

Update: Dudes #1 and #2 have admitted that they grabbed a couple of pictures off the internet and claimed them as their own and apologized. They still claim to be two 18 and 19 year old gay guys, and while they also admit that may have glossed over some things, what they have said has been true. Their supporters immediately started praising them for their courage in coming clean and admitting their mistake. A few brave souls have said (politely) that they don't believe that these guys are really guys. (It's a m/m romance community, and apparently it's not just the authors who are often secretly women in groups like this.) The supporters are now getting outraged at the skeptics, claiming that they are so guys! And anyway, they don't care if they aren't. Lots of people wander in to quote "this too shall pass" at everyone and wander back out again. I think a more apt quote at this point would be "there are none so blind as those who will not see."

Dude #3 popped back up today to say that he had a panic attack and that's why he posted yesterday that he was taking a break, although his wonderful boyfriend helped him through it, and he's considering getting some counseling, because the panic attacks have happened before. Highly dubious, although I'm still inclined to believe that there is a real 19 year old gay kid behind this one, even if a lot of what he's said about his relationship is pure fiction.

And I'm still a bad person, because I'm still sitting back with my popcorn, enjoying the whole thing.

Fully Favorable

2011-08-25T14:28:00.000-05:00

I got a letter in the mail today from Social Security, y'all. Fully Favorable. That's government-speak for "approved". I got my Social Security.

I called the lawyer right away to let them know, and the woman I talked to said that was the fastest turn around she'd ever seen. The hearing was August 16th, and the letter was dated August 18th. I don't know what my monthly benefit will be yet (although I have a ballpark idea of what it might be based on the letter that Social Security sends out every year) or when exactly I'll get that first check. Sometime within the next 90 days hopefully. But it's just a relief to know that I'm approved and that there will be money coming eventually.

I'm... actually not feeling a whole lot right now. I was pretty certain coming out of the hearing that I would be approved, and this is just confirmation. No doubt the freak out is coming. If the government agrees that I'm disabled, I must actually be this fucking sick. (Knowing how I feel day-to-day and having the government acknowledge and accept it are two different things. Also, who said anyone's internal logic was ever consistent?) But for now, I'm good.

We Are Entering.... The Freak Out Zone

2011-08-15T02:00:00.000-05:00

OK. My hearing is 36 hours away. Y'all, I am freaking the hell out. The rest of this post may be TMI, so feel free to either click away or scoot to the bottom and leave a comment, whichever you prefer.

Today was not a good day bathroom-wise. I know it's a combination of stress and the flare I experience every month. And I know it's only going to get worse over the next two days. (My hearing is naturally scheduled for the first day of my period-- my most poop-o-rific day of the month.) And for some reason my left wrist and elbow, the wrist and elbow least likely to give me a hard time, both decided to play up today. The ones on the right are slightly achy, but well within the normal range. Which means if I think about it I realize they hurt, but they aren't twinging and demanding my attention.

To add to the stress, my hearing will be not only on the first day of my period, but also on MTX day, which I occasionally refer to as Poison Day when I'm feeling grumpy about it. MTX is a chemo drug, a poison. I take it one day a week to bring my immune system down enough that it hopefully won't try to eat a hole in my insides. It's not a fun drug. It knocks me out flat-- we're talking Jr Narcoleptic time-- and frequently gives me the mother of all headaches. I'll have to be sure I pack my sunglasses, just in case. Part of me, the conniving part, thinks all this is a good thing. Let them see me at my day-to-day worst (understanding that if/when the Crohn's rages out of control I'm looking at symptoms an order of magnitude beyond that-- and probably a hospital visit). The practical side of me is thinking this is a terrible idea and wondering how I'm going to hold it together under all that stress on what will probably be my worst symptom day of the month.

For the last week I've been preparing mentally. Thinking about the questions he's likely to ask and how I might answer. I've also been mentally rehearsing interrupting the hearing to make a bathroom dash, if necessary. (I feel like I've adapted to the indignities my condition treats me to on a regular basis, but the thought of holding up legal proceedings, with all those Lawyers, because I've ohmygodgottagorightnoweverybodyoutofthepool is not a comfortable one.) Tomorrow I need to weigh myself, because they'll want a recent weight, and I need to find a letter (pretty sure I know where it is), and make sure everything I want to wear on Tuesday is clean and ready to go. And then tomorrow evening I need to take a shower and figure out some way to get some sleep and not explode from stress. And then Tuesday afternoon will be The Big Moment. Mom and Dad want to go out to eat somewhere afterwards, to celebrate I guess, even though it's very unlikely I'll get a decision at the hearing. (It will probably come in a letter in a month or two.) I think I'd rather come home to my own bathroom while my body no doubt continues to attempt to expel foods I haven't even eaten yet. Speaking of, it's about time for me to make another pit stop. Thank god that bathroom reading is accepted practice around here, or I'd be so screwed.

So anyway, that's why I'm Freaking The Fuck Out right now.

Closed and Self-Righteous

2011-08-08T00:49:00.000-05:00

Dinner was more than 7 hours ago, and I'm still pissed off.

One of my parents' friends from Massachusetts spent the night here last night on her way to a temporary assignment in the Midwest. (This was not the problem. I met Beth in the short period where I was in Massachusetts last fall, and I really liked her.) But Beth went to the same church as Mom and Dad. After she left it kicked out a whole Open and Affirming rant from my mom that still makes me want to vomit. (It may have been the bologna sandwich I had for dinner, but I'm pretty sure it was the exclusionary, anti-LGBT crap that she was spewing.)

A little primer on the situation. The first church they attended in MA adopted an "Open and Affirming" policy within the church. Here's the language I found for this:

“Open and Affirming” means that it has publicly and specifically declared that those of all “sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions” (or “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender” people) are welcome in its full life and ministry (e.g. membership, leadership, employment, etc.) It bespeaks a spirit of hospitality and a willingness to live out that welcome in meaningful ways.

Sounds reasonable, right? Everyone who chooses to belong to a church should have the right to be a member and to feel welcome in their church home. Well some people, like my parents, don't see this as reasonable at all. "It's against the teachings of the Bible!" "It's against the teaching of God!" "The Bible says what the Bible says! You don't get to pick and choose!" (She says as she eats ham for dinner.) I hate to be the one to break it to you, sister, but modern Christians pretty thoroughly pick through the Bible, only following the rules that work for them. I haven't given Leviticus a read lately, nor do I plan to. But if memory serves, the anti-homo stuff is just about the only bit that people like my parents choose to follow. They don't bother with the animal sacrificing, or the "women are unclean after child birth" hoey, so why this?

Bigotry. That's the only answer I can come up with. It's infuriating. It's bad enough to know that they feel this way and still be forced to live with them. If she fixates on this, and I start getting regular anti-gay rants, I don't know how I'm going to be able to keep from giving her a piece of my mind. And I won't be able to be any more polite about it than she's been.

Get me out of here.

The Lupus Foundation of America- Swagbucks' Charity of the Month

2011-08-02T02:27:00.001-05:00

Over at Swagbucks (which I've pimped a few times, and yes I'm still racking up the $5 Amazon gift certificates) they've started doing a charity of the month. People can donate swagbucks (points) that they've earned through different activities on the site. Based on the number of swagbucks donated, Swagbucks will make a cash donation to the charity. This month it's the Lupus Foundation of America.

Now, I don't have Lupus (knock on wood), but I know people who do. It's an autoimmune disease, and in a way all AI's are related. An advance for one usually means an advance for all of us down the line. So in that sense this is personal for me. I'd like to see the Lupus Foundation get the biggest donation possible. Plus, the exposure is really great. Everybody knows somebody with an autoimmune disease, but not very many people understand what they are or what we go through in trying to manage our diseases. (I can't really blame the general public for being ignorant in this. Far too many doctors are completely clueless about autoimmune disease.)

If you'd like to help with this donation drive, you can sign up for Swagbucks here: http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/fibrobabe. That's my referral link. An easy way to earn swagbucks is to use their search engine when you want to do an internet search. You won't win points every time, but when you do I'll get a few kickback points. I pledge to donate any of those points to the Lupus Foundation, in addition to my regular donation. There are lots of other fast, simple, free ways to earn swagbucks. If anyone decides to sign up and wants to hear about them, I'll blog about that next.

Getting Worried

2011-07-22T21:51:00.001-05:00

My Social Security hearing is just less than a month away, and I'm really starting to stress out. Not because of the hearing itself, although that's scary enough. What's worrying me is the financial state of the union and how that might affect my chances.

As of this evening the Republicrats are still squabbling over the budget. If they haven't come to some sort of agreement by Aug 16 I'm afraid I'll be denied again, not out of merit, but because they can't approve anyone until the new budget is in place. In fact, since I doubt anyone considers Social Security adjudication to be a vital service, I wouldn't be surprised if my appointment was cancelled all together. And lord only knows when it would be rescheduled for.

So that's what's keeping me up at night this week. Stupid politicians who will never have to worry about where to find the money for food or medicine or anything else for the rest of their lives, fucking with mine.

Edit: And here's a little something directed to the politicians.

I Have a Date

2011-07-07T13:25:00.000-05:00

A couple weeks ago I got a call from my lawyer. The government has scheduled a hearing date for my Social Security appeal.

This was a pretty big surprise. The waiting list for these things is insane. I was told that it was running 18-24 months here in the Indianapolis area, and that because I moved while on the waiting list, I'd be dropped to the back of the line again. No saving your place! No cutsies! I wasn't expecting this for another year to year and a half.

I've been working my way through the system for almost two years now, and every time I get to a new level it comes with a new surge of anxiety. Fear that I won't be approved, and my financial situation will continue to be dire. Fear that I will be approved, and I'll have final, incontrovertible proof that this is happening, and that I'm really this sick.

I think that second one is the greater fear. On many levels I think I've dealt with and accepted my illness, but there are always deeper levels of denial to discover. Getting Social Security after all this time of fighting for it will make it Official. I will be a government-recognized sick person, who isn't able to work and financially take care of herself. (The irony in all this is, the minute you are approved, after years of hassle in most cases, the government starts pushing back-to-work programs at you. If you were capable of getting back to work, they never would have approved you in the first place.)

Also, I'm scared about the hearing itself. In a very literal sense I will be sitting there, allowing some stranger to judge my health and how I've handled it so far. After my first couple of doctors, who simultaneously claimed that there was nothing wrong with me and that my illness was all my fault, the thought of having someone judge me in this way is scary. And it's not just someone who wants to judge me. Lord knows there are enough of those in the world, willing to judge anyone at any time for any reason. This is someone who will judge me and then decide if I deserve the help that I know I need.

Really, the whole thing is turning me into a big fucked up ball of stress and nerves and guilt. Which of course does wonderful things for my Crohn's and Fibro.

So if you would, please get those FGBV machines rolling. That I survive the next 6 weeks or so, and that on August 16th all the SSDI judges are in a sympathetic, accepting mood.

Jewelry!

2011-06-25T01:34:00.000-05:00

Tonight I went to my sister-in-law's jewelry party. Now, I'm not much of a jewelry person. I have one pair of earrings and two puzzle rings that I wear all the time, and that's it. So I went to support her (it wasn't just that she was throwing a party, she's actually starting up as a rep) and to buy something for my bff, whose birthday is in early July.

I was really surprised. I found a few things that I really liked! I ordered a pair of earrings for myself and a really pretty necklace for my friend. (We rent a beach house every year, and it's become a really important thing for both of us. The necklace is silver with a cz encrusted starfish pendant. It's just perfect for her.) And there are a couple things that I'd really like, but couldn't swing right now. One was a really pretty silver ring. (And I think there are a couple more rings I'd like to have.) Another is a great big pair of hoop earrings. (I've always wanted a pair of big ol' trashy hoop earrings. Not that these are trashy, but they're headed in that direction!) And then there was a silver necklace with a pendant that says "Believe" on one side and "like there's endless possibilities" on the other. There's an optional second pendant that says "Dream" on one side and "like they will all come true" on the other.

I'd host a party to help my sister-in-law out with her new enterprise, but I don't know anyone in Indianapolis. All my friends are in Texas and online. So I was thinking I might ask her about doing a catalog party instead. Does anyone think they'd be interested in helping out my SIL launch her business by taking a look at a catalog and possibly buying a piece or two of fun, mid-range jewelry? (Nicer than Claire's, less expensive than Kay's. There is a range of prices, but a lot of the pieces I saw were around $30.) Absolutely no hard feelings if you're not interested. I just thought I'd put it out there. If you are interested let me know, and if she is cool with trying a catalog party I'll mail you one. (Prepare yourself. It's a heck of a catalog!)

A small comment on a totally different topic. The New York Assembly has approved same-sex marriage for the state of New York! Yay! I couldn't be more thrilled that very soon everyone in New York, regardless of sex or sexual orientation, will have the right to marry, and all its attendant privileges and responsibilities. Others will have more to say on this issue (and say it in a way that's both more powerful and more entertaining than I ever could), so I'm just going to say Woo Hoo! and leave it there.

Woo Hoo!

And now, to get back into a habit that has fallen by the wayside lately, the Lip Balm of The Day is: Cat Pee (I know, it sounds gross. But it's citrusy and delicious.)

Windows!

2011-06-23T22:03:00.000-05:00

Today was a very busy day. After over a week of rain outs and rescheduling, the work crew came today and replaced every window in the house. It was noisy and weird, having a half dozen strangers traipsing in and out of the house all day. But it was supposed to take two days, and they finished in one. This was an inexpressible relief to me. Also, we never got out of the 70s today, so the house stayed nice and cool while big holes were opened up all over the place. We took Trouble to "summer camp" to keep him out from under foot, and he's still there until tomorrow. Which means I get to sleep in the middle of the bed tonight! Yay me! (Trouble is a total bed hog.)

While the crew was here banging around, Mom and I went out to run errands. Mostly I sat in the car and read while she did stuff, but still. At least I left the house for a little while. The one place I did go in was Target. I needed Midol (sexy!), plus I wanted to get a sleep mask. And I discovered that Dr. Bronner's was on sale, so I bought a bucket full of soap. Dr. Bronner might have been... interesting, but his soap is good stuff. I'm less rashy now that I'm using it, and less smelly. Well, less smelly in a bad way. I get the lavender scented kind, and while it's not heavy, the scent lingers nicely.

I'm going to have to call Amazon again tomorrow about my Kindle. It's not doing anything horrendous, but it's not acting quite right, either. Last night all my content disappeared for a little while, and then it didn't want to turn off or reset. I finally got it going again, but now it's not bringing the most recently opened books to the front of the file. Which doesn't sound like a big deal, but is annoying when you've got forty books in a file and you have to page through the whole file to find the one you're looking for every time you want to read again. It's still not time to replace it, but every time it does something screwy like this, that time gets a little bit closer.

So, that's what's going on for me right now. Nothing thrilling, just the every day blah, blah, blah of life.

Just for the Fokker

2011-06-16T21:34:00.001-05:00

I saw this and immediately thought of Betty Fokker. Don't you agree?

I Have No Google-Fu

2011-06-10T10:13:00.001-05:00

Some people have mad skillz when it comes to looking up stuff on the internet. I, apparently, am not one of them. I've been trying to find images to go in the collage for the Christmas story I want to write. I typed "two men in scarves kissing" into the search box, and these are some of the images I got back.

I really don't see what any of these have to do with men wearing scarves and kissing, do you? I was hoping for a romantic picture that would help spark my creativity. Instead I got Dick Cheney and a really tacky bathroom. Oy.

Merry Christmas, Darling

2011-06-09T03:01:00.000-05:00

I know I keep saying this, and then I never do anything. But this time I really mean it. (I think.) I'm going to start writing again.

One of the m/m publishers that I've been reading a lot lately has a call out for holiday short stories and novellas. 5,000-18,000 words, due September 1st. I can do that. I just have to get into a Christmas frame of mind. To achieve this I've been listening to Christmas music. The fact that it's been in the middle 90s (a solid 15 degrees above normal for Indiana this time of year) isn't helping. But I'm going to give it the old college try.

Tomorrow I'm going to start poking around the interwebs, looking for images to inspire me, both hunky and Christmassy. If you have any favorites, please be sure to link them in the comments. I could use all the support and inspiration I can get! If I can figure out how I did the last computer collage, I'll make one and post it when it's ready. If not, I might have to resort to paper and glue stick, and then God help you if you want to see it, because I haven't the foggiest where my digital camera is. So, keep your fingers crossed that I find the collage website.

While you're crossing fingers, keep 'em crossed that I manage to get beyond the soundtrack and collage phase. 'Cause I'd really like to write this Christmas story and get it submitted! (Once I get it written and into the hands of an editor I'll start worrying about whether or not anyone actually wants to publish it.)

Oh, and since I haven't done this for a while, my lip balm of the day is the thoroughly un-Christmassy lavender lemonade.

Fibro Bites the Big One

2011-06-06T01:58:00.000-05:00

I got a tweet today with a link to an article about Fibromyalgia. The article lists the 60 symptoms that are associated with Fibro. Let me say it again-- 60 symptoms. I think it's pretty rare for someone to have all 60, but most people with Fibro have more than one off the list. We often have many of the symptoms on this list, although the exact combo that we're experiencing at any one moment will shift.

You should take a look at the list. Some of it is irritating or just unpleasant. A few are downright scary. Many of us have more than one condition-- I have both Fibro and Crohn's Disease-- so it's a little hard to know what is causing what. For example, I have problems with hemorrhoids and everything under the Abdominal & Digestive section of the list. So when I tick off symptoms on the list, I don't even count those. And some of them are just... weird. Like "craving for carbohydrate and chocolate". Dude. I'm female. Do any of you know a woman who doesn't crave pasta and chocolate? So I don't count that one, either.

These are the 30 symptoms that I experience on a regular basis that I attribute to Fibromyalgia:

delayed reaction to physical exertion or stressful events
sweats
headaches
pain
morning stiffness
muscle twitches
runny nose
post nasal drip
earaches
ringing ears (tinnitus)
light and/or broken sleep patterns with unrefreshing sleep
fatigue
sleep starts
teeth grinding
menstrual problems
language impairments
short term memory impairment
confusion
trouble concentrating
sensitivity to odors
sensitivity to light
sensitivity to noise
night driving difficulty
sensory overload
depression
anxiety
unaccountable irritability (although I think I'm perfectly justified in feeling irritable)
bruising or scarring easily
hair loss
tissue overgrowth (specifically ingrown hairs and splitting cuticles)

I don't deal with every one of these symptoms all the time, but I do experience every single one of them at some point within a four to six week period. Any unusual exertion or stress increases the number and intensity of symptoms. And a biggie for me-- tenderness-- isn't even on the list. It's pretty common that I have to dump the cat off my lap because it hurts to much for him to sit/stand on me. Sometimes my mom will reach out and pat me as she walks by, and I'll yelp from the pain. A pat on the arm or the leg shouldn't make you hurt like that.

No one should have to live with all of this. But there are so few answers. So little is understood about this disease. Part of the problem is that Fibromyalgia research is woefully underfunded. According to this article, the government set aside $12 million dollars for Fibro research for 2011. That's nothing, a very small drop in a very large bucket. It's no wonder we don't know what causes it, and the few medications we have to treat it are only marginally effective at best.

If you find all of this as unacceptable as I do, write to your Congressman. Write to your Senator. Let them know that at least 6 million people in this country suffer (and I do mean suffer-- often silently, because many people, even doctors, don't "get" this disease) from Fibromyalgia. We need help. We need reasonable research funding, effective treatments, awareness, support. We need a light at the end of the tunnel, because let me tell you folks, there are days when it feels like the walls are closing in. We need more research, and we need it NOW.

The Crazy Train

2011-05-04T13:06:00.000-05:00

I'm almost-- not quite, but almost-- ready to consider therapy. The thing is, I still don't want to change. And until I want things to be different, not my parents, not other people, I just don't see it being a worthwhile endeavor.

Because you see, what I want, what would make me happy, is for things to go back to the way they were before I had to move. I don't want to be in Indiana. I don't want to live with my parents. I want to have complete control over 99% of my human interaction and mostly to be left alone. Therapy can't give me my apartment in Houston back. It also can't give me a body that doesn't hurt all the time or randomly and urgently expel everything I've eaten in the last week. Which is what I want, part 2. To be rid of all this physical stuff and live a normal life at home in Houston, where I belong.

And what others want from my therapy is stuff that I decidedly do not want. Mom seems to think that therapy will make me want to spend time with her and listen to all her gossipy, whiny, repetitive stories. Yes, I used to do that. On the phone, where I could be totally ignoring her and doing something else. Can't do that so much in real life. I think therapy is also supposed to make me want to sit in the living room in the evenings and watch lots of Wheel of Fortune and the Hallmark channel. I would NEED therapy after that, y'all. I'll stick to my room and my Law & Order, CSI, and NCIS, thanks.

I'm also kind of worried about any meds this hypothetical future therapist might want to put me on. There's a strong chance that they'll clash with what I'm already on. (Fibro meds are in a similar class of drugs to a lot of anti-depressants.) I don't want to change my meds. They may not do a lot for me, but they're better than nothing, and thanks to the drug companies they're free. New meds may or may not do anything for my pain and may or may not be free. And the only other thing I've found that helps and doesn't make me violently ill is a narcotic that was pulled from the market because it was making people's hearts explode. So it's the current stuff or nothing.

Yet I know the stuff I'm doing is not normal. Hiding in my room 24/7. Only leaving the house once a month, if that. Dreading social interactions. Staying up all night and sleeping all morning. Losing track of the day, the date, friends. Reading constantly to avoid real life. I know these things aren't healthy. But they're what I want. They're the best I can do right now. And the sheer energy involved in changing any of it is overwhelming to contemplate. Especially when it's not going to get me what I really want anyway.

So that's why I haven't started therapy yet. I'm getting there, maybe. Probably. But I'm not there yet.

My Squick Is Not Your Squick

2011-04-17T16:25:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I read Brier's Bargain by Carol Lynne, and it kind of squicked me out. You see, Brier was abused as a child, and brain damage from that abuse left him mentally handicapped. His partner, Jackie, is of normal intelligence.

Brier is a sweet, caring person, and he's described as being high functioning. He holds down a 40 hour a week job (although it's at a company where his twin brother is a long time employee, and it's not entirely clear what he does for those 40 hours), he gets his driver's license during the course of the story, and buys a car with his own money saved for the purpose. But he's also described as being child-like and having problems controlling his temper (a not-uncommon problem for people who've had head injuries).

This book was actually kind of odd. It's labeled as being the first book in the series, but it obviously picks up in the middle of the story. After reading it I did a little research and discovered that Lynne changed publishers, and she had to change the name of the series, although it's a continuation of the old one. As the story starts, Brier is going about his daily life and missing his lover, Jackie. Jackie is on assignment in the Middle East. Brier hasn't heard from Jackie in a while, and as a reader it's not clear if the relationship is real or if it's all in Brier's mind. It turns out that Jackie was injured in an explosion, and everyone kept the news from Brier.

Jackie comes home missing part of his leg, and Brier settles in to take care of him. At this point it's clear that there really is a relationship between the two men. What's not clear is why. We never get to see the falling in love portion of the relationship, even in flashback. Why did Jackie, a man who's highly skilled and speaks at least two languages, fall in love with a man with the mind of a child, who at 35 is just learning to take care of himself?

There was more that left a bad taste in my mouth, like the fact that Brier was sexually abused while institutionalized. It left me wondering if Brier really had the capacity to consent to a sexual relationship. At one point Brier asks Jackie about sex with girls. His only knowledge or experience of sex was with his abuser and then Jackie. Can anyone really be gay or straight when they're so ignorant of their options? I don't doubt that Brier loves Jackie. But in a way it feels like a continuation of the abuse, not a choice freely made. Would I feel differently if this was a straight relationship instead of a gay one? I'd like to think not, but I might. Would I feel differently if Brier was of normal intelligence? Definitely.

My discomfort with this story has me thinking about disability and my attitude toward different types. Brier has no problem with Jackie losing part of his leg. It makes no difference at all in the way he feels about him. He works hard to learn how to care for Jackie, because he doesn't want his lover to be in pain. And yet it's a little creepy to me that Jackie takes the same attitude toward Brier and his disabilities. People who are mentally handicapped are just as worthy of love as everyone else. But it squicks me when that love comes from someone of normal intelligence. It feels like the partner of normal intelligence is somehow taking advantage. And in this situation Brier's history of abuse just increases that feeling.

Am I a terrible person for feeling this way? I like to think that I believe that everyone is equal and deserves equal respect. (Except, you know, for asshats who have personally shown that they don't deserve my respect.) Does this squick come from a reasonable urge to protect someone who may not have the capacity to make the best decisions for themselves, or is my inner asshat showing? I don't think any less of Jackie because of his physical disability, and would think quite a bit less of anyone who would hold it against him.

The choice of Brier as a romantic lead was a bold one. I'm all for pushing boundaries and giving all kinds of people a voice in fiction. But this one left me unsettled.

If anyone wants to check out the book in question, Brier's Bargain will be available tomorrow, Monday, for free from All Romance eBooks. Or, you can weigh in now and tell me I'm an asshat.

I Really, Really Wanna Go

2011-04-15T09:40:00.000-05:00

If you're at all plugged into the book world, especially anything to do with romance, you probably noticed that the RT convention was last week. I've been wanting to go for a long time, but with one thing or another-- the expense, travel, work, being sick and having no money-- I just haven't made it. Next year it's in Chicago, and I really want to go.

There are a couple of things holding me back at this point. One is the expense. This is not a cheap convention. It's almost $500 just to sign up. If I don't have a roommate, which with my weird sleep and bathroom habits would probably be best, I'm looking at about another $800 would be my guess. Transportation shouldn't be a biggie. Amtrak has a train that runs from Indy to Chicago, and the schedule looks like it should work well for me. Only $50 round trip, and I don't have to borrow one of my parents' cars for almost a week, pay for parking, and then be alert enough to pilot it for several hours. All together, I figure this thing will cost me $1,600. If the social security comes through between now and then, it might be doable. If it doesn't (and I've learned at this point not to bank on anything when it comes to the government turning over the benefits I'm owed), then there's no way in hell I can afford to go.

The second problem is as much a deal breaker as the money. Can I physically handle it? At this point a trip to the grocery store wears me out. I only leave the house on average about once every 3-4 weeks. Am I going to be able to manage 5 days of workshops and brunches and chatting in the hotel bar? I can tell you right now that there are some events I'll take a pass on. The cover model pageant? No, thanks. The awards ceremony? If an author I really love is up for an award, and present to accept, maybe. But I'll likely skip that, too. In fact, I'd probably skip most of the evening parties. I expect to be nearly comatose from exhaustion and over stimulation by dinner time most days. I don't know if I can do this, and I'm afraid that it will end up making me really sick. But I still want to go.

Why? I want to connect with readers in real life. I'm getting active on Goodreads, and I have all my Betty friends. It would be beyond awesome to get a chance to meet a few of them. And then there are all those other people out there who love to read and talk books. There will be authors there. Maybe I'll get a chance to meet some of my favorites! And as much as anything, it would be amazing to go out and do something like a normal human being. A late-thirties adult woman who actually goes places without her mommy and daddy taking her. Adult socialization with someone I'm not related to. NO Little House on the Prairie or The Waltons on TV in the background. Does that not sound magical?

So, all I have to do is convince the government to give me my money and then somehow find the energy to manage a five day conference. Yeah, not likely to happen. But I still really, really want to go.

March Review and April Goals

2011-04-02T22:27:00.000-05:00

At the beginning of last month I set a few goals, so I thought I'd update you on how they went.

Goal #1: clean

Weeeeeeel, I made some progress here, but it was cancelled out by new mess. There are still two baskets full of clean laundry in my room, but one of them is a new basket with new clean laundry, so that's progress. I did some dusting, but I made all new dust. (I feel this is completely unfair, by the way.) I got rid of some of the junk mail and random paper that I collect like a magnet, but not much.

Bottom line on this goal: my bedroom is still a pit, but not as much of a pit as it would be if I hadn't worked on it a bit.

Goal #2: get my Goodreads Books to Read in 2011 list under 100 titles.

Hahahahahahahahahaha! I did manage to read 12 books that had been sitting on my list for a while, some of them over a year. But I added a bunch of titles, too, and the current total stands at 116.

Goal #3: blog more than once a week

Personal stuff derailed me on this one. I'm getting a handle on it, but no guarantees that I'm going to be any more regular this month than I was last month. But I'm going to try.

And I want to say thank you for all the kind comments on the last post. I appreciate the support.

Goal #3: return movie to Netflix

I did it! And I managed to watch and return a couple other movies, too. Success!

So that's March. Goals for April are:

to finish my taxes (I'm working on them, but slowly)
clear some more floor space in my room
dust and tidy my dresser, which is currently piled high with holiday cards and an inch of dust, in addition to all the usual stuff
blog more
continue to pick a lip balm flavor of the day, because it makes me happy
try to keep my 2011 reading list from growing past 116 this month-- read at least one book for every book that gets added to the list

Sounds good, I think. Doable.

Lip Balm Flavor of the Day: Lavender Lemonade

Rest in Peace, Laura

2011-03-25T04:43:00.000-05:00

Two weeks ago today, my friend Laura died. You know when you hear people say, "oh, I've known them forever"? Well, for Laura and me that was pretty much true. We met when we were in kindergarten. Her house was my second home, and her mother was my second Mom. Through cross country moves and changing life situations, we maintained a friendship for 30 years.

There's a formal obituary here if you want the basic deets, but I've always found those to be so dry. They don't really tell you anything about the person. So I'm going to write my own obituary and tell you about my friend, Laura.

As I said before, Laura and I met when we were in kindergarten. Our dads had just started working at the same company, and so we both moved to Iowa at the same time. We were both from the east coast-- her family was from Delaware and we came from Pennsylvania-- so there was some common ground right away. We had even more common ground when we realized that we'd both spent our summers, or as much of it as we could manage, in the same beach town-- Ocean City, NJ. Ocean City remained important to Laura for the rest of her life, and as an adult she went back as often as possible, even though she lived only a half a day's drive from the Gulf.

We didn't actually meet in class, though. We lived out in the boonies (in Iowa even the boonies have boonies), and I was in the AM class with all the other bus riders. Laura lived within walking distance of school, so she was in the PM class. This was excellent scheduling, because Laura didn't do mornings. (This never changed.)

We actually met through a baby sitting co-op. Our mothers, both being new in town and not really knowing anyone, signed up, and we ended up at each other's houses. You'd be hard pressed to find two less-alike 5 year old girls. Laura was always the girly one. Everything with her was always pink and flowery. I was the tom boy. But the two of us got on like a house afire. When we played Star Wars (hey, it was the early 80s), she was always Princess Leia, and I played everyone else. But we could go at it hammer and tongs, too. I was the hair puller; Laura was a biter.

In many ways she was more like a sister to me than a friend. When we told my brother last week, he said, "More than any of your friends, Laura was like another big sister to me." And then he tacked on, "You both treated me like dirt." Laura would have laughed as hard as I did at that. And then she would have laughed some more when I responded with, "Aw, poor baby." She would have laughed even harder when his wife chimed in with, "Well, that's how you're *supposed* to treat little brothers!"

Laura had a sense of humor, and she loved to laugh. She also liked to tease and play pranks. She once convinced me that there was a stranger with a gun in her closet. Scared the crap out of me. It was the middle of a bright, sunny Saturday afternoon. She was a very good actress.

Her first love was music. She loved classical music and hated country. She played the piano beautifully as a child, but I never heard her play as an adult. Laura was the one who introduced me to the music of the mega star of our junior high years-- Madonna. She also liked acting, and for a while she took voice classes and even had a manager for voice over work. Once she got a small role in a between bout skit at a big, televised wrestling thing in Austin. Smackdown, Raw, one of those things. I laughed for days at the idea of my girly friend at an event like that, let alone in the ring in front of all those people. But apparently she had a ball.

Laura (and her mom) gave THE BEST slumber parties. We always had a ton of fun. And that is where we discovered the iconic movie of our junior high years, Girls Just Want to Have Fun. We LOVED this movie. I'm pretty sure we could both recite whole sections of the movie, including song lyrics, if asked.

My family moved away the summer before high school, and although we didn't lose touch completely, we weren't as close in those years. But after college, with me settled in Houston and Laura in the Austin area, we were able to reconnect. She'd come down every year to go to the beach house, and various things would take me up to Austin for a visit, including two hurricanes. I stayed with Laura and her husband, Greg, for almost 3 weeks during the aftermath of Ike.

In some ways, Laura was a very 1950s kind of gal. Her goal was always to marry and be a housewife. She met her goal 5 years ago when she married Greg. (In fact, their 5 year anniversary is coming up in about 6 weeks.) I was a bridesmaid in the wedding. My parents came down for it, and Mom still talks about how beautiful and gracious the wedding was. Back to that 1950s thing, the planning was all about how to make her guests feel comfortable and welcome, not about being the diva or the center of attention. That wasn't Laura at all. She didn't mind hamming it up-- she liked to act and perform, after all. But she'd rather look after others than make herself the center of attention.

Her mother's childhood pet name for her was Laura Lady Bug, and I always addressed my emails to her that way. Sometimes she called me Beckers.

In the last few years, things weren't quite so rosy for Laura. She started having pelvic problems. It was diagnosed as one thing, and they tried every available treatment option, including surgery, with no success. They consulted doctors all over the country, and even explored international options. Last fall a new specialist decided that she'd been misdiagnosed all along, and they moved off into a new treatment plan. All this time she was in pain. Years of pain. Sitting was misery for her. Can you imagine not being able to sit through a movie or a long dinner out with friends? We talked about this stuff frankly, I think because with my own health problems I could relate. But she never complained. We'd crack toilet paper jokes and then move on to more interesting topics, like what books we'd been reading lately and favorite TV shows, like Ugly Betty or True Blood. (I was staying with them for Ike when True Blood premiered, and after that it kind of became our thing. Or you know, another one of our things. She devoured the books, and we were both devoted Eric fans.)

In the end, it was her disease that killed her. Whatever that disease was. As of her last email to me, they still weren't 100% sure what the problem was. A few weeks back she felt a tearing sensation in her abdomen, followed by intense pain. They had to put her on heavy duty pain medication, and she moved back in with her parents during the week, because she couldn't be on her own while her husband was at work. On March 11th, her mother left her peacefully sleeping at the house while she went to the grocery store. When she returned it was to a yard full of paramedics. Laura passed in her sleep.

I'm trying really hard to remember my Laura. The one who used to make up dance routines with me to perform in front of her ever patient and interested mother. The one who loved pink and ruffles and all that crap. The one who looked for every opportunity to gush with me over our favorite hot actors.

But it's getting harder and harder to forget that she suffered for a very long time. There was something very wrong with her body. Her doctors knew it, but they didn't do such a good job of figuring out why. Was all that suffering necessary? Could they have treated the problem more effectively? Maybe even cured her? Might she be alive right now if one of those dozens of doctors had taken her more seriously?

Those are questions I'm going to have to learn to work through and release over the coming weeks and months. They aren't helpful questions, unless they in some way help another person going through what she did. Mostly they're like an inquisitive tongue, constantly poking at a sore tooth. I need to learn this new landscape and then let the unproductive poking go.

In the meantime, I'm going to think about ponytails. I'm going to think about the way she would use every little molecule of a tissue before throwing it out. I'm going to remember how she smelled. I'm going to remember how beautiful and serene she was on her wedding day. I'm going to remember my friend, Laura.

Kiss Me Baby!

2011-03-19T13:09:00.000-05:00

I've got some stuff going on right now, and I'm not quite ready to talk about it yet. But I will say that I'm still kickin'. I'm in the mood to do a little cleaning today (I know. I don't have a fever, I promise.), and Prince is on the headphones, urging me along. I wanted to embed the Kiss video, but apparently His Royal Purpleness is pretty emphatic about keeping his stuff off the internet. So you'll have to make do with this picture instead.

Meow!

Loss and Gain

2011-03-12T16:50:00.000-06:00

After multiple "you really look like you've lost weight" comments from my mom this week, I dragged out the Wii and checked. (I haven't been feeling up to getting my Wii on lately, so it's been collecting dust for a while.) Lo and behold, I've lost another 6.6 lbs. That's a total of 22 lbs since the end of August. I'm not really sure where it's come from, since I don't see the difference at all. But 22 fewer lbs crushing down on my joints can only be a good thing.

And now on a completely different subject. If you look over to the right, under the About Me section, you'll see a little ad. In mid-January I signed up with a site called Swagbucks. Basically, you're letting them market to you and in exchange you earn points that can be used toward "swag". A lot of it is stuff I wouldn't be interested in, but they do have one piece of swag I can definitely use-- Amazon gift cards. Got to feed the Kindle somehow! So far I've earned $25 worth of Amazon gift cards, and I'm just over half way to earning another $5 card. There are other gift cards available too, like Barnes & Noble, Travelocity, Paypal, Target, iTunes, or Starbucks. If Swagbucks is something you think you'd be interested in, I'd appreciate it if you'd click on that banner or use this link to sign up: http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/fibrobabe. I can earn a few points through referrals, and there's always another book I want to buy!

Lip Balm Flavor of the Day: Shamrock Shake

Update on Last Week's Goals

2011-03-10T00:07:00.000-06:00

So, some stuff got done, some stuff didn't, and some stuff is worse than it was before. The DVD finally went out in the mail. I managed to do some dusting and clear out a bag full of packing materials, catalogs, and general crapola.

But the laundry is still in the basket, taking up way too much space. And instead of reducing my "books to read in 2011" file, it's increased from 107 to 120. (A couple ebooks finally came available at the library, and I picked up a few others cheap.) But 21 books in the rest of the month is still doable, if tight, as long as I don't add any more titles to the list. (HA!) Maybe I should just change the goal to "somewhere near 100" instead of "under 100". Might be more realistic.

So that's about it right now. One step forward, two steps back. You know, the usual.

Lip Balm Flavor of the Day: Cat Pee (not as scary as it sounds- pink grapefruit, orange, and lime)

Enough With the Tattoos

2011-03-08T14:52:00.000-06:00

I've read two book recently, both published within the last year, with heroes who are presented as scary, intimidating guys. Why do the heroines feel this way? What's the cue that these guys are threatening, criminal, and/or low class? They have tattoos.

Really? Because I'm about as non-threatening, law abiding, white bread as it gets, and I have two of 'em. You can't swing a cat without hitting one of us tattooed weirdos. They're so routine on college campuses that they've practically become a cliche, and have been since the late 80s/early 90s. For God's sake, Jenny Crusie has a tramp stamp. (Which I read about on her blog once, but can't find the post now and therefore can't link to. I did however, spend a lovely hour rereading posts from 2008, and laughed so hard I scared the cat when I came across a reference to the Korean Restaurant Story.)

So please, authors, lay off the tattoos as Signs of Evil Intent. There's a pretty good chance that a large portion of your readership has them, too, and we don't appreciate it.

Lip Balm of the Day: Peacock Puffs (lime, blueberry, cake)

Goals

2011-03-01T13:37:00.000-06:00

Hello! I'm not dead! I'm just up to my eyeballs right now. (How anyone who doesn't work or take care of a family or do anything really can be up to her eyeballs I don't know. But whatever.)

Anyway, I'm here to set a few goals for myself. First (and I can't believe I'm making this my first goal, but that should tell you just how much it's annoying me), I need to clean. I have not one, but two laundry baskets full of clean clothes that need to be folded and put away. There's precious little floor space in this room. I don't need to take it up with laundry. There's about an inch of dust covering everything in the room, and what's not covered in dust is covered in cat hair. Or my hair, because I'm shedding like mad again. At this rate I should be completely bald by next Tuesday. And there are piles of junk mail and general crap everywhere. I can't take it any more. The room must be cleaned.

My second goal for the month is to get my Goodreads "books to read in 2011" list under 100. That's really not all the books I intend or expect to read this year. It grows constantly. But most of the books on that list are things that I've already bought and are languishing in the TBR of Doom. (Sorry, I just read Shannon Stacey's Undeniably Yours, and now everything gets an "of Doom" tacked onto the end. Plus, it really is the TBR of Doom. It's where books I want to read go to be smothered to death under the stack of all the other books I want to read. Scary, scary place, my TBR file.) There are 107 books on the list right now, so if I can read 8 of them, without adding any others (Ha!), I'll meet that goal.

My third goal is to blog more than once a week. That's really kind of pathetic. Even I, who go nowhere and have no life, can usually come up with something to say more often than that.

My fourth goal is to remember to return Scott Pilgrim vs. The World to Netflix. I've only had it for a month now. I've watched some of it, and it's only meh, plus it keeps acting weird and skipping.

So, those are my goals for the month. I think I'll start out strong by sticking the Scott Pilgrim disc back in its envelope (if I can find it) and putting it on the table with the rest of the outgoing mail.

Lip Balm Flavor of the Day: Gummy Bear

Happy Days Are Here Again!

2011-02-22T00:54:00.000-06:00

Another round of good news on the medication front. My doctor's office called this morning. The makers of Savella (my other Fibro medication) approved my patient assistance, and there was 3 months worth of free meds waiting for me at the office! Yay! My Fibro meds are the only ones I take that are too new to have a generic, which means they are the most expensive. Now that I'm getting both of them for free, my monthly med costs have gone down by about 3/4. That's huge-- a significant line item in the monthly budget slashed.

In other news, I've got the Kindle down to 724 items. So far it hasn't made a bit of difference. In fact, the battery is dying even faster. But that might be because of all the clicking around to delete stuff. I'll go back to more normal usage for the next couple of days and see if there's any improvement.

And more good news-- I have a solid story idea to work on. Last night I was thinking about a story I started almost 15 years ago and abandoned. The actual pages are long gone at this point (trust me, it's no loss), but the idea lingered. As I was falling asleep last night it fused with another scrap of an idea, and suddenly I have a viable story idea. In the next few days I'm going to work on Kelley Armstrong's Outlining 101, and then I want to start writing March 1st. I'm not going to push myself to NaNo it. I'm afraid I'll flame out in a couple of days at that kind of pace. But I'd definitely like to finish March with a nice chunk of pages. I've also had a little bit of a brain wave about the story I was working on last fall during Discovery. So I think I may end up outlining both at the same time. We'll see how confused I get.

Lip Balm Flavor of the Day: Gingerale

Cleaning Up My Act

2011-02-19T19:24:00.000-06:00

I've noticed lately that my Kindle is chewing through its charge at an alarming rate. I don't leave the wireless on, so ideally it should be good for 10 days or so. At a minimum it should last for 7 days. My most recent charge lasted 4 days.

So today I called Amazon customer service. Apparently, I have an astonishing number of files on my Kindle, more than almost anyone the rep has seen in the 3 years he's worked for Amazon. There were only 837 files on my Kindle at the time, almost half of them samples. And the K2 (the version I have) is supposed to hold 1,500 books. So even if a sample takes up as much space as an entire ebook, I'm still only a little over half full.

I didn't really understand all the tech-speak, but I guess the problem isn't the number of files on my Kindle per se. The problem is with one of the 837 files. There's a glitch in one of them, and it's making the Kindle continuously try to index itself, which is eating up power. Supposedly there's no way to figure out which file it is, so the only thing to do is delete as many excess files as possible. Either the bad file will be deleted and the problem will stop, or with fewer files it will spend less time indexing. As the number of files goes down, hopefully the battery life will go up.

I accept that there's probably no way to know for sure which file is causing the problem, but this still annoys me. I barely ever leave my room, let alone the house, so it's not like I'm ever in great danger of being Kindle-less. But the charge really should last longer, and I don't want to have to clear that much stuff off my Kindle!

It kind of boggles me that the customer service guy was so surprised by the number of samples I have. I can't be the only weirdo who uses her Kindle the way I do. I find shopping directly from the Kindle to be a bit of a pain. Also, I spend a lot of time cruising around reading websites, so I probably hear about another 2-3 books I want to check out every day. I pop on over to Amazon, download the sample, and move on with my day. When I want a new book I go through the samples until I find something interesting, and then with a couple of clicks I can purchase directly from the Kindle. I can be anywhere to do this, including a doctor's office or the bathroom (prime book buying locations for me, btw). As far as I know, the Kindle can't tap in to your Amazon wishlist, so adding all those books I'm interested in to my wishlist just won't work as well for me. (I do wishlist books that haven't been released yet, since there are no samples for those. Then, I check the wishlist every once in a while, and anything I'm still interested in I'll sample.)

I spent a good bit of my reading time today working my way through samples and deleting books that I didn't love and won't be reading again. But the rest of my day was spent trolling Goodreads and adding more samples. So I'm only down to 829 items-- a net decrease of 8 files. Unless I got really lucky and deleted the problem file, I'm pretty sure that's not going to make a difference to my battery life. I guess I'm going to have to spend the next couple of days reading samples. That's fun in its own way, I guess, but I'd rather do it on my own schedule!

Feeling Weepie

2011-02-10T14:08:00.000-06:00

After reading several really good books lately I'm in that moody, creative place where I feel like I want to start writing again. I've been listening to music again, something I haven't done much of in the last couple of months.

I don't have much on my mp3 player, comparatively speaking. (Someone I follow on twitter said today that she has 10,005 songs on hers, and was pondering if she should if she should delete 5 songs to bring it back to a tidy 10,000. My old but serviceable mp3 has about 1/10 that capacity.) But there's still enough stuff on there that I forget what I have.

So I was cruising through the other day, looking for something good, when I rediscovered The Weepies. I only have three of their songs, but I've been listening to those three songs on repeat ever since. I'm thinking about taking the $2 in free mp3 downloads that Amazon if offering right now (promo code: VDAYMP3S) plus some of the gift certificate credit that I have saved up and downloading a few more songs, or possibly their whole catalog. I could see this music being the core of a soundtrack. I know I said this before, but I just logged in over at Wiz IQ, and I'm going to go through the Discovery class again, this time with less moving and distractions.

And here is a video I found for one of the songs I've had on repeat. It's not an official video, they don't appear to have made one, which is a shame. But it's still pretty good. I'd love to know where the images are from, if anyone knows. Looks like something Japanese to me, and while I have wide ranging tastes, this is an area that I'm completely unfamiliar with. Some of the clips look pretty romantic, and I'd like to check them out.

And now, Take It From Me!

Why Can't They All Be Ebooks?

2011-02-09T08:58:00.001-06:00

Small pet peeve time, folks. As I'm sure I've mentioned 8,000 times around here, I love my ebooks. Now that I've moved into a tiny room with no bookshelves and no storage, they are vital to my existence. That's not hyperbole, y'all. If it weren't for ebooks there'd be no books at all. And I can't live like that.

So why, oh why, must so there be so many books I want to read that don't have a digital edition? In the last week I've been all over Josh Lanyon (in the metaphorical sense), and now I want to try some f/f fiction. (Apparently it's Gay Week here in The Little Bedroom in Indiana.) I've done some research. I found a title that comes highly recommended. It looks like it has a lot of humor. Score! Except that it doesn't have a digital version. No score! No score!

The problem isn't so much that I want to buy, download, and begin reading an ebook while never leaving my bed (the only sitting surface in my bedroom), because I could buy it off Amazon and have it delivered right to the house without having to risk contamination by any of that icky ice and snow that's going around right now. The problem is, once I have it, what do I do with it? It's gone beyond a little scary and right into "call the EPA" at the moment. I desperately need to CLEAN ALL THE THINGS! Or more realistically, CLEAN SOME OF THE THINGS! If one more thing comes into this room, it may just pop like a zit. (Now there's an image for you.)

So all that means, no lovely, funny f/f story to read. It makes me very sad. The moral of this story? (My mother would say it's "clean your room," but that is never the moral of any of my stories.) Publishers, put out digital versions, please. Because those of us with small living spaces and snow allergies want to read your books, too.

Indiana is Pissing Me Off

2011-02-07T23:24:00.000-06:00

Usually I avoid the news, because I don't have enough energy to waste any being annoyed. But I caught just enough of a news broadcast to skate past annoyed into pissed off. The Republicans are currently pushing an amendment to the Indiana Constitution to ban gay marriage. It's already state law, but they want to make really, really sure that no judge can overturn it. This piece of asshattery was particularly irritating:

“Two percent of the population does not have the right to define marriage for the rest of the population,” said Micah Clark of the American Family Association, referring the minority of Americans who are gay and lesbian.

Does he not see that his 98% (not that I believe that 98% is even in the ball park for those who support this amendment) don't have the right to define something so personal as marriage for that 2% either? Marriage, from the government's point of view, is a contract. That's it. As long as all parties are of legal age to enter a contract and freely consent, the government should be satisfied.

It's religion and the couples' beliefs about marriage that give it personal meaning. No one is saying you have to let two men or two women marry in your church, if your church does not accept gay marriage. (It's called separation of church and state. We'll keep our government out of your church policies, you keep your church out of our government policies, and everyone will get along just fine.) More than that, marriage is a union of hearts and lives. It's what each couple brings to the table that makes a marriage. You can't define that. You can't control it. And you have no right to impose your ideas on this most personal of relationships.

For anyone who wants to read a little bit more about the proposed amendment, here's an Indianapolis Star article that explains the situation in more detail.

I'd really like to end this with telling all of those GOP bastards where they can stick their stupid amendment. But I won't. I'd just as soon stay out of their bedrooms, and I wish they would extend the same courtesy to the rest of the world.

Playing Nice

2011-02-04T00:14:00.000-06:00

Mom was pretty cranky today, so in an effort to pacify and play nice, I spent the evening in the living room with them instead of in my room. I picked a movie off my Netflix queue, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, and we watched it. Or I watched it, Dad slept through the whole thing, and Mom slept through a good chunk of the middle. That's not really a comment on the quality of the movie. Dad's got pneumonia right now, so he spends a lot of most evenings sleeping in the chair. And Mom falls asleep in front of any movie that isn't overtly Christian or produced by the Hallmark channel.

Other than Harry's Law, there are no TV shows that we both enjoy. And I've pretty much exhausted my supply of Instant Netflix movies in the Family category. So if anyone has any suggestions, that would be great. They don't have to be animated, and they don't have to be kiddish. They just need to be low on cursing and adult material. And for my sanity if they could be low on the religious references and cheese factor, that would be good, too.

Even though Mom was snitty today (she is totally freaking out about all the ice outside our front door and getting the cars and driveway cleared out, even though we have no where to go and no way to get there, since the roads are just as bad), I had a pretty good day. I read a book I enjoyed by a new-to-me author. If Dad listened to Rush Limbaugh I never caught him at it. And I, surprisingly, got a good night's sleep last night after my 3 hour nap. I think I'm almost caught up. Or as caught up as I ever get.

So that was my day. How was yours?

Attitude Adjustment

2011-02-03T00:56:00.000-06:00

I took a three hour nap this afternoon. It's made a world of difference in my mood. There's been a few minor annoyances today, but my nap armed me to deal with them like a rational(ish) human being and not fly off the handle or rant on the internet.

Tonight we watched Harry's Law as a family. The usual thing is that I retreat to my room after dinner and do my own damn thing. (Mom and Dad have an unhealthy appreciation for Hallmark movies, and movies she finds at the Christian store. It's February and they're still watching Christmas movies. I don't mind an occasional cheesy/sappy movie, but there's a limit.) But we all enjoy Harry's Law, so we usually watch that one together.

It surprises me greatly that Mom and Dad like it. The language alone would normally be enough to send my mother flying. And you can't deny that Harry comes at things with a liberal world view. Dad listens to Rush Limbaugh. Also, the show's by David E. Kelley. There haven't been any dancing babies yet, but there is a certain wackiness that you might expect from this guy. (Harry, who is a woman, has set up a law office in the ghettos of Cincinnati? Columbus? I don't remember. Somewhere in Ohio. The storefront she took over used to be a shoe store, and the former occupant left quite possibly thousands of dollars worth of designer shoes. Did I mention this was in the ghetto? Anyway, her assistant answers the phone, "Harry's Law and Fine Shoes," which should tell you all you need to know about the show. Oh, and Kathy Bates plays Harry.) If I were to make a bet on the one show Mom and Dad would not like, this is the one I'd pick. But I guess to them it's less objectionable than the cut 'em up, shoot 'em up shows I like to watch, like SVU and CSI. There's very little on screen violence in Harry's Law, and so far she's managed to help somebody who really needed it by the end of the episode, so I guess that fits with their tastes. I just like that Harry is a broad who's willing to call it like she sees it without having a hang 'em high kind of attitude.

I think I'm actually starting to get tired, so I'll cut it off there. Today was a better day for me, and hopefully tomorrow will be, too.

In Which I Am Unpleasant

2011-02-01T15:40:00.000-06:00

I have many annoyances and frustrations today. And so I thought, why not share them with you? That is what the internet is for after all. Ranting and porn. Sorry, no porn today.

Annoyance #1: There was a cop killed in Indianapolis recently. It's a terrible thing. He pulled someone over for a traffic stop, and the guy shot him. There are many things about this which are bad, including the fact that the guy was erroneously out on bail, and shouldn't have been out and free to be shooting people in the first place. But the reaction to this has been extreme. They rented out a sports arena to hold the funeral. Reportedly, thousands of people attended today, in the middle of an ice storm. They televised the service. It was on for hours. Literally, multiple hours. My mother watched the whole thing, TV cranked to the max as usual. I had to hide in my room with the door closed, listening to ABBA and Katy Perry to drown the whole thing out.

I'm willing to admit that my less-than-ideal emotional state is at least partially, if not mostly, to blame for the aggravation this is causing me. But I can't handle listening, even second hand, to two or three hours worth of funeral right now, even if the whole thing didn't strike me as an overblown media circus. I'm very sorry the man died, especially when he was serving the public and the man who killed him should never have been out in the first place. But the hoopla is distasteful.

Annoyance #2: This one is both gross and embarrassing, but since I'm being unpleasant anyway, I'm just going to go ahead and (over)share. I can't shower every day. My skin (like the rest of me) hates the cold and dryness, and showering daily makes the whole thing worse. Plus, showering is hard work, and I just don't have the energy for it. Last week I went for several days, it may have been like 5, without showering. Objectively, I know that's gross. It's embarrassing to admit. But I didn't want to, so I didn't. (In the rational part of my mind, I know that this is a fairly big red flag that there's something not good going on in my head. Unfortunately, that's only a very small part of my mind. The rest is saying "fuck it", which is why I think I probably need to find a psychiatrist pretty soon.) I finally took a shower on Sunday night, when Mom refused to serve dinner until I'd bathed. And then I showered again last night (but didn't wash my hair, that was just too much effort) when Mom started in on how we were going to lose power and I might not get a chance again for a while. We didn't lose power. (Obviously, or you wouldn't be reading this post.) Today, after showering two days in a row, I am in itchy misery. I'm scratching my pits like a monkey. It's not pleasant, and it's not pretty. And Mom is hassling me again to take another shower. Fuck that. I am not showering today. Maybe not tomorrow either. Go away.

After venting Annoyances #1 and #2, Annoyances #3-5 don't seem so significant. I want to hide out in my room, reading and listening to the most cheerful music I can find. I don't want to interact with my parents. I don't want them coming and standing in my door and talking to me. (Which my mother does all the time, and which is bugging the ever loving fuck out of me.) I want all my interactions to be on my own terms. The internet is perfect for that. Living with other human beings is not. I don't want to live here any more.

***

My plan was to try to post every day this month. February is a short month anyway, so why not? Although, after that screed I'm not sure anyone is going to want to read any of it.

Going back in my hole now.

Hanging on to the Happy

2011-01-31T00:34:00.000-06:00

I've been dealing with some difficult internal stuff this past week, and there have been a few things that have saved me.

1) Comfort food. Last night I made a Mexican casserole that I used to make in Houston. It wasn't quite how I'd have done it if I were working from scratch (I'd rather start off with chicken and rotel in the crockpot instead of left over cooked chicken), but it was still pretty good and a taste of home. Then I made a Strawberry Dream Pie. Tonight Mom made mashed potatoes and gravy just for me. Yum. I had a bowl for a midnight snack, too.

2) I'm reading a really fantastic book called A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. Really. It's fab. I'll be reviewing it soon. I'm about half way through the book, only 275 more pages to go. It's a big 'un.

3) I've been listening to a LOT of Katy Perry. Very peppy. My favorite is Teenage Dream. But I don't love the video, so here is the boys' choir from Glee doing their version. Hope it makes you as happy as it makes me.

Happy, Happy Day!

2011-01-27T13:24:00.000-06:00

The doorbell rang a few minutes ago. FedEx delivery. It was addressed to me, although I wasn't expecting anything. I open the package, and lo and behold-- medicine! Three months worth of Lyrica, free! That's almost $750 retail. I sent in paperwork to Pfizer's patient assistance program a couple weeks ago, and they've already sent me my first shipment. Thank you, Pfizer!

If I Had a Million Dollars

2011-01-25T22:06:00.000-06:00

I have a rich fantasy life. Lately I've been imagining what I would do if I won the lottery. The short answer is that I'd move back to Houston. I'd buy a little house and I'd get set back up with my old doctors and go back to my old life. (Mom has been nagging me about getting on the ball and finding new specialists. I know I have to, but I don't wanna.)

Then, I would buy a car, because I really miss having my own wheels. I loved my old Camry, but if I won the lottery and had virtually unlimited funds, I think I'd buy a hybrid. Houston may be oil country, but I really like the idea of spending less on gas. And while I'm going green, I'd want solar panels on my house.

I'd hire someone to come in and do all the cleaning and maybe some cooking. I'm just too run down to keep up with that kind of stuff, even if I didn't hate cleaning and avoid it whenever possible.

And then the biggest thing, the one that probably won't be practical even if someone handed me a million dollars right now, is that I'd travel. I'd love to head out to California and go to the RT convention. I'd like to go to NYC to the RWA convention. I love all things Disney, and I'd love to go to Disney World again. I haven't been there since I was a freshman in high school. They've opened like three new parks since then. I'm pretty sure that just one of those trips would leave me scary exhausted, let alone doing all three this year. Maybe it's a good thing I'm broke.

On a smaller scale, when/if the government ever comes through and decides to pay me my social security, I'd like to take some of the back benefits they owe me and buy some bright yellow paint and get rid of this drab gray/purple color on my bedroom walls. (This dingy room is enough to depress a person all by itself.) I'd like to get some sort of media cabinet organization thingie so that I have something to unpack what little stuff I have into. More yellow paint for my bathroom. And maybe some new towels and bed linens. (Not yellow. I'm thinking blue for the bed and bright pink and green for the towels, to go with my flamingo shower curtain.)

My realistic fantasies are much more modest than my fantasy fantasies, but at the moment they're all out of reach. Maybe I should start buying lottery tickets.

Grrrrr

2011-01-21T15:02:00.001-06:00

We're having a problem here at Multi-Generational Housing Solution Central, and it's really getting to me. A couple weeks ago Mom bought a package of hot dog buns and left them sitting on the kitchen table instead of putting them away in the pantry or refrigerator. Later that evening, while everyone was watching TV, Trouble jumped up on the kitchen table and chewed a big hole in the package, eating a good part of four of the eight buns in the pack.

Mom lost her shit. She cleaned up the mess, and then she came into my room, where I was sitting watching TV and Troub was sleeping on the bed, and started yelling at him. Mom is loud anyway, because she's losing her hearing, but this was right up in his face, shaking her finger at him, loud. He tried to back up a bit, she just kept coming. So he hissed at her. She gave him a little tap on the rump and kept yelling. He hissed again, she hit him a little harder and kept yelling. He hissed louder, and she really started whaling on him. At this point I started yelling, and Mom backed off enough for Troub to get under the bed and hide. Then she tried to come around the bed and go after him again. Can we say out of proportion response for a $2.50 pack of buns? I had to chase her out of my room to get her to leave him alone. And he'd been sleeping on my bed for at least 45 minutes before she came in screaming, so he probably had no idea why she was suddenly attacking him.

Now it's weeks later, and Troub still hisses and runs away every time she comes into my room. It doesn't help that she insists on making eye contact and pushing his personal space boundaries. She seems to be taking a nasty pleasure in tormenting him, and when I pointed out today that he's still upset about what she did (after she came in and chased him off AGAIN), she said she's still upset about what HE did. Dude. He wrecked a package of hot dog buns. Get a grip. If it's such a big fucking deal I will buy you another pack of fucking buns. When I pointed out that Troub has a right to not be hassled in his own space, she said something to the effect of "It's not his space, it's my space." So much for the whole "it's your home, too," speech I keep getting.

I never thought I'd have this kind of problem when we all moved in together. It's bad enough that I feel like I can't get a moment's peace, with her constantly poking her nose in my room and sometimes just opening the door and walking in. (What does a closed door say to you?) But I can't tolerate her hassling my cat anymore. I don't know how I'm going to handle this. She's proven to be completely impervious to hints and subtle suggestions. I'm going to have to get forceful about it, and probably about her leaving me the hell alone while I'm at it. We both have a right to be left in peace when we've retreated to our room-- the only place in the house that is supposed to be just for us. (I can't even get her to leave me alone in the bathroom!) The only outcome I can see of this conversation is for her to get all cranky and butthurt and even worse. And if I don't find a good way of doing this soon I'm going to end up snapping and saying it in the rudest way possible. But I'm sorry, the way she's behaving is not OK.

ETA: Mom walked into my room a few minutes ago and asked, "are you mad at me?" I told her I wasn't happy about how she was acting with Troub. First she starts on, "well, he's just a cat," and then she changed the subject and walked out. Now she's crashing around in the kitchen. If she doesn't take it easy she's going to break something.

Another Country, Part II

2011-01-19T02:32:00.000-06:00

I started this as a response to Julie's comment on the last post, but it grew until it just seemed smarter to create a whole new post for it. So here you go. Visiting the Christian Book Store, Part II.

I try to keep my snarky opinions to myself in these situations, because as much as I think this stuff is ridiculous, the rest of my family has an honest interest in some of it. (Not the more junky stuff that I made fun of here, but the books, music, and movies are of definite interest to the fam. My brother and SIL stood around giggling with me at some of the more out there product offerings, so it's not like they hold the scripture covered lolly pops as sacred or anything.) They've all been amazingly good about not pressuring me to attend church. I don't want to repay that with even the appearance of ridiculing their beliefs.

Underneath all the eye rolling, I'm kind of disturbed by what stores like this represent. Christian merchandising is a multi-million dollar enterprise, and to me it just feels really cynical and oily. I can't shake the idea that the people who make and sell most of this stuff do it only because they know they can sell anything if they can find a way to make it "Christian." And a whole group of people who are too young in age, too new in their faith, or just gullible are gobbling it up as fast as they can crank out some new piece of crap.

I know that there are New Age stores doing much the same thing. It's not restricted to the Christian market. And maybe I'm letting my prejudices show here. But it just seems so much more overwhelming in the Christian community. Did you know that churches, especially mega churches (Texas is the land of the mega church, so I have some unfortunate experience of this), have gift shops now. You can get mugs or tshirts or bottled water with the church's name and logo on them. And signed copies of the minister's latest book.

The prices on all this stuff are outrageous, too. My parents joined a Bible study at church, and although there are three Bibles on the bookshelf in the living room right now, none of them are the translation they needed, and they have a couple of expensive study Bibles still packed somewhere, but who knows where they are? So Mom went to a different Christian store last week and bought two more Bibles, one for each of them. She lucked out and the store had some on clearance. She got two copies at 50% off. She still paid $50 for the pair. That means each Bible was originally priced at $50. That's a lotta moolah for a book that's been in print for hundreds of years and could be downloaded as a free ebook from Amazon. (That's not a judgement on how they choose to spend their money. That's outrage at greedy publishers and store owners who choose to ask that kind of money.)

I know I made fun of all of this yesterday, but it just makes me sick when I see people being taken advantage of in the name of faith. I know there are other things my parents could have done with that $50, but they felt they had to spend that money to participate fully in their faith. The lady in line ahead of me at the store last night bought $90 worth of stuff. I honestly have no idea what she bought, I was busy goofing off with my brother and SIL at that point and just happened to hear the cashier give her the total. But she definitely looked like she could have put that $90 elsewhere. Like maybe shampoo. (Not that I have a lot of room to talk. I woke up this morning looking like Helena Bonham Carter at the Golden Globes.) Again, I'm not judging anyone's choice in how they spend their money. I'm mad at the church culture that pressures people to have these books to participate in their religion, and the stores and publishers that set the prices so high, knowing that there are people who will pay their prices no matter what.

Are those supposed to be dreads or what?

My visit to a foreign land

2011-01-18T00:23:00.001-06:00

Today I went out to dinner with my parents and brother and sister-in-law. But before we went to the restaurant, my SIL had coupons that were about to expire for a local Christian store. I didn't burst into flames upon crossing the threshold of the store, so I decided to look around a bit and report what I saw.

First of all, let me just say, there is a lot of Christian crap out there. There were a million books, including Christian weight loss and Sarah Palin's latest. My dad picked up a copy of George W's book, and I was a very good girl. I didn't once stick my finger down my throat and make gagging noises, even though I wanted to.

There were CDs and DVDs. There were wall hangings and statues and tchotchkes of all kinds. They had cards, which wasn't surprising, but they also had boxes of children's valentines. They had gift bags with Christ-centered messages on them. Children's toys. I spotted a box of Bible Scrabble. I'm not sure what the difference between that and regular Scrabble is. Maybe the dirty words don't count, or the "no proper nouns" rule is waved and you get to use names from the Bible, like Habakkuk or Abednego.

What was most odd to me were the items that were trying to ape secular crazes. Like Faith Bands- a Biblical version of silly bandz. This dog tag amused me. It says, "thelight", but the font used makes it look an awful lot like Twilight merchandising.

And this was quite possibly the weirdest item I spotted:

It's the Solar Powered Praise Flower! (The ones they sold had words like Love or Hope printed on the base, along with a scripture reference.) These flowers sit on your desk or windowsill and just sort of... sway. Bounce. Cute, but kind of weird. And other than the reference to the Bible verse, I'm not sure what makes it a Praise Flower as opposed to just a plain old flower.

So, that was my trip to the Christian bookstore. Nothing caught fire, and I entertained myself by laughing (quietly, I hope) at all the odd things that people will buy if you slap a cross on it.

Things That Make Me Happy

2011-01-16T10:26:00.000-06:00

There has been a dearth of happy in the world in the last week. It certainly hasn't been sunshine and rainbows for me. To me this means only one thing. It's time to do another Things That Make Me Happy post.

1. Pancakes for dinner. Especially if they're apple pancakes!
2. My library already has a hold list going for the audio version of The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen. Woo hoo! I love Sarah Addison Allen, and I can't wait for her next book.
3. Farkle is on it's way out! I won't share any of the gory details, but I will say I'm relieved to see progress.
4. Sunday Morning! It's quiet, and I have the house all to myself. I forward to these hours every week. I'm dealing with the change in living situation fairly well, I think, but I desperately need these few hours by myself every week.
5. Trouble. He's a little twerp, but I love him like crazy.

Do you ever just feel like a nap?

2011-01-14T10:10:00.000-06:00

I took a 3 hour nap one morning this week. (When your life is one big sick day, you can do those sorts of things.) It would be lovely to do it again today. I had a hard time sleeping last night, and when that happens I know I'm going to hurt the next day. And I do.

But here's the thing-- even those of us whose lives are one big sick day have to leave the house and do stuff occasionally. On Monday I went to the doctor, and she filled out a bunch of paperwork to get some of my meds for free (hopefully) from the manufacturers. Everything is all signed and ready to go; I just have to go somewhere to fax it. We've had snow and bad weather for most of this week, plus I was recovering from Monday, so today is the first day we've had a chance to do it.

I just had a brainwave. What if, instead of dragging myself out of the house every time I need to fax something (which is fairly regularly), I just BOUGHT A FAX MACHINE. Between all my medical crap, and Dad's retirement crap, and Mom's Mary Kay crap, I think we can justify the expense. I tell you what. I may be a little slow on the uptake these days (shut up), but when inspiration strikes, it really strikes!

Anyway, back to the original topic of this post. What was it again? Um, I talked about napping.... I forget what my point was. (I do this often, which is why there are many posts marked "draft" compared to what's actually posted.)

I'm going to the grocery store with Mom in a little bit. I want to poke around and put things in the cart that I want. Just asking for a particular brand of whatever isn't good enough. Mom and Dad like to talk about when I was little, and I'd constantly say, "I do it myselpst!" (That's "myself" for those who don't read 2 yr old.) There's been surprisingly little change in that department in the last 34 years. I hurt, and I'd really rather stay home in bed. But the weather is supposed to turn foul again tomorrow, and this may be my last chance to go out for a few days. And I want to do it myselpst.

I'm off to research fax machines now. And then later, after I've had my excursion, I think I'll take a nap.

It's a Sign

2011-01-10T15:15:00.000-06:00

This video cheered me up immensely.

Also, the doctor's appointment went well. Antibiotics, but no lancing for now. I've named my abscess Farkle. Anything that big really ought to have it's own name.

Off My Game

2011-01-10T07:51:00.000-06:00

I'm feeling weepy and out of whack today. Too much news, too much misery, not enough sleep. Troubbie the Wonder Cat woke me up at quarter to six this morning wanting to be fed. (Yes, he's still alive.) I have a doctor's appointment this morning, and I have something I'm scared to show her. Think it's an abscess that will need to be lanced, possibly requiring minor surgery and costing a million dollars. The book I've been reading, The Awakening by L.J. Smith, is angsty and depressing. Only 50 pages or so to left, and I don't want to go there today.

So what should I read? I'm seriously considering breaking my self-imposed book buying moratorium and downloading a book for the Kindle. What do you suggest? Something happy happy, please.

The Accidental Altar

2011-01-03T15:36:00.001-06:00

I was unpacking a box of tchotchkes a couple of weeks ago, and I ended up arranging my favorites on the only empty flat surface in my entire room-- my dresser. It wasn't until a few days later that I realized that it's got the vibe of an altar.

Starting at the top left, there is a picture of my brother and sister-in-law. (I fuzzed out their faces because I don't have their permission to post a picture of them on the internet. As far as I know, they don't even know I have this blog.) In the middle is Flower Annie, my Wee Peeple doll, made by the wonderful Kandra Niagra. Isn't she beautiful? I love Wee Peeple dolls. They have such personality and energy.

Next to Annie is a drawing I made when I was about 10. We'd just moved to Texas for the first time, and it was the Sesquicentennial. (150 years of Texas statehood.) I was the new Yankee girl, but they liked it so much that it was framed and posted in the hall at my middle school for years. I'm not sure how my parents got a hold of it, but they put it on the wall in the yellow guest bedroom in Massachusetts (which was briefly my bedroom). I think because the frame is yellow, so it matched the room.

Coming around the corner, there is a little pixie box I've had since I was a little girl. It's sitting in a wooden bowl that my dad carved. I'm not sure why it's sitting in the bowl, but when I took it out it didn't look right to me, so back in it went. Next to the pixie box is a large shell I got once on a trip to the beach in Galveston. The beach is kind of a special place to me. (I'm a Scorpio. That's a water sign, so I guess that makes sense.) I always feel more relaxed at the beach. Like I can exhale. All my muscles unknot and I sleep better. If I ever win the lottery I'm buying a house on the beach.

In front of the pixie box there's a crystal that I love. When I did have an official altar I used it to represent the energy of the God. There's also a pretty little shell that I found once walking on the beach. In the bottom right corner is a little dish given to me by a friend. She used to read cards at the Texas Renaissance Festival, and she used the dish as a tip jar. I know you can't tell from the picture, but it has suns and moons and stars all around the edge. In the dish is the fortune I got in my fortune cookie when we had Chinese food New Year's Eve. It says, "A new romance is in the future." I'd say that's pretty accurate, since a romance novel that I'd pre-ordered downloaded to my Kindle on January 1st.

Next to the bowl is a plastic canvas coaster I made for my parents. Their living room in Massachusetts was painted barn red and tan, with black accents. I made about a dozen of them in different quilt block designs, and I made that one, with a black cat on it, to represent my cat, Trouble. Mom and Dad love him to bits, and Mom calls him her grandson, so I thought they'd like it. I stole that one in Massachusetts so that I had something to put my sweating drinks on in my bedroom. Somehow it never got put back with the rest of the coasters when we packed.

In the center, in front of Flower Annie, is a little frame that used to sit on my grandfather's nightstand. On the left side there's a picture of my mom as a little girl in her Girl Scout uniform. (You can't really see it because of the glare.) We looked so much alike at that age, that I asked my granddad once when that picture was taken, because I didn't remember doing it. I thought it was me. There used to be a little picture of her brother, my Uncle George, tucked in there, too, but it slipped out. It's probably still in the box the frame was packed in for the move. I need to look around for it, because I don't want to lose it. On the other side is a picture of my grandmother and grandfather. I can see that picture from my bed, and it makes me happy to be able to look at them.

In front of the frame is my mascot, Super Becky. When I was a freshman in college I went into a Hallmark store around Halloween, and I spotted these cute little miniatures. My roommate and best friend is a huge fan of dragons, and I found a puppy in a dragon costume for her. For me I found a bunny in a super hero costume, with a capital B on his chest. I immediately knew his name was Super Becky. (Don't ask me why Super Becky is male. It makes no sense. But it is what it is.) I don't know how I managed to hang on to Super Becky for almost 20 years now without losing him. As you can see, he's pretty small. But I have.

Moving on to the left, there's a pretty little porcelain box that I got as a favor at a birthday party when I was in elementary school. It's got a butterfly on top and my name written in liquid gold on the front. I always thought it was the coolest thing. Next to that there is an old-style Weeble Wobble. I was at my grandparents house one day, and I decided to give it to Grandmom. She was so touched that I gave her one of my toys that she kept it forever after on display in her china cabinet with all her other treasures. I never had the heart to tell her that my 5 year-old self decided that he was the grumpy one, and I didn't want him any more. It kind of makes me laugh now. I still think of him as the grumpy one!

The stack of stones in the bottom left corner is something that my brother collected. I'm not sure why I kept them (I found them on the bookshelf in my room in Massachusetts), but they seem to fit there. Behind the stones is a little angel that Mom used to put out as a Christmas decoration in my room every year. I loved to play with her. One year I kept her, and she lived on a shelf in my apartment in Houston.

Behind the angel is another item that was always on display at my grandmother's house. I think I mentioned a while back that she was a professional church soloist in Philadelphia. As you may be able to tell from the little photo that lived on my grandfather's nightstand, Grandmom was also a sizable woman. This figure looked so much like her that her coworkers gave it to her as a gift when she retired. I love having this little piece of my grandmother on my dresser.

And the last figure is pretty well obscured by glare, but she is the little statue I used to represent Goddess on my altar. Here is a site that has a picture of the collection she came from. The name of the figure is Devotion, and she's just about exactly in the center of the page. You may notice that the whole collection is a bit, um, Georgia O'Keefe, but I like them. You can't see it, but there's another little shell at her feet.

And that is my accidental altar. Little bits and pieces of family and history and places that are important to me.

2010 Book List

2010-12-31T00:30:00.000-06:00

Every year since 2007 I've tracked my reading in my little red book. That book is one of my prize possessions. It's a great resource when I want to give recommendations, or double check if I've read a book or not before buying or putting it on hold at the library. Plus, it's fun to look back every once in a while and see what I've read.

I have a few rules for my list. First, it has to be a while book. If I only read a few chapters or a couple stories out of an anthology it doesn't count. Also, only books I'm reading for the first time go on the list. My regular re-reads of The Blue Castle or The Westing Game don't count. Neither do all those Vorkosigan books that I'm re-reading before starting on the new one. Without these rules my list would be much, much longer. But the rules make me happy, and it's my list so what the hell.

Without further ado, my 2010 reading list:

1. Home Is Where the Wine Is- Laurie Perry
2. Shiver- Maggie Stiefvater
3. Skin Trade- Laurell K. Hamilton
4. Laced With Magic- Barbara Bretton
5. The Convenient Marriage- Georgette Heyer
6. The Magic Knot- Helen Scott Taylor
7. Fired Up- Jayne Ann Krentz
8. If He's Sinful- Hannah Howell
9. Divine Misdemeanors- Laurell K. Hamilton
10. Suite Scarlett- Maureen Johnson
11. A Matter of Class- Mary Balogh
12. My Sister the Vampire #1: Switched- Sienna Mercer
13. Uneven- Anah Crow
14. The Comeback Kiss- Lani Diane Rich
15. Once Dead, Twice Shy- Kim Harrison
16. The Reluctant Widow- Georgette Heyer
17. Going Gray- Anne Kreamer
18. The Rules of Gentility- Janet Mullany
19. Ash- Malinda Lo
20. Devil's Bride- Stephanie Laurens
21. A Poisoned Season- Tasha Alexander
22. Lord Braybrook's Penniless Bride- Elizabeth Rolls
23. Alice I Have Been- Melanie Benjamin
24. I Kissed a Zombie and I Liked It- Adam Selzer
25. The Abduction of Julia- Karen Hawkins
26. In Milady's Chamber- Sheri Cobb South
27. Mr Impossible- Loretta Chase
28. The Truth About Lord Stoneville- Sabrina Jeffries
29. A Rake's Vow- Stephanioe Laurens
30. The Twelve Sacred Traditions of Magnificent Mothers-In-Law- Haywood Smith
31. The Murder of King Tut- James Patterson
32. Wild Ride- Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer
33. Lessons in French- Laura Kinsale
34. Bundle of Trouble- Diana Orgain
35. Skinwalker- Faith Hunter
36. Flirt- Laurell K. Hamilton
37. Intertwined- Gena Showalter
38. Beyond Heaving Bosoms- Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan
39. A Touch of Dead- Charlaine Harris
40. The Reckoning- Kelley Armstrong
41. What the Librarian Did- Karina Bliss
42. Last of the Ravens- Linda Winstead Jones
43. Born of Night- Sherrilyn Kenyon
44. Blue Diablo- Ann Aguirre
45. Captive of Sin- Anna Campbell
46. The Cinderella Deal- Jennifer Crusie
47. Beautiful Creatures- Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
48. Instant Attraction- Jill Shalvis
49. Scandal's Bride- Stephanie Laurens
50. Mistress By Mistake- Maggie Robinson
51. Blood Cross- Faith Hunter
52. Darkfever- Karen Marie Moning
53. Tales of the Otherworld- Kelley Armstrong
54. The Dead Travel Fast- Deanna Raybourn
55. The Girl Who Chased the Moon- Sarah Addison Allen
56. Mistress of the Art of Death- Ariana Franklin
57. Bloodfever- Karen Marie Moning
58. Frostbitten- Kelley Armstrong
59. Faefever- Karen Marie Moning
60. Dreamfever- Karen Marie Moning
61. Street Magic- Caitlin Kittredge
62. The Englor Affair- J. L. Langley
63. Exit Strategy- Kelley Armstrong
64. St. Nacho's- Z. A. Maxfield
65. Wild Heart- Lori Brighton
66. Handyman- Claire Thompson
67. Storm Born- Richelle Mead
68. Exclusively Yours- Shannon Stacey
69. Something About You- Julie James
70. Stranded With a Spy- Merline Lovelace
71. Rules Were Made to Be Broken- Lenore Black
72. Demonfire- Kate Douglas
73. What She Deserves- Ellie Marvel
74. The Last Hellion- Loretta Chase
75. Made to Be Broken- Kelley Armstrong
76. The Vorkosigan Companion- Lilian Stewart Carl
77. Zero at the Bone- Jane Seville
78. Ten Things I Love About You- Julia Quinn
79. Changes- Jim Butcher
80. The Wicked House of Rohan- Anne Stuart
81. Changeless- Gail Carriger
82. The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie- Jennifer Ashley
83. Heart's Sentinel- P.J. Schnyder
84. Magic Bleeds- Ilona Andrews
85. Sizzling Sixteen- Janet Evanovich
86. Dark and Disorderly- Bernita Harris
87. Maybe This Time- Jennifer Crusie
88. Bullet- Laurell K. Hamilton
89. Jungle Heat- Bonnie Dee
90. Silver Borne- Patricia Briggs
91. Alien Revealed- Lilly Cain
92. Allegra Fairweather: Paranormal Investigator- Janni Nell
93. Draw the Dark- Ilsa J. Bick
94. What She Needs- Anne Calhoun
95. Burning Up- Sarah Mayberry
96. Last Night's Scandal- Loretta Chase
97. Bayou Moon- Ilona Andrews
98. Menage on a Train- Alice Gaines
99. Tonight, My Love- Tracie Sommers
100. Dark Road to Darjeeling- Deanna Raybourn
101. Savage Sanctuary- Jacqueline Barbary
102. Butterfly Tattoo- Deidre Knight
103. Burning Lamp- Amanda Quick
104. The Lion of Kent- Aleksandr Voinov and Kate Cotoner
105. Hunger- Jackie Morse Kessler
106. Dead in the Family- Charlaine Harris
107. Motor City Fae- cindy Spencer Pape
108. Penelope and Prince Charming- Jennifer Ashley
109. Trust Me On This- Jennifer Crusie
110. Twas the Night- Sandra Hill, Trish Jensen, Kate Holmes
111. Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake- Sarah MacLean
112. A Christmas to Die For- Marta Perry

That's it. That's all she read. I may knock off a little Doctor Who winter freebie while the house is quiet this afternoon. If so, I'll come back and add it to the list. If not, there's always next year!

Irresolute

2010-12-30T21:02:00.000-06:00

It's New Year's Resolution time, and as Crusie would say, I got nothin'. No specific goals. Nothing special I want to do in the coming year. Maybe I'm just tired.

Resolutions, ideally, should be a mixture of things we know we can do but just haven't done yet, and things we aren't sure we can do, but we're willing to try. Right now I have many things that I don't even want to admit I want because it's just setting myself up for failure, and other things that I genuinely have no interest in.

For example, saying I want to write a book would be setting myself up for failure, because right now I barely have the attention span to finish a blog post, let alone a book. I'm not going to resolve to lose weight, even though I really, really need to, because routine errands outside the house exhaust me. The thought of doing the kind of exercise required for weight loss makes me want to roll over and go back to sleep.

So instead, there are a few things I'm going to try to do, when I think about it. I'm going to turn off the computer and read more books, when I think about it. I'm going to blog more, when I think about it. I'm going to use the Wii to move a little more, when I think about it. I'm going to try to be better about keeping up with friends, when I think about it. I'm going to work on my beaded scarf and sock yarn blankie, when I think about it. I'm going to put away some of the crap still lingering in the corners of my room from the move, when I think about it. (You'd think that living with the boxes and suitcases 24/7 would keep this particular project in the front of my mind. You'd be wrong. Fibro fog has eaten my brain.)

That's about it, I guess. If I can just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and maybe make a little bit of progress on the good days, I'll count 2011 as a success. I guess that's pretty much the definition of success for everyone. I just have to remember to keep adjusting my ideas of "progress" and "good days" so I can get there, too.

I Swear I'm Not Pregnant

2010-12-23T23:09:00.000-06:00

I felt a little off this morning. Not particularly hungry. And then this afternoon I was making a batch of toffee for my mom, and all of the sudden I was so nauseous. The smell of the butter cooking was just killing me. I ended up pulling it off the heat about 20 degrees early and sitting down with a few pretzels and a ginger ale. Once I settled down a bit I went back into the kitchen to finish up and raced right back out again.

While I'd been in the kitchen, Mom had been cleaning the bathrooms. I didn't get more than two steps into the bathroom before the smell of bleach chased me back out again, trying not to retch.

I got a little something in me at dinner and went back to my room. Mom wanted to make coleslaw for tomorrow night's dinner, and she was worried the vinegar would bother me. When I came back out a couple hours later to decorate the Christmas tree, I didn't notice any vinegar smell at all. But the cabbage smell was enough to gag a maggot.

I've got my period right now, and that always makes my Crohn's flare up a bit. Nausea and other unpleasant digestive symptoms aren't exactly unusual. But I've never had this sensitivity to smell before. I hope it goes away overnight, because I can't imagine the next few days will be pleasant if I keep feeling this way.

Huzzah!

2010-12-23T00:47:00.000-06:00

The Christmas knitting! It is done!

Those are the two pair of socks I knit for my father for Christmas. I finished the last one about 5 minutes ago. I still need to weave in a few ends on the face cloths I made for my mom and on the scarves I made for my brother's in-laws, but that shouldn't take long. I hope to take care of the face cloths tonight before I go to bed. The scarves I can work on tomorrow in front of the rest of the fam, since the in-laws won't be there.

Done, done, finito, done!

Also, I know my hair looks like it survived a recent encounter with a pair of hair clippers, but I promise, it's just pulled back in a pony tail. It's as long and snarly and multi-colored as it's always been.

Re-Discovering

2010-12-22T01:27:00.000-06:00

Last fall, in a burst of creative desperation, I took Lani/Lucy's Discovery class. I'd just moved away from the home I loved to live with my parents on the other side of the country. The yankee side. The class was my attempt to hang on to my image of who I was as a person before my health trampled me.

It wasn't a terribly successful venture, not through any fault of Lani's. The day after I arrived in Massachusetts my parents got an offer on their house. What might have been difficult suddenly became impossible. I attended all the classes, but there was no time or space or energy to do the assignments or participate in any meaningful way.

At about the same time I got the idea for the book review blog, and suddenly my attention was split even further. About a month ago I decided that I really wanted to get serious about the blog. I want the reviews to go up like clockwork. I want to have interesting reading related essays at least a couple times a month. Good steady content will drive more people to the site and increase comments. Eventually, it will become what I want it to be: a conversation about books among people who love them. But that relies on me reading and reviewing at a steady rate, at least once a week. My current reading project, which should wrap up next week I hope, hasn't allowed that. But after the first of the year I want to be going great guns.

The desire to review, the personal train wreck of the class, and the fact that I've done basically no fiction writing in the last four years led me to the idea that fiction writing wasn't the dream for me anymore. I decided to quietly shelve the idea. Nothing else about my life was what I'd dreamed or hoped or even wanted. Walking away seemed like the right thing to do.

That, of course, is when the itch returned. The idea, the very, very small idea. Someone laughing. They're happy. I have not the tiniest clue who they are or what their story might be. But I think I want to write it. Just for me. Not for a publisher. Not for my imagined future adoring fans. Just for me.

My happiest times writing were back when I first started. Every night I'd come home from work, eat dinner, and then sit down to write on my word processor. (Did you ever use one of those? It was like the bastard child of a typewriter and a Speak & Spell.) Every night I'd work on my story. I wasn't picturing the beta readers, I wasn't wondering what some editor or agent might think. I was just telling my story to a very interested party-- me. I want to go back to that. I want to write because it's fun and I like it, and damn what anyone else thinks. But first I need a story. So I'm going to do Discovery again.

Lani leaves the class recording up and available to class members. Tonight I downloaded them. Maybe next week or maybe sometime after the first of the year I'm going to go through them again. I want to find out who that laughing person is. I want to know why they were laughing. And I want to laugh along with them.

Ordinarily I'd wonder if I was setting myself up for another fall, to do this again after failing so recently. But you know, it's funny. It was only two months ago, but it feels like a lifetime. Like I was a different person then than I am now. I think there's value for me in those lessons if I just play around with it, take it at my own pace, and see what happens.

I still intend to pull my act together with the book blog. I feel bad that I haven't been as steady and organized as I would have liked. (Also, with only two of us reviewing, the work load is much heavier than I anticipated. If anyone else would like to write a review or two, please let me know.) I think if I can develop a routine for all of my writing, and that includes blogging here, too, the whole process will smooth out.

It's the getting started that's hard.

Little Mysteries

2010-12-14T01:40:00.000-06:00

Something the wonderful Julie said in her comments the other day got me thinking about this. The odd, random stuff that comes up in conversation sometimes. The little things that you never would have guessed about someone-- even someone you know well. I decided to dig around in my personal closet and see if I can find a few to share.

I was in the marching band in high school. I played the flute. I still have it, but I don't play it much anymore. Whenever I do, it scares the cat. In my four years we won the state competition twice and marched in two national parades-- the Orange Bowl parade and the Fiesta Bowl parade.

My favorite TV show as a kid was The Dukes of Hazzard. The Best Christmas Ever was the year when it fell on a Friday, and therefore it was both Christmas and Dukes of Hazzard day all in one. (Although I don't remember actually watching the show that day. But I sure do remember being excited about it!) I had the hugest crush on Bo Duke.

I finaled in the first RWA chapter contest I ever entered-- West Houston RWA's Emily. I was 22 and at my first RWA meeting. Everyone kept talking about the Emily, but no one actually said what it was. As the meeting broke up I approached someone-- it turned out to be a pre-published NYT Bestselling Author Kerrelyn Sparks-- and asked what the Emily was. She said, "It's our chapter contest. You have to enter!" So I did. One judge gave me a perfect score. Another wrote in the comments that she felt I was ready for publication. Almost 15 years later and it's still the most success I've had with my writing. I never did finish that book.

My grandmother was one of the first people ever on TV. She worked in Philadelphia for a company that was developing the technology. They needed something to broadcast, so they got their employees together and had a talent show. My grandmother sang. (When she wasn't typing or running a switchboard at her day job, she was a professional church soloist.) Somewhere we have an album with the group photo from her television performance. Based on the family stories I did a little googling, and I think this is what she did. I'm pretty sure she worked for Philco. I'd ask my parents to be sure, but they're asleep right now. ;p

I inherited musical talent from the other side of the family, too. My great grandfather was an orchestra leader in Philadelphia. One day he was walking down the street with his wife when he said, "Someday I'm going to play trumpet in that church." Her response was reportedly, "Honey, that's not our church. Plus, you don't play the trumpet." So he learned. And damned if he didn't play trumpet there professionally one day.

I've been in, I believe 36 out of 50 states. I've lived in 5 of them-- Pennsylvania, Iowa, Texas, Indiana, and Massachusetts. I've lived in two of them twice-- Indiana and Texas. I've made brief forays into the edges of Canada and Mexico (pre-9/11, when you didn't need a passport to cross the border), but other than that I've never left the country. If I could go anywhere in the world, and silly things like cost, my physical limitations, and the political situation were no barrier, I'd go to see the monuments of Egypt. It would be cool to see England someday, too. But if I could only go one place, it would be Egypt.

I never met my paternal grandmother. She died shortly before I was born. But she did come to me once, in a dream. My grandfather, who had died a couple years before, was with her. I was in high school and one of my best friends had died. In the dream Mom Mom and Pop Pop were holding hands, and they told me that it was OK, that I didn't have to worry anymore. Jasper was there, he was safe, and they were looking out for him. I woke up crying.

My parents were both juniors. So when they got married they decided that their children would not be named after anyone. I am Rebecca Lynn and my brother is Jeremy Daniel. (I insisted on the Daniel. In fact, according to my parents, I never called him anything but My Jeremy Daniel for the first year of his life.) Being their first child, Mom and Dad recorded the calls they made to friends and family announcing my birth. Somewhere, in one of these million and a half boxes we just hauled half way across the country, there is a recording of some great aunt somewhere saying, "Rebecca Lynn? What kind of name is Rebecca Lynn?"

When I was a kid my dad used to tease me and tell me that he'd wanted to name me Agnella Blossom, but my mom wouldn't let him.

Every year we put our Christmas tree up on Christmas Eve. (Except for this year when we're going to do it a few days early to make things a little less stressful.) When we were little Santa put up the tree. Once we got a little older we were allowed to help put up the tree as a way to help Santa out. All those millions of other kids to get to, you know.

My brother believed in Santa until late in his elementary years. In fact, at 32 I still haven't ever heard him admit that he isn't a real, flesh and blood man who comes down the chimney to deliver presents once a year. (Hey, my brother ain't dumb. As the pillow sitting on my couch right now says, "Those who don't believe get underwear.")

I learned the basics of knitting from my grandmother as a kid. She also took a stab at teaching me to crochet the summer before she died. I wouldn't say it was all that successful if my aim was to learn to crochet. But as a way to spend time together and be close, it was excellent.

The summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college I started picking up large print books my grandparents at the library. The first time it was the whim of a moment, and I wasn't really sure what they would like. So I got an assortment of books, whatever caught my eye. They loved it. It turned out they liked "the cat books" best. (I think they were The Cat Who books by Lilian Jackson Braun.) What they liked even better, though, was that their granddaughter was interested enough to pick up books for them. Every week or two I'd pick up the old ones and come back with some new stuff. There always had to be at least three. Granddad read faster than Grandmom did, and with only two books they'd fight over who got to read what, when. They were pills.

Well, that's... quite a lot actually about me and my family. I don't know if they really rise to the level of mysteries. They're perfectly well known to me, obviously. But I thought they were interesting tidbits, at least.

What about you? Anything interesting you'd like to share? Write your own blog post if you'd like, and then give us the link in the comments. I'd love to hear something new and mysterious about you, too!

Sometimes I'm a Jerk, Too

2010-12-13T19:00:00.000-06:00

This weekend I did a thoughtless thing, and now I feel like a shithead.

I went out to dinner with my brother and sister-in-law on Friday night. We laughed and had a really good time. My brother took my dad to a train show on Saturday (he used to collect N-gauge trains and put up an elaborate train platform every year at Christmas). And then they sat with my parents at church on Sunday. It doesn't totally make up for everything that's happened in the last six weeks or so, but it was a big step in the right direction.

So anyway, on Friday night, right in front of my SIL, I told my brother that Mom was making everyone's favorite Christmas cookie and asked him what kind he wanted. But I didn't ask her what she wanted. It was thoughtless and rude, and I can't believe I did it.

It seems like a little thing, but I still feel bad about it.

Oh, brother

2010-12-09T23:16:00.000-06:00

I'm a bit cheesed off with my brother right now. It started the weekend we moved in. The movers delivered everything on Friday, and understandably he had to work. But instead of coming over on Saturday to help (keeping in mind that this was for his 71 yr old father with Parkinson's, his 63 yr old mother with a not-100%-successful knee replacement, and his 35 yr old sister with pretty significant medical restrictions of my own), he decided to spend the day with his father-in-law, helping him with his model trains.

I can't be the only one who thinks that's shitty.

Since then he's come by probably twice a week on average. One Saturday he helped us move some stuff to storage. One evening he helped us buy TVs, and one night later that week he helped us set them up. (This is more or less what he does for a living.) Every other time he's come by it's been to hang out, eat a meal that my mother fixed, and go home. With the exception of the one Saturday and the night we bought the TVs, these have all been nights of his choosing. No one is demanding his presence.

Once he had plans to take my father to a meeting, which he cancelled last minute. Dad tried to go by himself. My mother was terrified the whole time because Dad's night driving has really gone down hill in the last six months. (I don't know how much longer it's going to be before we're going to have to take away the keys.) Dad was back home about 20 minutes later. He knew which intersection he was supposed to be at, but he somehow ended up in the wrong place anyway. When he couldn't find the building he just came home. So Dad had the pleasure of being dumped last minute by his son, feeling like crap because he couldn't find a place that he should have been able to find with no problems, and missing a meeting he was really looking forward to. What was my brother doing that was so important? Dinking around at church. And again, no one asked him to make these plans with Dad. It was his idea, and then he backed out.

Earlier this week he came to dinner and announced what the Christmas plans would be. Mom was not happy about them, and she questioned him. In the past, the story has always been that since his MIL's birthday is the 24th, it was super important for them to be down there for Christmas Eve. She had expected that they'd go down for the 24th and come back to spend Christmas day with us. Nope. Just the opposite. We get Christmas Eve (although they won't be going to Christmas Eve service-- the most important thing for my dad-- because his wife doesn't want to) and an hour or two Christmas morning, and then they're driving down to spend two and a half days with her parents. Mom, lacking input from them up to this point, had started making plans based on what she thought they might want to do. The in-laws, on the other hand, were consulted, and my brother and his wife made their plans based on what worked best for that side of the family. When Mom pushed back on this, questioning the plans, my brother told her that she needed to learn to "compromise". Excuse me? I thought compromise was two people sacrificing to come to a mutually acceptable solution. I'm pretty sure it's not one side telling the other side to shut up and take it.

The next day I called him for something completely unrelated, and the topic wandered into Mom and Dad. (Mostly Mom, because she does all the talking for the two of them, so she's the one he resents the most.) I let him know that his making plans and not keeping them was upsetting Mom and Dad. (He'd also made plans to have dinner with us last Saturday night, knowing Mom was going to make her annual Hanukkah meal (ie: piles of yummy yummy latkes!). She had announced that she wanted to make the meal and let him pick the night that was best for him. Then he backed out to go to a party.) He said he considers all plans tentative. What that says to me and Mom and Dad is that he's willing to make plans with us until and unless something better comes along. He's mad that we aren't perfectly fine with him dumping us. He thinks we should understand that "I will be there" really means "I'll think about it."

There was some other stuff about how he has a life of his own, and he didn't really want Mom and Dad (and presumably by extension, me) moving here. (Buddy, if you think I want to be here, you've got another think coming. I hate Indiana.) He doesn't think he should have drop everything any time they call, and that they should be doing more stuff for themselves.

Never mind that they kill themselves trying to do stuff before breaking down and asking, and when they do they always fall all over themselves assuring that it works with your plans and schedule, never mind what works best for them.

What I didn't say, but wanted to, was: "They came here to be close to you, you little ass wipe. If you didn't want them here you should have spoken up sometime in the last year or so, since that's how long you've known they planned to retire here. And they wouldn't ask for your help (not that you can be bothered to follow through and give it) if they didn't really need it. They've started hiring people to do some of this stuff because they're sick of waiting for you to get around to doing what you say you're going to do." Can you tell I was pissed?

I did a lot of deep breathing last night, and watched a lot of Christmas specials, and eventually I calmed down.

Today I emailed him to warn him that if he was thinking about getting Mom an oven thermometer for Christmas (she's been talking about it A LOT for the last few days) that he might want to hold off, because she was talking about getting one this afternoon. Also, I asked for his Christmas list again. (Before we moved into deeper waters in our conversation yesterday, he'd told me he was making a list at an online musician's store.) The guitar place he likes to shop at is running a sale this weekend, so why pay more next week? He emailed back that he'd already sent us his Amazon list (he did, it has 7 items on it, 5 of which are expensive electronics), and other than that all he wanted was gift certificates to the guitar store.

Right now I'd like nothing better than to tromp over to his house in my steel toed boots and kick him in the taint.

Am I totally off base here? Am I being way to sensitive here, or is being a real little shit?

Fa La La La La

2010-12-09T08:12:00.000-06:00

The Christmas spirit is finally creeping into Huddleston Drive. Yesterday, with out meaning to, all of my TV was holiday themed. I watched Tuesday night's episode of Glee, which was entertaining but weird. Why were Puck and Rachel so enthusiastically going along with all the Christmas music? Puck, in his own skewed, Puckish way, is very proud of his Jewish heritage. So why would he shut up now? And Sue playing out the Grinch story was so hackneyed I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The bit about Coach Beast and Artie's present from Santa made me cry a little, though. (But why was she Santa? That part was straight out of bizarre-ville, too.)

And then Mom wanted to watch the Charlie Brown Christmas special. Always a favorite around our house. It was followed up by a Prep and Landing short that was really cute. Dad slept through the whole thing, and Mom dozed off and on. I finished the scarf I've been working on for my brother's father-in-law. Yay!

After they went to bed I took the bag of Christmas refrigerator decorations that Mom found the other day and put them up. (It wasn't quite the ninja decorating I've been doing so far. They knew I was going to put them up, they just didn't know I was going to do it last night.)

And then to top off the festivities, I got 6 Christmas cards in the mail yesterday. It was just the tip of the domestic Christmas card iceberg-- there are many more to go. (The international cards went out on Monday. Fingers crossed that the recipients get them before New Year's.) But it was progress.

Last night, after the not-quite-ninja decorating I sat down and took a good look at the calendar. Then I took a look at the knitting that has to be done in the next two weeks. After I stopped hyperventilating, I made a list. If I stick to the schedule, I should be able to finish all my knitting in time for the big day. Fortunately for my schedule, my traditional, gotta get it done Christmas movie will be on TV next Friday-- A Very Brady Christmas. I don't know what it is about that movie, but I always seem to do my best last minute crafting while watching it. Thank you, TV Programmers!

Today I start with a tissue sweater for my great aunt. (It's a cozy for those little packs of tissues you put in your purse.) It looks to be a quickie project, so there should be no problem whipping it up and then doing another half a dozen or so cards. Maybe I'll even get a jump start on tomorrow's knitting!

It's a hope.

Poor Man's Blog Post

2010-12-07T01:05:00.000-06:00

I have many things on my mind right now, but no energy to express them. So I'm making a list.

1. Long Term Disability called. They've decided I could work, I just choose not to. Fuck them.
2. Talked to more medical insurance people today. I am too fat to qualify for insurance. Fuck them, too.
3. Talked to old apt manager. They decided to charge me $135 to clean an apartment that was fully emptied, with nothing more than normal wear and tear, and is scheduled to be completely remodeled, anyway. Fuck all y'all.
4. My brother declared at dinner tonight that he and his wife will spend Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with us, and then they're leaving at 11:00am to drive down for Christmas brunch and dinner with the in laws. Since my brother's idea of "morning" is 1:00pm, I don't think we're going to see much of them on Christmas day. Mom didn't say too much about it at the time, but I know I'm going to get an earful tomorrow.
5. My 71 year old father kicked ass on Wii Bowling tonight. He scored a 189!
6. I'm pretty sure I officially have all my Christmas shopping done.
7. I'm about 2/3 of the way through doing my Christmas cards.
8. I received my first three Christmas cards today! I'm going to hang them on my door as soon as I find the scotch tape.
9. It's freaking cold in Indiana. There is snow. I would like to go home now.
10. I'm reading an historical romance right now. There's some fairly improbable stuff going down, but everything else is so good that you don't notice so much.
11. I have many more bookish things to say, but I'm having trouble finding the motivation to say them.
12. Same goes here. This blog has been shamefully neglected in the last month or so.
13. I should make a commitment to write on one of the blogs every day, but I know I won't do it. Maybe I'll try that when it gets closer to New Year's. I always get excited about new projects and old stuff gets reinvigorated then.

So, that's the Readers' Digest version of what's going on in my head right now. Aren't you glad you asked?

Big, scary day

2010-11-30T01:35:00.000-06:00

Today I had an adventure. I borrowed my dad's car keys and left the house by myself. It's the first time I've gone anywhere by myself since Labor Day weekend, when I drove to the airport in Houston and got on the plane. It's only the second time I've been behind the wheel since then.

It was pretty damn scary at first. Almost three months is a long time to go without driving on doing anything independently. I was way out of practice. The fact that I was driving someone else's car didn't help. (My car is long gone. sniffle.)

Mom was in a foul mood this morning, and apparently all day yesterday, too. (I missed yesterday. After all the company and Thanksgiving hoopla, I declared Sunday an I'm In My Room, Leave Me Alone day.) She was upset because she thought she would have all the house done, and there are still boxes everywhere, and she can't find her Christmas stuff, and she was MAD. So while the 'rents went to the Social Security office to get stuff straightened out, I went shopping.

The two things she specifically mentioned were her Christmas mugs, which she always puts out first thing and are very important to her, and the Advent wreath. I found some cheap mugs at Michael's, so I was able to take care of that, but the Advent wreath was a bust.

Michael's had undecorated, do-it-yourself Advent wreathes for a while, but they were sold out when I got there. And they had one pre-decorated one, but it was way over the top and fugly. The whole things was covered with purple flowers and white things crusted with glitter. She would have appreciated the thought (and she damn well better if I'm spending 25 bucks for the ugly thing), but she'd rather die than have something that over done and ugly on her table.

I went to four other places-- four!-- and none of them had ever heard of an Advent wreath. Even Hobby Lobby, which is Christianville USA, didn't have them or know what they were . I was beginning to feel like a freak. I'm not the only one in the world, aside from Michael's Happy Glue Gun Lady, who knows what these things are, right?

One of these puppies. Light a candle every Sunday in Advent. You've seen these, right? I know a lot of people don't go in for the religious aspect of Christmas. I can't say I worry about it too much myself. But I grew up with one of these on my table for as far back as I can remember. My family can't be total weirdos. There have to be Advent wreaths out there somewhere. It's just so bizarre to me that I spoke to at least 7 people in 4 different stores, stores that carry all kinds of Christmas decorations and people who work in and stock those departments, and not a one of them even knew what an it was. Very strange. I knew that Indiana was the Twilight Zone, but come on.

Anyway, even though I couldn't lay my hands on a non-fugly Advent wreath, I did find a few other Christmassy things to brighten up the place. One was a small pillow that says "Those who don't believe get underwear." I was highly amused and had to have it right away. The fact that it was on sale helped. I got a magnet with a snowman on it that says "snow". (I collect magnets, so it's always exciting to find a new one.) And I bought a set of blocks that spell out the word "joy". Mom has a set of acrobatic elves that spell "Joy" that she always puts on the piano. My brother and I delight in scrambling them, so that they say "oyj" instead. One year I hid the J, so it just said "oy!", which I found highly amusing. So I took the blocks and put them on the piano, out of order, of course. So far Mom has noticed the mugs, which she couldn't help but notice since I put one at her place at the table, and the pillow, which she also couldn't help but notice because it was on the couch right where she planned to sit. No one has noticed the magnet or the blocks yet.

The weather is supposed to be cold and crappy for the next several days (plus I totally wore myself out shopping and will need a couple of days of rest to recover), so I think that's all the stealth decorating for a little while. I may call Michael's and see if a new shipment of the undecorated Advent wreaths have come in. If they have, I may pick up one of their decorated wreaths for the front door, too. There was one there that I liked. And maybe I'll get a fake poinsettia, if I can find one that's bushy enough. (Not a real one if I can avoid it-- they're poisonous to cats, and Trouble is dumb enough to eat the whole damn thing.)

This place may start to look a lot like Christmas, whether Mom finds any of her decorations or not!

Twits

2010-11-19T23:08:00.000-06:00

I have nothing of any depth to say today, so this is going to a group of tweet-ish length updates, or Twits.

Julie, yes my birthday was Monday! It's the first birthday I've spent with family in years. One of my favorite breakfast, one of my favorite dinners, birthday cake-- yellow cake with chocolate frosting and Homemade Vanilla Blue Bell Ice Cream (the best ice cream in the world and formerly available only in Texas), a dozen roses from my parents, and a bunch of birthday cards. It was a good day.

But my hand still hurts.

I was in the bathroom earlier this evening when I heard, "Bad cat! What did you do?" Turns out, what the cat did was get up on the table and chew up four out of the 12 hamburger buns in the package. I mean just totally annihilated them. It was bound to happen sometime. I warned Mom that he does this. She may be annoyed, but she also thought it was funny. She had a heck of a time telling me about it without laughing. Mom always smirks at how Troub has Dad wrapped around his little paw, but he's got her, too.

Tomorrow we get my stuff out of storage. It's lived there since I moved to Massachusetts Labor Day weekend. I can't wait to sleep in my own bed and set up my Wii. I want to see my Wee Peeple dolls again and have my own clothes hamper. Unfortunately, this means I'm going to be up to my eyeballs in boxes or the foreseeable future. Pray for me.

Things are... not going well for my brother's marriage. I would not be surprised if she files for divorce sometime after Thanksgiving. You never know, things could work out after all. But I'll be shocked if she doesn't file by the end of January. Ordinarily I wouldn't mention any of this, as it's most certainly Not My Business. But it's causing drama with the 'rents. If he does what he was talking about doing earlier today and moves to another state, there will be an explosion of epic proportions. Mom has been gloating for weeks about all of us being together again. She is going to lose her shit if he takes off now that we've moved across the country to be here. Maybe this is just early-onset divorce crazy, and he'll live on our couch for six months instead.

I finally broke down and ordered my new clothes today. I got:

2 zip front hooded sweatshirts
1 zip front, floor length, hooded bathroom (I spend so much time lounging in the one I already had, I decided to get another)
3 long sleeve tshirts
3 thermal shirts
1 long thermal henley sleep shirt
3 long sleeve sleep shirts
3 flannel sleep pants
3 layered look tshirts
2 pair of jeans, hopefully the right size this time

So, basically, I should be drowning in warm, cozy clothing by the end of next week. Yay!

Extra points if any of it comes in on Wednesday. They're predicting snow here for Thanksgiving. Yuck.

I think that's everything for now. I tell you what, this may be a particularly boring blog to read, but I could crank out these little updates all day.

A Moment of Grace

2010-11-14T21:25:00.000-06:00

I hadn't been out of the house for a couple of days, so this afternoon I decided to go grocery shopping with my mom. I made it as far as the driveway, where I committed one of the greatest pratfalls of all time. It wasn't pretty, ya'll. The only thing I could think as I sprawled across the pavement was, "oh, please, don't let me have broken anything." Because, of course, I don't have any insurance. Fortunately, while the palm of my left hand is pretty shredded, and the whole hand is stiff and swollen, there's no sign of broken bones. Whew.

And speaking of graceful, Julie mentioned in the comments getting food all over her sleeves. I don't have that problem so much, but I do have an amazing ability to dribble food down my front. I don't think I have a single shirt that doesn't have a stain somewhere. Since I'm getting new clothes, it's time to do something about it. When we saw my great aunt last month, she had something she called her "pearls", and I plan to try to make something similar for myself. Auntie's is a string of pearl beads with an alligator clip at each end. You sling the strand around your neck and clip each end to the napkin instead of tucking it into your shirt. The difference is that I plan to knit a length of icord instead of using beads. Sock yarn should make a thin enough cord, and the colors should be a lot of fun. When I told Mom what I was planning to do, she decided she wanted one, too. So now I have a new project, as soon as the swelling goes down. ugh.

Upon the Horns of a Dilemna

2010-11-12T19:18:00.000-06:00

It's time to share another secret with you all. Despite my love of Project Runway and America's Next Top Model, I'm pretty ambivalent about my own clothing. I have few requirements, and none of them have anything to do with looking stylish.

The first problem is fit. I am a fat girl. I'm not being coy. I'm not talking about needing to lose 10 lbs or comparing myself to models on the covers of magazines. The last time I was on a scale I was over 300 lbs, and that kind of weight comes with clothing challenges. Shirts are constantly too short, revealing, if you'll forgive my mixing of metaphors, my fish belly white muffin top. It's embarrassing. If you notice us fat girls constantly yanking down the hems of our shirts, that's why. They're just too damn short.

With pants I often find them unacceptably tight over the gut, hips, and tush, but ridiculously wide from mid-thigh down. Sometimes the waistband is tight also, but more often it gapes ridiculously. Not only does the skin tight stuff over the tummy, butt, and thighs emphasize exactly what we'd like to pretend isn't there, but with the Crohn's anything that presses against my stomach is painful. So the challenge becomes finding pants that I can sit and stand in without swimming in them or being cut in half.

Those are two of the *ahem* biggest problems I have with finding clothes. The next problem is one of availability and standards. Have you noticed how often big women wear unnatural fabrics and sequins? This is not by choice. It's exceptionally hard to find sane clothing made from natural fabrics for plus sized women in stores. There are catalogs, but you never know what you're getting until it arrives. Will the quality be good? Will it fit right or will it be a complete disaster? And because fat clothes are apparently a specialty item, even though a growing portion of the population need them, they tend to be more expensive. It makes sense, I guess. Significant demand, plus limited supply, means higher prices and fewer bargains.

Well, I didn't mean to rant. I guess I had a few things to get off my chest. The real reason I started this post was because I have some wardrobe building to do, and I'm feeling stuck. I've already ordered a few things, a couple of which fit and are exactly what I was looking for. A couple were what I want, but the sizes were completely ridiculous. I bought jeans in two different styles, figuring one or the other would work for me. I followed the sizing instructions. And they both look like clown pants. I followed the same sizing instructions, and the flannel pants and thermal top sets I bought are just right. Go figure.

Anyway, I'm going to post a few things, and I'd love to get your opinion. Keep in mind that I spend 90% of my time at home, so comfy is the word of the day. When I do go out it will be casual-- jeans if I can figure out what size fits me and a basic top. And I've moved from toasty Texas to the frigid north, so warmth is an issue. I'm doing most of my shopping at OneStopPlus.com, but I can also get basics, like long sleeve tshirts, for a good price at Walmart.com. They might not carry the sizes I need in the store, but I can sometimes find them online.

So, here's some of what I'm looking at. I'd like at least a couple more pair of flannel pants for lounging around the house.

Option one

Option two

I'm not absolutely in love with any of the color combinations. There's a sage thermal top that matches the sage flannel pants in option one, but I like the top much more than the bottoms. The french lilac combo of option two is all right, and you can get discount on both pieces when you buy a long sleeve cotton tshirt to match. But again, I'm not totally sold. (I prefer more vibrant colors.) The red/white/black check in option two is all right, but I'm not sure the large square checks are the most flattering.

I do really like the yellow-with-blue-flowers version of this thermal, but several people mention in the reviews that it's scratchy. I'm a delicate flower, and if it's scratchy I probably won't wear it.

scratchy thermal?

And I like the layered-look crewneck tee, which comes in colored sleeves and white sleeves.

colored

white

I'm spoiled for choices with these-- there are a million colors so it's hard to make a decision. They're offering $4 off if you buy two or more.

And I really like the look of this sherpa sweatshirt. Looks snuggly and warm. I'm even pretty sure what color I want-- golden wheat. I'm just not sure I want to spend the money.

sherpa sweatshirt

I know this is dumb. We're just talking about around the house slouchware. But funds are limited, and I can't try any of this stuff on before buying (although I can return it if necessary), and I need some help. So help! Which of these should I get?

Fun With Drugs

2010-11-10T14:00:00.000-06:00

I just finished pricing my meds at all the local pharmacies. Fun, fun, fun. I have no health insurance at the moment, and the future does not look promising on that front, so I'm paying for all my meds out of pocket. Let me tell you, this shit ain't cheap. If you've got prescription drug coverage, raise a glass to your insurance provider. You could be paying much, much more.

I was a little surprised at first how widely the prices varied at different pharmacies. Then I thought I would end up with a different prescription at every pharmacy in town. But it turns out that the best prices are evenly split between two places-- Sam's Club and Walgreen's, with the W card. All but one of the worst prices are at CVS. The cheapest refills will save me a little more than $150 over the most expensive ones. That's a pretty big difference when you consider it's the exact same pills in either bottle.

On a brighter note, I remembered something about the trip from Massachusetts to Indiana that I forgot to tell you. (I have Swiss cheese for brains, I swear.) As we were driving through Pennsylvania we passed about a million deer crossing signs. But someone in the Keystone State has a sense of humor, so they looked a little something like this (not my picture):

Happy Wednesday, y'all!