Harry Potter and the VMAs

It's been a few days.  I haven't had much to say, really, so things have been boring!  Sorry!

Anyway, today I finally saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.  I was really irritated by some of the (unnecessary) changes that were made to the movie, including the HUGE plot change at the beginning of the Battle of Hogwarts.  I also cried from the point where Harry speaks briefly with Snape until just before the end of the battle.  I was really disappointed, though, all in all - they could have done it more justice.  I'm so glad Pottermore will be open in October, I'm looking forward to stuff that is actually canon.  At least I'll always have the books.

This afternoon was fairly uneventful - I got a migraine from a combination of lack of caffeine and attempting to stop crying and probably eyestrain and had to take a nap, had to suffer through a millionth viewing of a Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and heard a funny story about the Toddler.

The Toddler was not very pleased at being left behind when S dropped me off at the movie theater this morning.  (I went to the first showing they had available so it would be super cheap.)  When S got him ready to go pick me up, he ran to the door and said, "Me?  Meee?  Me!  Meee!"  When they got outside, he chanted "ME!" while looking everywhere for me before S told him that they had to go bye-bye to get me.  So he ran to the side of the car his car seat is on and tried to open the door himself.  Then he checked the car for me.  When I got in the car, he said, "Me!"  It was pretty cute.  He does the exact same thing, only with a lot more crying and screaming, whenever S leaves the house with M or to make a quick trip to the grocery store when he's awake and left in my care.  I imagine he also didn't spend the two hours I was gone asking for me, either, like he does when S is gone.  ("Ma?  Mom?  Ma?  Mama?  Ma?  Mom? Mommm!"  Imagine this protracted over the course of two hours, broken up by tantrums and staring at the television.)  Moral of the story?  Toddlers are a strange species.

I finally repolished my toenails tonight.  This is probably the most exciting thing I've done in weeks.  They're very dark, because it's getting to be fall and they should stay polished long enough for the weather to cool off so I can stop sweating profusely every time I move.  Fuck summer.  I had many problems polishing my toenails, too.  There was less than an ounce of nail polish remover left in the bottle, and Girl Child managed to lose her bottle, so I had to be very careful when using it to make sure I got all the old polish off on the first try.  Then, of course, the color I wanted to use died, so I grabbed the OPI bottle of black that was in the hallway, only to discover that the (almost completely full) bottle was permanently stuck shut.  J couldn't get it open when Girl Child asked him to earlier today, so he didn't even try when I asked him.  S saved the day with a different bottle of black that has reddish undertones, which was actually pretty cool and closer to what I was originally going for.

Speaking of sweating, S thinks I might have a thyroid problem.  Gahoogy-hoo.  I really need to get to a doctor sometime soon and figure out what all my myriad problems are.

Wearing my glow in the dark Toy Story shirt to the theater today would have been way more awesome if I'd ever been in a room that was actually completely black.  On the other hand, it is totally entertaining to get under the covers and look at my shirt.  Yes, I am easily entertained, and I do find it hilarious when Sunshine chases (and catches) her tail.

So tonight, after the nail polishing, S and I watched the MTV Video Music Awards.  What a waste of time that turned out to be.  I was so disappointed.  It was completely moronic, Lady Gaga was pretending to be a man again, which was really irritating, and the only good performance was Adele.  She was stunning.  Her nails were a little scary, though.  30 Seconds to Mars was nominated for Best Direction, Best Cinematography, and Best Editing, which was why S wanted to watch it, but they didn't even show those on the broadcast.  And they didn't win.  I don't know who did, but that was pretty disappointing, especially since we got treated to a Lil Wayne performance before it immediately cut to the stupidest show I've ever had the misfortune to find myself watching in my life.  It was called I Just Want My Pants Back.  It was filmed very much in the style of another MTV show called Undressed, which was on in 1998, except with hipsters instead of college students.  Snarky hipsters who don't behave like any normal person I've ever seen.

Basically, MTV is a travesty, and really needs to find a new name for themselves, since I haven't even heard of a music video being featured on MTV in at least five years.  The whole thing was a train wreck.  One part that was good was when some guy I've never heard of named Rick Ross was in his "dressing room" in a pre-recorded segment, and he was painting and pretending to be Bob Ross.  That was absolutely hilarious.  "Happy little tree... right there.  Happy little trees."

Anyway.  I hope I never have the misfortune to ever have to watch MTV again for the rest of my life.  I don't care if that makes me old, I like quality music, and almost none of that was quality.  It was pulp.

I have a lot of links.  Because I am a lazy blogger.  Crap.

Links Round-Up Ahoy!  (Apparently it's a nautical edition.)

GameStop is a bunch of jackasses, and they'll be lucky if I ever set foot in one of their stores again after this stunt.  I might apply for a job with them, though, but I will never shop there.  I like my games unopened and unsullied, thanks.

Ron Paul finds FEMA unnecessary.  Oh boy.  I really do wonder which of the Republican candidates are going to terrify me into voting for Obama in the 2012 election, even though I was already pretty sure I was going to vote for him anyway unless someone truly awesome came along.

I'm disturbed by what some people label as unsafe.  I don't think radio waves are harmful.  I don't know why anyone ever would.  And of course this crazy woman is homeschooling her kids!  This is just as bad as that genderless baby.  I wonder if they're friends?

Corporations suck.  I want a job.  Fuck the fucking shareholders.

I love Bad Translator.

You know, I want to make a Jayne Cobb hat.  I would totally wear it.  I do not, however, think it is a good idea to cosplay as a Jayne Cobb hat.  What the hell.

Also, vote for my Rage Comic.  I really want to make the front page.

(This blog title was so easy!!  Haha!)

And now, I go to bed.

Telemarketer Torture and Sad Memories

Today has been kind of weird.  I spent a good portion of the day talking to C, who I haven't really had the opportunity to talk to at great length in years due to circumstances, about recent and ancient history.  There aren't a whole lot of people that I talk to now who knew me well when I was a teenager, so it's a bit of a different experience.  I can't say E, LK, or JHB fit into that category - JHB never talks about much other than his interests, and I wasn't as close to him at the beginning of high school as I was to C. 

Anyway, talking to someone who knew me so well during that time period is a little weird in some ways, but it's also pretty awesome.  Anyway, that was the primary activity of the day, talking about all manner of subjects.  We basically picked up the friendship where it got left off in 2005, except with higher maturity levels.  It's different to talk to him now.  I can't explain why, as I'm in a weird state of mind and I'm having a hard time stringing a sentence together.

S tortured a telemarketer for 20 minutes today.  He wouldn't let her hang up, so it's his own fault.  He was really desperate for her to pay for a vacation to Branson.  Eventually the Toddler got bored, and this resulted in a lot of noise between me trying to contain him and him screaming, and it became a hilarious phone conversation with a really weird telemarketer who wouldn't let her hang up.  She kept telling him she didn't have money for that, and he'd suggest J was hiding money or that maybe I was hiding money, and suggested she tell the Toddler to go play in the sandbox and told her how he teases his kids with telling them to play in traffic.  Seriously crazy telemarketer.  Actually, at one point, I shouted at her that the kitchen was on fire in an attempt to get him to let her hang up.

The Toddler nearly broke the TV screen today because he decided to start smacking it.  Fun.

J woke up really early today, when I was laying the Toddler down for a nap, so once the Toddler got up, I was really excited, thinking I'd finally have the opportunity to fold the laundry in peace, but I only managed the kids' laundry before J came in to say he needed to take a nap, so I still have about five loads of laundry to fold.  Crap.

Today's been boring.  As usual.  I think I may watch Firefly again tonight while folding laundry so I can get it put the hell away.  Speaking of putting laundry away, I'm really annoyed with Girl Child, who won't let me put her laundry away and won't do it herself.  I had that dresser completely neat and she dumped everything out of it all over everywhere in her room.  And she's hogging a good basket because she won't put away the clothes I just folded for her.  Ridiculous.

I really need to get enough sleep consistently every night.  I'm always so tired.  And I'm having memory problems, which may or may not be related to lack of sleep.  I completely forgot what happened this morning.

My ex-fiance sent my stuff back to me from England, and it arrived this morning.  Two mugs I'd forgotten about (he forgot the fridge magnets, though, which upsets me a little, but I'll live), some clothes, a crocheting project I started in 2007 and never finished, a bathing suit that's way too small for me, a purse I'd forgotten about leaving there, and the bucket we collected seashells and sea glass in when we went to Scarborough.  This was the only thing that made me cry.  It was broken when it arrived, too, so it had to be thrown away.  The Toddler kept trying to steal it from me.  I hadn't expected it to be so painful, getting all that stuff back.

Anyway.  There's really not much to say after that.  It's really too bad this is such a depressing note to leave this on, but there isn't much more to say.  I feel like crap.  Today was just totally lame.  There were good parts, but my current state of mind says that today was a really dumb day.  I think I just need to sleep.  I'm just exhausted and kind of crabby.  Hopefully I'll have something interesting to write about in a day or two when I stop feeling like this.

Power Outage, Storm Damage, and a Link Round-Up

I was going to write a second blog post last night before going to bed. There was going to be a link round-up and I was going to post some updated pictures of the doggies, because doggies are awesome. But, the weather decided that wasn't happening. We had some serious storms last night (one of my links is about that), and we lost power a little before midnight last night. It didn't come back on until about 6:30 this morning, so I'm just happy that Firefox saved my tabs, because I hadn't bookmarked my links or anything yet.

Anyway, about the storm - it was really cool to watch it come in before we realized how bad it was going to get. Both kids were in bed and I'd just finished up my evening session of Final Fantasy X (this is something like my sixth time playing that game, but will only be the third time I've actually finished it, if I do), and S suddenly said that a huge storm was coming in with straight-line winds and possibly hail. Of course, because we're weather people, we went outside to watch it come in. It was actually really awesome, there was a lot of cloud-to-cloud lightning in the storm, and I could see its progression by where the lightning was in relation to me - it started out only being north of us, and within five minutes was directly over us, and the wind went from almost completely calm to about 20 miles per hour, and it was just starting to rain a little bit when we suddenly had a huge 60 mile per hour gust. The wind was groaning; I was absolutely terrified that there was a tornado and that the sirens weren't going off like they're supposed to, but S told me that it was because of the way the wind was blowing through something. We had to run for the door to get back inside because we were getting a lot of debris, and we both got some small bits in our eyes.

A few minutes after we came in, the power went out momentarily before going out completely a couple minutes later. I started spazzing out because power outages freak me out (the only reason I was freaked by the storm was because I was terrified a tree was going to fall on the house), but S totally kept her head and just went and started lighting the million candles we have around the house, which gave us enough illumination to see. I imagine that's what it looked like in here when the original owners of this house lived here, back when it was a farm in the middle of nowhere and there wasn't electricity.

Of course, no event can happen without the dogs going completely nuts at some point, and they decided they were in love with my flashlight and chased me all over the house. They were really excited the whole time and both really wanted to go outside, but I wouldn't let them because I like having alive doggies.

While the power was out, S stepped outside to see why there were so many emergency vehicles around and to see if it was just our house that was out or if it was the whole block (it was), and I stepped out to see if I could see anything else and whether the dead tree branch in the front yard was still up or not, but my trip outside was abruptly aborted when a giant flash of lightning exploded right above me (it felt like it was, anyway), and then there was this massive clap of thunder immediately afterward while I was frantically scrambling with the door to get inside. I spent about half a second feeling sure I was about to die.

When S went to bed, I had to leave a few of the candles in the living room burning because I'm so afraid of power outages. I think it's because the house is too quiet and dark and I have a vivid imagination. Somehow, I managed to fall asleep, only to be woken by J coming home from work around 6:30, which was immediately followed by the power coming back on. I managed to stay mostly asleep until probably about 8:00, though, so I definitely got enough sleep to function, which was nice.

Anyway, S and I went to QuikTrip this morning, and on the way there, we'd seen a little bit of storm damage, so decided to drive around the neighborhood before going home and discovered houses that barely escaped being crushed by trees and one street was so blocked off by fallen trees that we had to turn around and go a different way, which led us past the neighborhood elementary school, which is right next to a little park. That park was seriously torn up. A giant walnut tree directly next to the playground had completely broken and landed in the middle of the playground equipment, breaking the only bench.

Later today, after J went to bed, S and I took the Toddler out to that park to get a look at all the damage. Clean-up crews had already done some work moving the branches out of there in the two hours since we'd seen it last, and while I was impressed with the speed and efficiency that they were showing, I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to come earlier to get pictures of the damage before it was touched. It was pretty impressive. I saw at least three uprooted trees, lots of torn up limbs, and just general debris. S and I are pretty sure that there was an undetected F1 or F2 tornado last night, judging by all the damage. I took many pictures. The Toddler got really excited on the playground equipment (it was safe to play on, miraculously) and decided his face was an excellent tool for descending stairs, which is also known as sliding down metal stairs with your face. That kid is seriously resilient: he didn't even cry; he was just really startled to find himself upside down on the stairs.

Anyway, we decided to leave the park when the crew that was removing all the trees came back from what I assume was their lunch break, and drove past a pretty impressive downed tree across a yard. It had missed the house by only a few feet. After I picked my book up from the library, which I've been waiting to read for six months, we drove by it again so we could get some pictures. It was truly epic. I know getting it out of there will be a bitch, but those people are incredibly lucky that their house is still standing.

After we got home, I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood to chronicle some of the damage. I found two possible culprits for our power outage in this area last night - a huge tree on the main road we live on, about a block away from us, had fallen and hit the power pole, which is now leaning awkwardly over the street, and the lines are all screwed up. There was also a couple of awesome evergreen trees I always liked that were covered in thick vines on a side street, which broke and hit the lines there, too.

Storm Damage Photos

(Click to enlarge)
 

This was the tree in the park next to the playground.

These people got very lucky.

This was the tree that took out our power last night.

I really liked these trees and am sad about how damaged they are now.

Okay, so now that I've dithered on for pages about the storm and the resulting damage, let's move on. I've been talking to E today, at least when I've been home, and she's decided that we must go on a vacation somewhere together. The lunatic wants to go to Europe, somewhere like Italy or France, where neither of us speak a word (or at least a complete sentence) of the native language, or somewhere ridiculously expensive like Australia. I suggested Iceland as a joke, and then Canada, because if we went to Victoria, we could also visit Seattle, which I don't think she's ever seen. She shot both down, so I suggested Alaska. She surprised me and greeted that idea with some enthusiasm. Of course, we'd have to go shopping to get supplies like hiking boots, so it'll have to be after I get a job, and oh god, I'd need about three extra memory cards and a whole case of damn batteries for my stupid camera. This is going to be awhile off, anyway, due to the me not having a job thing. But she's planning on coming back for a visit soon so we can truly hang out and spend some time together, instead of the short, fleeting visits we've been having for the last few years.

I tried to get in contact with the driver's license bureau again today, and once again, I was hung up on because they have no hold system. I'm so sick of that crap. I just want to know if I'm ever getting unsuspended or not, because I'd really like to get a driver's license so I can try to fix everything else. Seriously.

So, that's about all I have to say.


Links Round-Up 

Apparently, Missouri got the worst of the storm last night, so I'm feeling very lucky to be living on this side of the state line, especially since we got our power back so quickly compared to the poor people on the Missouri side, some of which are still without power.

I doubt that this will ever actually work, unless some truly motivated, good-hearted people are very involved in the process, but it's a pretty cool idea.

Pottermore is now in full beta, due to be open to the public sometime in October.  This article makes me wish desperately that I'd gotten into the beta.  I'm very impatient to see what all the content will be like.  Also, I'll never be bored again.

Anderson Cooper completely loses it on live television and giggles like a girl.  Hilarious.

Animals with their heads stuck in things.  Because.  Just because.

Some of these things were some of my favorite things to eat when I was younger, and I'm very sad that they're gone.  Seriously, bring Surge back, Coca-Cola!

(Also, this post had a ridiculous amount of technical difficulties!)

The Captain Obvious Club has a New Member!

I'm back from my trip to Topeka.

This morning, my phone played my text message tone several times back to back (the Final Fantasy X victory fanfare), and S said, "You have texts!" I said, "Yes," and she said, "I'm Captain Obvious!"

I love it here. I really appreciate it when I've been gone for awhile.

Anyway, my trip to Topeka was interesting. I stayed with E's dad, who I'll call DM, and E on Monday night. DM picked me up first and we drove together to the airport to pick E up from her flight. I talked his ear off, because I talk nervously when I'm.. nervous. Ha. Anyway, E was starving when we picked her up, so we went to a Cracker Barrel near the airport to get some food. I got a baconriffic BLT, and E got her usual standby, chicken tenders, mac and cheese, corn, and mashed potatoes. DM got a salad. I chronicle this because the food was pretty bad. Mine and DM's turned out fine, but poor E had a gelatinous blob of potatoes that she couldn't eat, and her mac and cheese was a bit burnt.

Mashed potatoes should not behave like this.

Anyway, after that, we went to Macy's to buy a suit for DM for the funeral (the reason E was in town at all), which was some serious hilarity, as E appears to think that she can make her dad be something he's not. She wanted him to get new shoes that had these scary, long squared toes - they were horrifying. Apparently they're quite fashionable, but they weren't him at all. The salesman and I found a pair that worked much better for DM that E said would do, and then she made him get a new tie and belt. And a shirt. Poor man. And immediately after the shopping trip, we made the two-hour drive to DM's house, which is about halfway between Topeka and Manhattan, way out in the country. The property is gorgeous. I took pictures.

This is what DM gets to see every morning.  So. Jealous.

Since I didn't know the man who died (he was E's stepmother's father), I wasn't planning on going to the funeral, even though E said it would be fine if I went. (DM did not agree and was perfectly fine with me being entirely too uncomfortable with the concept of going to the funeral.) The funeral was in Wichita, so DM and E dropped me off at LK's house to spend the day and night. Well, they tried to drop me off, but LK wasn't even there, she was at her friend-boy's apartment, and her mother, MK, was there with LK's puppy, Thor. (He's a four month old Akita.)

Thor, the blurriest puppy in existence.

MK had no idea I was coming. She didn't even recognize E or me until we got right up to the porch, and then she got really happy. I haven't seen her since I was about 12, so that's probably a pretty dramatic change, I don't look anything like I did when I was 12. LK is apparently a master of communication, woo. After calling LK repeatedly, we managed to communicate that she needed to arrive like now, and she eventually showed up about half an hour later. There were hellos and goodbyes, and I spent the rest of the day hanging out with LK, and ended up helping LK paint her bedroom.

The house LK and her roommate are renting is owned by MK, and they're working on fixing it up really nice, which would be fine if their contractor would cooperate. He was supposed to be there by 11:00, and didn't show up until 6:00 that evening, screwed up the crown molding so they have a six-foot space that doesn't have any, and even though he promised to install the carpet, he didn't do it. He looked kind of like a skinny Jeff Daniels, except what hair he had left was shaved.

Contractor Guy kind of looked like this.  (Jeff Daniels)

In the evening, LK's roommate came home from work and picking her baby up from daycare.  The baby was 10 months old, but about the size of a typical 7 or 8 month old, and very cute.  She really likes to kick.  I got to hang out with her for a little while when her mother and LK went to the neighbors' house to get their wifi password, because they were willing to share the wifi until LK can afford to get internet in the house.  So MK and I played pass the baby and kept her entertained.  I love babies.  Then LK had to pick her friend-boy up from work, and he decided to stay over.

After the contractor and MK left, one of their friends showed up to hang out right about the time I decided to go to bed, so I slept through the rest of the night's events.  Apparently they were drinking, and LK's friend-boy decided it would be a brilliant idea to jump over the porch railing to get down instead of walking between the people on the stairs, and wound up badly injuring his ankle - they weren't sure if he broke it or just sprained it badly, but he had to be carried upstairs and was up most of the night crying from the pain.  They couldn't take him to the hospital because they were all unsafe to drive, so LK took him to the hospital in the morning.  No idea if he's okay or not, but I hope he will be, he was a nice guy.

E and DM showed up to pick us up for lunch while she was dropping him off at the hospital, so we had to wait for her to get back, and then we went to Bobo's Drive-In, which has been operating in Topeka since 1948.  Then we dropped Leah off at home and E and I went to her mother's house to visit her for a few hours, while DM went off and did some work at his company's Topeka location.  He likes to work.  I'm calling E's mother CR.

CR has a new dog, a seven month old Shiba Inu named Sam.  She had a Shar Pei named Ginger until May, but Ginger was too old and sick and had to be put down.  Sam is nuts.  He tried to eat my pants.  One of CR's cats tried to eat my feet, too, which I wasn't too pleased about, especially since I don't even like cats.  CR was pretty cool; I haven't seen her since E's wedding, and she knows about the divorce, so at least we could speak freely about that for awhile.  She's convinced E's husband is going to try to kill her or something because he's really obsessed with her.  There was a long talk about how E just needs to move the hell out and let her husband deal with not being able to afford their townhouse alone, especially since until about a week ago he was planning on trying to screw her in the divorce and get all her stuff, until he realized that under Tennessee law, you get to keep everything that you had before the marriage and only the stuff you got during the marriage gets split down the middle.  He even wanted to take E's dog, Buddy, who he doesn't even like.

Anyway, CR knows I'm an atheist and that E is no longer Catholic (she's been involved with First Assembly of God since we were in high school), but it really bothers her, so she gave me a rosary.  Not sure what I'm going to do with it.  Girl Child wants it to wear as a decoration, since it's not like I'll ever use it.  I've been an atheist since I was about 10.  CR is really nice, though, and was pretty happy to see us.  We set up her new speakers that E got her, and we explained that the new Firefox is the only one available now and that all of her stuff is still there and that she will just have to go through the effort of reorganizing everything.  Apparently she just got a new computer not too long ago, and she's really mad at it.

DM picked us up after a few hours (we were there for two or three, I'm not sure), and we drove E back to the airport to go back to Nashville, and then he drove me home.  He's really a sweet man, he told me I could always call him if I'm in any trouble, even though he lives two hours away.  He also really wants me to get my learner's permit set up so I can drive with him next time he goes to Nashville to see E so I can get some driving practice in.  I don't think he realizes how scary merging is, haha.  But her dad is really, really cool.  I think I kind of annoy him a lot, what with the incessant talking and all, but he likes me anyway.  And I proved I'm capable of being quiet, because he had a business phone call when he drove me home after dropping E off and I only talked when I needed to tell him that we needed to take an exit.

Anyway, it was a pretty good trip.  I called home while we were driving E to the airport, and S let the Toddler talk to me on the phone, and he was all kinds of excited to talk to me.  Totally made my day.  He calls me "Me" now, and it's really, really cute.  I missed the hell out of everyone while I was gone, too.

Last night was also movie night, and we were watching the third X-Men movie.  I played FFX for ten minutes after everyone dispersed, and then I passed out.  And today's been pretty ordinary, I had my camera out because there's a massive spider outside the living room window, and I was taking pictures and then decided to take a photo of Sunshine, but the Toddler photobombed it.  It's hilarious.  I won't share the photobomb (no faces, remember?), but I will share a picture of the spider.

"Why hello there, Mister Spider, are you enjoying your breakfast?"

I Am Boring

This is a boring post.

E is coming to town (for a funeral, unfortunately), and I'm going to get to see her and LK while she's here.  The funeral is tomorrow, so today E and I are going shopping with her dad because he needs a new suit, and her dad is picking me up on the way to the airport to pick E up.  I'm hanging out with E tonight, and then going to Topeka to spend the day with LK tomorrow (the funeral is for E's stepmother's father, who I've never met, so even though E said LK and I are welcome to come to the funeral, I'm not comfortable going since I never met the man), and then on Wednesday, the three of us will spend some time together before E's dad takes me home and E back to the airport to go back to Nashville.

In preparation of all of this, I packed almost everything I'll need last night (going to have to de-pack my cell phone charger as soon as I finish this post, though, as my phone is almost dead), and this morning I finally folded and put away all the clothes that have been sitting in the living room being ignored because I hate getting sweaty, which happens every time I fold laundry.  Upside, all the laundry is put away now, and we're working on figuring out a system for where the laundry baskets will be kept when they're not full of clean laundry, since I'm generally keeping up really well with the laundry.  There's no longer about 20 loads of dirty laundry anymore, at least.  (Laundry for five people and the household takes up a lot of space when you decide to suck at doing the laundry.)

In any case, I am highly unlikely to make a blog post until at least Wednesday night, and probably not then because I imagine I'll be too tired to post.

Anyway, in other news, today is Girl Child's first day of school.  It's really weird not having her here, I keep forgetting she's at school, and forgetting that we have to be home when she gets home.  Lots of weirdness in this.  I've gotten so used to having her around that it's just downright strange that she's in school.  Girl Child is also really weird.  When I went into her room to put her laundry on her bed for her to put away, I noticed she had taped a Joker playing card to her laptop.  She's so weird.  I love that about her.

And... that's really it.  Nothing truly interesting has been happening.  I think J forgot to look at the laptop and see if he could fix the power button on it, so I imagine I'll have to wait until next week for him to look at it when I'll be home to remind him.  At least I still have some sort of computer available to use.

Also, it's raining, and other than that being irritating for the errands we have to run today, I'm quite happy about it.  We could really use the rain.  Even if it has been raining for the last four hours.

The Rambliest Post Ever

So I haven’t bothered writing a post at all this week. This week has kind of sucked. I’ve been completely sleep-deprived for the last two or three days, and we’re out of cigarettes (and I’m not sure if we’re getting more or if only J is going to be smoking from now on), so I’m a real treat to be around right now.

I’ve almost completely finished all the laundry that was taken downstairs, though, so as long as I maintain it a little better, we won’t end up with a laundry mountain taking over the hallway again.

I spent three days working on a new Sharpie art piece - I don't have a photo of the completed version (and I'm not entirely sure I'm happy with the completed version), but I do have a photo of it as it was right before I finished it off.

I haven't decided if I want to call this anything or not.  It now has a few more ribbons of yellow and some more stars and a black background.

I've also got photos of the crazy line drawing and the slightly schizophrenic-looking one that I'm pretty sure I've already mentioned previously.  I'm going to put those in the photo gallery instead, though, I think.  The crazy picture up above I'm thinking about uploading to DeviantArt as a work in progress photo since it's been months since I added anything to my profile.

Anyway, Thursday and yesterday were particularly bad in this incredibly fun week.  Girl Child had a friend over for a sleepover, which wasn't a problem, she's actually been working on cleaning her room, so S said she could have her over.  The problem came when Girl Child basically seems to have decided that since her friend is over, she can treat me any way she wants, regardless of the fact that I am an adult and she is not.  So the last two days have been nothing but us sniping at each other because I've finally cracked.  She completely overreacts to everything I say and do, even when I'm being perfectly lovely to her, so I'm done trying to be nice, at least until she adjusts her damn attitude and starts showing me some respect, because I'm sick of her crap.

Today, S and the Toddler are going out to meet up with a friend of S's, AC, for a little while, since it's been awhile since they've seen each other.  He's almost doubled in size (or at least it seems that way to me) since AC last saw him in October. 

Sunshine is slowly starting to get back to normal, so maybe she won't need to be put down after all.  She's sort of started wagging her tail again, and wagging her butt sometimes, too.  Unfortunately, she's also started being food aggressive toward Shadow again, even when he's nowhere near the food.  And for fuck's sake, we don't starve her!  There is always food available.  Dumbass dog.

My hair is about as long as it was in March of 2010, so I'm a little over a year behind where I would have been if I hadn't ever cut it, so at least there's that.  In about another year, it'll be waist-length, so in about two years, it'll be about to where I want it.  It's starting to look thicker, so maybe this not-dyeing thing is working out for me.

I don't particularly have anything of substance I want to write about.  I'm feeling particularly anti-social today.

I'm hoping to soon be able to get my learner's permit so I can start to get the hang of driving again - I discussed it with S a week or so ago and mentioned that if I got it in July, I could try for my license in October - I'm hoping to have my license before next spring, because S is planning on having a medical procedure done that would render her unable to drive for over a month, and the entire household would disintegrate if she didn't have a substitute driver.  Seriously, no bills would get taken care of, we would starve and die, J would never again get a prescription filled, and the car would eventually run out of gas or something.  Of course, we'd have starved and died by then, but still.  So it would probably be preferential for me to have a license so I can help in that way - plus, that would enable me to have a bit more independence - I could also get a job further away once I find a job nearby that I can use to get enough money to buy a car.

I was so angry at the couch the other night that I coated it in tape so it would stop falling on me.  I hate sleeping on it, we were supposed to get a new couch four months ago, but shit kept happening and we never were able to get one.  So I took a roll of packing tape that I had downstairs from a move and taped the cushion fabric to the top of the couch frame.  I think, since S and the Toddler are out of the house, I may remove the tape and nail it up there for a more permanent solution, at least until we get a new couch.  We're basically going to have to completely take this couch apart when we get rid of it to find all the crap we've lost inside of it.

This week has been crap.  The only reason I sound so damn cheerful half the time is because that's just how I sound these days - I don't think there's a power in the 'verse could stop me being cheerful for long.  This is what happens when you decide that you are going to be happy no matter what.  Eventually you stop trying to seem happy and just are happy.  And funnily enough, after writing all this down, I'm a lot less cranky and angry than I was when I started, so maybe that's another little nugget of wisdom I've learned: don't bottle everything up, find an outlet.

The weather here is awful, I wish it was winter again.  All my clothes that look good on me are too warm for me to wear unless it's 20 degrees outside.  It's currently over 90, and even with the air conditioning on, I feel like I'm melting.  I'm wearing my oldest, rattiest pajama pants and an ancient t-shirt, so I should be fine, but my stupid body is convinced that it's actually on fire.  (I've had these pajama pants since 8th grade, actually - I got the set specifically for pajama day at Sumner, and the only reason I can still wear them is because the elastic is basically exploded.)

I love the music that M makes - this particular song simultaneously makes me feel like my heart is swelling and makes me think of Jurassic Park.  What a combination.

I'm experimenting with not messing with my fingernails at all unless they get a snag, and am working on breaking myself of the only relic of biting my nails - sucking on them.  They're still very thin and bendy, and I hope they eventually get hard if I stop putting them in my mouth and idly playing with them, but right now they're like kitten claws - flexible and sharp.

Yesterday, S and I were introduced to a new way to play the Bad Translate game by my friend CN.  There's an online tool that does the translation transitions for you, so 10 translations, 20, 30, 40, 50, or 56 - and there are often hilarious results.  S and I spent most of yesterday playing with it, writing stream of consciousness passages, nonsensical sentences, and weird phrases to see what we would get.  For example, if you input, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," and tell it to translate that sentence 50 times, it comes back with, "Fox Brown cloth."  I don't know what the hell that's supposed to mean, but it's pretty funny.

I require more coffee and I am interested to see if we have any canned pumpkin in the house at all, because I'm interested in completely winging a pumpkin cake.  Since I'm awesome like that.  I just wish I wasn't so tired.  I hope today doesn't suck as much as yesterday did.

Hulk Lady, the Ring of Power, and Yarn

S is kind of like the Hulk, but without the radiation.  If we did not have her, Girl Child and I would never be able to eat anything that is kept in a jar ever again, unless J was available to open it.  This is because J has some sort of weird thing about having to close jars as tightly as possible so everything stays fresh.

Girl Child just brought me a jar of hot fudge and asked me to try to open it for her because she couldn’t get it.  She and I have about the same level of strength, so that was a fail.  I apparently turned purple and looked quite funny, because she laughed at me.  Then she took it to S, who exerted absolutely no effort and opened it immediately.  I imagine if S did not have so many physical problems, she could pick me up and toss me around like a rag doll.  Then there's W, who could easily throw me around like a rag doll.  He's a little scary, actually.

Anyway, things have been pretty standard around here.  The car turned out to be fine - the starter wasn’t the problem, but rather the battery, which died.  The shop told S that they weren’t going to charge her anything for looking at it - they said it needs new brake pads and a new battery, and they weren’t going to charge her for telling her this, so she got an oil change, which made the car run beautifully, and she changed the battery herself, and they’re getting new brake pads next week and changing those themselves, I believe.  So yay, it wasn’t something that was going to be horrible to attempt to fix.

S wants to quit smoking, and I think I’m going to attempt to quit with her this time, as long as J doesn’t smoke in the house anymore.  My willpower is just about as good as S’s, so I do hope he’s willing to do it outside until he quits.

I miss wearing my filigree ring and having a ring on my left hand.  My filigree ring broke awhile ago, and I can’t exactly wear my engagement ring, since, y’know, I’m not engaged anymore.  I’ve switched to my high school class ring for my right hand and my green onyx claddagh for my left, but it’s not really the same.

Yeah, I’m not terribly exciting today.  I’m exhausted, actually.  I’m not sure why I’m so tired, because I got a decent amount of sleep last night, but I think I’m going to have to nap before tonight.  Tonight we’re supposed to start watching Return of the King with M, and I don’t want to fall asleep during it, since I love the Lord of the Rings movies.  I can’t wait for The Hobbit to come out.

S and I have made plans to go see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 in the theater soon, once the initial excitement is over, because I generally dislike other people's children and do not want to sit through two hours of attempting to hear a movie I've been excited about seeing since 2007.  We're also waiting because it'll be less annoying to go once it's less crowded and not sold out.  M was going to take Girl Child to the midnight showing, but they were sold out by last week, and the movie doesn't even come out in theaters until July 15th, so it's probably going to be a little bit before we get to go at all.

This weekend we're planning on having a massive water gun fight.  Can't wait.  We should have gotten water balloons.  I thought of that last night.

I’ve been doing some work on my afghan, making more squares since I haven’t finished making all of them, and I’ve been watching stuff on my computer while I’ve been doing this.  Last night it was Fifteen and Pregnant, which is a Lifetime movie I saw in 1998 that has Kirsten Dunst in it.  Parts of it were as predictably bad as a Lifetime movie gets, and other parts were almost good.  Today, I have been watching Firefly.

Sunshine seems to be doing a lot better, she's much less fearful today.  She chased the laser through the living room last night (we had to get Shadow outside for her to do it at all), and today I caught her trying to chase her tail, so hopefully she'll be back to her old self soon.

Anyway, a napping opportunity has presented itself, so off I go.  Particularly since I'm incredibly dizzy.

The Longest Week That Ever Was

So we're officially not going to be playing the D&D campaign we've been playing anymore, because W and A haven't been able to consistently show up on time in weeks.  I know they're busy, but ...

I'm just really disappointed.  I was really excited about this campaign and interested in seeing how the story would play out, and I'm upset that I may never get to find out what happens next, especially as I was actually starting to get sort of good at playing.

Anyway.  Today has been kind of a bad day - the car broke, and they're having to have that fixed this weekend in anticipation of J going to work on Tuesday.  He's got Sunday and Monday off, though, for Father's Day and J and S's wedding anniversary.  I'm going to be taking the kids on a long walk/trip to the park, and texting to see if the coast is clear before we return.  Lots of water we will need.  Yes.

I'm still in a lot of pain from the whole "let's risk my life for Sunshine thing" - I damaged the plantar fascia tendon in both feet because of sprinting in untied shoes without arch support.  I didn't do near as much damage as S did to her foot in May, but it's quite enough to be going on with, especially with all the muscle pain and the other tendon pain I'm experiencing from that.  At least I know I can still sprint when I need to, I guess.  Oh, and for extra fun, I've finally started menstruating again after three months.  (I know, squick, sorry.)  I'm worried there's something wrong with me, but it could also be my weight or how stressful the last three years have been, or maybe something got broken when I had the miscarriage in 2009.  I don't know.  I hope it's just being all funky for no reason, though.  That'd be nice.

Sunshine seems to be doing a little better.  She's still being much more timid than usual, and she can't wag her whole butt at all right now (though she wags just the end of her tail a little bit when we pet her right after giving her her meds), but she's been a bit less stiff today, which I'm going to take as a good sign.  Also, I've discovered that since she can't scratch her own itches at all right now, if I scratch her ears, I can make her moan, which is hilarious.  I love those damn dogs so much.  Shadow's just been himself, though I think he's being a bit more gentle with Sunshine now than he was on Thursday - he tried to play with her and flipped her onto her back and she screamed, it was scary.  Anytime someone happens to say "where is it" about anything at all, he comes running, thinking we've got the laser out.

Today was pretty boring, actually, beyond the whole car thing.  It feels like that didn't even happen today because today has been such a long day, even though nothing really happened today at all.  I've been particularly tired all day (espresso didn't even help), and rather moody as well.  I'm sure I'm just a barrel of laughs right now.

W and A were here for a couple of hours without LW because he's actually visiting his mother for once this weekend, and we just hung out because J couldn't even remember what he wanted to do for the dungeon we were about to go into.  I don't know why he didn't write it all down like he did the last one, but whatever floats his boat, I guess.

I'm worried about C.

I haven't been sleeping well at all the last few weeks.  I'm always tired, but I can't seem to fall asleep, and once I manage to get to sleep, I sleep so lightly that everything wakes me up, so I'm barely getting any sleep at all, and that's not helping my mood, so I've been probably a bit unnecessarily cranky lately.

This week feels like it's been about three weeks long.

My Life is an Oddity

I've spent most of the morning reading various news articles and looking up disaster movies and TV shows I find interesting.  I can't find anything that would allow me to watch Mega Disasters (the primary one I'm interested in watching, of course), but hopefully I'll find something soon.

I love watching hypothetical/fictional disasters in movies and on TV shows.  I like the hysteria, the little CGI cities being ripped to shreds, the explosions.  I am a serious dork.  I love 2012.  Twister was my favorite movie when I was little, and also Night of the Twisters, which is so bad it's good.  I liked Dante's Peak and I haven't seen Volcano yet, but it's on the list.  I want to be in possession of every disaster movie that was any good.  I don't mind cheesy special effects, the more destruction the better!  Like The Core, or epic earthquake movies, documentaries about what might happen if a super tornado hit, or if Mount Rainer erupted cataclysmically, or if a really big hurricane hit New York City.

God, I love a good, cheesy disaster movie.

The Toddler is currently down for a nap - I'm not sure how long he'll sleep, since S had to move his bedtime to 9:00 so he'd stop waking up at 1 AM and stay awake all night.  S decided that she needed one, too, and after she gets up, we're going to the library so I can drop off those books that I deem useless and pick up my new holds (whee!), and then I think we have an errand or three, but I'm not sure.  Pretty stoked about the books, though, I believe one of them is crochet amigurumi of things like zombies and monsters, and I'm all for having patterns for those kinds of things.  Poor Toddler, by the time he's five, he's going to have a bedroom filled entirely with zombies, Cthulhu stuffies, monsters, and other strange oddities.

My life is an oddity.

The Girl Child has rearisen - I was previously the only person awake.  Because of the various sleeping schedules of the inhabitants of this house, it almost never transpires that we are all awake or all asleep at the same time.  I in fact remember very few occasions where we have all been asleep at the same time - there was one day when everyone who doesn't work nights was napping at the same time that J and M were sleeping, including the dogs, but I can think of no other occasions when this has occurred.  This morning, we were actually all awake at once, which is a much more common occurrence when J stays up late, unless I happen to stay asleep when the Toddler wakes up.  There's a lot of activity in the mornings, usually, with everyone running around and talking all at once and dogs and baby and Girl Child cavorting about, and J and M shouting stories at each other over the din.  I love being here.

Anyway, now it's just me and Girl Child, and hopefully soon S and the Toddler will be up.  The Toddler's been asleep for about two hours now, so I can't imagine he'll sleep for much longer, unless he takes another epic 3-hour nap.  So, now it is time to go to the kitchen and gorge myself on something random because I keep forgetting about the existence of real food.  Mmm, real food.  I like food.  I think I'll go searching for some.

Ringtones and Other Drivel

So I didn’t post yesterday because it’s really irritating to type on this computer (that’s part of why I haven’t been posting as often), but I really did mean to!  Baby-sitting was excellent, TD was the most placid baby ever.  He didn’t cry when AD and MD said goodbye and left, he was totally cool about having his diaper changed, he was totally cool with laying down for a nap, he let me feed him without making a mess at all, he was perfectly content to sit in my lap and watch a documentary with me, and he was just generally the easiest baby to take care of ever.  The most difficult part of taking care of him was washing out his bottle, because it’s a Dr. Brown’s bottle, but even that was easy, as I’ve dealt with those before.  Also, it turns out that they only live about a mile away from me, so it’ll be really easy to baby-sit him in the future.

Seriously, that was the most awesome baby-sitting job I’ve ever had.

We ended up not being able to have game on Saturday night, because J never went to bed on Saturday as there was so much to do.  He mowed the lawn after S and the Toddler woke up, and then he just stayed up.  While I was baby-sitting, the entire clan was over at J's parents' house hanging out, and Girl Child picked out a cell phone she likes because she's being put on the plan this summer.  By the time I got home, J was having what was supposed to be a nap in the giant chair in the living room, but he wouldn't wake up.  We didn't get him conscious until after 9:00, and we were supposed to go to W and A's apartment for game this time, but by the time we got J up, the Toddler had had to go to bed because we just couldn't keep him up anymore, he was simply too tired.  So W and A came over to hang out (and LW too, of course), and we had some fun chatting with them.  W discovered this blog and realized I am not nearly as stupid as I come across.  (S says that I only seem stupid because I am perpetually happy in my demeanor and since I am also rather spastic and tend to forget words and replace them with 'thingy', people tend to think I am not nearly as smart as I am.)  Apparently I actually make sense when I write.

Yesterday was mostly spent listening to music with Girl Child and turning some songs into ringtones and making a bunch of wallpapers for my phone, too.  Here’s a list of (all) the songs I have turned into ringtones:

Psychostick - Do You Want a Taco? (custom ringtone for S when she calls me)
Jimmy Buffett - Cheeseburger in Paradise (currently the custom ringtone for J, but I may change it)
Cowboy Troy - I Play Chicken With a Train (Simlish) (because I find it hilarious)
Jonathan Coulton - Code Monkey (because it’s one of my favorite songs with vocals)
Jonathan Coulton - Chiron Beta Prime (this will be my main ringtone around Christmastime)
Jolly Rogers - All For Me Grog (I may change J’s ringtone to this)
Hakuna Matata (Girl Child’s custom ringtone)
Adele - Rolling in the Deep (I don’t actually like this, but it’s H’s custom ringtone because she likes it)
They Might Be Giants - Why Does The Sun Shine? (another one that I have because it’s really awesome)
Hedwig’s Theme from the first Harry Potter movie (because I’m a nerd)
Canon Rock, arranged by GTRMAN (ringtone for the house phone)
Backstreet Boys - As Long As You Love Me (ringtone for E)
Final Fantasy X Victory Fanfare (my text message tone)

And that’s all I have so far, though I think I might make Still Alive a ringtone as well, just because I may as well round out the dorkyness.  I also made Re: Your Brains into a ringtone, but I had to lower the bitrate so much to make my phone like it that it ended up sounding like poop, so I deleted it off my phone and will have to try again later.

Last night, I told M that I really wanted my favorite song by him as a ringtone, but wasn’t sure what part I would use because I love the whole thing so much (I love it so much it sometimes nearly makes me cry), and he asked me to play the part of it that I loved the most, and about ten minutes later, he sent me a file transfer on MSN.  With the most beautiful part of the song turned into a ringtone.  He even gave it a fade-out at the end.  He is so awesome.  He made me want to cry.

Today we have a few errands to run, mostly along the lines of groceries and a library trip.  I haven’t done any work on my afghan since Sunday morning, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to get some done today, though with as tired as I’m feeling right now, I’m rather doubtful that that will happen.

I exercised some of my creativity last night and created a rather strange picture with my Sharpies (I have a very large set of Sharpies) on some of the drawing paper Mom got me for my birthday.  S said it reminds her of the ocean.  I’ll try to scan it later so I can put it on DeviantArt and I’ll post a little copy here (or a link to my DA page), and if that doesn’t work, I’ll just take a picture of it.

My earbuds are officially broken - they have to be held at a certain angle for the left one to make any noise at all, so at the moment, my ashtray is holding the cord in place where it’s plugged into my computer so I can hear my music without wanting to scream.

I checked out a buttload of crocheting books from the library awhile ago, and almost all of them are rubbish, of course.  I’ll be taking them back today, once S is awake enough that she’s willing to go.  I’ve got more waiting to be picked up, oh boy!  I’ve managed to renew the books I have out for S a second time, so I don’t have to worry about fines on them, and hopefully I’ll be able to renew them a few more times since she’s still on the first one.

I think I must be being particularly annoying lately or something, because it feels like everyone is being really cranky and impatient with me.  Perhaps I should be less talkative or something, I don’t know.

The laundry still isn’t folded.  I don’t want to do it because I want to get the rest of the dirty clothes washed, but I think I’m going to do that today or tomorrow.  I’m sick of the clean clothes being knocked onto the floor anytime anyone but me or S goes through them, and I’d really like to know what clothes we actually have clean at the moment, because we are all convinced that none of us have anything clean, but we must, because there’s about 10 loads sitting in the living room that say otherwise.  Ha.

The Toddler has completely covered his face in a thin layer of applesauce.  I’m very amused.

I just discovered another song of M’s that makes me want to cry.

I don’t have anything else to say, really.  I hope today turns out to be a good day, though.

Afghans, Baby-Sitting, and Friends

I really need to get better about posting regularly again.  Most of my time lately has been spent working on my afghan.  I’ll post a picture at the end, after I take one and get J to help me get it onto my computer.  (My computer won’t recognize my camera, but if I plug it into his USB hub, I can transfer pictures from my camera to my computer via the home network.  I’m not even kidding, that’s how I have to do it.)  Though he’s just gone outside to mow the lawn, so I’ll just do it myself, haha.

I ended up staying up all night, until after 11:00 on Thursday morning, due to some sleeping complications.  I managed to get about 3 hours of sleep before I was awoken, and then I went out with E.

Hanging out with E was fantastic.  We had a blast.  We went to Waxy O’Shea’s, talked about her marriage (she finally called a lawyer and is starting the divorce proceedings soon), then came back home and played around in the driveway for awhile.  I got a hilarious video of her freaking out over mosquitoes, and we took a bunch of pictures.  We also ran around with her crazy little dog for awhile.  He’s so tiny.  I’m so used to Shadow and Sunshine that Buddy seems abnormally small and delicate; I’m afraid to pet him like I would normally pet a dog, and end up treating him more like a cat.

Nothing special happened on Friday, except that I got a text message from someone I’m friends with on Facebook asking if I’d baby-sit her adorable baby for a few hours today, so I’ll be going off to do that for four hours and then going to game and W and A’s apartment.  I’m going to have to completely repack a purse with everything I’ll need for game just in case I wind up going straight from baby-sitting to game.  I’m pretty stoked about baby-sitting, though, this particular baby is 11 months old, and it’s been forever since I played with anyone under 1 year.  I’m looking forward to placid baby-ness and a lack of toddler-style behavior.  As much as I love the Toddler, he does make me want to tear my hair out sometimes.

Speaking of the Toddler, he stayed up almost all night because he does not like it when the bedroom door lets light in, so he woke up at about 1:30 when S tried to go to bed, and stayed up until about 6:30, when J managed to get him back to bed, and then he woke up at almost 10:00.  Woo-hoo for broken sleep!

We’ve got D&D tonight, as previously stated, and we’re going to try to do it at W and A’s apartment, which should be interesting, since I’m not entirely sure the Toddler will cooperate and sleep.  Should be interesting to try, though.

Anyway, here’s a picture of what I have completed of the afghan so far:

These are the top two rows of squares.  I have five more rows to go, then a border to get it even all the way around, and then an edging to make it pretty!

And that, as they say, is that.

Another Good Day

Today, I spent a good six hours working on a crochet block for the pillow cover things I'm making for the throw pillows that will match my afghan, only to discover that the pattern is completely fucked and that I can't use it.  After I was almost done.  Because that's when I discovered that the pattern was fucked no matter what I do.  So I gave it to the Toddler.

S and I are going to start baby-sitting LW a couple days a week soon, so that should be interesting.  We're baby-sitting him tomorrow for a bit while A has a job interview.  I hope she gets it, I think she misses working.

Tomorrow, I will hopefully work on the laundry while S folds what is already clean.  So. Much. Laundry.  I'm not sure when we're going to get that done, but hopefully it'll happen.

Today was a really good day, though.  S, M, Girl Child, and I watched the extended version of the first Lord of the Rings movie, and didn't finish until about 15 minutes ago.  Girl Child hadn't seen it all the way through yet, and it made her cry.  D'aww. 

W and A came to visit around 7:00 this evening and hung out for a little bit, which was nice.  Then the Toddler went to bed and S and M went out for dinner while Girl Child and I hung out and played music while I did some work partially constructing the afghan.

Most of the day was just regular stuff, same as always.

I'd write more, but I'm so tired my brain is no longer functioning.  I forgot to eat any actual food all day, though, which was kind of stupid of me.

I would go lay down now, but the Toddler is having one of his periods of wakefulness.

I have fantastic ideas for stories to write, but none of them come to me in words, just flashes of images.  They're all horror.  I think I read too much Stephen King while I was in high school.  It's permanently addled my brain.

I'm going to need to go to sleep soon if I want to resemble anything close to alive tomorrow.

Laundry, Plans for the Week, and An Obsession with Chocolate

I really shouldn't try to write blog posts when I'm tired.  That's really why I haven't been posting lately - I've been tired for the whole week.  It's been kind of awful.  Anyway, I was looking over last night's post, and found lots of really weird bits where the words in the sentences didn't make sense.

I was so desperate for chocolate earlier that I mixed together some baking cocoa, sugar, a bit of butter, a bit of milk, vanilla extract, and a little cinnamon together to create a concoction that was sort of a cross between chocolate syrup and liquefied candy bar, which was more what I was going for.  I'm not sure what I'd need to do to improve this, but I was impressed with myself for my first attempt.  It was so rich, though, that I had to add more milk to it so I could ingest it and get some form of chocolate.  Oh my god chocolate, how I love you.  I'd love you more if I could type properly, but between the keyboard slowly dying and my dyslexic fingers, I'm screwed on that one.

After the Toddler and S wake up (they are napping), we are going to the store.  I have forgotten what we're buying, but I hope it's chocolatey.  Because everything seriously needs to be made out of chocolate right now.  I want to live in a chocolate house and just take great big bites out of the walls.

I am not normal.

The Girl Child has yet to return home from her visit with her best friend, who is in town visiting her dad for the summer.  (Girl Child's best friend currently lives in New Mexico with her mother and only sees her father during school breaks.)  Don't worry, I'll think of an abbreviation for the girl sometime soon - I'll need to, as she'll be around a lot, hanging out with Girl Child.

E is coming into town this Thursday.  We're going to go out for an activity of some sort that will surely involve eating food, and then she'll drop me back at home and continue on to her dad's house.  She comes back to Kansas every summer for Royal Family Kids Camp, which is a summer camp for abused and neglected children, and the last couple of times, she's managed to stop by to visit me for at least a little bit, either going to her dad's or on the way back to Nashville.  I can't wait to see her, though I imagine she'll be horrorstruck by how fat I've gotten just since last year.  At least this time my hair isn't all falling out from hair dye, too.

I need to start finding clothes for going to the store and stuff, the Toddler has been asleep for ages, so I'm pretty sure he'll wake up soon.  He may not, though - he woke up at 3:00 and stayed up.  Only after bashing S and me with his head when S was trying to get him to sleep with her in the bed.  I'm not sure what time S got up this morning, because I was asleep and didn't wake up until 9:00 this morning.  I thought J was a fold in the blankets on the other side of the bed and accidentally kicked him, but all he did was roll over and stick his arms out weirdly, so I guess I didn't hurt him.

I'm hoping this week we can take ALL the laundry to the laundromat and just get it all washed at once.  And get Girl Child's room cleaned out so there's room to put all her clothes away so she'll stop stealing all the laundry baskets.

Today I need to find as many of my clothes as possible and wash them; I'm completely out of clothes and I'm really annoyed about it.

Anyway, obviously today isn't the most exciting day ever.  It's hot and muggy and disgusting outside.  I'm going to get dressed the rest of the way and then work on my crocheting some more, though I think I'll temporarily abandon the bag for awhile because I really want to get started on the actual work of getting the afghan all put together and stuff.

Tornadoes, Graduation(s), and New People

Things have been a little hectic here lately, which is why I haven't posted.  Mom's graduation went well, except for the fact that my camera refuses to take good pictures in gigantic rooms from large distances, so I have almost no good pictures of her graduating, but I did get a very funny video of her waving her diploma at us (I was there with my aunt and uncle), and we got some group pictures, which unfortunately have the color balance messed up on them.  When I put them on the computer, I'm going to edit them and hopefully fix them.

Friday was Girl Child's sixth grade graduation, and everyone in the house except the dogs and M went to see it.  I got some pictures of her getting her certificates, but unfortunately missed out on getting some good pictures because the Toddler was screaming and had to be removed.  Friday was a nothing-special kind of day beyond that.

Yesterday was a pretty good day.  J let S and me sleep in and took care of the Toddler for awhile until we got up, partly because the Toddler woke up at midnight and didn't go back to sleep until like 5:30 and then woke up at 7:00.  Nobody got much sleep, even with me going to bed at 7:30, so it was a fucked kind of morning.  Then we had errands, and then S had an errand that she had to go on and I needed to get the house at least partially cleaned up because we were having a new person over, and I was having a hard time getting J out of bed, so there was a bit of a meltdown on my part because I couldn't get everything done and felt like an epic failure.  The only upside of the afternoon was that the Toddler actually napped, unlike Friday when he fell asleep in the car for a few minutes and then absolutely refused to nap at home.

J's new friend from work came to visit yesterday, which was why I was cleaning so frantically.  I managed to get the hallway completely clear of laundry and J took it all to the basement in trash bags for me, and J got the toys and other stuff picked up off the floor, and then we collapsed onto the furniture until J's new friend arrived.  I'm not sure what to call her, her name also starts with an A, so I think I'll call her AB, which are her initials.  (Thirty seconds of Facebook sleuthing to find that out.  Whee.)  Anyway, she was a completely new entity to me, so I was a bit shy/aloof at first, because that's just how I am with new people sometimes.  It wasn't until S got home awhile later that I loosened up and got a bit more comfortable.  J grilled pork chops and steaks and we had a team effort on the veggies, and then the Toddler needed a second bath because he was completely covered in food goop.

As a side note, while I was clearing out the laundry, a fat black spider fell on my chest from the inside of some clothes, and managed to bite me on my collarbone before being flung to the floor, where J killed it while I flailed hysterically and held the Toddler behind me.  With a bottle of Wet.  Yes.  It's funny now, but at the time it was horrible.  Anyway, my collarbone is itchy.

W and A didn't arrive until after 10:00, with LW, so we started game very late, and just as we were really starting to get involved in it, I heard tornado sirens.  A went to the door and said that the air felt stagnant and completely still, and S jumped up and leaped across the room to her computer to check the weather radar because we don't have a weather radio right now, said that there was a tornado that looked like it was heading straight for us, and we all mobilized and started grabbing stuff.  I went and scared the living hell out of Girl Child by bursting into her room and yelling the essentials at her, then grabbed the Toddler out of bed (he didn't even wake up) and ran downstairs with him.  A started crying with LW in her arms because their dogs and cat were alone in their apartment and she was scared they'd die, and then she started trying to get in contact with her mother, but her phone didn't get reception in the basement, even by the window, so she tried AB's phone, which also had no reception, so I sent someone up to get my phone so A could try it, but all she could do was access the internet on it, it wouldn't call or send texts.  (It limited us to emergency calls only and nobody thought to grab the house phone.)  After awhile, S decided it would be safe to go back upstairs, so I put the Toddler back to bed (and luckily he didn't cry), and we called game for the night.  I also managed to get LW to sleep for a little while, too, until W and A decided to go home.

This reminded me of a Thank God School's Over party in high school where there were severe storms and we ended up in the basement being terrified that we'd be blown away.  I don't remember enough about that specific party to give more details than that, but it was pretty special.

J let me sleep until 9:30 this morning, and since he went to bed and I got up, the Toddler has thrown several tantrums, which somehow did not wake AB, he attempted to bite me during a time-out, and now he's chilling out in his high chair and we're just sitting around the living room.

I'm pretty sure today is going to be a nothing-much kind of day, too.  That's okay, because I like it that way.

Daily Drivel and Advice

I ended up writing nothing over the last weekend, mostly because I was so irritated with Blogger for deleting the page I had to re-create (the link is just below the title), and also because I’ve been exhausted beyond belief.

I got up at 6:00 after going to sleep around 4:00 on Saturday to help get everything ready to go for the road trip S and J were taking to pick up the riding lawn mower JGM gave them.  I had the house to myself for the whole day, so I ended up going back to sleep around 8:00 and slept until nearly 3:00, so I got nearly enough sleep.  I ended up cleaning the whole living room and taking a ton of laundry downstairs in anticipation of D&D, so we’d have room to play and S could stop dying on her crutches.

W and A came over with LW around 10:00, about the same time that J and S and the children returned, but by this point, it was far too late for game, so we hung out and chatted.  I made cornbread around midnight because it sounded wonderful.  They were here until LW fell asleep on A around 1:00, and then we all hung around the living room doing our own thing until very late.  Saturday was basically a very boring day full of nothing much.

Yesterday was also a nothing-much routine kind of day.  I don’t actually remember a lot about it because of how tired I’ve been.  The only thing that we really did was stop by the library to print some stuff because our printer at home is broken, and then not a whole lot happened.  I’ve been particularly irritable the last few days, not sure why, but I’d really like to keep that under control, since no one in this house has really done anything to deserve me being cranky and snarky toward them.

Today was exhausting because I didn’t get nearly enough sleep.  I fell asleep on S last night while she was showing me stuff in Minecraft, and then when I had to wake up so she could go to bed, I was unable to get back to sleep for almost an hour, then J scared me awake when he came home, and the dogs barked at M when he got home a couple of hours later, which also woke me up, and then the Toddler woke up before 7:00, and from that point onward, his mission for the day seemed to be to destroy the living room and grab stuff that doesn’t belong to him.  Like S’s incense.  I tried to take a nap earlier, but it takes me awhile to fall asleep, and between that and the guitar and the screaming, I managed about 10 minutes, especially since the Toddler decided to pound on the bedroom door and yell at me.  Wah, wah, poor me.

I had a stroke of brilliance earlier in regard to J’s work food - chili and cornbread!  I made a big batch of cornbread and we bought some canned chili at the grocery store, and he’s set!  Yay!

I have no plans in particular for tonight, I’m going to go to sleep early and hopefully get enough sleep so I can have some energy tomorrow (the coffee just doesn’t give me the energy I need anymore, I totally need an espresso maker), and I’m going to try to get some stuff done.  Like making a dent in the laundry, because S, the Toddler, and I are all completely out of clothes.  I’m currently wearing a retired pair of polyester dress pants, and it’s just too warm for that crap.  They don’t breathe.  I’m dying. 

I talked to C for a bit today.  I’m worried about him, he’s in a similar situation to E, and I hate seeing good people be miserable for no good reason. 

Speaking of E, I also spent a good long time talking to her today as well.  I really feel bad for her, she seems to be stuck between trying to please everyone and wanting to be happy, and she can only have one in this situation.  I hope she and her husband sit down soon and have a discussion, a real discussion, about the things they want out of life, and hopefully he’ll come to the same conclusion that she did, that they need to get a divorce.  She’s just so palpably miserable.  I try to sympathize with her as best I can, even though I’m on the complete opposite end of her viewpoint toward children.  I just don’t think she deserves to be punished because she doesn’t want them.  Not everyone was made to be a parent, and she’s one of those people.  As wonderful as she is, she would be an awful parent.  She likes things to be too clean to be a happy, effective parent.  I don’t know why her husband doesn’t see that, doesn’t see her.  I don’t think he even wants to see her, just the image of what he wants her to be, and I think that’s why he gets so angry when she just isn’t what he expects.  He doesn’t love her for her, and that’s not fair to her.

I don’t understand the attitude to the people who are childfree.  They are still people, and they still deserve respect, and they deserve to do with their lives what they want, even if that doesn’t happen to include children.  E doesn’t deserve to be treated like a brood mare because her mother-in-law wants grandchildren, or because her husband doesn’t care about her wishes.  I have several friends, not just E, who are childfree, and I try to be as supportive as I can, even though I don’t get why E and H hate babies.  Well, I guess I can see why they hate babies, but I see so much good and fun with babies that I can overlook all the gross stuff and the screaming and the sleep deprivation.  I guess that’s the difference between wanting to have children and not wanting to have children, and I will never pressure either E or H or any of my friends who don’t want children to have them.  It’s their decision to make, and I’ll still be just as supportive if they decide in 10 years that they would like to have children, though I have my doubts that either of them will.

I’ve been kind of an advice dispenser today.  Every so often, I just come out with all of this wisdom, and it always seems to be just the right thing to say.  It’s really weird.  I’m really stupid when it comes to managing my own life, but I can find the correct solution for the problems in my friends’ lives, and give them justifying reasons for why they deserve to be happy.  I just wish I could take my own advice sometimes.  (JHB used to call me his source of wisdom because of this weird quirk of mine.)

Anyway, today hasn’t been terribly exciting by any stretch of the imagination.  The Girl Child has slipped back into being sullen and surly, and has gone back to being insulting toward me at random intervals, S and I have been hanging out most of the day, and I’ve finally gotten my first wind and have started doing some of the laundry.  M and J are both at work, and the Toddler is in bed for the night.  Just another day at the crazy house.  Ha.  S is currently making lava waterfalls in Minecraft.

I really have nothing more to say.

Old Friends, Drama, and Blogging

Yesterday was so bad that I didn't want to post about it.  Well, at least not until I'd had some time to process everything and be in a less negative frame of mind.

I got four hours of sleep yesterday, because Girl Child threw the biggest tantrum I've ever seen her throw when J wouldn't let her go downstairs before school.  It was five o'clock in the morning.  She managed to wake everyone, including the Toddler.  I was so angry with her, because she threw off the entire day for everyone, and I am much less patient when I am tired, and I need to be able to be patient, because the Toddler is only 18 months old, and I was not as patient with him as I could have been.  I was so exhausted I couldn't cook dinner, which was okay because S and M went out for dinner last night and I didn't have any because I was too exhausted and ended up going to bed around 7:30.

I was in bed for almost 12 hours last night.  I slept for almost all of that time.

Nothing of note really happened yesterday beyond the epic tantrum, and I'm not going into detail about that to protect Girl Child's privacy.  I don't want her to have to read about it (she reads this blog when she isn't grounded), and I don't want her to decide to revisit this blog when she's 20 and freak out.  Because I love her anyway, even when she is being awful.  I know that it's only because she's 12 and miserable, because everyone is miserable when they're 12.  So I love her anyway, even when she spends months being absolutely awful to me, like she was over the winter.

I think I've mentioned this previously, but for the first time in my life, I have long fingernails.  I'm finally not so fucked up that I bite my nails constantly anymore.  I've bitten my nails for longer than I can remember.  I've had them long for about two months now.  I don't think they're particularly attractive (my middle and ring finger nails on both hands grow funny), but they're long.  Actually, at the moment, they're too long and I'm having difficulty typing.

I've been reading the blog of someone that I have known for over 10 years, though I don't really know him now.  He's part of the reason I started blogging on LiveJournal, and he was one of my closest friends while I was living with my mother, and then everything went to hell in 2005 and we barely spoke after that.  Reading his blog, though all but the most recent entry is about three years old.. it led to a lot of introspection and self-examination that made me think some things I'm not ready to put into writing yet.  I'm very glad to be back in contact with him, because I have missed him a lot.  I shall dub him C.  (I think I'm going to make a separate page on this blog soon for keeping the cast of people I talk about straight, I'm starting to get really confused when I talk about people, since I'm only using initials and other things to identify them in order to preserve privacy.  That's why I have yet to mention my name or give any indication as to who I am, so that that way the people that may eventually read this that don't really know me won't know or hold it against real-life me.)

Anyway.  I need to wrap this up, S and I need to run errands while the Toddler is napping, so hopefully I'll find the time and energy to write later about some of my other thoughts, if they ever become coherent enough to bother writing about.

I absolutely love the music that M makes.  It's perfect for helping me concentrate, which is why I want it.