Nerdy Book-Loving Girl

It's been awhile.  I'm completely exhausted.  I'm moving again at the end of May.  I have a job, I don't remember if I've mentioned that.

Honestly, I kind of don't care about playing catch-up right now.  Probably because I've had 3 hours of sleep and I work 1-10 tonight.

I'm alive, I gave up on The Scarlet Letter and Mrs. Dalloway and whatever the hell else I was trying to read.  I'm currently reading Lord of the Rings, and it's actually really good.  There's a few parts that you really have to be awake for or they sort of slip by you and you have no idea what you just read because you mostly stared at it and turned the page, but other than that, it's excellent.  I keep running across words I don't know that Tolkein didn't make up, and I don't have a dictionary and I'm usually at work when this happens, so I may never expand my vocabulary at this rate.  In any case, I'm almost done with Two Towers and am making my way steadily to The Return of the King.  It's a one-volume book I got out of the library, since I was having issues finding Two Towers when I started getting close to being done with Fellowship, and so I switched to the one-volume set, and hope I didn't miss anything.

So, I'm supposed to go with MB to her friend's house today to do laundry while she dog-sits, and we're supposed to leave in about 5 minutes and she hasn't even taken a shower yet, so we might not be going.  Hopefully the dogs don't poop inside or anything if she's late.

Edit approximately 30 seconds after I clicked publish: MB is now in the shower, hahaha, so apparently my thoughts were a catalyst or something for her.  Heeh.

Anyway, my birthday was yesterday and now I'm 25.  I'm going to go get coffee and hope that I get to take a nap before work.

The Slob Who Reads a Lot

I am alive.  (Obviously.)  I am in Emporia.  I am about to go to bed.  Apparently, the best I can do is declarative statements at the moment.  I have a library card, a job (which I haven't attended orientation for, which makes me nervous), and I have other big news that I hope I'll remember to post about later.  It deserves its own post, both so I can shit my pants over it and squee incessantly.  I am currently reading (or rereading): Angels & Demons by Dan Brown, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve, and The Stand (expanded edition) by Stephen King.  I've already read Angels & Demons, but I haven't seen the movie yet, so I wanted a refresher on how disappointed I'm going to be.  I read 9 pages of Pride & Prejudice before I gave up a few days ago, further cementing my need to just own the book so I can read it like I read 1984 - pick it up every few months and read a chapter or two.  Of course, I haven't touched 1984 since 2006, but it worked for The Hobbit - it took 6 months to read, but damned if I didn't do it.

Things are looking up.  I'm terrified.  I'm on the edge of some (more) huge changes.  I don't know how I feel about this and how many I'm ready to accept, but I'm working toward something different.  I don't know if it's better, but it's different.

I miss everyone like crazy. 

My belongings are everywhere because I never pick anything up.  I have two binders, a blanket, two canvas bags, a bathrobe, various purse innards, a newspaper, a notepad, a sweater, and mail on the floor near my feet right now.  Oh, and four library books, and that doesn't even count the books I seem to have misplaced.  (I was attempting to read Mrs. Dalloway again.  I got as far as I did last time.  I just can't seem to follow it.  It's somewhere around here.)

Things I seem to be good at accumulating, now that all my stuff is in one place:

• Pens with varying levels of ink.
• Odd batteries.
• Shoes.
• Books.
• Purses.

I am odd.  I am tired.  Good night.

Blargh

Life has been happening.

I quit the job at the survey place in favor of working for an actual corporation within my comfort level.  So I'm finally back in retail.  I've had two hours of training in the fitting room, three hours of training on the register, and my next time working is on black Friday.  Hopefully as a cashier, since I'm not trained on the floor and I would rather die than be in the fitting room.

I can't remember if anything else has happened lately.  Lots of things have happened, I suppose.  I don't really know where to start.  I never really know where to start.

I think some good things will be happening soon, though.  So, yay.  Also, I only have two more Christmas presents left to buy, one for M and one for my mother.  Everything else is done.  I'm so excited.  I still don't know if I'm going to do Yule or Christmas this year, but we'll figure something out.  I'll honestly probably have to work on Yule, and the store is closed on Christmas, so there's a pretty good chance that we'll have to do Christmas with me regardless.  Maybe.  I don't know.

My fingernails are finally growing back.  I'm still sort of trying to quit smoking.  I really should just quit.  Seriously.  I don't want to end up on oxygen when I'm older.

If I ever stop always being tired, I'll start posting more regularly.

Ballszilla!

I went to work two hours late (sanctioned) because I didn't get hardly any sleep last night, and today still managed to be tedious and long.  Woo!  I stood out there for an hour and a half this evening before I went home and absolutely no one would take a survey.  And the ones that agreed didn't qualify for a survey.  Goody!

While I was at work today, S had an equally long day rearranging the entire living room by herself.  Crazy woman.  It's pretty great, actually.  I'm now on the other end of the couch and in the corner by the windows, and I really dig it.  It feels sort of fort-ish.  Ha. Anyway, she did an incredible amount of work, and between that and digging out a bunch of clothes that were by the bed in the bedroom, she definitely kicked ass today.  Go S!!  Also, she found my other ballet flat I've been missing for four months that I swore up and down was under the couch.  It was under the couch.  And she found a shirt I've been missing for almost a year, so I'm really excited to get to wear it again.

I'm attempting to catch up on the laundry, since now that I'm working, it's not really getting done and everyone is out of clothes.  Joy.  Sometime in the next few days I am going to have to go through and sort all the laundry so we can have J take it downstairs and we can start getting it all washed again.  It's Mount Laundry in the hallway for now, though.  Oh god.

I'm taking Girl Child trick or treating on Halloween, and I'm all excited because I get to wear my glow in the dark Toy Story shirt and have it actually GLOW.  Yesssss.

While I was sorting the laundry out into what we need immediately tomorrow and what we can wait on for later this weekend, I got confused about some shirts, because S and I trade shirts around a lot.  (We both wear huge shirts when we're just hanging out at home.)  So I was trying to ask S about it, and I said her name, and she said, "Ballszilla!"  Because unlike a normal person, she greets people like this sometimes.  The hilarity was too much for me though, as it made me collapse laughing.  And then she yelled things like, "Floor!  Lamp!  Wall!  Dog!" and got great amusement from me laughing at this stuff.  I laughed so hard and for so long that I cramped my abdominal muscles and made my entire face hurt.  It was great.  She and Girl Child were sitting there laughing at me laugh silently, clapping like a retarded seal.  I love being here.

So today hasn't exactly been exciting or anything, but all in all a good day.  I'm too tired to write anything of substance, sorry.  If I could, I'd get all Link Round Up or ranty or some shit, but I'm just too exhausted to put a coherent sentence together.  I may do a picture update sometime soon, though, because I need to perform a camera dump very, very soon.  It's completely full.  I've got pictures dating back to April on that thing.

I'm obsessed with playing Solitaire on my iPod lately.  I don't know what to make of this.

And now, laundry!

I Am Bitchy Tonight

Well, I finally got to the point where I'm about to start mentioning even more new people, and I had to create a spreadsheet (Okay, a table in OpenOffice!) to keep everyone straight, since I don't use identifying information on this blog.

Today was kind of a busy day.  I'm really starting to not like RP very much - I liked her okay when I first started working at CAR (pseudonym!), but I'm seeing more and more that she's not a very nice person.  She sucks up to Boss a lot, and is his pipeline of information on what happens when he isn't there.  I don't like this very much (I can see why my coworkers at the fast food restaurant didn't like me very much), especially because she stole 3 different people out from under me today because she was being a competitive bitch.  CRN gave one of the surveys back to me, since I was the one who originally talked to them, and they decided to come back while I was bringing in someone else and talked to RP, who wrote her name on the screening sheet when she knew full well that it should have been mine.  So CRN gave it to me.  Woo.

Anyway, my other problems with her are that she's only 20 years old and has a baby that she isn't a very good mother to - she told me a story about how her son is so bad that when he was 9 months old, he said "bitch" and got spanked for it.  NINE MONTHS OLD.  What is this person doing with a baby, and why don't I have one?  I'd be a better mother than her.  And it's not like he said bitch, anyway.  He made a sound that sounded like it, while babbling, which is a thing that infants DO.  Christ on a stick, people.

One redeeming quality of RP is that she's stupid, so she agrees with everything I say, even bullshit.  Also, she thinks I'm a great singer, so it's nice to have the ego stroked a little bit, even if I know it's because she's an idiot with no life experience.

Anyway.  I'm starting to look for a better job, because I kind of hate this one sometimes, especially since Boss drinks on the job.  Actually, if he hadn't offered me the job on the spot, I'd have probably gotten a job with Old Navy, because they called for an interview on my first day at CAR.  Figures.

I think that's enough bitching about work.  Of course, I don't really have much to write about.  I had an idea for a story earlier, it just popped into my head, and I wrote down the one line that was in there, but I'm letting the rest float in my head for a bit before I put it down, because if it's actually good, it should stick.  (At least according to Stephen King.)  Maybe there's still a chance of me getting to write that novel I've wanted to write since I was a kid.  I would love that.

Anyway, I need to go and do stuff before I go to bed.  I have the house to myself tonight because J and S went to visit a friend of S's and they took the children.  Also, M is at work, so it's just me and the puppies.  Who are passed out on the floor.  I don't know how they are able to do that, since I've been really loud.  (I really love singing.)

Why is Coheed and Cambria so awesome?

Update Fail

Okay, so I've been really busy lately.  I don't even want to touch this right now - in fact, I'm about to go to bed.  Here's a quick bullet-point update, which I may or may not fill out sometime over the next couple of days.

• I quit my job at the dry cleaner after four days because there were roaches around the clothes, the owner was dicking me around with getting my I-9 and W-4 filled out, and it was just generally horrible.
• The owner of the dry cleaner tried to refuse to pay me.
• Three days later, I got hired on the spot at a data collection place at my local mall, and I'm now a recruiter for bringing in people to do surveys.
• Life has been okay, except maybe a little sleep-deprived.
• I went swimming last night.
• I recently read Under the Dome by Stephen King and it was fantastic.
• We did an iPod switch again in the house not too long ago - I don't remember if I mentioned it or not, because I acquired this iPod when I was still posting regularly.  I have J's old Classic, Girl Child has my purple Nano (and my old pink Nano), J has S's old black Nano, and S has a Touch that she won in a drawing from her bank.
• With the Classic, I have enough room to finally get all my music on it at the same time, and I can even put movies on it.  I have Tangled on it, which is probably my favorite animated movie of all time, even better than Toy Story.
• It took 3 days to convert the Tangled file to iPod format.  I was sure my poor computer would explode.  It is inexplicably awesome to be able to watch a movie on an iPod.  No one else gets it, except Girl Child.
• Girl Child's birthday is on Thursday, and I have no idea what to get her.  So is the Toddler's, but he's easy.
• Christmas is coming, and I'm already panicking about present shopping.  Whee!

I may post at some point to give better details about work, once I get around to assigning pseudonyms for all the people I work with, because there's a buttload.  Woo!

There, I updated, is everyone happy now?

Obscure Doesn't Mean Hipster

I like obscure music.

I don't mean that in the hipster sense - it's not liking bands before they were mainstream thing.  I mean music that is literally not mainstream, that is literally obscure.  I'm talking about music that is usually categorized in New Age, Ambient, Noise, Space Music (which is actually a sub-genre of ambient), Ethnic Fusion, and World.  I used to listen to Night Tides on KCUR, my favorite local NPR affiliate, until I didn't have a radio that worked well enough to tune the station.  I wish I still had my stereo.

When I say my musical tastes are eclectic and kind of weird, I'm not kidding.  I like as much weird stuff as I like (ADD moment - oh!  Bjork!) mainstream music.  Apparently I'm currently on a .. I don't even know how to classify this group of music.  But I'm on a kick of it, whatever it is.

Anyway,  I just woke up, haven't even had coffee yet, so am a bit incoherent.  I wanted to sleep for longer, but I woke up when the Toddler did and then I started thinking, and that was the end of sleeping.

So basically, I've got nearly every musical genre represented on my iTunes playlist, and this tickles me.  Now I need to sort it all and delete the stuff I don't actually want, of which there probably won't be much.

I'll probably write another post later to explain what has been going on in my life outside of my music, because yesterday was rather eventful.  Also, I haven't taken my allergy pills in like two days, and I'm very sad, because all I can do today is sneeze and itch.

I May Just Die Now

Okay, so I don't know how the people with jobs have the time or energy to write anything worth reading.  I barely had the energy to make myself dinner.  Or the ability to get up and walk, for that matter.  I'm not kidding.  I spent four hours on my feet at work today, for the first time since I lost my job in December 2009 (when I'd regularly stand for 9-10 hours and be mostly fine), walking and shifting and reaching over my head and lifting heavy groups of hangers to bag orders, and that plus my decision to walk home (I was at the location within my perceived walking distance today) caused me to be unable to move around until about six hours after I got home.  I am not pleased with this development, and I really hope that my resistance to that kind of thing returns quickly, or I'm just going to die.  Maybe now.  Maybe I'll just fall over sideways onto the couch right now and just die.  Blah!

Anyway.. today I learned the Spanish word for stapler (es grapadora, apparently) and that you can get cramps in your knuckles.  I also learned that I need more pants than I currently have.  This whole owning only two pairs is not going to cut it for work.  Anyway, I worked for four hours today, and I've started helping customers for real.  As long as I stop forgetting that starch exists and remember to double-check the cash register when I close it, I think I'll be fine.  (My cash register training took less than a minute - I don't know how exactly to use the credit card machine, but I imagine I could puzzle that out myself if I really needed to.  I guess I'll find out on Monday.)  I actually really prefer the main store, where all the action is - it just feels friendlier, and I can walk there and back.  Please, scary boss man, let me have that location!

Today was also an excellent day at home - when I got home, S and the Toddler were outside because S was having a smoke, and you pretty much can't leave the Toddler in the house these days if you're going outside, because he will have paroxysms of grief over it.  It's kind of hilarious to watch (hey, the kid regularly gives me injuries, I'm laughing at him when he's ridiculous!), but it's really annoying to cope with, so he gets to go outside a bazillion times a day right now, and that works out well for everyone, pretty much.  Anyway, they saw me coming and he met me in the yard with a knee hug.  It was really, really cute.  After I went inside, I ate what was in my lunch box (I really don't need to pack a lunch for work - I never end up eating it, so I'm going to get grazing food instead) and watched Children of a Lesser God, which made me miss using ASL.  It also made me cry.  And I learned how to say "fuck you!" in sign language, which I'm sure will come in handy.  Haha.

J ended up waking up really early (about 4:30), and he wanted to get food, so S went to McDonald's for him, and the Toddler went along, and he almost climbed into his car seat on his own.  (I often put him in the car, so I've occasionally been asking him to try climbing in on his own.)  When they came back, I took him out of the car (S's hands were full), and I asked him if he could say my name yet, sounding it out for him very slowly.  And he said it.  Then he said it again.  And then he demonstrated for everyone else in the living room (Girl Child completely lit up), and then I used it as a form of bribery later when I was about to give him a bath - I told him if he said my name, I'd put him in the tub right then, and he immediately said it.  I'm pretty sure he knows that he's saying my name, S is really the smart one in that department, being his mother and all.  But oh god, what a rush!  Every time he says it, I just want to grab him and kiss his face off.  Totally made my day.  (Seriously, this is the absolute best part of my day today, and I mean that.  I would be more excited about him finally saying my name than if someone gave me $1000 right now.  Not that I would pass up $1000.)

Anyway, I played some FFX later in the evening, worked on my iTunes playlists some more (because I'm just never going to be done with the tweaking, I think), and then I had the idea to look up speech pathology, which I've been thinking about on and off for about 10 years now.  I think I'd like to become a licensed ASL interpreter and also get a speech pathology (or assistant) degree and work with deaf children and adults to help them learn to read lips and speak.  Maybe.  I've had a look at what you have to go through just for the interpreter certifications, and it's going to take me like four years just to get that, and usually a speech pathologist has a master's degree, so it's going to be a very, very long time before I get that, if I manage to do it at all.

Right now, it all kind of hinges on having a car.  Doing the math in my head, if I spend absolutely no extra money for about four months, I should have enough saved to get a car that runs.  Of course, Christmas is coming up, so I'll tack on an extra month for Christmas.  But in any case, I should be able to buy a car by this spring, and hopefully I'll have my permit issues sorted out so I can start driving.  (Though if I get the car and can't drive it yet, I'll just figure out how to make it be so S can drive it until I can drive it myself.  If she's agreeable - I haven't talked about this with her yet because I haven't had any prospects for getting money until this week.)

I can't think of anything else to say.  My brain isn't working very well - I'm really tired and I took two naproxen and a Zyrtec about half an hour ago, so now my brain is extra not working.  See?  I can't even make words be sentences.  But I'm off tomorrow, so I'm going to sleep a lot.

New Chapter in My Story

I don't have time to do that links round-up, so it's going to have to wait until probably Sunday.  In fact, a lot of things are probably going to have to wait until Sunday.

I'm going to begin at the beginning, though, just to be a horrid bitch.  Bwahaha!  Today, I slept in really late because I passed the hell out around midnight in the bedroom and slept through everything until I woke up in the middle of a seriously strange dream involving a mansion and a guy with thousands of ladies' socks stacked up in a gradient, so they made the entire color spectrum.  There was also a room with a ton of antique furniture and things and lots of old lamps and an old guy restoring them or something.  I don't know.  It was weird.  Anyway, between that and the company that was over bringing me further out of sleep, I was up for the day.  Woo!

The day was basically the exact same day as the last several, until my phone rang at about 2:30.  There was a man on the other end, the guy who owns the dry cleaner I applied at last Friday.  He wanted me to come in for an interview this afternoon, so after much frantic running about (since I was still in pjs and all), I was dressed and S drove me to the interview, which was very short - if S had known how short it was going to be, she would have just waited until it was done and dropped Girl Child at her friend's house after.

The interview was okay.  The guy was foreign, so I had difficulty understanding him sometimes, but he seemed really nice.  He really liked my typing speed (80-90 wpm on keyboards that actually work), and he didn't like that I don't have a car right now (I decided to avoid mentioning the lack of driver's license), but I'm smart and willing to work, so apparently he's willing to overlook the slight transportation snag, since...

HE HIRED ME!!!!!!!!

(If I could, I would make that part sparkly and dance-y.)

Anyway, so he told me initially that he would call me by the end of the week and let me know if I was going to be starting training or not (I've heard this before, that's usually a sign that they're not going to hire you at all), and we thanked each other, and I went outside to wait for S.  A few minutes later, I was on the phone with J, trying to figure out how long it would be before S came back, when he stepped outside and called me back over to tell me he had changed his mind and that I start training tomorrow morning at 10:00.  Holy crap. I have to ask for a certain woman at the location near the house when I get there and I will learn things and it will be awesome.

When S picked me up, she decided we needed to go to Long John Silver's and have some food, and there was much excitement (I talk ridiculously fast when I'm excited, too!), and we ate and the Toddler displayed a love of tartar sauce the likes of which has never been seen - it got him to eat his chicken, which normally doesn't happen.  When we got home, J was already in bed (he's been on vacation because his birthday was Tuesday), so after I got off the phone with C, I came outside and hung out with S and the Toddler for a bit, and we invented a new sport of walnut throwing.  Ha.

After we came inside, I waited until I was sure M was awake, then I went downstairs and unstacked all my totes in the basement so I could get at the clothes I keep down there that I don't wear very often - most of them don't fit right now or are things I don't really need to wear at the moment, like my heavy sweaters and my bathrobes, which are all shorty robes and make me overheat anyway.  Of course, I recently just switched my clothes around, moving the stuff that I only have for when I'm working downstairs and keeping all the fun clothes upstairs and also bringing up all my winter stuff so that I wouldn't have to worry about that later when it's actually cold.  Then, of course, I end up needing my work shirts.  Figures.

After I brought up all my work shirts, I did a quick fashion show for S so we could determine how many work shirts I have available to me, and as I was trying to get things moved around so they'd all fit (tiny dresser + a bazillion shirts = sad), I grew very frustrated with my complete lack of space - I have a small four-drawer dresser with a wide storage drawer thing sitting on top of it, which doesn't even begin to sufficiently hold all my clothes.  So I went back downstairs and got the other storage drawers, which is the exact same size as the first one, took all my crocheting stuff out of it (all 58274 projects) and dumped it all in a piece of luggage, hauled the drawers upstairs and perched them upon the first one.  I now have drawers reaching almost to the ceiling.  It's a little ridiculous.  I actually can't reach much above the top drawer in the first tote, so I will regularly need a step stool now if I need anything out of the other ones.  Woo.  I don't even care, actually, I'm just so damn happy to finally have room for all my shit.

Of course, this running around like a headless chicken (which is what S said about me on G+ earlier) caused me back pain, knee pain, ankle pain, shoulder pain, and foot pain.  And I've got a headache and I'm starving.  And I have to work tomorrow.  God, that feels weird.  I haven't worked in almost two years.  TWO YEARS.  That is a long time.  I'm really nervous and excited about tomorrow.  I hope like hell that I can sleep tonight, or tomorrow is also going to suck horribly.

Anyway, I'm really really excited.  And stuff.  Oh god.

Goodbye, Facebook

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted anything worthwhile - my allergies and my sleep schedule nonexistence of late have made it hard to do anything that requires actual thought.  So I've been spending quite a bit of time tweaking my iTunes playlist, reading news articles (so many links to share!), discovering new music, watching movies, playing video games, and crocheting.  Also, playing with Twitter.

Things haven't exactly resembled anything exciting here lately - same old, same old for the most part.  I don't remember if I've mentioned this previously, but I applied for a job with a dry cleaner in my neighborhood, and am still waiting to hear back from them.  I don't know if this means they found someone else, or if they lost my application among the many they probably received, as everyone and their mother is desperate for work right now, or if they're just taking their time deciding who to call.  I've been on tenterhooks for days, though, and am starting to feel pretty confident that they're not going to call, just like everyone else.  I wish I knew what I was doing wrong.

J installed the dishwasher the day before yesterday.  It's wonderful.  Everyone is so damn excited.  We had to have the power off for about four hours, though, so that was kind of a fiasco, but it's a fair trade for a successful installation.  Also, because S needed to help J with the install, I had the Toddler for a large chunk of the day, and took him to the park.  Of course this was the one hot day this week, and of course I got a sunburn and 12 mosquito bites, and a horrendous allergy flare-up.  I'm mostly fine now, though, except I get new mosquito bites every single time I leave the house right now, which is really lame.  I am so itchy!

This morning, I woke up to discover that Facebook made some major changes to the entire site.  I was already angry with them to begin with after their last "tweak" of the privacy settings, making it more difficult to set them the way I want them because I can no longer tell what some things are set as at all.  This makes me pissy.  Anyway.  I'm completely sick of the way Facebook is run, I hate everything about it, and I've decided to quit using it.  I'm in the process of getting a copy of all my data downloaded from Facebook, and then I shall be deleting my account.  I don't give a shit who's going to miss me.  That's what Google+, e-mail, and fucking telephones are for!  Not to mention that I actively use both MSN and Yahoo messenger clients (well, I use Yahoo for E's benefit only, actually), and the fact that I'm not hard to get in touch with at all.  So fuck off, Facebook.  (I believe S decided the same thing this morning, as did several other people on my Facebook friends list, so I imagine I'll be seeing them all on Google+ shortly.)  I've even found a way to make up for the stuff that I was following on Facebook that it is now impossible to follow with the new News Feed - Twitter!  So I'm using Twitter to follow Huffington Post and NPR and all the other stuff that I use to find the news articles I read, and will probably use Google+ to keep up with the people I care about.

Anyway, that's really all.  As stated previously, nothing exciting has been happening lately.  I'm listening to a really beautiful song by M right now, which is pretty awesome. 

Speaking of M, he saved my butt on Sunday.  I was already having kind of a bad day, and then my iPod got frozen while I was trying to force my computer to recognize its existence.  Like really frozen.  I couldn't reset it, turn it off, skip the song, hear anything, lock it, or adjust the volume.  I could literally do nothing with it.  M offered to take it with him to work, and I don't know exactly what he did (something fancy, apparently), but he fixed it within half an hour.  Of course, I didn't have access to it until Monday morning, but I was just so happy to have it functioning again that it really didn't matter to me when I got it.

Also, S and I discovered raspberry ginger ale.  It's a very happy, pretty shade of fizzy pink.  I will be having some with vodka later to see if that's tasty together.  I will be having some alone in a minute to see if it's tasty at all.

I hope that I get back to regular postings soon - I'm planning on finally writing that post about growing up Catholic and how I've always sort of known that I was an atheist, but I'm lazy, so here's hoping it actually materializes.  Also, I have an idea for a new story bouncing around in my head, but I think I'm going to let it marinate for a little while before I try writing anything down, since about half my stories are poop.  Not that I've ever finished one, except for this story that was six pages long that was about a little girl and a pond that I wrote when I was 19.  I've been thinking about revisiting that a little bit and seeing if I can tweak it a little bit, and see if I can revisit the same family after a few years have gone by.  Maybe.

Anyway, I don't have anything interesting to say.

Winter Clothes, Laundry Success, and Rediscovering Music

I often completely forget about the existence of some songs.  I will hear a song, love it, and then years later be reminded of it (usually because of a Wikipedia trawl), and be horrified that I don't have it on my iPod.  I rediscovered Gone Till November by Wyclef Jean last night while I was reading Wikipedia articles about the previous MTV Video Music Awards shows, from back when they had a huge selection of categories and were actually about music.  Anyway, Gone Till November won an award in 1998, and I remember seeing the music video on MTV, because it was right around the time I started watching MTV.  (That makes me old, the fact that I can remember when MTV and VH1 had actual music videos broadcasting in the daytime.)  But I loved that song, and I forgot all about it, so I am very happy to have rediscovered it.  Now once I get all the music off the other computer and reorganize on this computer (J is pretty sure it's the motherboard that's gone bad, but he didn't even check to see if the power button is broken or not, so it could be that, too), I will have the ability to see what I do and don't have, and make sure I haven't already gotten it and just forgotten about it.  Because that would be annoying, and I tend to do that rather often.

Anyway, I finished the laundry today.  My shirt also arrived, which I'm very excited about, and it's now washed and dried and sitting in my dresser waiting for me to wear it.  S and I are picking up the bras tomorrow sometime, after we go to the library to print the email confirmation to prove that I am in fact the person who bought the damn things, and then there will (hopefully) be new bras!  Woo!  Also, folding sheets is awful and I do not recommend it to anyone who wants to keep their sanity.  But there's only one load of dirty clothing right now, and I need to wash the comforters, and that is it.  Everything else is clean.  I can't say put away because Girl Child won't let me put her clothes away for her and all she does is stuff them in a random part of her dresser and then wonder why nothing fits.  All the rest of the clothes are put away, though, except for a few of S's because the dresser simply doesn't have the capacity for more.  And the closet is so full I couldn't fit another thing in there if I was Hagrid.  I'm feeling pretty good about the state of the laundry, though - it's whittled down to a point where I'll only need to do about a load a day, probably.

I actually had a disagreement with Girl Child about that.  She doesn't see why I should want the laundry to be completely done.  Because she doesn't care, and she doesn't think it matters.  Sometimes I really just want to grab her and shake her - but I'll just fantasize about shoving a banana up her nose instead.  (No worries, no crabby hormonal teenagers were harmed in the making of this blog.)  Besides, the banana threat worked fairly well as a laugh-inducer earlier, even if she didn't bother doing any of the things I asked her to do until I nagged her about it.  I would fall over in a dead faint if I discover tomorrow that she actually bothered to put her sheets on her bed like I told her to.  I'm really frustrated with her right now, can you tell?

I spent this morning baby-sitting the Toddler because S didn't get to sleep until after 4:00 this morning and he woke up at 5:30, so at 8:00, she decided to get me up and ask me to take care of him until later.  She got another three hours of sleep, which I guess is something.  Unfortunately, there was so little coffee left in the house that what I ended up making was like weak tea.  It was very sad.  J was up until about 6:00 this evening (so almost 24 hours), so I had a little back-up when I was alone with the Toddler, and the day was generally a good one.  Dealing with Girl Child was frustrating, the Toddler was both a giant butthead and really sweet, J was mostly playing on his computer and quiet, and S was S.  The highlight of my day was playing Final Fantasy X.  I'm finally ready to admit that I'm a little over-leveled - I killed Seymour in the battle on Gagazet so quickly that I barely got everyone in on the AP for the battle.

While I was folding the laundry this afternoon, the Toddler hung out with me.  I stuck him in the crib while I was playing music and managed to get a decent amount done until he decided he wanted to go back to the living room.  It was actually a pretty cool way to fold the laundry, too.  I sang to him and he'd either "sing" or start to dance, and then he'd throw one of his stuffed animals at me and start screaming for no apparent reason.  He's adorable.

I just heard a weird noise.  It sounded like air rapidly leaking from an air mattress, and I was a bit startled, as it started very suddenly, so I began looking all around the living room for the sound, only to discover it was S, with her cheeks puffed out, blowing out air through her mouth.  I told her that I was very startled by the noise and had thought it was a giant balloon or air mattress I'd somehow not noticed in the living room leaking air, which she thought was very funny.  Then I said, "Oh, you're just leaking again," and she said, "Occasionally I just plug the hole with something.. You know, food, drink, cock, whatever."

Yeah, that's what it's like to live here.

Anyway, I had more stuff to write about.  Oh, yes.  This evening, I went through the stuff I have stored in totes downstairs (this is what my life boils down to - totes) so I could get all my winter clothes sorted out and ready for when it gets cold.  Not that I really need them - if I wear a long-sleeved shirt, I only need a light sweater when it's 30 degrees outside.  I barely wore my coat at all.  Not that it fits anymore - my chest has gotten too big to button it, and it was the biggest size Kohl's had in that style, and was the first girly coat I've ever owned.  I'm a little disappointed, but maybe I'll shrink a little once I lose some weight.  Anyway, I got my small supply of winter clothes out and took the clothes that I never, ever wear downstairs to keep down there.  They're all clothes that will count as work clothes if I ever manage to get a job, so they'll have to come back up once that happens, unless I have a uniform or something, but for now, they're fine downstairs.  Especially since most of them barely make it over my stupid boobs right now.  (Hence, new bra.)

Anyway, the hat I made last summer (I made a whole set for myself - scarf, hat, and two sets of arm warmers) finally looks good on me now that my hair has grown out - it looked really stupid last year.  Which reminds me, I need to get my ass in gear on the hat I'm making for S so she can wear it with the scarf I made for her last year.  Hopefully I'll be able to make Girl Child's Ravenclaw scarf soon, too - she'll like having that.

My hair is sort of long enough to braid.  It's not a braid I'd ever wear out of the house, because it's all stubby and it'd fall apart in three seconds if I was moving around at all, but it's good for just sitting here.

Anyway, I'm really tired, and there isn't really a whole lot else to say.

Laundry and Linkage

Today's been an okay kind of day.  I spent a good bit of time just sitting around, being tired.  J stayed up really, really late, so he was around for awhile.

I reorganized Girl Child's entire dresser today so everything will fit better, and I think I'm going to have to start putting her clothes away for her so things stay organized.  I don't think she'll particularly mind, except if she wants a specific shirt.  She and S are actually planning on going through her clothes this weekend and sorting out what doesn't fit and what she hates, so it will definitely be easier for her to get to her clothes after that.

I also lost my mind and decided to sort the laundry that still needs to be washed - I've caught up enough that there aren't a million loads of it anymore, so I'm finally able to wash the loads by type and color, and I've only got about eight or nine loads downstairs now.  Of course, the household generates almost a load of laundry a day, so that won't last long, but I feel pretty accomplished about what I have done so far.

I've started biting my nails again, and I'm not very happy about that.  I was doing great for awhile, and I'm not sure what happened.  Hopefully I'll be able to stop again soon.

E talked me into creating a PayPal account today, and then sent me $25 as a "very very late birthday present".  She's really wonderful, I love her to death.  She's finally starting to work on getting divorced, too.  God, I wish she'd just told me before the wedding, because it would have been so much easier on them both, not having all this time to tear each other apart.  I guess I can't really focus on that regret, and neither can she.  I worry about her, though.  I can't imagine how poisonous her current home environment must be, and I really wish she'd just hurry up and move out.

Anyway, there's not really anything else to say.  Girl Child is currently doing the dishes, and once she's done, I'll be able to start the load of laundry that's in the washing machine, I have a small load of jeans to fold, and I'm really tempted to go on the hunt for more dirty laundry.  My life really does currently revolve around laundry, but at least if I maintain the system that I've set up downstairs, I'll suffer a lot less irritation, and probably be able to find clothing regardless of whether it's been folded yet or not.

So, on a less boring note, I have links to post about.  I've been gathering them for two days.

Link Round-Up

Some idiot thinks that carrying babies facing forward or in forward facing strollers will damage their brains or frighten them more than necessary, saying that parents unnecessarily traumatize their infants every day.  I can't believe this for a second, because every baby I've known has preferred to be facing forward, regardless of whether I was the one holding him or if it was his mother.  (Every single baby I've ever taken care of has been a boy - my current count of children I've baby-sat is up to six, every single one of them were boys who were in diapers at the time.  Half of them still are in diapers, actually.)  Anyway, I've never seen a baby who was fearful about being in a forward facing stroller or being in a carrier facing forward, or even just being held that way.  They want to take the world in, and they're more likely to be bored and bitchy if they can't see what's going on around them.

I found this article and the accompanying slideshow thought-provoking, a little heartbreaking, a little disgusting, and interesting.  I've got very mixed feelings about the whole thing, some of which are just too big for me to form into words.

Apparently Tyra Banks felt the need to write a book.  I attempted to read the first chapter, but it's so awful that I didn't make it past the first few paragraphs.  Not even Twilight was this bad, and I thought the single chapter I read of the first Twilight novel was terrible.  (I only read it so I could tell people that I had in fact attempted to read it if they challenged my criticism of the book, because I thought the concept sounded stupid right from the beginning.)

I don't normally post stuff like this, because it's more mundane than some of the other stuff I post, but the fact that Rupert Grint basically impersonates Kenny when he goes out in public to avoid all the publicity and attempt to live a normal life amuses me greatly.  That and the fact that he is lovely, lovely eye candy.

I love this short little story about the antics that went on during the development of Windows 95.  It's really kind of cute.

I stumbled upon the story of a neglected little girl while reading Fark a few days ago, and did some further research on her to find the original article about her.  It's one of the most tragic, heartbreaking, and horrific cases of neglect I've ever seen.  My heart aches for this little girl, and I hope the new family she has are able to do right by her.

And last, a ridiculous person who hates cursing.

I'm Boring as Hell

I meant to write a post yesterday, but I ended up not bothering.  I'm fine.  The bites are still there, but the swelling has gone down significantly and I'm no longer in any pain at all.  Well, now that I'm thinking about it, I recognize that my elbow still hurts, but I'm no longer in agony like I was the last time I posted.  I didn't need to go to the hospital, either.

It's been pretty uneventful around here the last couple of days.  Nothing of note has happened.  I took some cute pictures of the Toddler, and I tried to get pictures of Girl Child for S because she wants them, but Girl Child was very obnoxiously refusing to allow me to photograph her, even going so far as to nearly smack my camera out of my hand when she tried to stick her hand in front of the lens.  Less than six months ago, she loved having her picture taken.  Honestly, she was probably being contrary just for the sake of being contrary.

I have links to write about, but I'm going to do it this afternoon when I don't feel like I'm going to fall asleep any second.

S just announced to the living room at large that WarGames is being remade.  Really?  How on earth does that make sense?  I think all the creativity that used to exist with movies got used up at some point, so they're just doing remakes of everything now.  This is why I don't bother going to the movies anymore except for the Harry Potter films.  (Speaking of which, we really need to go see the last one before it leaves theaters, I'll be devastated if I don't get to see it in theaters.)  I don't want to waste money on something I'm more likely than not to hate.  I just looked at movies that are in theaters right now on Fandango, and the only one that looked vaguely interesting was Cowboys & Aliens, and I'm not excited enough about it to bother seeing it until it comes out on DVD.

I finished the book I was reading last night.  It was Chasing Fire by Nora Roberts, which I've been waiting to read for about six months.  It was pretty good, but fairly predictable for her stand-alone stories, which usually all follow the same formula.  At least they have a plot, though, which I think is pretty good for the romance genre.  The first sex scene wasn't until almost 200 pages in.

Honestly, I just don't have anything interesting to write about.  McDonald's coffee is disgusting, I'm wearing a drink carrier on my head, and I have laundry to fold and wash.  This is pretty much my whole day.  But yay for some form of caffeine that isn't nasty Mountain Dew.

Too Tired

I am too tired to write a real post.  I went to Wal-Mart with S and then cooked dinner.  Also, the Toddler ran us ragged.  Today is S's birthday and I got her some t-shirts and a silly card.

I have a lot of links I want to post about, but I can barely sit up, let alone concentrate on making sense.

I swear I'll write a real update soon.  Really.

My back hurts so much from cooking (lots of chopping because veggies are yummy) that my spine may never work again.  Ow.

Record-Setting Heat and Body Canvases

I did not get nearly enough sleep last night, and it showed.  I was baby-sitting the Toddler earlier because S had to pick Girl Child up from the relative's house, and the only thing that kept me from falling asleep was writing my last post on paper and sheer force of will.  I was going to go take a nap/sleep until tomorrow after the Toddler woke up from his nap, but by that point, I'd gained a second wind.

I haven't gone outside during the day in about three days or so - it's been too hot.  Today's official high was 109, which was record-shattering.  Seriously, that record is smithereens, shreds, nuked.

I'm never going outside again.  Oh my god.

Today, S and I became human canvases for each other - lots of doodling.  I also had her draw the sign of the Deathly Hallows on my back in about the spot I'm planning on getting it tattooed, and she reproduced the Chinese symbols for Serenity (the Firefly) on my right inner arm, so I can get an idea of how exactly I want them when I get those tattooed on me.  The rest is just a jumble of insanity.  Also, I can't draw an ankh to save my life.  S wrote "Trololololo" on my foot, for instance.  She has it on her arm.  There are leaves, misshapen lips, aliens, insults, derpy faces, and just all sorts of stuff.  My left arm is covered in Harry Potter scars.  S got a lot less of the "artistic" outpouring because I mostly drew on myself, but I wrote "Accio Brain!" on her leg and some stuff backwards and upside down.

At the moment, I'm watching Prisoner of Azkaban, but once I finish this post, I'm going to bed.

This is what S drew on my arm.

... And these are the original symbols.

 *squee*

Lots of Nonsense, Plus Links!!

Well, today hasn't been terribly exciting so far, just the usual stuff that happens around here - S and I made stupid faces at each other, the Toddler refused to nap until he fell asleep on me at 4:30, right before J and S were about to take him to see some family (of course), Girl Child is sick.. the usual, for the most part.  We're supposed to be having D&D tonight, so I may have exciting things to post tomorrow if W and A show up at a decent time for us to start game.  And if I get my ass off my computer and shower and nap.

Speaking of showering, today will be the day that I start the No 'Poo thing - I washed out some old travel bottles from when I went to England last year because the ones S bought aren't sufficient, and I will be mixing up my baking soda once I'm done writing this post and hopping in the shower, as you're supposed to mix it fresh.

I've been really slacking on the laundry and I kind of hate myself for it.  I think I may clean up the living room after my shower and vacuum, and then nap.  Actually, that's a stupid idea, I'll just get instantly sweaty and gross.  Okay.  I'll clean and vacuum, mix my baking soda, shower, let my hair dry, start a load of laundry, and nap.  There.  Hopefully I'll feel a little better when I wake up, as I've felt like poop all day.

I've got another link round-up from the course of the day - apparently I read enough news websites to qualify for a daily dose of links.  They'll be posted at the end.

Wow, there's just not a whole lot to say.  Today's just been a day.  The last few weeks have basically been the exact same, except I'm sucking with laundry the last couple weeks - I almost got completely finished and was all awesome and stuff, and then I just failed because I was so exhausted, and then it got so hot and I don't like to move at all when it's hot.  So I just suck and need to cut that shit out.

Anyway.  It's just me and Girl Child, and she's in her room.  It's really quiet.  And I have such strange taste in music.  I've been listening to Voltaire's Star Trek songs, and the CD Brent Spiner put out a few years ago today.  Combine that with all the other weird stuff I listen to, and you've got the ultimate dorky collection.  I have more music in that vein than anything else, probably.  I wonder when I started liking satirists so much?  (I've also got Garfunkel and Oates, Jonathan Coulton, Weird Al, and some other stuff I can't remember offhand right now - my playlist is currently over 2,500 songs strong, and the only thing I have in a truly high concentration is M's music - about 20% of my music library is him.)  And oh god, I just went from Zombies On Your Lawn to The Good Stuff by Kenny Chesney.  That is such a strange transition.

And now.. onward to... LINKS!!

Link Round-Up

This is one of the most terrifyingly mesmerizing music videos I've ever seen.  Oh. My. God.  I.. just.. what I don't even..

This is just asinine.  I hate commercials, and this is a big part of why.  It's so disturbing!

Here are some reasons why filesharing is good for music.

It's seriously time to allow change to happen, and if you don't understand computers, you should definitely step aside and not make laws about them.

I found this New York Times article about atheism being on the rise (written in 2009, but still fairly relevant) to be pretty interesting.

Michele Bachmann, who I hold in about as high regard as I do Sarah Palin, won't answer questions about the small business she and her husband own that she's always going on about.  Please don't let her be President, America.  That would really suck.

I officially love this lady.  Seriously, what a person!

I need to research this issue a bit more, but I'm not sure how I feel about e-tickets - it feels a little bit too Big Brother for me.  Do they zap the car and get the information, or is it just an electronic machine that they create the tickets on when they pull someone over?  Or maybe I'm just an idiot, because obviously they're still going to pull you over, so it must just be an electronic method instead of the paper method.  Duh, me.

I already do not like praying mantises (manti?), but this video is hilarious.  I love how the announcer is just dying with laughter at the end.  It definitely does not increase my love for the things, though.  Bleah!

Anyway, time to go do things!

My Very First Link Round-Up!

This is like a milestone!  Or a day when I should get an award!  I'm starting the foray into semi-mainstream blogging.  I think.  Maybe.  Anyway.

I'm finding more and more that I have a lot of links I want to share with people, and I generally don't post them on social networks because I expect most people not to be terribly interested in what I post on Facebook.

Here, though, it's a bit different. This is my blog, so if you're here reading this, you've either got an interest in me personally or find me interesting (*dies laughing*), or you reached me while using Google to find something else (which has happened a few times now).

I digress. I'm going to start posting links, possibly daily, possibly a few times a week or once a week. I don't know. I'll start writing some form of title on them once I have some idea of how often it is going to occur.

Also, after this one, there will not be nearly as much pointless explanation before the good stuff.

Link Round-Up

Alec Baldwin wrote a piece for the Huffington Post about the national debt and all the problems with the debt ceiling and the defecit that I found interesting and accurate. I think I agree with him.

A really dumb man from New Jersey didn't bother to turn off the water for his automatic sprinkler system when winter came, and then was astonished to find that he would have to pay the water bill after the pipe froze and burst.

The school board of a small town near Springfield, Missouri has unanimously voted to ban Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five from the shelves of the schools because it is "biblically contrary". The complaint that brought the issue before the board came from a man whose children are homeschooled. Goddammit.

This article from Mother Jones started the abortion rights rant I was writing, which morphed into the sex education rant in my last post.

GraphJam very accurately portrays what household objects look like to a toddler.

The Bloggess made me want a giant metal chicken sculpture.  Which I already posted about, but I forgot, so here's a link to the specific post.

And more No 'Poo articles, all of which are at least a year old:
NPR
MSNBC
A woman's personal experience with going No 'Poo.

So far, most of the articles I've found that talk about it negatively are people who haven't done their research and are horrified by how their hair will feel if they don't shampoo daily, not realizing that it eventually balances out and turns out fine for most people, from everything I've read so far.

I don't really have anything else of import to add except that I actually cooked for once last night and it turned out fabulously.  I'll post a real post about it tomorrow, since I'm making it again when I feel less like a murdered migrane.  For now, it's time to start getting ready for bed.

Switcheroos and Baking Soda

I am so lazy! I've been having a hard time finding the desire to write anything. Really, all I'd like to do at the moment is a whole fat lot of nothing. Or sleep. My dark circles have bags. Even when I get enough sleep, I look exhausted.

I haven't done anything more with that essay about abortion that I talked about - I've been busy ignoring it in favor of things that require much less brainpower. In fact, I'm pretty sure that my brain has just completely deteriorated to a point where I'll never be able to think deeply again. That's kind of a scary thought, so maybe now I need to work on that essay and post it.

I'm listening to my favorite song by M at the moment, which is making it hard to sit and type everything out because it's so beautiful that I want to sit with my eyes closed and just listen to it.

Last night, I switched from my poor Frankenstein of a computer (which I never posted any photos of) to S's old XPS that used to be J's a few years ago. S inherited M's XPS (they're actually almost the exact same computer, except M's old computer has a better processor and RAM but a smaller hard drive than the other XPS), so I get a computer that I can actually keep most of my crap on, but now I can't play the Sims, unless I turn this one off and put it somewhere safe and hook the other one up with its eight thousand cables, because the optical drive on this one is broken from J dropping it so much. However, this computer has a much better, and less broken, keyboard. It's also faster, has Windows 7 instead of XP, and it's prettier. Not to mention, I could theoretically take it places with me that allow me to use the electricity, since the battery does not work at all. And I can close it if I need to, which is nice and something I've definitely missed. Anyway, I was intending on formatting this computer before using it, but then discovered that because the optical drive only works sporadically, it can't reinstall Windows (or run the Sims, since you need the disc to play if you don't want to play pirated copies), so what I've done instead is delete all of S's old files, reconfigure all of her settings and basically change absolutely everything to suit me. It's almost like having it be mine, except that it says Users>S-- instead of Users>L--, which just bothers the hell out of me, but honestly, if that's all I've got to complain about, I'll take what I can get.

Anyway, so lots of excitement surrounding the transference of computers - I'm keeping the Frankenstein as a way to play the Sims until I manage to acquire one with a functioning optical drive and other good parts, and this also means transferring my music library over - that's almost 18 gigs of music! And I have to completely resort it and delete all the stuff that I only deleted out of iTunes last time, because it's all back now since I never deleted the source files. (Over 1,000 songs, actually, that I'm going to have to go and find and delete. Oh joy.) Then I have to readd my audiobooks and fix all of them as well, probably, knowing my luck. Maybe it'll let me fix the chapter titles so they don't suck anymore, though, because a lack of formatting makes my head want to explode. And I need to find a better copy of Order of the Phoenix, as the one I've got is missing the end of the chapter The Woes of Mrs. Weasley.

Well, that's probably enough bitching about how disorganized I am and how much work I'm going to have to do in iTunes before I can even attempt to sync my iPod, so in other news, S and I are going to be trying out this "No 'Poo" thing that I found on a blog, which sounds completely awesome - basically, we won't be using store-bought shampoo or conditioner on our hair anymore, but a mixture of baking soda and water (and after J gets paid, we'll also be adding essential oils to give it a scent) for shampoo every few days and apple cider vinegar with water for conditioner, though just on the ends at first. Funnily enough, I found this not by searching for ways to stop using shampoo, but to find ways to make my hair healthier with food items, out of a combination of curiousity and frustration at how pathetic and weird my hair is. And because I just joined a long hair forum, hoping for some information that I might find helpful in growing my hair out. Anyway, I found this blog after a bit of googling, and it sounds like an absolutely terrific idea, especially after I got a load of her before and after pictures - her before picture had her hair looking dry and weird and poofy with this weird wave, and in the after picture, her hair was tame and soft and silky-looking, and it had darkened, too, to a shade of brown that she apparently was in love with.

Anyway, I've devised a schedule of how often I'm going to use the baking soda mixture on my hair, and I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to use the ACV every time I wash my hair or every other time. The way I've drawn up the schedule looks as if I'll be washing my hair on Saturday, Tuesday, Friday, Monday, Thursday, Sunday, Wednesday, and then back to Saturday again, in a nice little cycle, so there'll be two days between each washing. I don't know if I'm going to need to move them closer or not - you're supposed to just rinse your hair with warm water in the shower on the days you don't wash it. It's going to be an interesting first week, though - the first 10 days or so apparently involve some truly horrific hair days while the scalp stops being all weird and re-regulates the natural oil production, which is basically the purpose of this experiment. I'm going to give it about a month and see how I like it by the end of August, and if it ends up looking okay, that's just how I'm going to wash my hair from now on. Hopefully, I'll never need to use a styling product again.

I'm really excited about this! I've read one account of someone's hair falling out in clumps, but 90% of them say that after the natural oils of the scalp regulated, they were so happy with it that they'd never go back. Also, some people discovered that they had curly hair, or straight hair, or another entirely different hair type than they previously thought, and it cuts out frizz almost completely. Also, if this works and we keep at it, we're going to save SO much money in the long run - we use a lot of shampoo and conditioner right now, and it'll be nice to only have to buy a box of nice, cheap baking soda instead of shampoo and conditioner for every person in the house, if J and Girl Child switch to it as well. Actually, I'm doubtful that Girl Child will make the switch, since it's so close to the start of the school year, but J probably will, if it does good things for our hair. I'm hoping M will make the switch, too, from what I've read, it does amazing things for people with very curly hair, and I think he'd be very happy.

Today, we went on errands involving the Kansas Department of Revenue - specifically getting the car registered and going to get Girl Child her first state ID and to get my instruction permit so I can work on driving and get my license. Unfortunately, I'm listed as having suspended driving privileges, so I couldn't get my permit today, or take the test, or do anything but be hung up on by customer service in Topeka. So I'm calling tomorrow morning, after I call the other relevant places to get more information on why this happened. Hopefully, it'll be quickly resolved with little effort on my part and I'll get my permit on Tuesday or something. If I'm lucky and it doesn't turn out that my driving privileges are suspended for life or something ridiculous.

In D&D news, we're starting another new game what W is going to run, and I'm going to try out being a rogue.  Basically, I'm a fancy beat-stick, but it's still a slight departure from the norm, and since I'm not all that good at the roleplay aspect as of yet, that's the best I can do right now.  I decided to name my new rogue Zoe, and S told me that I'd damn well better live up to the name and be a Big Damn Hero.  It should be interesting with W running - I've never actually played a game with him running, because LW was born right as he was about to start running the last game that I was going to participate with him as DM, and we basically had to give that campaign up after one session.  So, yeah, I'm a little nervous, as from what S has said, W's games are usually something that turns into a Lovecraftian horror.  Anyway, because J's work schedule is changing, we're moving game from Saturdays to Mondays, which is handy, because that is the day I'll be watching LW every week, so we'll be able to get started sooner since they won't have to drive all the way out to Raytown to pick him up before even getting here.

I applied for a job with the county a day or two ago, I can't remember for what position right now (it's in my email, so it's not like I'll be totally clueless if they actually called me), and I'm intending on applying to be an election worker, so maybe that'll help me get a normal job.  The permit thing is going to cause me problems, though, but maybe not too many.

I don't really have anything further to add, so I'm going to go and be very frustrated with iTunes now.

Also, thanks to The Bloggess, I now want a scary metal chicken sculpture.

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.

Epic Laundry Day

Girl Child is wonderful.  I’ve spent a huge portion of today folding all the clean laundry (seven baskets or so and a very large hamper), while S hung up all of the hanging stuff and sorted out what she’s going to deal with tomorrow, and after I folded all of Girl Child’s clean clothes for her, I asked her to please put it all away in her dresser (as I need the basket, there’s a similar proportion of dirty laundry that needs to be taken down).  She did it without arguing, gave me the basket, and offered to assist me in collecting all the dirty laundry and getting it into baskets to take downstairs.  I love it when she’s wonderful.

I feel really accomplished after getting all that done - everyone now has clean clothes that they can find!  We even reorganized the system we had for the Toddler’s clothes and bedding, and we’ve already collected a bunch of clothes for donations out of the clean laundry.  Well, there’s still the socks, but there’s always the socks.  I don’t think we’ll ever find all the socks.

Anyway, that’s pretty much what happened today.  I’ve started another Sharpie drawing, partly in anticipation of when we rearrange bedrooms so I can cover the walls with art.  Also because I really like being creative with Sharpies.  I miss the construction paper art I used to do, but there’s no space to do that here, at least right now.  Maybe after J installs the dishwasher so there’s more room in the living room.

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Girl Child ended up not helping get the laundry collected - the Toddler helped me instead.  I’m exhausted.  There are five regular baskets, two large laundry bags, two small laundry baskets, and the huge hamper full of laundry.  I also managed to vacuum the hallway, and now the Toddler is in bed.




Actually, hanging out with the Toddler was a lot of fun, actually - I was folding a last load of clothing and singing to him and playing with him and generally having a blast with him.  Then I spent 45 minutes with him, putting all the dirty laundry in the newly emptied baskets, which was both frustrating and hilarious.

Woo hoo, laundry.

Anyway, I’ve got a lot more to do tonight before I get the chance to relax and die a little before I go pass out.