Adrasteia's Labyrinth

This plant has absolutely no idea what season it actually is.

2012-01-30T12:17:00.000-08:00

Pictured: blissful ignorance

This and our other lipstick plant must be on some sort of synchronized blooming cycle, despite being of completely different ages and in separate rooms. Maybe it's the light? IT'S JANUARY IN SEATTLE. We don't HAVE any light. I have no idea, but it is certainly pretty. All those little dark flowers will send out fuchsia centers like the one on the bottom right, and it will be very colorful in our bathroom and guest room for a while.

Just one of my twenty seven plants. Yep. I'm a hoarder. Except instead of hoarding spoons or dead rats or something, I hoard plants. Going to Molbak's is like a religious experience.

Occasionally this provides some problems, such as having to try to move an approximately 6' tall hibiscus tree across town in a Honda Civic or figuring out what to do with a spider plant that somehow sprouted a baby that grew into a huge thing of its own and was starting to drill its roots into the wall. I'd get a giant pot and put those spider plants together with the little one from work all into it, but I don't know where I'd put said giant pot... So now we have a bathroom counter covered in an air plant in a bowl and the spider plant baby sitting in another bowl with water, where it seems really happy. There are of course plants on pretty much every available surface in the bathroom and some hanging from the ceiling because I ran out of room.

Thankfully, Patrick is most patient with all this. Probably because I moved the hanging vine thing in the hallway so it no longer whacks him in the head every time he walks through it.

Maybe someday we'll have this indoor conservatory that I've dreamed of. Glass windows, trees with clusters of blossoms hanging from them, bushes and vines everywhere, a stream flowing through it or a pond, depending on what I can manage and what won't rot the house's foundation. And as K suggested, perhaps white fairy lights here and there to illuminate it in the dark. In the day, maybe I could open up some windows to let butterflies and hummingbirds in. Or it'd be just gnats. You never know. Dreams don't usually turn out the way you've envisioned, although to be fair sometimes they turn out better (for Exhibit A, see: husband).

I actually feel better today!

2012-01-27T10:03:00.000-08:00

I attribute the shortness of this depressive cycle to the stability and security my life has now. It's so much worse when you're alone. Or when you feel alone, despite having someone around.

I felt pretty bad until we got home and Patrick's company (and your wonderful comments, all you stellar ladies, THANK YOU) slowly started working on me. I can't tell you what a difference it makes not having someone asking you why you're acting this way, or what's wrong with you. Being with a partner who understands you and is content to just love you and let your emotions do what they have to do without badgering you to be someone you're not is near-miraculous. Friends who send you love and shine light into your black little pit help so much, even if they're far away. Getting back into my little sanctuary at home, where I could just be myself and not have to wear my Out In Public Face helped too.

We had a totally unhealthy dinner, with edamame, hummus, chips, salsa, milk, and chocolate covered fortune cookies with love messages inside to top it all off. Sometimes you just need a thrown together meal of tasty stuff, eaten while sitting on top of the kitchen counter in your jammies, to make you feel better. I was wearing slippers, for added effect.

I actually did talk about my feelings and issues for a while, and Patrick was good enough to listen. Usually I think I have nothing to say, but then I remember that I spent so long being put down for it that thinking I'm wordless is just a reflex. God, I am so lucky I married this man. That was the best decision I ever made. He listens to me, respects me, and does everything possible to be an amazing husband.

Later he lulled me to sleep by playing Skyrim. Yes, that game is boring enough to watch that we use it as a sleep aid. I am not kidding. Every time he turns it on I find myself wanting to drool on a pillow. DULL. How interesting can it really be to sift through the 347th burial urn in search of some piddly amount of gold? And this is coming from someone who beat Morrowind and all its expansions. He also fought walruses. Walri? Something like that. Anyway, watching it totally makes me narcoleptic, so I snuggle up on the bed behind him while he plays it and after I've dozed for a while he'll rouse me, shoo off the cat pile and help me into our actual bed. Works better than Ambien half the time. Must be more exciting if you're actually playing it.

Oh, and after I revived enough to not hate life and everything in it, I tried on my Super Fancy Valentine's Lingerie Husband Surprise. Gloriously, it fit! Granted, this isn't exactly something that you'd have to be a waif to cram yourself into, but I don't care. It fit, and I'm happy. Plus it's actually cute. I decided to get something because I thought it'd be romantic and all the other stuff I had was either stained with age (why does age make things an icky orange-y yellow?) or hideous. I think Younger Me must've thought bargain bins were a good place to buy intimates at one point. Silly Younger Me. This new thing is adorable and classy looking, so I was happy. Yay!

It's interesting how your choices change depending on your mental state. For the past few days I'd been wearing outfits with a lot of red in them, since I got kind of fixated on that color during my hypomania. Following the crash, I went immediately back to dark colors. I'm still wearing them, having switched out ruby earrings for black pearls (Note: I'm not rich. The ruby ones were a gift from a family friend, and the black pearls were bought years ago in Mexico, where they're a whole lot cheaper.), and these are much more normal for me. Jeans, sneakers and this are what I'm wearing today:

I love this sweatshirt. It's so comfortable, and it is very slimming. My color pattern looks slightly different, but you get the idea.

Totally more normal than a crap ton of red on me. It always goes like that, though. I inevitably wear much brighter colors when I'm feeling euphoric. I guess it's not surprising, but it is kind of fun to observe that sort of cyclical behavior in yourself (if you can remove yourself enough from the situation to do so).

I had a killer headache last night before we got home. I wonder if the migraines with auras, the borderline, and the bipolar II are all tied together. I suppose it would make sense. If something is wired a little wonky in your head, it would follow that all the weird little problems you have are probably linked to it in some way, and comorbidity with mood disorders is extremely common, likely for this reason. Fortunately I had some good pain meds remaining, and those quieted it down for the most part.

Thank you all again for your love and support. You mean the world to me!

And so after three days, the crash.

2012-01-26T16:40:00.000-08:00

It started late last night with a quasi-dissociative episode, feeling abstracted and outside of myself. I had another of those dreams that I just know if I weren't on the meds would've been an awful nightmare. There's something off about those dreams. Even with the meds, there's a flavor of just teetering on the brink of a horrible black pit. I will never ever stop taking this medication. There is no way I am going back to that place.

Now I'm sunk in depression. Thanks to Patrick and all he's done to give me a stable existence and constant love source, I'm not in any danger of self-harming or killing myself, but the urges are always there when you're feeling really low. Mostly I just want to curl up in a ball under the covers and cry.

It's okay though, this will pass. I'm grateful for everything I have, and I just have to stick this out until it goes away again. It always does. Thank you all for being the wonderful people you are. I love you.

I might be a little hypomanic right now. Maybe. Possibly. Potentially. Why aren't there more words?

2012-01-25T15:26:00.000-08:00

I have been so hopped up the last couple of days, and still going strong today. I'm having a horrible time falling asleep, so it's a good thing I have the Ambien to drug myself into it. Even with that, though, I'm still only getting about 7 hours of sleep a night, and that usually makes for a very cranky girl. Not now, though! I'm really bubbly and excitable, and I keep having to remind myself not to overshare on the internet.

I find myself REALLY looking forward to Valentine's Day this year. Those of you who have known me for a while may recall that generally I'm either ambivalent or openly hostile to this most be-pinked of holidays.

Well, not anymore!

I'm not sure what my deal is, but I'm like 17 different kinds of crazy for it this year. I made reservations! I bought lingerie! I had a dream where I painted giant red hearts on my palms (what?) and danced around! I used way too many exclamation points!

I don't know what's wrong with me, but I'm pretty sure it's some sort of disease I caught from Patrick.

Oh, and I'm also really hormonal. As I was telling K, periods are just your body throwing a temper tantrum because you once again were inconsiderate enough to avoid getting knocked up. It's a wonder my womb hasn't just spontaneously generated a baby. Judging by the cramps it seems enraged enough to do so.

My uterus is kind of an asshole.

What was that about oversharing? Oh well.

By the way, traffic was a doozy last night. Not only was it horrible, there was a biker doing that stupid thing where they try to balance at a stop without putting a leg down whilst wearing camo while it was dark and raining. Literally camo, not just something that looked kind of like it in order to make an incomprehensible fashion statement.

I'm pretty sure if I mow you down while you're actually wearing camouflage I can't be held responsible.

I wasn't going to post this because I realized the lint on the mirror or lens or whatever makes it look like I have a giant rogue nostril hair, but then I decided I don't care.
FLAME AWAY.

Just some artsy stuff running through my head

2012-01-24T14:32:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I, like everyone else, will get bits and pieces of songs and spoken parts stuck in my head. Here's a snapshot of what's been trickling through my mind today:

The skyline was beautiful on fire

All twisted metal stretching upwards
Everything washed in a thin orange haze
I said, "Kiss me, you're beautiful -
These are truly the last days"
You grabbed my hand
And we fell into it
Like a daydream
Or a fever

The Dead Flag Blues by Godspeed You Black Emperor

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Darkness on the edge
Shadows where I stand
I search for the time
On a watch with no hands
I want to see you clearly
Come closer than this
But all I remember
Are the dreams in the mist

Is it cloak and dagger?
Could it be spring or fall?
I walk without a cut
Through a stained glass wall
Weaker in my eyesight
The candle in my grip
And words that have no form
Are fallin' from my lips

These Dreams by Heart

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Save the fairyland we live in

Where all failings are forgiven

Feel like hunted by a griffin

I'm falling down

Straight down

Fairyland by Angelzoom

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

X
And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

XI
Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

The Highwayman (final two stanzas) by Alfred Noyes

Patrick knocked depression off my wall.

2012-01-23T19:54:00.000-08:00

Well, OUR wall now, I suppose. Since we done got hitched and all that jazz.

I had three pictures hanging in the hallway, each representing a stage in this cracked out mental cycle that I go through. In descending order, they illustrate hypomania, mixed states, and depression. Patrick brushed by them as he was going to the guest room, and Depression fell off the wall. The frame broke but the glass in it didn't, and the print was unharmed. Now when you look at the wall, all you see are hypomania (exhilaration) and mixed states, with no depression.

All three of these are prints by the lovely and talented Melissa Nucera of ThisYearsGirl on Etsy. I first ran across her art years ago on deviantART, a wonderful resource for imagery of all types. You can find some amazing stuff on that site if you have the time and inclination to dig. I've only linked to this artist's personal deviantART page on here, but there is a massive database with millions of contributors. You just have to poke around.

These are the ones that are meaningful to me in particular:

Exhilaration

Mixed states

Depression

Of course it would take Prince Charming to get rid of my lowest moods without even trying...

Apparently there really is a Boom Boom Room and I was pretty sure the cat was trying to murder me.

2012-01-22T12:44:00.000-08:00

Ever have certain dreams and then you wake up pissed off at someone for doing some fool thing in your dream? Even though you KNOW you only dreamed it? I had a fun one of those the other night.

Patrick and I were walking along and he kept trying to tell me about this stupid adventure he had with whores and booze in some pesthole called the Boom Boom Room.

Dream Patrick: It was so fun, I was with these other guys and this woman and blah blah blah
Dream Me: Knock it off.
Dream Patrick: No, I have to tell you! There were disco lights and (etc...)
Dream Me: Quit it.
Dream Patrick: It was at the Boom Boom Room and there were all these tassles...
Dream Me: STOP TELLING ME YOUR HEINOUS STORY.

So yeah I woke up irritated that he kept trying to tell me about his nasty little excursion somewhere. I told him all about it, and he was compelled to look up the Boom Boom Room to see if it was a real thing. Not only is it a real thing, there are about 40 of them scattered around the U.S. I have no idea what was going on there. This led to the conversation ending with, "So far today we've learned that I didn't actually go to the Boom Boom Room at midnight with a bunch of booze and whores, and you hate nasal spray."

The nasal spray was a whole other thing. I cannot abide that crap. It tastes like aerosolized bad and makes your sinuses burn like you were just dunked in a bucket of chlorine from hell. Plus it makes your snot congeal into awful ropes. So no, just no. Evidently I went on a whole tear about how much I hate it when I woke up that morning. I blame the Boom Boom Room dream leftovers. One cannot be expected to function normally after that sort of conversation.

This morning I woke up to a really weird sensation: I had a sleeping mask on, and something covered in fur was rhythmically banging on it. I kind of lurched my face over and yanked out an earplug:

Me: What the hell is happening on my face?
Patrick: Oh yeah, Gurgles really doesn't like you. (There was sarcasm here I was too groggy to pick up on.)
Me: Is he trying to smother me?! I have this vision of Gurgles kneading softly on my mask while whispering "Die...."
Patrick: No, he just completely jumped over me to get to you. I'd say you were wrong about him hating you.
Me: Why is he on my head?
Patrick: I think he really likes your sleeping mask. He seems to be trying to make biscuits out of it.
Me: Oh. Can you pull him off? This is disturbing.

Enjoyable Saturday pastimes

2012-01-21T19:03:00.000-08:00

I did not know how much fun could be had by looking at real estate listings and laughing at the horrible taste of other people. But now I know!

We spent a good couple hours today looking through these. We ran across a toilet in the middle of a giant basement (so you can poop with lots of good airflow?), complete with pink fluffy seat cover and toilet mat, a wall painted in some sort of horrid checkerboard fashion, what appeared to be murder sheds on several properties, aquamarine houses about to fall off cliffs that only accepted cash, and plenty of others. Highly entertaining. If you have nothing better to do, this is a great option.

Then we had fun paraphrasing Chicago lyrics while eating dinner. Most songs fall into a pretty predictable pattern, which seems to go something like this:

I love you
You were better than me
And I dumped you
Now I'm sorry
I won't take no for an answer
Slip into my creepy rape van
Here, have this tasty beverage
It definitely doesn't contain a roofie

Also highly amusing.

Slushy, mucky mess

2012-01-20T16:02:00.000-08:00

It's been raining steadily all day, and the snow is falling off of everything in huge moist chunks. Ick. There are still trees down across a lot of roadways, but the streets are slowly getting more passable. Our icicles have dwindled to mere shadows of their former selves (which is good, because they were starting to look like giant teeth hanging from our back door's awning). Mostly I just hope the temperatures stay high enough that this doesn't all freeze. What a nightmare that would be...

As I was perusing the internet today I ran across this awesome picture on The 'I'm Gonna Do That' Girl's blog (she's fabulous, go check her out):

I can't wait to see these. ON FIRE.

I'm really excited for The Hunger Games to come out. It seems like they're making an effort to be faithful to the book, which is always nice. I enjoyed the book immensely. It was enthralling without wallowing in its own angst (the novel takes place in sort of a post-apocalyptic America). The characters, while young, were developed and lacked that annoying vacuousness that so often infests YA (young adult) books. I think the casting was well done, judging by the trailer. Jennifer Lawrence is no slouch as Katniss, anyway, so I have hope.

What's behind door number 3? ICE!

2012-01-19T12:44:00.000-08:00

Needless to say, we are still at home today. It's been snowing and/or icing all morning. And not just a light mist, either. No further snow accumulations, my left buttock. We've got an ice storm warning going on until 2pm (originally scheduled to end at noon). Mostly it looks the same here except there is a little more white stuff on the ground. Fortunately we haven't got a carport that could cave in, as apparently that's been happening. I do not foresee us going anywhere tomorrow, either. It's supposed to warm up, but we'll see. Right now it looks like a deathtrap disguised as a winter wonderland.

Here's a selection of pictures from around our region. I, obviously, took none of them.

Seatac airport

I-5 corridor

Collapsed carport in Olympia

Icy roads!

I love how it looks like a lake of foamed milk

There will only be more of this ice accumulation as the day goes on

Brrrr (Updated with more pictures)

2012-01-18T11:43:00.000-08:00

Well, we're officially snowed in. We went to the store last night for groceries and such, and I'm glad we did! We also got a copy of The Dark Knight, because it was $6 and really you cannot have too much Batman with your snow.

I was going to take a picture of what it looks like outside for you, but I'd have to get up, and right now I am under an electric blanket with a snuggled Monkey next to me, and you've all seen what snow looks like. Rest assured that it's still white.

...Oh all right, I'll go take some. Here you go:

Right side of the backyard, with the shed and grill. So glad we got that grill cover...

Left side of the backyard. Looks like about 6.5", judging by the amount piled up on the bench. I was going to make a benchmark pun, but that seemed too easy.

Snow is continuing to fall as I type this. It began snowing as we were leaving the store last night to go home, around 6:30, but then it stopped for a few hours and didn't begin in earnest until around midnight or so. At least I assume that's what happened. I fell asleep, but the news seemed pretty sure that it was going to start around that time, so I'll go ahead and believe them.

We have some icicles lining the backside of our roof, not terribly impressive. It's amazing how much darker it is in this house with the skylights covered up by snow. I think we've gotten 5 or 6 inches so far, and it shows no signs of stopping. Thursday's only supposed to get up to 34 or so, and I'm betting it won't be warm enough to thaw this mess. Fortunately for me, I have a giant pile of vacation time, so I am going to stay home and off the road! I will also forcibly restrain Patrick to keep him from venturing out if I have to. There is no work important enough for me to risk injury of my trombonist.

Speaking of trombones (although we really weren't), he's playing Peter and the Wolf on the 22nd with the Tacoma Symphony, so we watched the Disney cartoon version all the way through. Wow, was that a blast from the past! I haven't seen that in probably 25 years. I am OLD, y'all! Good lord. And by the way, that wolf was seriously freaky. Disney was a lot less milquetoast back in the day. It's no wonder we all grew up warped, hah.

Supposedly we're going to get a bunch of gusty weather tonight, not as much as Laramie (poor J, I feel for you), in Wyoming. Apparently this storm has affected 8 states! That's impressive. And this is why we didn't even try to drive today: There were 95 accidents in an eight-hour period in Pierce and Thurston counties, which include Tacoma and Olympia, State Trooper Guy Gill said Wednesday morning. Most were spinouts.

And that's with the vast majority of people staying off the roads. (There were only like 10 people out, I'm sure, so that's 9.5 accidents per person! That's what I told Patrick, anyway. He looked skeptical, but I'm firm on this point.) WSDOT's (Washington State Dept of Transportation) traffic map has been showing green (wide open) lanes all day, so this is just the few who felt it necessary to attempt the roads. I have absolutely no desire to be one of them. This is bathrobe and cat weather!

There's this tree in our yard that wasn't particularly upright anyway (I don't think they planted it right, and they don't seem to understand how trees work - they get bigger all the way around, so don't plant them right next to a fence), and now it's at about a 45-degree angle from the ground with the weight of all that snow. Sigh. A while ago I tied it to the fence with a piece of rope I found around here, but it looks like my rope was no match for the weight of all this frozen water. Thanks a lot, weather. You ruined my ghetto tree solution. FINE. I'll just move it, or think about it, or maybe cantankerously mumble to myself about it a lot. Or something.

Addendum: we were watching a live newsfeed from one of the local stations, and it's hilarious listening to people complain about the snow. Most of the complaints went something like this: "Ah don't know why we wound up in this hyar ditch! Grampy said ah was only goin' thirty miles per hour or some such, and then this ditch done appeared and we got stuck. We've even got faur-wheel DRAHVE! This is supposed to be a ditch-free CAHR!" And so forth. Awesome.

Update: We went out and got some more pictures of what it looks like around here when it snows. Chilly!

Patrick got a better picture of our backyard.

Front yard, out toward the main road. See that nearly horizontal tree? Yeah.

Side of the house. Look, we have another Christmas tree!

More side of the house, toward the back. As you can see, bamboo doesn't like snow very much. Fortunately it's springy and really hard to kill. It'll be fine.

Snow. And then more snow. Plus some snow.

2012-01-17T15:38:00.000-08:00

Evidently we're going to be buried in white garbage by late tonight. This is what the weather service is claiming will happen:

12-18". WHAT? WHY?

Horrible. Supposedly this is going to be the worst snowstorm since one in 1985.

Major Winter Storm from Pacific Northwest to the Northern Rockies

Late Tuesday night through Wednesday, a strong low-pressure system with copious amounts of moisture will approach the Northwest coast. This will set the stage for a major winter storm across the lower elevations and mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Travel could become dangerous or impossible in the cities listed below, just to name a few.

Cities in the winter storm threat zone: Seattle | Olympia | Bellingham | Portland/Vancouver |

Oh boy. As of now they've downgraded that earlier picture to 6-10", but still. Seattle doesn't function well with 1". We're planning on staying inside and hiding. We'll stop by the store tonight before going home and stock up on essentials, namely toilet paper. Avoid roads in the Pacific Northwest unless you absolutely have to venture out, anyone ending up around here.

Things like this are why. Dec '08.

I see kittens and an electric blanket in my future, along with a nearly indecent amount of husband-snuggling. Monkey's taken to putting herself under the covers with us in bed with only her face peeking out, and sometimes not even that. I think she thinks the bed is her lair. But she'll also quite happily lounge on the electric blanket for hours with Gurglepurr. Thank you for that gift, parents. Everyone in this house loves it. I guess Widget has too much bulk to be cold. She's like the abominable snowman, but covered in soot or something. 16 lbs of kitty covered in a luxurious fur coat... toasty!

Stay safe, y'all.

This is just so I don't have to look at butter every time I pull up my blog

2012-01-15T17:08:00.000-08:00

I feel like this right now. It's been snowing all day.

This post will make your arteries run away screaming

2012-01-12T13:51:00.000-08:00

I was trying to think of something to write about today, but the only thing rattling around in my head was how much I don't like bacon being in everything. I swear, you go to the grocery store and there are bacon chocolate bars, deep fried bacon, bacon soup, bacon salt, whatever.

Apparently at the Puyallup fair this last year they had a bacon sundae. It used to be that clam chowder had, you know, clams in it. Now everyone has bacon in their stupid chowder, and you're lucky if you can find a tiny, lonely, afraid piece of clam buried somewhere under the pig.

Sidenote: Patrick said "Their Stupid Chowder" would make a great band name. I'm not sure I can get behind it.

The only thing more artery-clogging that I can think of, besides maybe deep fried Twinkies and Oreo shakes at McDonald's, is this:

I am not making this up. Patrick saw it himself.

WHY?! Why is this a thing? They also had deep fried Kool-aid, but somehow this seems worse.

Teeth

2012-01-11T12:30:00.000-08:00

Hey y'all. I had my cavities filled today. This is going to be short, but I wanted to let you know that I'm still alive and made it home okay. If I owe you an email, please give me a day or so. I had a pretty severe reaction to the numbing stuff (pounding heart, dizziness, weak feeling, shaking), and my face doesn't work at all. I can't eat or drink, and I can't move the muscles in and around my mouth correctly. Supposedly it will wear off later this afternoon or evening. I hope so. Gives me flashbacks to my surgery when half my face didn't work for a couple weeks and my right earlobe became permanently numb. Ugh.

Hope you're all doing well! I'll be back for real tomorrow.

Drool

2012-01-10T21:07:00.000-08:00

This, my darlings, is a modern compound bow:

Heli-m from Mathews, top notch for everyone who's not doing this in the Olympics or whatever.

Doesn't look much like what you think of when you picture a bow, does it? It is absolutely amazing how far we've come over the past couple thousand years, I must say. Sadly, this thing is crazy expensive, so I'll never own it, but it IS a thing of beauty. It's got 70 lbs of draw weight and 80% let-off, which means that when the bow is at full draw you're only holding back 14 lbs of weight instead of 70. This means when you do fire you get a lot more power than you could normally stand drawing back, and you can hold the bow fully drawn and steady (your arm won't shake holding 14 lbs like it would the full draw weight) for much longer, in order to correctly aim and time a shot. Yum!

The bow itself weighs only 3.5 lbs and can reach arrow speeds of 332 feet per second. Comparatively, guns are still way faster (about three times the speed with a .22 rifle, which is generally 1,000–1,135 ft/s), but I'd imagine there's something primitively satisfying about using such an ancient style of weapon.

I know this probably doesn't interest anyone who isn't me, but I felt like sharing.

Prosticoffee

2012-01-10T10:12:00.000-08:00

I don't know if this phenomenon is unique to the northwest or what, but it's seriously getting on my nerves.

We have stripper coffee shacks. Slutty java huts? Whatever you call them, we have them. It's gotten so prevalent that places which don't take off their clothes feel required to post signs so people are aware of it. Really? There are that many people who like staring at cleavage and ripped fishnets first thing in the morning?

Patrick accidentally wound up at one once. He'd been trying to find the normal one a block down and forgot where it was. They have really deceptive names sometimes. The latest one we saw this morning driving down Aurora was Gourmet Latte, which sounded fine on the outside but then had some girl in a hot pink bikini leaning out of it. At 8:15AM! Usually the stripper ones have names like Chicka Latte or Divacup or something, but every once in a while you'll get blindsided. He made eye contact the entire time and felt mortified by the whole thing.

That's my good Idaho husband! I do love me an old-fashioned country boy.

A few of them have been busted for actual prostitution or flashing or whatever the charge is for that. Public indecency for cash? I don't know. But I avoid them like they've got plague (and they probably do, or at least syphilis).

It's always too early for this kind of thing.

I finally came up with a post idea.

2012-01-09T19:33:00.000-08:00

I KNOW! I can't believe it either.

As I was waking up from my incredibly long and detailed dream this morning, watching it fall into shreds around my mind instead of holding together, I reflected on what I believe to be the success of this drug I'm on. It's been a couple months now since I started taking the Prazosin, and I have not had a single one of those dreadful dreams. I've had a few gory ones and several where I woke up wreathed in sweat (this morning was one of those), but none of them have the overwhelming sense of fear and horror that usually accompanies my nightmares. I had one day that I spent consumed with dread that we were all going to die at the close of the year, but it faded after that day. It's amazing how convincing your own mind can be, despite the lack of any type of proof for its convictions.

For those who don't know, I've had terrifying nightmares with obnoxious frequency ever since I was little, and it seemed that nothing would get rid of them. Sometimes they would leave me almost unable to function for a day, the sense of dread and trauma was so strong. Basically it was like having PTSD without actually being in a war.

Since taking the drug, I've had one dream where the flesh was hanging off my hands in shreds and others where I know I was fighting, being hunted, and killing to stay alive (last night was one of those), but the details fall apart when I wake up and they're no longer able to haunt me. At least, that is how it is so far. I'm really hoping it's the drug that's made this difference. I intend to keep taking it for the foreseeable future. If the dreams return, I'll see about trying something else or upping the dosage, but for right now it seems to be working. A drug that gets rid of godawful nightmares but has no awful side effects like regular psychotropic meds? I'll take it.

Tangentially, I've decided that I'd rather have a bow as my prize for swimming two miles than a dress. I have lots of dresses, and that one's pretty damn cute, but I'd rather add another weapon to my arsenal. When you are fighting for your life every night in dreams, whether you remember them in the morning or not, it helps to get as much of an advantage as you can during the daylight hours. It seems stupid, but it really does work. After I took up martial arts and became fairly proficient, my hand-to-hand combat skills in dreams improved immensely. Same with learning to shoot guns. I'm planning on adding throwing knives and bows to the list, but these will take time. Both to afford and to gain proficiency in.

So that's the new goal to shoot for (get it? hah). Two miles swum in a single session and I can get a bow, some arrows, and start saving for training. My ankle is healing up as I type this, and I'm hopeful that next week will see me back in the pool. Even if I never actually hunt with the bow, I'll still gain the skills to use it, and I'm hoping those will carry over into my dreams.

I'm planning on working in an actual hunting trip with my grandparents and parents hopefully this fall. We'll see if I can get the time off. I don't think I'll be able to afford an out of state tag (they live in Montana, the hunter's paradise), and I haven't got room for all the meat a kill would yield anyway (I'd give it to my folks if I did), but I can at least go along for the experience and gain some valuable lessons to apply inside my dreams.

It's a lot easier to survive when you're the hunter instead of the hunted. I'm tired of being a victim, even if it happens less now than it used to. I don't ever want to go back to that.

I intend to become the hunter inside my own mind.

Clogs and GURGLES!

2012-01-06T15:00:00.000-08:00

Ah found me some shoes! Finally. We checked various stores with no success until Patrick convinced me to try Clarks, wherein we found some very nice clogs. I was going to get Danskos originally because they're supposed to be really comfy, but 1) I couldn't find any without backs at this time of year and 2) $130! Yikes. So no. These ones that I got were on a pretty good sale and much less expensive.

Not pictured: $130 shoes

They're very comfortable and mercifully they do not touch my blisters at all, so I'm happily healing as I type this.

Patrick has a great picture of Gurglepurr on his phone. Every time I see it I have to yell GURGLES! at the top of my lungs. Well, maybe not the top. But definitely at the middle of my lungs. I'm fairly certain that this is just something that happens when you see this picture. It can't be helped.

See? GURGLES! You know you did it too.

Oh, and here's Gurgles as an uptight ballerina:

Natalie Portman's double in Black Swan. His rider was demanding.

This is totally turning into a Cat Lady Blog.

Social network failures

2012-01-05T12:52:00.000-08:00

Really, Google? REALLY?

I thought we'd had this talk before.

Remember when you started up your horrible Circle thing or whatever it was and automatically added everyone I'd ever emailed in the history of my life, whether I actually liked them or not, to my circle?

Remember how I freaked out at you and screamed about it, then turned Circles off with a vicious click and broke up with you for a while? Apparently it didn't make a big enough impression.

WHAT THE CRAP IS THIS?

Google, when you get up in the morning, do you immediately think to yourself boy, I hope I'll accidentally trip over an ex-boyfriend's name while innocently perusing the news? NO, YOU DON'T. In fact, you probably think about ways to downrank the names of everyone you've ever dated so that they never ever show up in even purposeful searches.

This would actually explain why I can't seem to find several people. Google formerly dated them too.

Slightly bigger, for more rage value.

For those who don't know, that right there is my first ex-fiancé. Yes, I have more than one. Basically I'm Elizabeth Taylor without the money or the acting talent. When I moused over his name, it informed me that "You are connected to Steve Terjeson on Gmail." My first thought was a barely coherent AAAAUUUGH! Mostly because this makes Gmail sound like some sort of long-distance sex facilitator.

I hate you so much sometimes, Google.

Ouch. And sack cats.

2012-01-05T10:23:00.000-08:00

I sat down on the floor to put my shoes on this morning before work, and sure enough the sort of healing blister split open again down the middle when the skin on my ankle flexed. OW! I dislike this thing immensely.

I know you were just dying to see this.

I wish I had clogs or something. Regular shoes keep rubbing on it, but if I put a band-aid on it goes back to being a mucky mess. I've compromised by taking off my shoe and sock every time I can. I wish I could wear sandals or backless slippers all day. It'd be so much more comfortable.

We tried out an awesome new cat pilling technique last night. Cat-in-a-sack! This is exactly as hilarious as it sounds. I grabbed the bag for my yoga mat (made out of canvas, so slightly less shreddable than usual), and we plopped a cat in. We started with Gurgles. He didn't really seem to mind. You just cinch up the top of it so they can't get their limbs out and smack you in the face, and then they can go ahead and flail as much as they want while you're pilling them without either you getting injured or them getting away.

When I put Monkey in for her turn I accidentally let go while I was lowering her and she plopped into the bottom of the sack quite happily. She then pretended it was a cave and didn't want to stick her head out for me to cinch the thing up around it. Too bad! I'm bigger, so I won.

Hah! I've defeated the... cat. I MUST BE BATMAN.

Well, that wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

2012-01-04T15:04:00.000-08:00

And they complimented my flossing. LAWLZ.

Yeah, I couldn't get over that. See, all you have to do is really just floss for like a week before you go in and they can't tell the difference. Although to be fair I was semi-regular at it anyway. I just amped up my flossage to evangelical levels before this dental appointment to see if it would help me avoid the de rigueur lecture. And so it did. Take heed, everyone!

It really wasn't bad. It didn't hurt, and everyone was very nice. I even got a goody bag! Which was nice since they said I should switch to a soft toothbrush and one came inside the nifty little treat bag. I love free stuff. Sadly I do have a few little cavities, although after 5 years of not going to the dentist that isn't too bad. Those will be filled next Wednesday, and I'm sure you'll get to hear all about how much I hate my drooling, numbed up face afterward. Whee!

My ankle is displeased. It is not better at all from the fin blisters, and is still raw and kinda oozy. I know you wanted to know that, Gentle Reader. I think after work I'll go home and put it up and try to dry the silly thing out. Maybe that will make it heal up. I put antibiotic stuff on it last night, just in case, so now I think it just needs to air. We shall see. As soon as this is fixed, I will be back at it! I thought about going and wearing sandals, then just doing some weights on my upper body, but I don't know. I don't want my pants to drag on it. It hurts to touch it, even with just a sheet. There's always something. HEAL, DAMN YOU!

This is what I get for swimming nearly a mile in fins the first time I put them on in years. That sound you hear? That's my mother telling me how moderation is a wonderful thing.

We had a super yummy dinner last night. Baked wild Alaskan cod with tomatoes and garlic, black rice, and stir-fried broccoli with tomatoes and diced avocado on the side, followed by cherries and blueberries over a little bit of honey yogurt for dessert. Delicious, and surprisingly inexpensive. I am so glad I married this man. He has a lot of good selling points, but this was one of the strongest! I'm big on food. Food is awesome, especially when you cook it yourself. I kind of hate cooking, but even I will admit that making stuff for yourself is sort of primally satisfying.

Fortunately Patrick both likes cooking and excels at it. He can even do the flippy pan thing where you toss the food up and catch it! He tried to get me to attempt it once, and I told him that unless he wanted dinner all over the wall he should probably give me a pan full of beanbags or something first. No joke, we would've been peeling mushrooms off all four walls and the ceiling, which is impressive considering it's vaulted. I get excited when I do things for the first time, and stuff tends to go everywhere.

This is why I will only throw knives outdoors. In a field. With no one around.

I swam a mile! ...almost.

2012-01-03T10:33:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I really threw myself into it. Partly this was inspired by wanting to wear that dress I mentioned and partly by how much I love feeling fins on my feet. It's awesome, y'all! You really zoom.

I wasn't sure exactly how long the pool was or how far a mile was, so I just kept at it for about 45 minutes with little rest breaks here and there. I ended up swimming underneath people at one point because there were too many people in my lane and the fins made me faster than anyone else, so I kept lapping them. It was just easier to go underneath along the bottom than to go around.

This happened when I did a lot of swimming before, too: you feel really great, then you get tired, and then you get to this point where it feels like you could go on forever. I never feel this when trying to run. Maybe it's because I'm so busy hating the running that I can't concentrate on the other feeling? What I love about this is how I don't think about how I look while I'm doing it. I don't think about how my thighs look when they move or how the excess weight feels. I can really appreciate how strong my body is instead of what it looks like.

This is liberating!

I was going along and then noticed that my left ankle was starting to feel a little sore, so I looked and sure enough I had a half-circle of popped blister around it on the back side where the fin was rubbing a bit. I really need to get some neoprene fin socks. I wasn't exhausted, but I wasn't sure how much a mile was either, and I didn't know how close I was to it, so I decided to call it a day. I'd done 34 laps. A mile is 35! I was THISCLOSE! Next time I will do it for sure.

My ankle is still pretty raw today, so we'll see if I can swim Wednesday or if I need to lift weights or something instead. I'd go without the fins, but it might sting in the chlorine and it'd be super gross if I saw someone else in there with a wound, so I'll probably wait. Weights for my upper body would be nice and help out with the swimming later. It hurt even touching my ankle to the sheets in bed last night, so I'm thinking yanking a neoprene sock up over it would be a bad scene.

They are not kidding when they say that long fins make your legs work a lot harder! You gain speed, but boy does it work your thighs. This is a great thing for me! I have a lot of thigh muscle, but it really needs to be toned.

I set a goal for myself of 2 miles during a single swimming session. If I can do that, I can get the dress. This will probably take a while... 70 laps is a lot! A lap isn't just one trip across the pool, either. It's down and back. So 140 trips across the pool, whoa. Maybe by the time I accomplish this feat, my rear will have slimmed a bit!

What would I buy if I had more money and less ass?

2012-01-02T14:37:00.000-08:00

This.

Adorable tiny black polka dots on a dark red dress that emphasizes waist and bust while de-emphasizing rear? YES PLEASE. Sadly their sizing is a bit off for me. I'm too darn curvy for this, at least on the bottom half. Thus, off to work on my shark impression some more.

Dresses are good motivation.

Good start to the year

2012-01-01T12:45:00.000-08:00

Whoever said herding cats is difficult obviously didn't have a laser pointer.

We had a lovely night yesterday! We had our sushi, then came home and got all fancy (our Victorian Halloween costumes), then had some red wine and dark chocolate and danced to various tunes until the coming of the new year. Very festive!

Today we're off for a mini-hike in the woods. I'll put on some warm clothes and we'll go wander around in the trees for a couple hours. Being around all that plant life always makes me happy, as anyone who's ever seen me in a greenhouse can attest. This also explains why we have something like 27 plants in this house. Some day maybe I'll be able to have a conservatory, complete with running water. Like an indoor jungle! Sigh. One of my many dreams, along with a giant jet tub. Mmmm!

When I was in college I worked in the nitrogen fixation laboratory of my mentor, and part of that involved growing up a crap ton of alfalfa plants. This was wonderful for me, because it meant that in the icy horribleness of a Pullman winter, I could go spend my afternoons in the sunny greenhouses, at a balmy 75-80F or so, with humidity and green things growing all around me. It was great! And it was awesome for my lungs, which really REALLY don't like cold air and dryness. Probably kept the inevitable yearly pneumonia from being even worse than it already was.

I was remembering this story for some reason the other day, and it still makes me laugh. When I was in martial arts, I had a reputation for being a rather fearsome opponent. (I'm not exaggerating. During one of my belt testing fights I intimidated a 250-lb second degree black belt guy into backing away from me with a look of alarm on his face as I stalked him around the dojo.) The few girls that were in it were mostly all afraid to fight me, except for a black belt who was a friend of mine. Anyway, I was on that horrible Atkins diet at the time, and so the only flavored liquid I was allowing myself was Crystal Light (I know, ick!). I had a big Nalgene bottle full of the red variety, and was slurping it while sitting in the dojo before class began. One of the girls came in and saw me drinking it, then her eyes got big and she asked, "Oh my god, is that BLOOD?" I turned my head, looked her straight in the eye, smiled a little, and said, "Yes."

New Year's Eve 2012

2011-12-31T18:32:00.000-08:00

Whew! What a day.

We were up until 3am or so last night singing show tunes in bed. Were we drunk? No. We just really love musicals, apparently. After going through stuff in Cats, Phantom of the Opera and Moulin Rouge, we finished up by singing the entirety of the Buffy musical. YEP. THAT AWESOME.

Anyway, we got up about 11:30, went to get some coffee, and then the positive frenzy of cleaning began! We swept, vacuumed, mopped, scrubbed, dusted, and so forth. I dragged a bunch of stuff off the top of the cabinets and hauled it all up the ladder to the loft in a plastic tub. Then we went out and dug this weedy thing out of the yard, threw it in the bin, and dug another hole for the baby blue spruce we got a while ago. We dragged that chunk of grassy stuff over to the place where the weed had been and crammed it in there, then planted the tree in the second hole and called it good! That stuff was HEAVY. Good lord. It was all we could do to heave the weed thing into the bin, even doing it together. We found some of those free coffee grounds in a bag when we were out getting coffee, so I grabbed those. They're actually really good for your garden, so we made sure to put a bunch of that around the newly planted tree and the maple tree we liberated from a ditch some months back. I am one tired (but happy) girl!

Oh, and I had the best dream ever last night after swimming. There was some initial bullshit, but the good part was at the end: I was a pirate on a ship and we got to this weird window in a rock wall that you could walk through. Inside was a world entirely composed of water that you could breathe just fine in, and I took off swimming. I then turned into some sort of manatee-sea lion thingy and I could just zoom through the water! Absolutely awesome. I turned somersaults and dove, racing around in the water. Needless to say, I decided to get my fins out for next time at the gym. ;)

We're about to head out and grab some sushi, mostly because after all that we are incredibly tired and the idea of someone feeding us is way appealing.

Happy New Year's! Kiss someone you love! <3 See y'all next year!

Guess what I did today.

2011-12-30T23:27:00.000-08:00

I WENT OUT IN PUBLIC IN A SWIMSUIT.

Well, the gym. And I wore a sports bra under the swimsuit just in case. But whatever. There were other humans there. I know, holy crap, right?! We got money for a new coat for Patrick for Christmas, but then we found a stupid coat that we didn't know we had, and it seems to be just fine (down undercoat with a water-resistant shell), so we decided to spend it on getting ourselves fit and healthy this year.

Thus me cramming my chicken-colored self into a swimsuit and making like a manatee for a decent length of time. I swam LAPS, y'all. With the swimming! And the using of muscles! I am so impressed with myself right now, albeit more for the bravery required to pour myself into a swimsuit than the effort, but hey, baby steps. Admittedly there weren't many laps, since I have no endurance anymore whatsoever, but I quit trying to keep track of them eventually and just swam until I was tired. I think that's good for a first go! We are planning to go three times a week and work up to swimming three miles a week. Maybe a little more, depending, and then intersperse this with weights and other types of cardio once I get some fitness and my heart doesn't sound like someone shot up a hamster with speed.

They had us do this in high school, so I know I can do it. It's just a matter of getting back into it. The great thing about swimming is that you can really see results. In high school, I started out being able to do maybe 12 laps or so, then 24, then 32, etc. It went up really quickly. This was perhaps 10 or maybe 11. I'm not sure. So we are at square one again. But square one is how you get to square two! Well, unless you're playing hopscotch or... you know what I mean. One goes to two, the leg bone's connected to the- yeah.

So that was my major accomplishment for the week. Yay!

Have a splendid New Year's Eve, y'all. Much love.

Bunch of random stuff

2011-12-29T12:39:00.000-08:00

I finally found out what happened to Patrick's stocking. Monkey had dragged it off under the guest room bed to murder it in peace. This is only one of her many lairs. Others include under our bed and behind the couch. She's been known to run off with socks, cat toys, once a pair of my underwear. I get the feeling that she thinks she's a wild animal.

Sock killer extraordinaire.

It's slightly less convincing when you only weigh about 8 pounds. She's a strong little bugger, though. Try to pill her and it's like you're attempting to shove medicine down a demon's throat. I guess this is what comes of hauling yourself up a Kittywalk 20 times a day. Damn, I just looked at the price on that thing, and it's twice what I paid for it a few years ago. Good thing I bought it then...

Are any of you doing the New Year's resolution thing? I am pretty much resolving to do things on and off throughout the entire year anyway, so this isn't new. Instead of resolving to lose weight like I usually do, I am instead going to resolve to increase my fitness. That is a much better goal, I think. You can see a difference in that a lot sooner and easier than you can with your fat. And weight loss should follow, so that's nice. I'd really like to get rid of this horrible pill weight that's still on me. Patrick, the darling that he is, loves me the way I am, but I'd like to feel better about myself.

We'll see how it goes.

It's time to woman up.

2011-12-28T10:56:00.000-08:00

It's finally that time again. I've been slack the past few years, but it's time I put on my big girl pants, took a deep breath, and endured.

Yep, I have a dentist appointment.

I haaaaaate going to the dentist. I'm sort of stoic (for the most part) about pain, so it's not that, but I always feel ripped off. It's much like going to car repair shops. I have no way of knowing whether they're lying to me or not, short of going to multiple dentists for opinions (which I am too cheap to do), but it always feels like I'm getting scammed.

Nothing hurts in my mouth, thankfully, and I'm embarking upon an even more religious brushing/flossing/mouthwashing regimen than usual in an attempt to avoid them staring at me and judging me for a lack of forceful flossing. And the LECTURES. Why do dental hygienists feel that they can lecture you about your tooth cleaning habits? Am I paying you to expound ad nauseam upon my dental failings? NO.

It just seems like I ought to get my teeth professionally cleaned, and I kind of wonder whether I have a cavity in one tooth. No pain, but it is a little discolored. Fortunately it's in a place where no one can see it unless they stick their face in my mouth, in which case they will have far larger issues than a tiny dark spot on my inner molar. Hopefully it'll just be a stain or something and nothing that will have to be hacked at. I am not one of those people who must have perfectly pristine teeth the color of new printer paper, but I'd rather they weren't developing holes or anything.

It's next Wednesday at 9:45am, so I'm sure you'll all get to enjoy listening to me complain about it if it turns out I have an alien colony living in there or something. In the meantime, I'll probably stew about it. This is just one of those awful things you have to do if you don't want your body parts falling off.

I knew a girl once (I thought her name was Dorito for the longest time, turns out it was not that, but it was close) who ran off to join the circus. I shit you not. This really happened. Anyway, she came back after two years or so and evidently hadn't brushed her teeth the entire time she was in the circus, because they were all brown and looked like they would make squishing sounds if you touched them. AWFUL. Ever after I've had a horror of things happening to my own teeth. Heaven forfend I should end up with squishy circus teeth!

I have odd fixations about stuff. This tooth thing is very similar to when I watched 60 Minutes or something as a little kid and they had a program about osteoporosis. I'd be damned if I was going to end up like those poor old ladies in the show, so ever since that day I've drunk milk like there's no tomorrow. The up side of it all is that some years ago when I was in high school or thereabouts, I was stupidly running through the house and happened to have my right arm sticking out a bit. I slammed it into a wall on my way through a doorway, and it smashed in the plaster and bent the steel girder or whatever's inside of walls, but I DID NOT BREAK MY ARM. May or may not have anything to do with the gallons of consumed moo juice.

But you never know...

Wonderful vacation all around.

2011-12-27T11:25:00.000-08:00

I am finally back! I had a splendid time staying home and doing absolutely nothing, except when I was wandering around buying food or watching a camel chase a pony around some sort of non-petting zoo. We were a bit festive before Christmas itself, going out to walk through lights and having a nice dinner.

Dinner was had at Rock Salt. We were originally planning on going to a separate event, but that didn't seem particularly appealing, so we went and had dinner. I hadn't been to Rock Salt in ages, and it's not bad. It's not overly pricey, but it isn't crap food either. I had surf and turf, and Patrick had some type of pasta business with seafood in it. Yum! I secretly think it's a mafia front. You never see anyone in there! Maybe I just always go at off hours... No, I'm pretty sure the mafia are the answer to this.

Me before dinner. iPhone photography is amazing now! Patrick's phone, not mine. Mine barely remembers what a camera is. I'm too cheap to get a new one, though, so the aging carcass on the couch beside me will have to endure.

Now that I think about it, that picture looked better in smaller resolution. Oh well. Please also note the absence of snow outside the window. HOORAY! I know people like white Christmases, but around here that means horrible driving misery. I'd prefer the white stuff stayed away.

Every year there's a street in the Ravenna neighborhood that calls itself Candy Cane Lane. About 60 houses are all decorated for the season, occasionally with massive ornamentation (there's a giant cherub-y revolving carousel thing that circles a huge bush in their roundabout), and it's amazing to look at. Evidently there is a tradition in this city to go drive through this street. I guess because sitting in traffic is festive? We walked! We parked a couple blocks up and wandered down, then were able to stroll through the Lane at our leisure. This proved to be particularly fortunate since their Grinch was restored!

Cindy Lou Who was there as well, but she wouldn't fit in the picture. Grinchy is big!

Gurgles did the honors this year and threw up on Christmas. It's never a proper holiday until someone's puked. I think it's an actual rule. Fortunately our household has a lot of furry volunteers for this important task, so Patrick and I can take a pass.

Speaking of actual Christmas day, we lost power for about 6 hours! It started around 10:30-45 and lasted until about 4:30pm. Awesome. It actually didn't bother us too much because we were really lazy and hadn't bothered to start cooking yet, which worked out pretty well. All those people with electronic gifts that needed charging or partially-cooked meat in the oven were probably not pleased. Fortunately the lights came back on before it got too dark outside. The hotline said around 2700 households were without power. That is a lot of pissed kids. Yikes. They were estimating 6pm as a fix time, but I'm sure everyone was working as hard as they could to avoid more of the angry phone call deluge. I'd be surprised if the lines were out in only one place. It was incredibly windy on Christmas, and you could see the trees whipping back and forth, plus small branches flying through the air.

Patrick and I started a new family tradition for our first Christmas together: love letters to be read on Christmas Eve! We didn't do gifts this year, as our combined human and animal medical expenses were making things tight, so this was a wonderful way to celebrate. I think we will do this every year. Although, to be sure, we were not giftless. Certain relatives (you know who you are, you incorrigible rebels) ignored my no-gift exhortations and sent incredibly generous presents anyway. We are very fortunate to have the family we do, gifts or no gifts.

When I was digging around in the top of the guest room closet, I must have very gently tapped the light fixture up there. I don't ever remember touching it, so it must have been just a brush of my head or something, but that thing fell right off the ceiling and whacked me in the face! Then I couldn't figure out how on earth they'd gotten it attached up there in the first place, so I couldn't put it back up. Sigh. Now it is dangling from its wires (that aren't hot, don't worry parents, it never worked in the first place) in the closet because I have no idea what to do with it. I texted the maintenance guy (the owner's son), and let him know about that and the other canned light fixture that crapped out in our bedroom. They were not kidding when they were complaining about their mom being taken for a ride by some people who were supposed to be redoing this house. Oh well. I don't have to look at the closet light and the other one doesn't bother me much. Hopefully he'll get around to fixing it soon.

Ended up having Christmas dinner the day after the holiday itself, since by the time the lights came back on we weren't really feeling like cooking, and it was delicious! We had glazed ham, Szechuan style green beans, and mashed red potatoes with roasted garlic and truffle oil. Yum! If you just looked at the plate, it looked very traditional, but this had quite a few different tastes. So good. I can't wait for all the leftover dishes!

In other good news, Evil Dress Bitch paid up! We are now free and clear out of that horribad attempted transaction. I consider the $20 we spent shipping the dress back to be a Learning Fee. This woman evidently doesn't understand how Paypal operates, and she paid for Express shipping to mail a cashier's check to my work. You may recall that I was on vacation last week. Right. So by the time she told us about it and we came down to get the delivery slip, the post office was closed. Of course we had to come back the next day. I signed the thing saying Patrick could get it on my behalf (his car wasn't starting and needed a new battery, so I was driving and was trying to avoid paying for parking by waiting on the street). This didn't matter as they wanted to know if he had proof linking him to that address. What? Of course he doesn't. Hell, I don't have proof of that either. I just work there, I don't live there (although it sometimes seems like it). So he came back to the car and waited in it while I ran down and got it. They didn't ask ME for proof that I had ties to that address... Whatever. We have got it and it went through fine. So very very glad this is all over. VICTORY IS OURS! Or at least less defeat. Patrick is totally my hero for bullying her into it.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and are ready for the new year!

Only with cats.

2011-12-16T08:55:00.000-08:00

"Oh look, he's killing it."
"What's he got? The bedspread?"
"Yes, and now it's all dead. Isn't it, you ferocious creature?"
"Awww, adorable murder."

What I imagine would happen if I attended a seminar on handling change

2011-12-13T16:54:00.000-08:00

Them: "We're sorry, you're freaking out everyone here. Please leave."
Me: "Oh come on. How about I fistfight someone and if I win I can stay?"
Them: "No. We will pay you to leave."

I don't think anyone there would enjoy learning about how I (don't) handle change. I've gotten slightly better over the years, but it's still not pretty. I do find these seminar descriptions amusing, though. Just imaging how all these people would react to someone in their midst who spoke openly about dealing with mental issues cracks me up. In my experience, they're generally a bit horrified and want to go elsewhere. I'm not exactly sure why I find this hilarious, but I do. Maybe it's the contrast between what they're expecting and what they'd actually hear. I don't know. Probably no one thinks this is funny but me.

We had to pill the cats again the other day and I have to say, it makes me laugh sometimes. When they're not making my fingers rot off, anyway. Poor Gurgles sat on the floor and retched repeatedly. Widget looked betrayed and then spit up on the wall. Monkey tried to disembowel Patrick. Why do they even give you pills for cats? Really? Everything for cats should be formulated to soak into their skin so you can just dab it on the back of their necks and be done with it.

And I leave you with this. Things that are supposed to be motivational (sort of) and aren't.

Holiday Pops!

2011-12-10T18:08:00.001-08:00

Last night I went to see Patrick play with the Seattle Symphony. This was conducted by Marvin Hamlisch, who is very personable with an audience. The whole experience was vaguely surreal. With comp tickets, you never know where you're going to end up sitting, be it beside the loo or right up front. In this case, I wound up in a Founders Tier box seat!

What rich people see before the performance.

So there's me, after a long day at work, wearing my sneakers and reading Stephen King's The Waste Lands in a $365/person box seat while waiting for the symphony to make its appearance. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who actually worked for a living in that box...

I met a couple of the musicians backstage before Patrick saw me to my seat, and I've now met almost all of the symphony's trombone section. I met the second trombonist at one of Patrick's recording gigs, and I met the bass trombonist last night. There was also a trumpet player named Justin, who was substituting for someone. They all seem like really normal people, which is nice. Sometimes musicians (cough singers cough) can be real divas, but all the instrumentalists I've met so far seem down to earth.

I tried to get a picture of Patrick as he was getting into place and warming up, but even his phone's (comparatively) mighty zoom wasn't going to do much to conquer that distance.

See? Terrible. Thank goodness for Paint...

Anyway, it was good. Sadly they inexplicably skipped Greensleeves, but I enjoyed the show. The guy two seats down from me kept getting up and leaving to go smoke during the first half. He'd come back and then he'd absolutely reek. Ugh! I finally tried to stuff my shawl up my nose to keep the smell out. Cigarette smoke gives me an awful headache. Fortunately he knocked it off during the second half, but started scratching his knee instead like he had some sort of meth itch. Everyone else I was seated with was polite, which was pleasant.

The singalong was fun! I wish it was a bit longer and more challenging, but it was great. We all stood up and I belted Jingle Bells, It Came Upon The Midnight Clear, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing and O Come All Ye Faithful. Fun times! People always look so terrified when they have to stand up and sing in public. I think it's a blast. Hopefully some of them sang out a bit more because of me!

There was fake snow, Santa, a children's choir (which was totally adorable, and I hate children, so you know it must be true), and for some reason a balloon guy. I entertained myself by judging the various outfits worn by the soprano they had singing stuff. There was one really abominable mermaid-looking getup and a terrible strippery-y thing with horizontal blotches, but the rest weren't too bad. The white dress she wore for a couple songs was genuinely nice. If I had smaller upper arms, I'd wear it. Tragically, I have no pictures of any of this since I consider it the height of rudeness to use one's phone during performances, so you'll have to take my word for it.

I'd never fork out all that money for this seat, but it was great to sit in it and see Patrick play. Hooray for being a musician's wife! I hope you're all having a great weekend and taking care of yourselves.

And now for something waaaay less deep!

2011-12-07T20:36:00.001-08:00

You guys, I got served decapitated shrimp heads with dinner tonight. INCLUDING FEELERS!

We went to Taka Sushi to have some inexpensive seafood (surprisingly good, just happens to be in a crappy little strip mall and doesn't cost much), and I ordered some ebi, among other things. What turned up was not ebi. This is ebi:

Note the lack of creepy-ass shrimp skulls.

What turned up looked like something they rejected from Alien as being too shudder-inducing:

WHY IS THAT THERE? IT HAS EYEBALLS.

I regarded it in horror and revulsion. I poked it a couple times. It didn't move. Regardless, I was having none of it. Historically, when gross stuff unexpectedly shows up I give it to my father, who has an iron stomach and is disgusted by very little in the way of foodstuffs (remember the lard soup with the random corncob in it?). However, he was not present, so Patrick stepped up admirably. I am one of those people who feels the need to not offend the chef by refusing to eat something, even if it's an abomination against nature and it's going to haunt your nightmares for at least a week, so Patrick saved me a lot of creepy shrimp face napkin-stuffing. Yes, I absolutely would have rammed that freakish thing in my napkin and snuck it off to the bathroom so I didn't look like I was rejecting their wonderful delicacy. No, I do not know what is wrong with me. Probably several things. The relatively normal-looking shrimpy part was good. Raw, but good. I considered that to be quite enough damn horizon-broadening for one night, thank you very much.

Even looking at a picture of that gives me the wiggins. Creepy... I draw the line at eating something's face. Particularly while its dead eyeballs are STARING AT ME. Maybe it's just as well I don't hunt like the rest of my family. I'm obviously kind of a weenie. Patrick's stomach just grumbled really loudly. I told him it was the shrimp faces in there screaming to get out. He disagreed, but I'm pretty sure I'm right.

On an up note (get it? I'm so funny) that has nothing to do with that, Patrick got called this afternoon to play the Holiday Pops concerts with the Seattle Symphony! This was really last minute as apparently some scheduling thing went all wonky and their principal trombonist didn't show up for the rehearsal (which was today, performances are the 8th through the 11th), so Patrick got called. Since he obviously didn't have his trombone with him as he'd been at work and a trombone is not exactly a briefcase, they gave him this piece of crap one that's for kids to play with from their Soundbridge learning thingy. Someone asked him if he mugged a high schooler to get that hunk of garbage, which I found hilarious. He says he was sure that thing had never been played with the Seattle Symphony before, but now it has been. I'm sure it's very proud. At any rate, he's glad to be home and have his own again. I don't blame him. Monkey is not glad. Every time she even sees him pull out the horn she runs like he's going to kill her with it. Why does she hate it so much? We do not know. It's a mystery, Charlie Brown.

Oh, and he gets a comp ticket for Friday night, so I get to go hear him for free! Apparently there is a singalong. I love singalongs. Even if the songs are all kind of stupid, like Jingle Bells and Rudolph The Red-nosed Reindeer. I think they do that because no one can get the pitch changes right on stuff like Greensleeves or For Unto Us A Child Is Born unless they're actually in music, and I can't imagine them wanting to listen to a bunch of semi-intoxicated old folks warbling their tone-deaf way through something like that. Although if I were drunk enough it might be awesome...

I wish I had eggnog.

As the year draws to a close

2011-12-06T10:21:00.001-08:00

Which is in itself misleading. I always have this strange feeling about the Gregorian calendar. It seems like the year ends, but the year is really circular. Everything about it is circular. The revolution of the earth itself, its orbit around the sun, everything. (Or perhaps oblique, but certainly not a straight line with an end.) So the year is not ending, but it is perhaps finishing a cycle? If the dark of winter is considered the end of the cycle, I guess. If you regard summer as the end of a year, we're smack in the middle of one.

I blame all of this on too much blog reading and tisane consumption.

I had a conversation the other day with someone about whether he would go back in time and redo his childhood if he could. We haggled about it for a while, pointing out ups and downs, and finally came to the conclusion that it would probably depend (at least for him) on whether he would know going into it everything that he does now. This would make him a very strange ten-year-old, but whatever. It's hypothetical anyway.

Personally I would not go back. Even if I knew what I do now. You could use the argument that in going back I could fix all the screw ups that occurred on the way to the present, since I'd know how everything would turn out, but there are a couple sticking points. The first is that with changing something, you would get an alternate timeline. I know this sounds like a lot of bufferfly effect rot, but it's true. Say I'd married someone other than who I did. Or chosen a different major. In all likelihood, either of those would've thrown my life's journey far off the track from where it is now. Different city, different relationship, different job. As soon as that happened, all of your known quantities would go out the window. You could no longer say that everything would end up in a certain place. So much for going back with all the knowledge of what would happen.

The second sticking point is overestimating your own abilities. This happens a LOT. Overconfidence stemming from perceived omniscience about a situation will be your downfall every time. Who is to say that I wouldn't make even worse decisions the second time around? That I would be so secure in my supposed foreknowledge of my life that I wouldn't do something completely stupid and/or reckless? Or if I know that I'm not going to like my marriage or my job or my whatever, that I wouldn't change it to something else that would be worse than anything the present had to offer? I suppose there's always the chance that I could turn my life into a rich playground, but that isn't very likely. Realistically I'm never going to do things radically different from how my personality naturally lends itself, and that includes not becoming an investor or a politician or whatever in order to gain significant amounts of wealth and influence for myself.

All in all, it's a risk I'd never take. Even if I could. Would you go back and do it all over again if you could?

All I've got is this picture of a giant green cat.

2011-12-05T17:01:00.000-08:00

Silver bells, silver bells, it's Christmas time in the city...

2011-12-02T15:50:00.001-08:00

And also it smells of weed. Like, a lot. I'm not sure if it's just from Occupy Seattle getting bored and wandering around or what, but whew! I wandered around downtown today, first going down to have lunch with Patrick and then walking him up to the Paramount for his rehearsal before heading back to Belltown, and 1st Ave is so barren now. All the tourists have buggered off for warmer climes, and it's great! You can actually walk down the street without getting crushed by people wearing fanny packs and taking stupid pictures of the Space Needle sticking out of their tongues. (Yes, this is a thing.)

Weed reek notwithstanding, I did get a picture of one thing I particularly enjoy this time of year. The Macy's star! This is so pretty. I love it. This is the same intersection where I sang carols last year.

In other news, Monkey totally forgot who Gurglepurr is and has spent the last 24 hours or so making hissyfaces at him. It's retarded, and he's just ignoring her. He was gone for one night, and now she thinks he's a whole different cat or some stupid thing. Not the brightest crayon in the box, is what I'm saying.

Have a fabulous weekend, everybody! I'm off to chill out with my delicious husband and a big pile of cats. Hopefully without the hissing. That just makes it sound like I'm cuddling with snakes, which is less comforting and more alarming.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

2011-12-01T13:18:00.001-08:00

The good: Gurglepurr does not have FeLV or FIV! Labs look great.

The bad: Most of his teeth are rotten. Except the canines and incisors. Ugh.

The ugly: We're going to have all of those out except the healthy ones, since it seems stupid to temporarily leave him with half a mouth of rotting teeth and we'd just have to pay for all the surgery stuff a second time. This isn't going to be cheap. Ouch. Thank God for all the gigs...

We saw some excitement last night driving home. Somewhere past 105th on Hwy 99 going up through north Seattle, we happened to see flashing lights on a pickup on the other side of the road. I thought that was a little weird, and mentioned that I didn't know the cops had pickups. I knew about the SUVs and the regular stuff, of course, but this was new.

We thought perhaps it was just waiting there after a routine traffic stop until we got a little bit further up and noticed there was an entire barricade of 4-5 cop cars blocking the southbound lanes of 99. Wow, this looked intense. There was a car stopped south of the barricade, and a guy was getting out of it with his hands up. He was wearing a long black trench coat, according to Patrick, who had time to stare at the situation.

I didn't see where the cops were at first because it was dark and I was trying not to run off the road, but then it dawned on me that all the car doors were open, and I looked behind the doors. Sure enough, there were about 10 cops, all with guns drawn and trained on this guy, standing behind the open car doors.

We proceeded on, and didn't see anything more, but I wonder what this was all about. Aurora is known for drugs and prostitution, but no one ever gets this riled up about hookers, so maybe it was drugs. I don't see anything about it on the news anywhere yet, but maybe it will turn up at some point. It was pretty impressive.

'Tis the season... to get gigs

2011-11-29T20:39:00.001-08:00

This is cause for celebration! Patrick wasn't kidding. With the advent of late fall heading into winter, the gigs have really started coming in. Can I just say that I love how he gets paid for this?! It's fabulous. Along with a number of other ones, he just got a gig playing with the Seattle Symphony for a show at the Paramount. The group they're performing with is called Pink Martini. Here is a poster:

Damn right it'll be "very special." They're getting my husband to play with them!

I think they might be French. At any rate, they sometimes perform in French. ...I just looked it up and they are not French. At least one of them is from Oregon. BUT here is what it says on that site: The band began to write songs together and their first song “Sympathique” – with the chorus “Je ne veux pas travailler” (“I don’t want to work”) – became an overnight sensation in France, and was even nominated for “Song of the Year” at France’s Victoires de la Musique Awards.

So that's cool. Plus it pays pretty well. $200-ish per service, which means each time he plays. There is one rehearsal and the show, Friday afternoon and then Saturday night, so that works out to an extra $400! Seattle Symphony gigs are very lucrative. Hopefully this with the money we've gotten back so far for the dress will cover Gurglepurr's teeth yanking procedure. It's always something, I tell you. I think I'd rather just pay for all his tooth problems than get stuff for Christmas this year. A healthy, pain-free kitty (with better breath) is much better than more things, no matter how cool they are. Bow and arrows, you can wait.

Oh, and the last recording gig turned out to be for Underworld 4, which is probably going to be a really awful movie, but if any of you see it, you'll get to hear Patrick playing. They usually only find out what they're doing when they show up to sightread for the recording (which in itself is pretty impressive), but sometimes the guy who contracts all the musicians will tell them what they're doing when he sets the gig up if he thinks they'll actually be interested in whatever it is. Needless to say, Patrick didn't find out what this was until he got there...

If any of you watch Community, he did a few episodes of that as well. I've made him promise that I can come along to listen if he ever finds himself recording soundtracks for any Silent Hill games. I could not miss that! It hasn't been the same since Team Silent at Konami gave over control of the game to various Americans, and I miss Akira Yamaoka's composing, but it's still not horrid. I suppose it's my fandom extending itself to things that don't really deserve all that much loyalty. For example, I've heard they're going to make a second Silent Hill movie. The first one was pretty bad (barely followed the game, which is too bad because it was brilliant), and I expect the second one will be terrible, but I'll see the damn thing anyway because I'm sort of like a bug attracted to a zapper when it comes to that series. They screwed up the plot so badly in the first movie that it'll be entertaining to see if they just wallow around in failure or try to cobble something together that vaguely resembles the games. Sometimes I enjoy lameness.

I've only just now realized that this post has turned into a really long rambling session, but I am not quite done yet! I was thinking about the whole archery thing, and I think it is a good idea for me. I've shot various guns and I'm not bad at it. I was also involved with martial arts for a few years (kyokushin full-contact karate), and I wasn't bad at that either, but I've finally gotten old enough to appreciate that breaking things will ultimately result in a lot of aching later in life. I was fortunate enough to not break anything while I was involved in martial arts, and I have no desire to return to hand-to-hand combat any time soon. The culture is not that great for women, let me tell you.

Ranged weapons, on the other hand, don't have those drawbacks to them. I don't have to join a league or dojo or whatever to shoot a gun or a bow and arrows. And I actually own a gun, but it's at home in Montana. We shoot cans. It's really fun, to tell you the truth, especially when one is swinging in the wind while hanging by a string from a distant tree limb. I haven't done it in years, for various reasons (mostly time constraints or forgetting about it), but I think I will the next time I make a trip home. A bow and arrows could be really fun, too. I hope it's sort of similar. Obviously the mechanics will be very different, drawing a bow instead of pulling a trigger, but the general idea of aiming a projectile at a distant object is the same. Also, I'm pretty strong and that should help me. Being strong doesn't seem to really help anything with guns, except maybe with bracing yourself so the recoil from a big one doesn't knock you over backwards.

Plus you never know. It might turn out to be good exercise, all that running back and forth to retrieve arrows and strength used to draw the bow. I could use some of that! Hopefully sometime within the next half year or so I'll be able to get some lessons and see if I like it. If not, there's always learning to throw knives!

I'm a strange girl sometimes. I have no problem learning how to engage in various types of combat, but I won't bait a hook with a worm. Yeah. I had to draw the line somewhere... /eyeroll Thanks to my darling grandfather for never making me touch squirmy things and putting up with getting hooked now and again because I haven't ever learned how to not yank fish directly skyward when catching them. <3

Pretending to be rich in Pottery Barn

2011-11-28T09:51:00.001-08:00

I sat down on a deeply overpriced chair and lounged indolently. Patrick sprawled in the one next to me.

Me: "What do you think we should do with our bathtub full of money?"
Patrick: "Maybe we should drive down the freeway and throw it out the window."
Me: "That would be festive. All the green."
Patrick: "Mmhmm."
Me: "This chair is really overpriced. And it says As Is. What do you think is wrong with it?"
Patrick: "Probably people like us sitting on it."

We also found some candles with music-y looking business on the outside. This is how musicians ruin holiday decor.

Me: "What're you doing?"
Patrick: "Trying to see if there's an actual tune on it. Look at this, there's a natural sign where there isn't even a note."
Me: "What the hell kind of key is B sharp? I was pretty sure people just referred to that as C."
Patrick: "This doesn't make any sense. All of these notes they've got here, that would sound horrible. E, B and E-sharp? Ugh."
Me: "This is why I never closely examine holiday decorations. You either wind up finding lies or huge dead arachnids."

Maybe the light at the end of the tunnel wasn't a train...

2011-11-26T14:39:00.001-08:00

Well, The World's Best Antibiotics (tm) have kicked in and I am feeling better! Hallelujah, y'all. I still have a very slight cough, but it's decreasing exponentially as the days pass. Possibly more importantly, MY FINGER ISN'T GREEN ANYMORE! Woohoo!

That was rather alarming. I've never had a green digit before. Before we went in to see the doctor I told Patrick it had become a zombie and warned him not to make it angry. Then I pointed it at him and whispered "Braaaaaaains." I don't think he bought it.

And on another happy note, we have recovered slightly over half of our dress money from the Evil Dress Bitch! This will make absorbing Gurglepurr's teeth costs so much easier. I really hope he hasn't got FeLV. Apparently terrible teeth at a young age are a marker for it, but he tested negative at the shelter he came from and you can also just have really bad teeth. So hopefully he just has rotten teeth? That seems like a strange thing to hope for, but it would be way better than the alternative. I'm not even sure what that is, but it would probably be bad.

Patrick's off to a recording gig tonight, so I'm going to lazy about at home and probably go to sleep really early. Now that I can sleep without waking up to cough, I'm doing my best to soak rest up like a sponge.

Also, I think I want to take up archery. It has always seemed like fun to me, even when I was little and the best I could do was making my own bow and arrows out of sticks and baling twine. Yep, Montana girl. Baling twine is great for everything. Almost as versatile as duct tape. My arrows didn't go very far or in much of a straight line, but the bow DID shoot. Which, to my way of thinking, is kind of a miracle. I had no idea what I was doing. Not that I do now, but that's what lessons are for! Now if only we could afford them...

Still Alive Part II: Not Dead Yet

2011-11-23T17:40:00.001-08:00

Well, to the surprise of no one I have pneumonia. AND an infected cat bite on my finger that was turning green. Siiiigh. At any rate, thank you all so much for your good wishes. I'm on what's basically the nuke of antibiotics, so hopefully it will all go away soon. No generics for it and I'm allergic to amoxicillin (and thus all -cillins), so it ended up being $105. Ouch. But I suppose this is a small price to pay for not getting blood poisoning and having my finger amputated.

Oh yeah, and I made a Better Business Bureau complaint about that horrible dressmaker. Seriously, you guys, she'd been trying to get out of giving us a refund any time soon by telling us how she couldn't buy her 4-yr-old a birthday present this year and asking us how we could be so mean. Why were we trying to hurt her so much?!1one We checked other complaints about her and sure enough, she's tried this garbage with other people before us.

OH MY GOD. This is not a romantic relationship. We are not breaking up. This is a BUSINESS SITUATION. Dear lord. She finally got wind of my BBB complaint, which included such gems as suggesting she might want to cooperate for the sake of her business' reputation and that if we couldn't sort this out we had no problem taking her to small claims court. This resulted in her sending us an incredibly whiny email, which said that we shouldn't think that just because we were mad it would make money magically appear in her Paypal account. (Why doesn't she understand that you don't BANK with Paypal? They get money from your OTHER BANK. Dear god I want to stab her.) She then followed this up by telling us that she was borrowing money from her mother to pay us.

1) Okay, this obviously means that money DOES miraculously just appear in your account if we're mad. Thanks for confirming that suspicion. Oh yeah, and she bitched that we didn't just trust her to pay the money back. Lady, I have absolutely no reason to trust you and every reason not to. Are you not the same person who took 2.5 months to give me a dress that was shoddily made with the wrong measurements and didn't include any of the stuff that was supposed to come with it? OH RIGHT YOU ARE.

2) YOU BROUGHT YOUR MOM INTO IT? Seriously? How old are we? You ran to your mother? She said her mom was giving her the money because she "just couldn't believe the situation." Add her to the damn list. I can't believe this shit either.

3) I stipulated 7 business days in the BBB complaint for receipt of refund. Let's see if she coughs up. If not, we'll inform her that we will be trying to sue her. And make her pay court costs. At least the threat of talking to a lawyer should make her give up the cash.

I cannot believe what an absolute nightmare this has been. Wish me luck. Have an absolutely fabulous day, you awesome people. I heart you all tremendously. You are all gorgeous, witty and fascinating. Eat way more than you should and stay warm!

Still alive

2011-11-22T11:09:00.001-08:00

Hi guys. I've still got my sickness, and I've been feeling out of it. Sorry I haven't posted. When you're ill, it's hard to find things to say.

It's been rainy out the past few days, and it has hailed here and there, but no snow. I'm glad! Snow in the Seattle area is always a recipe for disaster. A couple years ago we had a pretty bad snowstorm and then such things happened as a semi truck hanging out over I-5 once it slid down a hill covered in ice and couldn't stop. Buses jack-knifed everywhere... it's horrible, without fail.

I'm off this week, so I'm enjoying getting to sleep in! So luxurious. I'm very much a night owl, and I have always hated getting up early. Nighttime is more relaxing, quiet and dark. Nowhere near the loudness and glare of daytime.

Hope you're all well and staying warm. Is there snow where you are?

Meh.

2011-11-16T12:18:00.001-08:00

Thanks for the good wishes you guys have sent. Unfortunately I'm not better yet. Hopefully soon, although ever since I was sick all those times in college, when I get something at this time of year it tends to settle in my lungs and hang out for a month or two. Maybe after I get better I'll give Pneumovax a try. I guess it couldn't hurt.

Just gotta make it to the end of this week and then I can rest up for a whole week. Go away, you stupid sickness! I hate how when you're ill it feels like you've been sick forever, even if it's only been a few days.

I'm up to 4mg of Prazosin daily, and I haven't noticed anything. I haven't had any nightmares, but that doesn't mean anything as they usually come in waves with periods of nightmare-free time in between. Supposedly the therapeutic dose is 6-15mg, so I'm not expecting anything for a while yet. I just have to work up to it. I'm being very methodical about it, since I'd like to minimize side effects if possible.

I hope you're all having a good week. Stay healthy!

Sick

2011-11-14T16:34:00.001-08:00

Sorry I haven't been posting much. I've been sick, and I'm still sick. Today I quit being able to smell things. Maybe this means that my immune system's measures against the virus are now to a level where they will help and I will soon get better? Stupid cold.

Thank you all for the warm response to the track. I'm glad you liked it! At least as many accolades belong to Patrick. Without him, this couldn't have been done. He's amazing. I wish I could just listen to some music and magically write down the correct notes!

Carefully disinfected hugs,
Adra

I wish I had a Klonopin.

2011-11-12T11:55:00.001-08:00

You guys, I am so upset.

I FINALLY got that damned dress in the mail, and 1) it doesn't fit, 2) it isn't as described (no tulle lining the bustle?!), and 3) seriously? For that amount of money I expect it to be fully lined and with no exposed serging. And I expect higher quality overall. I am seriously disappointed. What a waste! I hope the maker decides to set aside her usual policy of no refunds. For real? THIS is what I get? It did not even come with the promised crinoline slip and bustle pillow, and it's been over two and a half months!

SO upset. She offered to make me something else, and I don't want it. I just want my money back and this to be over. What a nightmare. I have never had something like this happen before. All my other experiences with custom-made stuff have been great.

At least the stupid song is almost done. Patrick and I were up til 2am last night working on it. I could hardly sleep last night. It took me about an hour to fall asleep, and then I kept waking up, so I'm both exhausted and upset, along with still being sick. Maybe I'll try napping later today. I don't know.

I hope you all are having a better weekend than I am.

Update: She agreed to give me a refund. That's at least something. I feel slightly less bad.

This cold is making me totally useless!

2011-11-11T21:06:00.001-08:00

I pretty much just sit around and alternate between surfing the internet and cursing the state of my innards. Sometimes, when I'm feeling adventurous, I do both at once. I know. It's amazing. I deserve a medal or something.

So I'm going to be ancient on Sunday. 31. Yep. It's time to buy denture cream and old people underpants. You know, when I was little, I was pretty sure 31 was mostly dead. As it turns out, it isn't.

Anyway, I don't care about all that. You guys, check out this insanely hot man I married:

Am I lucky or what?! Also, he's huge. 6'4". I know, I won the man lottery.

I got the pictures of our little Halloween dress-up party from my sister, and I thought I'd post a couple since I can't come up with anything else good. Blame the disease.

Kim (little sister), obviously me, and Patrick. My hair looks sort of strange and I look vaguely suspicious and kind of facially bloated from this angle, but check out the waist curve! I love corsets. Please observe how Kim and I look nothing alike.

That wrist thing is something I got off Etsy ages ago. I could probably make the same thing myself if I really wanted to, but I kind of think it looks better with just one instead of a matching set. After all, it's not like I don't have enough things going on in this outfit... Oh, and I would normally look a lot shorter next to Patrick, but I happen to be wearing 3" heels in this picture.

I love closet diving. I need to get some sort of display thing for all my jewelry and scarves. I can never find anything! And I forget I have a lot of stuff because I can't easily see it.

I'm so full of chocolate. Dear God. Patrick made us hot chocolate from this Fran's stuff that he indulged me by buying the weekend Kim took off (we made a trip down there for a farewell chocolate-ing), and OY is it ever rich. It's good, but wow do you not need a lot of it. We ended up putting the extra in a container in the fridge because neither of us could face more than a single mug of it. Urg.

I've been reading the tenth volume of the editorial histories behind Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion, and there was originally a character in The Silmarillion that had my last name! This is what it said: "And the children of Manwe and Varda are Fionwe Urion their son, and Ilmare their daughter..." Even Tolkien thought Urion was a cool name! haha Too bad he changed it. I had to email my dad proof of it and then call him to make sure he got it. He's the only person other than me who would think that's astoundingly cool. I come by my nerdiness honestly. It's genetic. I was able to use The Silmarillion for about ten book reports growing up because no one ever believed a kid had read it. Hah. See, it pays to read stuff that most people think is too dull to ever slog through.

I found Gurglepurr on top of the shower door this morning. WHAT THE HELL, CAT.

HOW?! How did he get up there? That ledge is like 1.5" wide. I do not understand this.

I'd gone into the bathroom to brush my teeth and wasn't even paying attention, then I noticed a swishy motion out of the corner of my eye. I looked over and THIS was staring at me. After I took this picture he stood up, stretched, wandered down to the end and back, then hopped down like it was no big thang and sauntered into the living room to haul himself up the kittywalk (which is a giant, multi-tiered cat climber hung on a door) and deliver a sermon about nothing to himself and anyone who might care to listen.

This cat is clearly insane. And also immune to physics.

I can't think of a good title for this because of my cold.

2011-11-10T09:25:00.000-08:00

Okay, y'all! Patrick says he will try to get all the finishing touches on it this weekend. This includes putting in dynamics for the MIDI string tracks and I believe cloning a couple string parts to really flesh them out. A later version will probably have the trombone chorale he was thinking of, but not this one!

Hopefully you will have it by this weekend or Monday of next week. It's truly impressive how much he's learned by doing this. I have my very own audio engineer now! We need to save it in various formats and listen to those to see how it sounds. Apparently some of them are better than others for preserving quality. Please send an email to lifebloom at gmail dot com with Good Enough in the subject if you want me to email you a copy. Otherwise I will probably upload it to one of those free sites and you can download it from there.

I hope you guys like it. Much love.

Headcold

2011-11-09T15:31:00.000-08:00

Sorry I've been AWOL lately, everyone. I've currently got the awful headcold that my poor Patrick had a few days ago. I'm at home sick feeling sorry for myself.

Patrick did the last few string tracks last night on the computer. He's amazing! The more I listen to myself, though, the more I feel like I should fix every single little imperfection I hear on the recording. I'm going to do more retakes when I am healthy again anyway for my own education (it's a good learning process), but do you guys care if it's perfect or not?

Okay, realistically it's never going to be perfect. We did this in our living room on a crappy mic with $100 worth of software. It's not exactly a recording studio in LA. And it isn't bad, I just hear little things here and there, like a word that isn't precisely enunciated or whether my voice sounds too warm and ought to have a harder edge to it.

I guess what I want to know is do you want me to try and make it absolutely as good as I possibly can before putting it out there, or should I do it now? Listen to me, I sound like I think I'm keeping my adoring public waiting... /eyeroll This is hardly the case. It's just that if I get caught up in trying to attain machine-like perfection, you might not hear it for a year. Or ever.

Opinions, please?

Vocal track laid down!

2011-11-06T15:11:00.001-08:00

And it sounds good! I'm very excited. ;) Now to finish the instrumentals...

I love Sundays. And Saturdays. And Friday nights.

2011-11-06T12:05:00.000-08:00

I am lounging shamelessly in my new pajamas while I type this. It's a beautifully lazy Sunday morning (morning still, thanks to daylight savings!), and I am perfectly content. Purr...

My sister finished up her externship on Friday and headed back to Pullman, so we're back to our honeymoon state. It was lovely to have her visiting, but it's also great to have the place to ourselves again. I can't tell you how fun it is to contemplate all these first holidays together!

Friday night I sang through Good Enough using the mic with just the accompaniment for the first time, and while the music side needs a little fixing before it's ready, it sounded pretty good! (Sounded good enough, hah! :p) If you don't like Evanescence, you probably won't like this, but it doesn't really sound like most of their stuff. It strikes me as rather contemplative. It's just piano, strings, and a trombone chorale Patrick is inserting that he created by recording and overdubbing himself. I think it's a very pretty piece, and it's not technically challenging, so it's a great piece to begin doing this with. This is particularly true because I haven't had lessons or really practiced in a while. When we've got it ready, I'll either post it on here or just ask people who are interested to email me with something like Good Enough in the subject so I know who I should bother sending it to.

Nothing much came of the doctor appointment on Thursday. He said that it could be a stone or just some sort of unspecified inflammation, and there wasn't a lot I could do about it. They didn't have the technology at UW to dilate the gland's opening and fish around in there, and the nearest equipment is in Portland, Oregon. He wasn't sure if the ultrasound people knew how to do the stone-breaking technique, or if it would even work. I could have surgery to take the gland out, but it'd be incredibly risky since I've already had surgery there, and I'd run a really high risk of having half of my face not work anymore since the nerve would probably get irreparably damaged. I vetoed that immediately. I'd rather put up with pain than have only half a functioning face. It was bad enough when that nerve was bruised and it took a couple weeks for my right side to work again. You can't smile correctly or really open your mouth. You also can't raise your right eyebrow or close your eyes tightly. It's weird. None of that.

I'm in for yet another appointment about the anxiety on Tuesday. The doctor canceled the last one because he was out sick. Oh wait, no, it's because he hadn't read the thing he asked me to write for him yet. AND he was out sick. Except the secretary could put me on hold go ask him IN THE CLINIC when he thought he'd have it read... People, come on. I am such a much better liar than y'all. If you're going to lie, at least give me some credit and do it right. /eyeroll

Despite that annoyance, I'm going in on Tuesday to see if he'll continue the prescription for Ambien for me, since that actually seems to help when I need it, and if he will write me a script for 1 month of 10mg/day Prazosin with the option to contact him and have him call in additional refills if it works. If it doesn't work, I'll just let it lapse. But I don't have time for repeated doctor appointments. Work is getting crazier and crazier, and I simply have too many things to do that require me to be present for the entire day. If he can't do that, I'll just say the hell with it and deal with it. I've dealt with it for nearly 31 years so far, and I can manage until everything cools down enough again that I have time for repeated appointments.

Birthday's in a week! Woohoo! This will be the first birthday of mine that Patrick and I will have celebrated together, and I'm excited. I don't even care if we don't do anything, although hopefully my dress (plus hat!) will have shown up by then, and there are murmurings of possibly a night at the symphony. Curiously, that evening the symphony is being conducted by someone who Patrick played for, whilst performing a piece that he played for that guy back when he was in the Civic Orchestra in Chicago. It's all very déjà vu...

I was going to buy some black furry slippers that the Nordstrom catalog promised were in stock, but it LIED, so we went over to Macy's to have a look at what they had. The only ones there were by Jessica Simpson, who I cordially despise for a variety of reasons, so I refrained. Yes, I can be very petty sometimes. I am now going to troll the internet for black furry slippers. By God, I will have some, and they will not have her name on them!

If anyone remembers the firewood scented Henri Bendel candle that Bath & Body Works used to sell, I am sad to report that it is no longer being carried there. However, they have one called Fireside that smells almost identical. We got some beautiful candle holders at Fireworks in University Village on Friday evening (we were out treating Kim to some goodbye cocoa from Fran's Chocolates), and I made sure to get a Fireside candle that would smell wonderful inside the holder! I have one big one and one little one. While the little one is only suitable for a tealight, the bigger one can hold up to a pillar. They are both very similar, with frosted white glass on the outside and the darker outlines of leafless winter trees on the inside, which the light from the candles shines through. They're really quite lovely. Let me see if I can find a picture or two....

Bigger size, about the same as a really huge single-wick pillar.

Smaller one, perfect for cheap tealights!

These are the two I got. They look so nice when it's dark in the house and just the candles are lit! Very wintery feeling. They're pretty inexpensive, too. The bigger one was $18.50 and the smaller was $12.50. I love when nice things are also affordable. I tried on an assortment of stupid hats to the vast amusement of Patrick, and purchased exactly none of them. Despite being a hat person, I don't really wear them very much. They make my head too hot. Maybe it's all the hair. I will leave you with a stunning picture of this escapade.

Forgive the hair. That's what naturally drying curly hair will do for you.

May all your days come to a close with chocolate.

St. James cathedral pictures

2011-11-01T21:34:00.000-07:00

Patrick and I took the day off work today (ostensibly to recover from Halloween, but since we didn't do a whole lot other than staying in and watching movies while avoiding trick-or-treaters, there wasn't a lot of recovering to do). We eventually got up and moseyed our way down to the union to pick up his music for the next concert, then went over to the cathedral for some leisurely exploration.

I love Catholic churches. They always smell so lovely. I'm not sure what the particular type of incense that they use is, but it's great stuff. This particular cathedral is just gorgeous. It has gigantic vaulted ceilings, a holy water font that's so clear it looks like there's not even any water in it, a darkened Mary shrine lit only with candles, a fascinating little candle high up in a red holder that defies explanation when you wonder how they light it, and many other intriguing features. We took pictures of some of them, so here they are:

People praying in the meditation/adoration shrine. It is golden and designed to look like the burning bush. The inscription says venite adoremus, which according to the internet means "O come let us adore him" or something very similar. Not sure what's inside the box. Maybe the ten commandments? I like the wrought iron gate particularly.

Inside the chapel near a Mary statue. These lit candles are all prayers from the faithful.

Me observing the Mary shrine. These lit candles are also prayers.

Me looking at the candle I lit for my friend Madame's husband, along with other worries and hopes.

The candle I lit.

A lady praying in the Mary shrine. It gives me chills to hear prayers whispered in the shadows filling the various shrines of this cathedral. I guess it's a combination of the smells and the audible whispers. The flickering candles don't hurt, either...

Looking toward the altar from the main entrance. Font of holy water is in front with the baptismal pool. What you see in the back is a set of giant organ pipes and the choir loft. See how clear that water is in the bowl! It just looks like a stainless steel bowl, even up close, until you dip your fingers in to cross yourself. Then the water ripples show it for what it is. The glowing circle in the ceiling is a huge skylight with words inscribed around the edges. I'm not sure what they said, as it was kind of hard to see with the brightness. The tall white thing on the right is indeed an enormous candle. It's way taller than I am!

Statue of some saint. Sadly I don't know which one. Maybe St. Francis? There are many of these statues in alcoves around the main cathedral hall.


Some of the stained glass windows. We tried to show details, but it's hard. The statue is Mary. Oh and yes, that is the top of my head down there at the bottom of the picture. This place is enormous! Everything is just immense.


Stained glass windows again. See? Too bright.

The outside of the adoration shrine. I do not know how they light that candle on the left. It looks to be nearly two stories up and it's on a sconce thing that doesn't appear to move. Maybe they have a huge ladder? Or a really long lighter?


Looking back toward the main entrance from the altar. That is a second set of organ pipes, along with the loft where Patrick played a series called Great Music For Great Cathedrals. Apparently they did it every year. I hope you all enjoyed these pictures. We tried to get some detailed ones of the stained glass, but they're really hard to see. If it's bright enough to see all the colors, it's also bright enough to make the camera on his phone go wonky. Rest assured that there are many beautiful stained glass windows here! They're very detailed, and it's amazing to see what must have been hours upon hours of work. This is the cathedral where two or so years ago (I forget exactly) I went to hear a Requiem Mass. It was lovely. (Patrick has also played the Requiem in this cathedral.) They had a full orchestra (I think, sounded like it) and choir, and everything was in Latin, but the leaflet things they gave you had the translations so you could follow along. There is one tomorrow evening as well, and we might go. I find them fascinating. I think Patrick has a cold though, so maybe we will stay home... Not sure. We'll see how he feels. I'd rather he didn't infect the entire cathedral. Both of us had the idea to take some pictures of me in the Mina dress inside this place. This will be a good idea particularly if it takes long enough to show up that all the leaves have fallen off the trees for the year. Also, it is a lot warmer inside than it would be in a graveyard! Brrr...

Nearly Halloween!

2011-10-30T16:15:00.000-07:00

We had a lovely time going out last night. My dress hasn't shown up yet, and I know now that it will be later than Halloween for various reasons (although she is mollifying me by making me a hat and necklace, along with sending a vintage dress or two). Alas.

Anyway, I threw on some stuff that I've had for a while and called myself a Victorian courtesan. I think it worked... I did the makeup myself, finally getting the eye stuff right (I think). I need to buy some of my own mascara, as I had to borrow Kim's. We hung out in a bar for a few minutes while waiting for our table at Bizzarro, and after I'd come back from the bathroom my sister informed me that every single man's head in the place had turned and followed me as I walked along, lol.

Men like corsets, y'all. Hah.

Dinner was great! We had some wine that was described as having "dark forboding fruits and silky underthings", so of course that was grand. Started off with what was actually a dessert cheese plate (apples, spiced pecans, honey, port wine reduction, brie, some type of blue cheese, pecorino). Kim and I had the Forest Floor Frenzy (me again, because it's what I always get), Josh (Kim's husband) had something that I can't remember and Patrick had some sort of delicious beef thing. For dessert we had tiramisu, salted caramel ice cream and a sort of molten chocolate cake. Yum! I love Bizzarro.

Kinda hard to see the waist cincher, but you get the idea.

I can't wait to eat our festive skull bread and watch creepy movies! It's a beautiful blustery day out, with leaves blowing and rain here and there. So wonderful for this time of year.

Happy Halloween, everybody!

Bloggy blog blog. And my swollen face.

2011-10-27T19:14:00.000-07:00

I had a CT scan today to see what the hell is the problem with my face. I have another appointment on Thursday with an attending or a fellow or something. I don't know. Someone higher up anyway. It's like I'm slowly working my way up through the ranks of doctors as each of them gives it a go.

This one today said that it's probably a stone of some sort, but that he can't feel it. He could SEE swelling from a few feet away (I ate a bit of sour candy to show him), but that he couldn't physically feel a stone in there and couldn't get any saliva out of my gland, so it's pretty much completely blocked.

If the scan shows it to be a smaller stone, they can dilate the opening to the gland (after numbing my face) and try to get it out that way. If it's too big or it's something else (tumor, whatever), they'll have to go in surgically. We shall see. I'll be glad to get rid of it, whatever it is. It makes eating a misery!

I contacted Suppurate System about the lack of emails telling me my necklace had shipped, and they have not gotten back to me yet. Very mysterious. And aggravating. If they don't get back to me within a couple more days, I'll get Paypal to refund the money as something obviously didn't go right with the transaction. Maybe they're on vacation?

I don't know if my dress will show up by this weekend or not. I asked her to have it to me by the 29th, but I haven't gotten a This Shipped email, so maybe it won't turn up for a while yet. I feel foiled! The dead-looking Gurglepurr next to me agrees.

My anxiety is basically back to normal and I had a nightmare last night, so I am pretty sure we need to up the dose. It's not surprising, seeing as the vets were given 10mg as a standard dose and I was only on 1-2mg. I have had so many doctor appointments in these last few weeks, it's ridiculous. I have two next week, one on Tuesday and one on Thursday. Tuesday is with the general practitioner again to see about the Prazosin dose and whatever else. Thursday is another ENT appointment...

Fortunately for me, I have a really handsome husband who knows how to cook. That takes the edge off. ;)

My precious...

2011-10-25T15:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was just a collection of GAAAAAH!

First I noticed that I'd forgotten to put my ring back on the previous night after dyeing my sister's hair. Me being who I am, my brain immediately started panicking and thinking all sorts of stupid things.

Oh no! I forgot the ring!
This means we're going to get a divorce.
NO IT DOESN'T.
But it's a bad omen! Aaaaah!
Shut up, it will be fine. You'll put it back on when you get home.

Then I fell off a stool at work. /facepalm

So we got back home and were relaxing on the bed when I jumped up with a gasp because I'd just remembered that I needed to go get my ring and put it on.

Ring was missing.

Panic ensued, with Patrick and I looking everywhere. When Kim (my sister) came home from work, she joined us. We looked under rugs, inside of grates, palpated cats, moved the piano out of the way to look behind it, etc. etc. We even pulled out the refrigerator in case the cats knocked it underneath there. Strangely there is a collection of paintbrushes behind it.

I suspected the cats were involved. Gurglepurr was maligned. Patrick found a giant dead arachnid in a heating vent. Kim found the XBox controller and wanted to know if she got partial credit for that one. (Yes, she did.) I poked through hairballs in the garbage to see if maybe it was eaten and then thrown up (EWWWWW).

While the searching was going on, I was steadily getting more and more alarmed. Patrick, who is a far more moderate soul than I am, took a break for a minute to sit on the couch and actually think about it instead of continuing to maniacally search the same places over and over again in the hope that the ring would mysteriously appear on the 7th search (I kept that up just in case it might work).

Then he had the presence of mind to take the top off the piano and look inside the damn thing. BINGO! There was my ring, lying on the hammers. As far as we could tell, it had been batted off the top of the piano where I laid it and then scooted into the little crack between the key cover and the part of the piano that holds music. Apparently when sitting there and thinking about it he remembered that he'd lifted up the key cover a bit when we were moving it out of the way. That must've been what tilted it inside onto the hammers. It looks solid when you're not staring intently between those two things, so we didn't even think at first to look inside it.

I mean come on, who really thinks their cats are going to shove a ring INSIDE a piano?

I couldn't believe it when he said he'd found it. I did manage to talk myself out of hysterics, so happily there was just a little bit of freaked out laughter. I'm so glad I married someone bright. Also, I apologized to Gurglepurr.

After all this, we pretty much decided a dinner of wine (me), beer (them) and cookies was in order. Although to be fair we did go out and get an HDMI cable for movie watching and got actual food while out. But still. Drinks were needed after this. What a night.

I am never taking this off again. Unless I first tie it to my face for safekeeping.

Russian music and burning fingers, among others.

2011-10-24T12:34:00.000-07:00

Saturday was Patrick's Tacoma Symphony concert, and it was really good. The soloist who performed on the chaconne from The Red Violin was excellent, and they began with Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, which is one of my favorites. It always makes my scalp prickle hearing the first few bars, brrrr! I wish classical music groups would do more stuff that has that kind of effect on their audience. Maybe if they did, fewer of them would go bankrupt. Or if they lowered the prices...

We made esquites and carnitas for dinner last night, while my sister made chocolate chip cookies. When I was getting the serrano peppers ready for the esquites, I made the serious mistake of using my fingers instead of a knife to get the seeds out. After about an hour, my fingers were BURNING! I tried sucking some of the burny stuff off, and that just made my mouth burn as well. Patrick looked up how to get rid of it, and while he did that I soaked my fingers in some milk to make it stop temporarily. We tried one of the remedies, putting olive oil on my fingers to solubilize the capsaicin and then washing it off, which brought the burning down a lot but didn't entirely rid me of it. My fingers are still a bit hot today! I learned my lesson.

It was absolutely pouring on the way into work today. Fortunately there weren't any accidents. We saw quite a few on the way down to Tacoma on Saturday, though. It was pouring then, too, and there was even a car in a ditch. I'm glad we made it safely! I'm also glad I wasn't the one driving. I get nervous enough driving in bad weather when I know where I'm going, and I've only been to the Pantages in Tacoma a few times in recent years, always far enough apart from the last visit that I've completely forgotten how to find it. Patrick saves the day. I should just get a t-shirt that says that...

I'm still having jaw pain and swelling when I eat, and it's either the same or slightly worse. I called the clinic back and left a message on the resident/fellow voicemail. Hopefully they get back to me soon. Obviously the antibiotics did not work (and this is why you shouldn't treat something until you know what it is you are treating), so we have to try something else. I'd rather they ordered an MRI than a CT scan, since it seems foolhardy to irradiate the site of a prior tumor... At any rate, I see them next week.

The prazosin might be having a good effect on my dreams. I haven't had any bad nightmares. I HAVE had plenty of anxiety, so if it's meant to fix that from day to day as well, it will have to be at a higher dose. Faced with even the smallest of stressors, my levels still skyrocket. I'll discuss this with the doctor when I see him next (Nov 1).

I got some black fingernail polish yesterday for my costume (called Fade to Black by Deborah Lippmann), and it works great. You have to put on a couple layers, but it isn't weirdly off-black or streaky, both of which are customary problems I've observed with black polish. This is pleasantly shiny and opaque. Black as a nail color looks surprisingly classy, I must say.

Maybe success?

2011-10-20T15:56:00.000-07:00

Dreams of the last two nights have been weird and mildly hilarious. The first one involved zombies, which should come as no surprise to any of you who have read about my nightmares, but these were apparently for tourists! They asked if I wanted to take my picture with them. I declined...

The other one seemed like it was flavored with bad, as if it was going to go south pretty quickly, but then the thing in it that was going to become horrifying got bored and wandered off. Really strange.

This sort of fits with what the doctor said might happen with the dreams. They just get altered, I guess. So they're not bad anymore. Or at least, with the vets, sometimes it was a different kind of bad. Like instead of being right in the middle of a war, they'd hear someone outside banging on the door.

At any rate, I call this a win! I've been feeling a little bit less anxious as well, kind of languid. As Patrick pointed out, after three decades of being on edge, not being at full alert all the time would feel rather languid.

Now of course I don't know if this is the drug or just a placebo effect, so I'll give it a while before passing full judgment on its efficacy. But so far I'm really encouraged! The doctor said I could increase it up to 2mg without an additional visit (although I have one on Nov 1 to see how things are progressing), so I may try that after a week or so and see if that makes it so I can have conversations with anyone without trepidation.

I could be all normal and shit, y'all! Crazy thought, I know...

I've had a few mild side effects, nothing that I'm really concerned about. I had a few stabbing head pains yesterday, but they've faded. When I wake up I feel really sunk deep in dreams and laden with fatigue still, but that doesn't really bother me. It goes away once I get up and move around. My heart beats a little faster when walking around, but I haven't had any dizziness or fainting worries at all. I can so deal with all of this. Wouldn't it be great if this really did the trick? I guess it's the first drug of its particular class, so I am one lucky girl that it was discovered.

Research, I heart you so much.

There is hope. And weird jewelry. But mostly hope.

2011-10-18T19:12:00.000-07:00

Well, I think the doctor visit was a success. He seemed to actually really listen to what I was saying, and talked with me about some options we have. I think what's going to end up happening is me being referred to someone for a complete psychiatric profile (which might be useful, this has never been done). Apparently it takes around 8 hours, joy.

I was feeling downcast at the prospect of having to go to yet more doctors before getting any sort of relief, but then he gave me a prescription for a drug to try. It's called Prazosin (brand name: Minipress), and it was apparently originally designed to treat high blood pressure. When they did a study involving vets with PTSD, they noticed that the drug made the vets' anxiety far less and their nightmares diminish or go away entirely.

THIS IS HELLA PROMISING, Y'ALL.

I am to try 1mg of this in the evenings and see what happens. Hopefully it will help me! Apparently the side effects mostly include lightheadedness when standing up quickly and nasal congestion, of all things. I can deal with a little snot, and I already have the lightheadedness, so that will be nothing new. We may up the dose a bit, depending on what it does at this level. I think 10mg is usually what people end up at, but it may take less to have an effect on me. He did say that I could up it to 2mg myself if I didn't notice anything with 1mg.

He wanted me to write out my life story (sort of a summary) in 10 pages or so, including some of the nightmare details, so that he could evaluate better how I am to be treated. This makes sense to me, since a lot of what I have to tell won't fit into a standard doctor appointment. It just takes too long to say all of it. I was going through old blog entries looking for examples of nightmares and filled up 5 pages just with nightmares from 2006-two months' worth of 2008, sigh. And that's not even taking all of them! Just the ones that seemed like they might be useful.

I meant to mail it to myself so I could keep working on it at home tonight, but sadly I forgot to do the emailing part, so there it sits at work. I'll finish it tomorrow and mail it off. He really seemed to wonder if there was some sort of traumatic event in my past or something, since what I deal with seems in many ways like PTSD, but there just isn't... I have a relentlessly normal and healthy family. Anyway, I'll explain what I can. Hopefully it's good for something.

Thank you all so much for your kind comments. I am lucky to have family, friends, and readers such as yourselves! <3

In other news, I ordered a killer necklace to go with my dress! I was going for creepy gothic since, after all, this is Mina Harker we're talking about here, not Elizabeth Bennet. I think this necklace, from the Ruin of Spider Queen collection by Suppurate System (out of Japan), does the trick:

Delightfully creepy!

This being Japanese, of course there is some fabulous Engrish to go along with it:
It is the cross necklace which imagined the burying article of the queen who manages the spider beyond a century. The corroded jewelry is embedded in the center of the cross of a wood base, and a spider nestles up.

I think it's splendid. Just the essence of creepy gothic-ness that I wanted. It is 10cm by 5.5cm, so it will accessorize my décolletage nicely without being oversized or minuscule. And you get a nifty postcard! I love freebies. Especially interesting ones that have the possibility of being framed on a wall later.

Total credit to RW for pointing me in this direction. That was a good idea you had, lady!

Two things I liked today, along with some ramblings

2011-10-17T15:27:00.000-07:00

This is a real place. It's in Antrim, Ireland:

And in a world obsessed with size (I say this as a curvy girl who will never be stick-thin no matter how little she eats), we have some perspective:

She might not be the best at spelling, but she's got her priorities straight.

I'm still feeling down and pretty anxious today, but the sobbing business was over as of Friday. My face is still swelling up every time I eat something, and we are on day 4.5 of antibiotics. I'm to call them back if it continues into Thursday, so let's all cross our fingers and hope it goes away.

Tomorrow is the appointment for what I hope will be some sort of anti-anxiety medication. Wish me luck, I could use it. These things always terrify me. I feel like I shouldn't complain because, hey, I don't live in Rwanda and I'm not getting raped every morning. I have a lot to be grateful for. I live in a warm, safe house, I have food and clean water, and I am not desperate for money or have any really serious health problems.

I guess it's a First World problem, this luxury of trying to treat mental issues. I'm sure they happen in other parts of the world too, places where the people who live there are not lucky enough to have funds or resources to help their mental problems. It can't be only in the First World.

I think I'm just arguing with myself. I suppose my problem is that I feel bad for even thinking I HAVE a problem. Even though it's obviously impacting my quality of life. See, that's one of the fun things about borderline. You spend a lot of time feeling like you're bad, evil, whatever. That you don't deserve to complain about anything because you aren't worth anything. I used to hear my brain thinking at me all the time that I should just die and go to hell because I belonged there. That gets old in a hurry, let me tell you. I never feel judgmental of other people's mental issues, whether they seek treatment or not. I just judge myself.

I was staring at myself in the mirror on our bedroom closet last night, and it was actually really creepy. If you get close enough and stare into your own eyes, it's like you have no idea who is looking back at you. Maybe I just have a scary face? Hah. I actually had to shake my head and look away at one point because it was so intense. I wonder why...

Anyway, I guess all this is to say that I would really like to feel less on edge all the time, and to not have any more panic attacks. Whether they involve gasping for air, wanting to throw up in the middle of the night, or sobbing uncontrollably, they are bad for me and they're making my life worse. So it's worth it to me to try getting rid of them, even if there are some side effects. I'm hoping for something that will make the day-to-day anxiety less and then something that I can take when I'm having an attack. Hopefully the latter will be fast-acting (under half an hour if possible). It doesn't happen every day, or even every week, but it would be nice to have something for when it does occur.

Thank you all for your support. I'm really grateful for all of you, and I wish you only the best. I wish ME only the best, too! ;) Hopefully we will all spend the latter portion of this year and all the ones to come as well as we can possibly be.

Cheers.

Irritating Friday, but now it's the weekend!

2011-10-15T14:00:00.000-07:00

Oh, y'all, Friday was awful!

When I woke up to get ready for work, I was suddenly hit with this wave of MUST CRY RIGHT NOW. I managed to keep my shit together until I got to work, with just some minor tearing up here and there, but when I tried to have a meeting I cried all over the place and got sent home. I explained that it wasn't anything in particular, and I mentioned my neck lump thing, and said that I just couldn't stop crying. Maybe the codeine didn't help... I don't know. But I hadn't taken any yet before this set in.

I kind of wonder if this is some sort of delayed stress response. I historically have a rather delayed one. I didn't cry when I first thought my tumor had come back, although I did feel crazy amounts of upset. So maybe this was just that come home to roost? When I had surgery I didn't snap out of it and freak out until a full week later.

Anyway, I went out to the garage and sat in my car and cried for a bit, then decided that I needed to leave before anyone came by and wondered wtf I was doing sitting in my car in the garage having a tear. I drove home and sobbed the whole way, then felt a little better. Got home, had a nap for about three hours, and that seems to have taken care of most of it.

It's just nerves or something, I swear. I guess at least it wasn't a normal panic attack. Those sound awful, like you're having an asthma attack. You can't breathe, your throat closes up, and the noise you make as you try to suck in air is this horrible shrieking sound. Fortunately I don't have those too often.

That appointment for anxiety on Tuesday cannot come soon enough. Fortunately the hoodie that I ordered arrived, so I am blissfully wrapped up in it as I am typing this. The husband has taken good care of me, as have several very kind friends, and I am trying to chill the hell out.

Harder than it sounds...

Ow. And also some derivative corporate crap. (updated)

2011-10-12T10:50:00.000-07:00

I think I have an infected parotid gland. Right where I have that scar from the tumor being removed, there's a spot that feels swollen and tender. When I eat it swells up even more, and I can feel the skin get tight against it. It's kind of below my jaw and also a little in front of my ear. I've been having jaw pain for a week or so, which I thought was mostly from stress (and a lot of it was), but this didn't help either.

Yes, Mom, I have an appointment. Although the earliest the UW's otolaryngology clinic could see me is Nov 3, so I'm thinking of looking elsewhere. The question is: do I go to a general internal doctor and then possibly have to get referred back? Or do I try to find an ENT doc somewhere else? Decisions, decisions... Maybe I'll keep the appointment I have an make another one sooner with a general internal doctor. Then if I need a referral I'll just use the appointment I already have at UW. That might be a good plan.

Update: I called Patrick's doctor's office, and his GP is going to see me on Tuesday morning of next week. In the meantime, his receptionist called UW and shamed them into seeing me earlier ("You ARE their patient, and they OUGHT to be taking care of you!"), so I have an appointment tomorrow at 1pm for my neck infection or whatever it is. It's like a miracle! Thank goodness. I'm keeping the GP appointment on Tuesday because I really need to do something about this anxiety. It's ridiculous. And I want to talk to him about that weird sudden weight gain that I can't seem to get rid of. Hopefully he can figure out what's wrong with me. I get exercise, I eat like a saint, and I've still got these 15 lbs stuck on me that appeared practically overnight, it seemed like. Sigh. We will see.

At first I was panicked, thinking the tumor had come back and I hadn't noticed. But tumors don't swell up, go back down, and then swell up again. And this directly corresponds with when I eat (good job Patrick for noticing this). So I'm thinking it's not a tumor. Yay!

I was worried I wouldn't be able to sleep last night with all the stress of the day, and indeed I wasn't tired when I got into bed last night to try falling asleep, so I took one 5mg Ambien and tied Patrick and I together with a scarf at the wrist... You never know! This was after I had him hide the keys. I wanted to sleep, but I didn't want to sleepwalk and wind up in Burien or jail.

It worked just fine though. I had no weird side effects and it knocked me out. It was a nice restful sleep, too, so I actually feel pretty good today. Hooray! I will remember this for possible future use. Some nights I just can't sleep worth a damn, and then I always feel horrible the next day. This might solve that occasional problem.

In other news, I listened to samples off of the album Evanescence released yesterday. Normally I like their stuff for the most part, probably because Amy Lee's voice happens to have about the same range as mine, making her pieces really easy to sing to, but I can't really recommend this. Everything sounded pretty much the same, and I didn't notice any songs that really stood out, with the exception of one bonus track called Secret Door. That was neat, but one good song does not an album make. The first track on the album had some sort of weird rhythm that was vaguely off-putting. I think I'm going to pass on this one.

Just say no.

Weekend plans and other stuff

2011-10-07T15:45:00.000-07:00

Patrick's got another recording session at the Bastyr chapel on Saturday, so I'm going to go listen to that. It should be lovely. They are always so amazing to listen to. I'm hoping to purchase a cushion for my rear end before going, because holy buttmonkeys are those pews uncomfortable if you sit in them for 2 hours! The pillows I have are either noisy (buckwheat) or too squashy (no point), so I need a slightly firmer one to take the rump pain away.

The chapel at Bastyr where Patrick records.

What it usually looks like during recording.

He's also been learning a lot about the recording software we got, so he redid the first instrumental tracks for Lament, along with working on some other planning. Progress is being made! Slowly, but it is. Eventually we'll get around to adding the vocals. I think for each one we're going to make a separate track with the notes for the current vocal line plunked out on it (played on keyboard so I can hear them as I sing, makes it WAY easier to get the right pitches than just trying to memorize them and sing them while the accompaniment plays something else). We can then delete the plunked tracks after they're no longer needed. Cheating! Sort of.

We're still getting the house ready for my sister to come stay with us for a while. We've got to clean a bunch of stuff and move the catbox out to the kitchen (yay, how wonderful) so she can actually shut the door to her bedroom while she's here and have some privacy. I wouldn't want poop right next to me while I was sleeping, either. It's times like this that make me wish we had a utility room or something. Oh well. I guess we'll just have to keep it even cleaner than we usually do. She'll be here until past Halloween for a vet school externship, and I hope it goes well. It's always interesting having someone else in your living space for an extended period of time.

I've been having a lot of anxiety lately for one reason or another, so my muscles have been spasming and my jaws ache from clenching them. I take NSAIDs (Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs) and use the heating pad to get rid of the spasms. These mostly help. I go back and forth debating whether an anti-anxiety drug is worth it, but I'm still mostly on the side of no, which is fine. If it gets worse I'll see about it. Right now I'm doing pretty well with just the Ibuprofen/Naproxen, etc. Just a few nightmares within the last couple months, nothing too horribly bad.

It helps that my day-to-day waking existence is so much happier now! Really takes the edge off, let me tell you.

Bad brie and Dr. Gurglepurr

2011-10-06T09:22:00.000-07:00

We're still going round about that cat's name. So far we've come up with: Sunshine, Orange Thing, Dr. Jones, Gurglepurr, Cuddles (what the shelter named him), and a variety of less pleasant monikers depending on what he's currently up to. Dr. Phineas Gurglepurr sounds rather impressive, if a bit unbearably British. He might be British. I'm fairly sure he'd eat fish'n'chips. Or fish ampersand chips, as I like to call it. I think I'm clever. It's a disease.

Widget, Monkey, and Dr. Phineas Gurglepurr. Awesome.

Rest in peace, Steve Jobs. Say what you want about the man, he gave it everything he had until the curtains fell.

We went shopping last night and, being the cheapass I am, I decided to pick up a package of brie that was on sale. We eat cheese rather too quickly in this house, so I figured we'd be long done with it by the time the sell by date came upon us (10/7). We got it home, opened it up, and it smelled awful! Some sort of horrible rotting vegetative stench or whatever. I've had smelly cheese before, but brie is not supposed to be pungent. That's sort of its whole deal. Anyway, poor Patrick tried a bit to see what it tasted like and then was ill for a while after, starting about two hours later. I was not about to eat anything that smelled like that, so I didn't have any.

Pickiness saves the day! Remember that, kids.

We're taking it back today. While they can sell food cheaper when it's getting closer to its sell by date, they ought to not be selling actual rotten food. I frown on that. Yuck.

This week has really been full of multi-car accidents on the freeway. I don't know what's going on. Maybe it's all the students driving around now that school is back in session. Whatever it is, it's ruining my commute! So kindly knock it off, y'all. Thanks.

Date night, Orange Thing and gutters, oh my!

2011-10-03T14:52:00.000-07:00

Weirdly, Patrick and I decided to have a date night on Sunday. We were originally going to go for Chinese food, as there is this really good authentic place on Lake City, of all peculiar locations. They have four different menus, if you can believe that. Americanized, native, vegetarian, and some sort of Special Breakfast Menu. I don't know. Anyway, we went and it turned out that Urbanspoon had lied to us. They were not in fact open until 10 on a Sunday. They were only open until 9:30 and the kitchen closed at 9. It was somewhere around 8:45 when we turned up.

So we tried to think of other places to go and remembered Bizzarro, an aptly named very strange looking Italian restaurant in Wallingford. It's another one of those places where the decorators were on speed and LSD at the same time:

The sign says "Nobody is 'fine' with water." How true...

Dinner was excellent. I had the Forest Floor Frenzy, which is in their words "wild mushrooms and walnuts foraged from the darkest woods melded with a cream sherry sauce and our house made pappardelle ribbon pasta." Patrick had the Sugar Snap Pea Carbonara, described as "a traditional blending of fried house cured pancetta, chicken stock, egg and parmesan with sugar snap peas tossed with our hand made linguini pasta."

Both were very tasty. They had some crab-potato fritter thingies as appetizers for that day's special, so we tried those. They were really good. The red pepper aioli that went with the fritters really made it. I think they definitely needed the touch of spice. We ended up downing two half-carafes of house red wine, which was pretty tasty. Date nights really need to be on nights when we have days off the following morning, though... Oh well, wasn't very hungover. And it was worth it.

For an abrupt change of subject, we got the gutters cleaned! Soooo pleased about that. I got up on the roof and threw what appeared to be potting soil out of the gutters for an hour or so while Patrick unscrewed the downspouts and emptied the filth out of them. I doubt whether those gutters have ever been cleaned. If so, at least not for a couple years. It was pretty bad. I found a semi-rotten dog chew bone and two separated halves of a tennis ball up there as well.

While I was up there, I asked Patrick to throw a wet scrubbie up to me, and I cleaned both skylights. You do not realize how dirty those things are until they've been cleaned! I guess it was dirt or algae or something that was on them, but now they're all better. After I got off the roof I swept all the dirt off the deck and we just barely managed to finish everything before it started pouring rain. Guess that was a timely gutter cleaning. The rainy season (read: most of the year) has begun again in earnest, it would appear. Yay!

This picture is actually from a few days ago, not really sure when, but I thought it was terribly cute. The Orange Thing was sacked out in the papasan chair we used to have in our living room (we have since put it up in the loft to make room for the music recording station), and I couldn't resist a picture. He's just so fluffy!

Pictured: cuteness

Weirdly he looks as if he has no tail, but I assure you it exists. It is exceptionally long and fluffy, and is almost permanently waved around looking like a giant crème brulée-colored question mark. Overgrown kitten, indeed.

Conversations with live people

2011-09-30T09:23:00.000-07:00

Which is only vaguely humorous if you know there's a Buffy episode called Conversations With Dead People, and even then it's not that great. Sorry. I'm still waking up.

Me: You have really huge thighs. It's amazing.

Patrick: I know, I have giant femurs. If I ever lost a leg, I'd just save the femur to beat off muggers with.

Me: This is kind of morbid.

Patrick: Well, I'd clean it first. It'd be a really clean femur.

Me: You're so considerate. If I'm ever beaten to death with a leg bone, I hope it's by someone as hygiene-conscious as you.

In other news, this morning we saw some lady driving the wrong way up the one-way street we were on. I honked and she kind of swerved over to the side, but then pulled out again and kept going when the cars had gone by. Siiiiigh.

Patrick was testing out the recording software last night and did a bunch of humming into the mic to make sure it was picking things up correctly. Let me tell you, the Lament does not sound nice with man humming. It sounds even worse when you mess with the settings and pitch shift the notes up 8 instead of 12 (a full octave). The numbers denote half steps, not whole steps, which is the difference between going from an A to an A#/B-flat and an A to a B. Horrible sounding when you get it off.

Playing around with settings on this software is alternately amusing and ghastly, depending on what comes out. I told him that I was rather relieved he wasn't capable of sounding haunting and ethereal. It'd be really weird for a 6'4" man to manage that, and probably kind of upsetting. He agreed.

Oh, the ladder was finally delivered! This means we get to spend a Very Exciting Time cleaning out the multiple years' worth of slop from our gutters. Woohoo! I think I need to get some rubber gloves or something else waterproof. I have gardening gloves, but they'd quickly get soaked through with ick. So rubberized it is. Or maybe for Patrick. I don't know. We'll probably argue about who does it. He'll insist he should because he doesn't have to get up on the ladder as high to reach the gutters, so it's safer. I'll tell him it's gross and I deal with gross on a regular basis, so I should do it.

We sort of have a cat name. It's Dr. Sunshine Orange Thing Jones. Yeah, I know. He gets called Sunshine when we're trying to be good parents, Orange Thing when he's being naughty (or assorted worse names, depending on the crime), and Dr. Jones here and there because we're brain-dead and can't remember what we named him before. I suppose it's better than Hey You, but not by much.

Art! Maybe.

2011-09-29T09:04:00.000-07:00

If you believe music is art, which I do. Patrick got some updated recording software and we set up a sort of miniature recording studio in our living room. This sounds like it's terribly unwieldy, but actually it's mostly out of the way. The idea is to use it to record me and then either layer me on top of myself first (me singing the main line over me singing the harmony) or just have me singing on a solo track with backing music.

I am of two minds about this. It sounds really cool, but it's also a wee bit terrifying if you're like me and you loathe listening to recordings of yourself. I always stay in a state of pre-cringing listening to myself. It's like watching Olympic figure skaters. I'm always like please don't fall, please don't fall... Sigh. I guess I'm just waiting for something to sound awful.

I told Patrick it would probably sound like mating goats, followed up with a "Baaaaaaa!" noise to illustrate my point. He was having none of it and told me it would be fine. We shall see.

First on the list is actually a piece from a video game. It's called the Lament of the Highborne, and it's from Warcraft. It's sung by the queen of the undead, Sylvanas, and a choir of banshees. It's all in this fake language that Blizzard made up, but it's still haunting and I've always found it very pretty. My Aussie best friend sent me the music when he came up with the recording idea, so I will suck it up and get over my nerves for that reason.

It will probably be a little different than the original, since I don't think I really want to sing it four times (the choir is three parts, plus the solo). We'll probably do a synth choir for the backing stuff, orchestral instrumentation in the background instead of the piano suggested on the sheet music, and then me singing the solo on top of it all. The synth choir is a good idea for another reason: there's something called an obligato that appears twice in the backing vocals, and both times it ends on a high B-flat. For people who are not sopranos, this can be a difficult note to sustain. I've held a C before, but it's only happened once and I'm not prepared to kill myself trying to achieve this note. Thus, yay for technology! The solo itself only goes up to an E, so that's easy.

It's always a mental thing, you know? Even if you've sung notes far above whatever you're currently staring down, but you've convinced yourself that a certain note is The Highest Note In The Piece, EEEEK!, you'll have problems with it. This is why it helps to drink a bit.

I'm not kidding.

When I was trying to learn the Habanera (L'amour est un oiseaux rebelle) from Carmen, I had serious issues with getting some of the higher notes at first. Then I decided that it was all mental and I needed to get past my mental block. I had a couple glasses of wine and then gave it a try when I was feeling more relaxed. Bingo! Immediate success. I went to my lesson the next week and sang it, whereupon my teacher asked what on earth I'd done, because it sounded so good. I told her I got drunk and tried it and she was like okay, whatever works for you.

I don't think they like it when it turns out the secret to success is booze instead of practice...

I totally crowed about this.

2011-09-28T09:45:00.000-07:00

As those of you who read this blog know, I'm.... not fond of traffic around here. That's putting it politely. I'm sure every place has its problems with drivers, but here we seem to have a disproportionate number of asshats. We have aggressive drivers, people who insist on driving in the carpool lane whilst not being a carpool AND THEN CUTTING OVER INTO THE OTHER LANE WHILE HOLDING UP TRAFFIC.

NOW I'M ALL SHOUTY. SEE?

Anyway, yeah, this enrages me. So this morning I was deeply pleased to see cops stationed at various points along the carpool lane, gleefully pulling over people who were not carpools but were convinced they were important enough to count as two for the purposes of HOV lane driving.

One was even waiting at the most brilliant place I've seen yet: when you actually exit the express lanes via the HOV lane, you go through a tunnel and come to a place where it splits. One goes right and the other left, but both exits require you to be a carpool to use them. There is no way out! You can't get past a cop without him seeing you. He was sitting just at the juncture of these spots today, and it was brilliant. I cackled madly upon seeing this.

We've been reporting people we see who are driving in the HOV lane without actually being carpools pretty regularly now, since we can't shoot them with a flamethrower *tear* and it's kind of satisfying. Nothing happens to them except they get a letter suggesting they don't understand the purpose of the carpool lane, but maybe it's giving the cops a clue that they should really start policing it better. Good. Do that instead of getting speeders. It's not like anyone can really speed during rush hour anyway, and these people are making traffic worse for everyone by stopping an entire lane of traffic so they can cut back over into the lane they want to be in. I HATE YOU ALL. I hope those tickets are expensive. Hah.

We watched some more Buffy last night, Becoming Parts 1 & 2. The end is so sad! I nearly teared up, but then I'm rather emotional lately on account of biology deciding to be pesky. Being a girl can suck at times. Then again, we get to wear pretty dresses, so I suppose it evens out.

Chicago!

2011-09-26T13:13:00.000-07:00

I spent a large chunk (nearly six hours) of this weekend watching a production of Chicago. This was not six hours for one show, it was two shows of about three hours apiece, done by the same people both times.

Why on earth would I watch the same show twice? Because my husband was playing in it! The production was put on by a group called the Hi-Liners, and it was performed in Burien, which is sort of around the same general area as Sea-Tac airport, for any of you who know where that is.

It was actually really good. I was pleasantly surprised. I didn't expect much going in, since some of the performers were very young, but it was highly entertaining. I was kind of glad they changed this walking over chairs thing (standing on a chair, then stepping on the back, tipping it over and sort of jump/walking off of it as it fell) after the first performance I saw, since I was surprised no necks were broken engaging in that little feat. Apparently that's a classic move by some old-time artist, but it looked rather dangerous.

Anyway, it was fun to go and listen to Patrick play a show like this. He usually does very classical stuff or the recording gigs, none of which have much room (the recording gigs have absolutely none) for adding your own little touches to a performance. With the music in Chicago, he could really throw in a bunch of sexy, sultry pitch changes, add or drop a few notes here and there to make it sound better, and so forth. It was a nice change from the regularly scheduled program. The growled out trombone was pretty wicked. It's so wonderful having an awesome husband.

Seeing this show really cleared up a lot of details for me. I'd never seen the entire show before, and I'd only rented Chicago the movie once, stupidly without realizing beforehand that it was a musical, so I was really pissed when suddenly everyone started singing and turned it off. Thus when we did a few scenes from it in my former ensemble class, I had absolutely no context for any of it and didn't even bother figuring out what was going on. Now everything makes much more sense!

We watched a couple episodes of Buffy last night, and I have so missed everyone's favorite vampire slayer. We watched Halloween, the one where everyone who bought costumes at a particular shop changes into the character they're dressed up as, and Hush, the silent episode which was nominated for an Emmy. Oh Buff, how good it is to see you again. It's even better this time around, since now I have a hilarious husband to bounce snarky comments off of. I think a Buffy marathon is in order.

I was scheduled to have a massage last night, but Deja, who is now doing house calls, evidently got it all bamboozled in her books and it didn't end up happening. This was fine with me, as I had a lovely dinner with Patrick, but we still ended up rearranging the bedroom to try and accommodate her massage table. It turned out well enough that I think we're going to leave it. It's a bit more spacious now. We moved the wicker chest at the end of the bed over against the wall and scooted a bookcase over, along with cramming a kitty pole in the corner over by my side of the bed.

I realize this means nothing to any of you without pictures, but sadly I am otherwise occupied at present and can't get any. Alas.

In this week's edition of Delicious Things You Can Do With Fruit, Patrick made a wonderful dessert for us. Granny Smith apples peeled and rolled in cinnamon sugar, then baked in egg-painted puff pastry and topped with some of that remaining Devonshire cream. Yum! I am a lucky, lucky girl, I tell ya.

Good thing we started up an exercise program...

Yes, that's me wearing camo.

2011-09-20T16:56:00.000-07:00

He has moons on his wings!

It was in Montana and I was cold. Leave me alone. That is a giant moth my mom found outside the house one evening while Patrick and I were visiting. Isn't he beautiful? Of course still alive, and very gentle. He just sat on my hand. I think he enjoyed the warmth of my fingers. After holding him for a while and taking pictures, we set him outside the dogs' yard and he was gone in the morning.

This is in lieu of an actual post with significant content. I'm waaaay too tired of a girl for that. I'll check back in with y'all around Thursday or possibly Friday. Whew.

J: How did your first couple days go?! I'm dying to know...

Last few days

2011-09-16T17:02:00.000-07:00

1. Shoved an air conditioner up a ladder into the loft by myself. That was... interesting. Before any of you ask, Patrick wasn't around. This was during his Chicago gig. I strategically wait until he's gone to do insane stuff sometimes. A girl has to do something when her guy is off being all musical!

2. In the process ripped a blister off my foot so now I have a raw spot on the bottom.

3. Began the Couch to 5K running program with Patrick, which is currently more of a walking/jogging program. I do not like running, but I will do it if it will get rid of my excess weight.

4. We invented a delicious tomato soup last night! It was a collaborative project. It involved tomato sauce, two cans of home-canned tomatoes (thanks, Mom!), one fresh tomato, garlic, onion, the leftover Mexican cream we had in the fridge, some fresh corn cut off the cob, and fresh thyme. Yum.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Don't expect many posts next week, because I'll be crazy busy with work. Next week is going to be intense. Bisous!

Assorted lunchtime ramblings

2011-09-13T14:27:00.000-07:00

Hola, lovers.

I am enjoying a fabulous meal at the moment, consisting of roasted butternut squash with sage and delicious Chinese egg noodles with a bit of sesame oil. Patrick made both, and I am wallowing in how lucky I am with each bite.

The man-treasure himself is presently off warming up in preparation for a concert he's playing tonight. He is part of the Tacoma Symphony contingent backing up the band Chicago, and he looks simply luscious. Concert-wear for musicians, how I heart you. Nothing beats a tall, handsome man in a tux. Even if said man has misplaced his black cufflinks and is instead forced to wear weirdly LSD-inspired looking multicolored ones. We were praying no one would notice, but then half a dozen people at his office did, so we've given up on that.

Lest you lot think this post is merely composed of bragging, allow me to irritably inform you that the ladder we were supposed to receive in order to clean out the gutters either Sunday or Monday has still not arrived. The gutters therefore remain weedy, which does not fill me with glee. One would think that facilitating someone else doing your job would inspire said ladder-loaner to deliver, but such does not appear to be the case. Possibly because his house is not the one with a small garden growing next to the roof. I am not about to buy a ladder for a house I don't own, so I guess the vegetative sample will just have to carry on.

Oh! The spouse has texted me. What could it be? Surely it's some scintillating commentary on his bottomless love for me, or how he's pining in my absence....

"I hate fairs."

Agreed, husband mine, agreed. Along with normal hatred of fair food and atmosphere, carnies creep me the hell out. It's like an entire complex of used car salesmen. With corn dogs and fanny packs.

In other news, the cool weather has returned! It's 64.2F and overcast where I live, and I couldn't be more pleased. Well, maybe a little more if it rained. But I'm holding out hope for that. The pilfered maple continues to appear perky, so that's gratifying. My yanking and dirt manipulation skills are crazy good, yo.

I hope you are all having fabulous weeks, lovers.

Besos,
A

P.S. Robert, I am not commenting on your blog because I can't, actually. Every time I try to go there my browser freezes up. I'm not sure what is going on. I'm not ignoring you on purpose. Just FYI.

Grand Theft Tree (or possibly just Petty Larceny Tree)

2011-09-12T10:16:00.000-07:00

Actually it might not have been stealing at all. It depends on if you consider the mess of growing stuff alongside a road as belonging to anyone. But I like to think of it as a heist because then I can consider myself dangerous and deep into the world of organized shrub crime!

Ahem. Anyway.

I really wanted a maple tree for our front yard, particularly because I finally got around to asking the owner's son if the clumps of weedy-looking business here and there in the lawn were planted intentionally or if I could get rid of them. He said she didn't care about that stuff, as they weren't trees, and they were probably just weeds, so I am going to get rid of them at the earliest opportunity!

This means that I have plenty of space for a tree. The yard could really use one right smack in the middle. There is some stuff growing around that loves the heat, like the rosemary we planted and the lilac along the south side of the house, but most of it prefers the cooler partial shade provided by a tree. Rhododendrons, etc. I'm hopeful that if we can get one established there it will shade part of the yard at least a bit, and the lawn should grow better. Plus the poor rhodie won't get so dry. I water it, but I think it's just not a fan of hot weather and sunshine. I do not blame it. Neither am I.

We went to several nurseries yesterday, with no luck. We found one maple that was the type I was looking for, just a regular, run-of-the-mill maple tree, but it was $100! Everything else was weird ornamental varieties. Does no one plant normal maple trees anymore? We seem to be the only people who want one. I kept a lookout as we drove home for trees that might have dropped seeds that we could use instead, but I didn't see anything til we went out on a walk (read: tree theft reconnaissance mission) afterward.

I found a few dried ones, but they looked pretty old, so we just kept walking. As we strolled down the street, I saw a sapling growing from the left bank alongside the road! We tried digging it out with a stick, but the stick was rotten and broke in two pretty quickly, so we went with the yanking method. We tried to be delicate about it, but there is only so delicate two adults yanking on a tree can be.

We got it out of the bank without too much harm, and it still had a pretty good set of roots left on it, so I'm hopeful. We went home immediately and stuck it in a pot with some good soil, watered it, then went out to get more dirt as it appeared we didn't have nearly enough (I'd only bought enough to start some seeds, as I didn't anticipate finding anything larger).

While at the store, I happened to see the most gorgeous orchid I've ever run across. Did you know they came in blue?!

Me neither!

It was expensive for an orchid, $34.99, so I told myself that that was too much and attempted to keep going. Patrick The Enabler saw the look that came over my face at the sight of this plant (abject adoration, blue is my favorite color) and was having none of it, so he decided that we needed to become the proud parents of yet another tropical plant. (It was not that hard to persuade me, which I'm sure shocks all of you.)

I am totally in love with this plant. It's in the bathroom where it can enjoy the humidity and bright indirect light that we get in there. I now have a total of three orchids in the bathroom. One is a yellowish when it blooms, the other is purple, and now this one. The purple one has just started blooming again after finishing a first run a couple months ago (it was the plant Patrick gave me the day he proposed). I consider this a good omen.

I seem to have failed at taking a picture of the purple one for you, so instead enjoy another one of the blue orchid in its place in the bathroom!

Mmmmmm, blue.

Simply lovely. SIIIIIGH...

So, back to the tree: we got the needed dirt on our trip, along with the orchid, and added more of that to the pot as soon as we got home. We also appropriately diluted and dumped in a bunch of rooting hormone, so hopefully that will help. I thought about dipping the roots like you're supposed to, but I figured I'd disturbed the tree enough already, and the worst that could happen with adding rooting hormone to the soil would be it just not doing anything at all. /shrug

Filled up the pot sufficiently and watered the hell out of it. It looks pretty good this morning, so I'm hopeful. I want it to get a good start in potting soil before we transfer it to the yard. The soil in this area is utter crap. It's full of rocks and quite sandy, so the water just drains right through it. If we were to ever buy the place, we'd need to actually get sod laid down with a bunch of good topsoil in order to have a decent lawn. I must be an adult. I'm complaining about dirt.

Classic! And stolen. Sort of.

Grow! That's all I ask. Just don't die. Hopefully this works. This yard is going to take ages to set in order. And also, the gutters apparently have potting soil in them or something. A few weeks ago we noticed a small weed garden sprouting from the right side of the front gutter, and when we pulled them out they appeared to have potting soil all around their roots. Smelled like it, anyway. So either someone deliberately put potting soil in the gutters (?!) or the leaves and whatnot that clog gutters up had just decomposed over the years into something very similar. Needless to say, we're cleaning the gutters as soon as Jake (owner's son) drops off the ladder. Supposedly that will be tonight, but we shall see. I know you all were just dying to hear about my gutters and crappy topsoil, so you're welcome!

In other news, we watched Bram Stoker's Dracula on Saturday night, which is always a good time. Oh, to wear all the girl outfits in that movie! Lucky actresses. Patrick had never seen it before. I would express more amazement and horror about that, but it'd be sort of hypocritical, considering how I hadn't seen Ghostbusters before this spring. I think Coppola's take on the classic tale is incredibly romantic, and a very satisfying way to end the whole business. Since I am again a sucker for romance (Get it? Sucker, vampire movie..... oh never mind.), I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I looked rather closely at Mina's red dress during the absinthe scene, and I must say that I really like mine better. The plunging back of the original is not really me, and I vastly prefer the corset lacing motif. The sleeves also seem to be better on the re-imagined version. It seems a bit ridiculous, but I have odd considerations of practicality that fit into my choosing of Victorian-era gowns.... go figure. I'm willing to wear bustles and hoop skirts, etc, but heaven forfend my sleeves should drag in my soup! I guess we all have priorities.

In closing, huge congratulations to my dear friend J, who managed to get a job in this horrible market. In Laramie, no less, which is not exactly an easy task. Well done, lady! I told you they'd hire you.

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS

2011-09-08T09:27:00.001-07:00

Patrick decided to give me the Mina dress as a combined birthday-Christmas gift (but I get it in time for Halloween)!!

Since he's a professional musician, he gets paid for gigs that he plays, and it's an additional source of income for us. He has a regular job too, so it's just extra cash. I am STOKED! We measured me for it last night and got the whole thing going. The lady says she will have it for me before Halloween, and I'm sooooo excited!

I fully plan on wearing this to every formal event (by "formal" I mean "everything") that I attend for, like, ever. Yes. Plus it gives me an excuse to go hear Patrick play more. Secretly, I would've done that anyway. But now I can look rad doing it!

Maybe I'll start a trend... I will have you all know that I apparently already inspired someone to start a fancy dress collection of her own. It's not much, but damn it I am an inspiration to someone about something! hah

This will totally be me. Except without the blonde part.

It's that time of year again!

2011-09-07T15:53:00.000-07:00

"And what time is that?" you might ask. Why, Halloween Costume Planning Time!

I know, it's still grotesquely sunny out and warm. But there is just the barest breath of fall in the air... or perhaps that's just the pile of leaves currently rotting on top of my deck. Note to self: sweep.

I really wanted to be Mina Harker this year and have Patrick be Dracula, but we are going to have to go with something cheaper for me. This is an absolutely lovely dress, but holy mackerel cupcakes is it pricey!

How great would this look?!

I love this shot particularly. The lace blindfold really makes it.

Anyway, as I said, a different look is required. I refuse to half-ass Mina.

I also considered some sort of witchy sorcerer-type motif, and I really liked that dark Darien robe that I may or may not have linked on here before. If not, here it is. If so, well, skip this part.

I would look killer in this. Minus the dreadlocks.

Still pretty damn pricey, but not nearly as unattainable as the Mina gown. I think I will keep perusing. I suppose I could be myself again this year, since that's always morphing into something new and weird, but I'm feeling more like being a character.

I love this holiday! If you don't know about this already, you ought to get a copy of Ray Bradbury's book The Halloween Tree and read it. I have a splendid collector's edition of this, and I read it every year. I fell in love with it as a kid by watching the Halloween specials on TV. Bradbury himself wrote the script for it, so it's not all cocked up like most adaptations. It is a book for all ages, and I find it endlessly fascinating. He has a way of evoking the deliciousness of a crisp, smokey October evening, complete with leaves swirling in the wind and the vaguest hint of ghostly presence wafting from candlelit pumpkins.

Any costume ideas, feel free to suggest away! Keep in mind that stuff fitting me best will have a corset-like or Victorian look to it. I have a very hourglass shape, so no awful pencil skirts or bodysuits. No one needs to see that. Even Halloween isn't meant for that kind of scary.

Not dead, I promise.

2011-09-06T09:33:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posting, y'all. When I'm not crazy busy with work these days, I'm either sleeping or trying REALLY HARD to relax. The husband and I had a lovely 4-day weekend together due to the holiday and me needing to take a day off work last week because of going into overtime. It was wonderful. We just hung out with the kitties and played video games, slept, etc. Patrick said it was the weekend of horrible looking food. He kept making these scrambled egg (or tofu, depending) and couscous things with veggies in them, which were delicious but looked remarkably like vomit. I did not mind this. I never mind when someone else cooks for me!

Aaaaand we're past Labor Day, so hopefully this weather will go back to being its normal cool, drippy self! It's not that bad, just in the 80s during the day, but that doesn't mean I like it. We have not once needed to use that air conditioner we bought a couple months ago. Figures, you know. But if we hadn't bought it, the temperatures would almost certainly have been in the 100s. The weather is ornery like that.

My phone maintained last night that it was still Saturday in Shoreline, where I live, but everywhere else it was Monday... I think said phone is full of wishful thinking.This new Blogger interface is strange. I might like it, but I'm not sure. I suppose if I actually posted more I'd know if I did or not. :p

Belated happy birthday to my father! I love you, Old Wolf. You're marvelous.

I hope you're all well and gearing up for fall! Or spring, if you're reading this in Australia (I'm looking at you, FH).

New loofah, now with 100% less earwig!

2011-08-25T10:59:00.000-07:00

I was taking a companionable shower with Patrick the other night when I noticed something odd on my shoulder.

Me: What is that? Do you see that?

Patrick: What? Where?

Me: THERE. It’s a leg. Some sort of insect leg.

Patrick: Ick! Where did it come from?

Me: I don’t know. WHAT? There is another one! On my arm! Where are all these insect legs coming from?!

Patrick: *looks around for mysterious dismembered insect*

Me: OH MY GOD THERE’S A DEAD EARWIG IN MY LOOFAH!

Patrick: Gah!

Me: Ew ew ew! I wonder how long that’s been in there… Yuck! I must’ve just squashed him to death and then smeared him around. Oh lordy. Um, what should I do with this thing?

Patrick: Throw it away!

Me: Okay good, I mostly just wanted permission to do that. I hate wasting stuff, but I couldn’t stand the thought of washing with something that might still have earwig juice in it.

I got a new one and now I can wash without insect legs mysteriously appearing on me. Check your shower pouf, everyone! You never know what awful thing might have died in it…

Delicious August

2011-08-22T12:33:00.001-07:00

That's right, boys and girls. It's peach time again! Mmmmm, peaches...

Last night we ate what was possibly the most delicious thing I've ever taken a bite of. We grilled peaches that had been drizzled (although I also used a basting brush) with balsamic vinegar and sprinkled with brown sugar, then added a dollop of double Devon cream to each peach half and scattered shredded coconut on top.

Mind you, this is not the oddly sticky coconut you usually get in stores in the baking aisle. We found this at a place called Plaza Latina on Aurora, and it's just the grated coconut without weird additives. It's crunchier and it doesn't stick to stuff.

As for the peaches, you start them off flat side down on the grill, then wait for them to look nicely browned/charred (not too black, just with the expected grill marks). After you see that color start to develop, you turn them onto their rounded sides and sprinkle a bit more brown sugar over the cut halves. Wait until they seem softened all the way through, then remove and add the cream and coconut. We put the lid back on the grill for the face up cooking portion so they would get more heat all around and not be still raw while the bottom got black.

Holy good God was that ever something. I could eat those all year. Every day. Never get sick of them. YUM. Just like eating heaven.

Anyway, that aside, we're still having a fun time squirting medicine down Monkey's throat. She had a fever of 105F when we took her in to the clinic, and they gave her fluids and meds, so we are continuing her regimen of those until the course is finished. We tried tempting her to eat them with chicken-flavored pill pockets and (sigh) even prosciutto, but both of these only worked once for some reason. So now we mash the pills and make a suspension in water that we suck up in a syringe and squirt into her thrashing throat. FUN TIMES! This is what you get when you're difficult. We tried the tasty option, but noooooo.

I will publicly admit that I unfairly maligned the Orange Thing. Whose name is still undecided upon. He is still a douche sometimes, but he's not THAT much of a douche. This infection thing wasn't to do with him. Oh, and the leg issues were apparently caused by muscle aches resulting from the fever. Sorry, Orange Thing. Forgive me?

I had a hard time sleeping last night. I think it's because it was fairly warm, although not yet warm enough for the air conditioner. I just could not find a comfortable position, and I kept waking up. Hate nights like that. Seems like it lasts forever, but you never get any decent sleep, so it might as well not have happened at all.

We watched Mr and Mrs Smith last night again. I love that movie. It is so funny, and I enjoy watching my favorite movies repeatedly so that once I know the story I can look around for lots of other little details and enjoy the entire film more. It's amazing what you miss when you're trying really hard to pay attention to a storyline and follow all the action and dialogue.

Today
Rain 70°F
80% chance of precipitation

Tonight
Rain 58°F
90% chance of precipitation

COME ON, WEATHER! RAAAAAIN!

Murder sheds, corn, etc.

2011-08-20T18:07:00.001-07:00

Patrick and I went on a hike last weekend, and it was splendid. Even the part where we were sort of running down the mountain trying not to face plant into a rock. I had a lovely time.

On the way back we were sitting in traffic going through this teeny town called Gold Bar, and they had a collection of creepy buildings surrounded by high fences with signs attached to them saying Absolutely No Trespassing and No Public Inquiries. I told Patrick that obviously these were murder sheds, since what else would you need a ton of creepy shacks for in some tiny-ass town? He agreed.

Monkey had a terrible fever the other day, and then developed some eye leakage, so we took her in to the vet. For the record, if you're around the Seattle area and have a sick kitty, take your pet to Cats Exclusive. They're fabulous. The place is clean and neat, and it doesn't have that stomach-turning disinfectant-mixed-with-dog smell that a lot of vet places have. Everyone was very nice, and our Monkey is now on the mend.

We were trying to administer fluids night before last when a truck passed by outside and scared her to death, and she got me pretty good trying to escape. I could actually see down into my hand where she punctured it! I cleaned it up and put some antibiotic stuff on it, and it seems like it's healing fine, along with the other welts she gifted me with.

We went to Senor Moose for brunch today, and had this delicious corn thing. It's apparently called esquites, which is corn cooked with epazote (apparently a sort of plant). Well, I had that as an entrée, even though it's supposed to be an appetizer, and Patrick had some type of carne asada tacos. We shared deliciously authentic guacamole and plantains with cinnamon and sugar, as well as a couple cups of Mexican hot chocolate. I swear this place is the best in the world for that drink. It's wonderful! You always expect it to be like those awful beverages where it's all thick and delicious on top, but then you take a swig and it's like slightly chocolate-flavored water beneath.

Anyway, it was all awesome, and here is the recipe for esquites, from a cookbook that we went and bought after eating there:

Esquites
(serves 6)

6 small ears of corn
2 tbsp unsalted butter
3 tbsp lard or vegetable oil
1 1/2 tsp salt or to taste
2 serrano chiles or any fresh, hot green chiles, finely chopped
(Note: the dish I had came with red flecks, not green, so perhaps you could substitute chili powder or some type of red pepper)
3 heaped tbsp chopped epazote leaves
8 oz thick sour cream or crème fraîche
Fresh corn tortillas

1. Cut through each ear of corn at the stalk end and remove all the leaves and silks. cut the ears into slices about 1 1/2 inches thick. (When I had this, it was cut off the cob into kernels, so I recommend that)

2. Heat a heavy pan into which the corn will just fit in one layer. Melt the butter and lard or oil together in the pan, then add the corn, salt and chiles. Cover the pan and cook the corn over medium heat, shaking the pan from time to time and turning the corn over once, until it is tender and slightly browned - about 15 minutes.

3. Stir in the epazote for the last 3 minutes of the cooking time. When ready to serve, add a dollop of cream to each plate. Serve with fresh corn tortillas for making tacos.

Note: this may be prepared ahead, but the epazote should be added about 3 minutes before serving. I don't recommend freezing.

That is (mostly) what the book says, anyway. There is another recipe that is called elote con crema, and that sounds sort of like what I had as well, but not completely. At any rate, it was corn with cream and a bit of heat that you could wrap up in taco form. I'd expect garlic to be great with it as well.

Let me know if any of you try this!

Doris don't live here no more, y'all.

2011-08-12T15:10:00.001-07:00

Patrick has been getting calls from someone in Georgia who is deeply convinced that he's some 80-year-old woman named Doris. In spite of him telling her that he is not, in fact, said Doris.

*ring ring*

Patrick: Hello?

Old Lady: Doris? Hello?

Patrick: I'm sorry, you've got the wrong number.

Old Lady: Oh, I'm sorry. Goodbye!

*ring ring*

Patrick: Hello?

Old Lady: Doris?

Patrick: *sigh* No, you've got the wrong number still.

Old Lady: Darn it!

*ring ring*

Patrick: I'm not answering that.

Message played when calling his voicemail: Hi, this is Patrick. Please leave a message and I'll get back to you.

Voicemail: DORIS! Can you call me back? I need to talk to you.

This has been going on for a while.

More conversation

2011-08-09T09:07:00.000-07:00

Patrick: You know, Santa Claus is Coming to Town is a really creepy song. "He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake..."

Me: Santa Claus the stalker. It's a wonder more people haven't taken out restraining orders.

Patrick: And what's up with it being in this happy major key, anyway? It should be in a dark minor key. *sings a bit*

Me: And sung in that exact child molester voice. Yes. Much more realistic.

Tidbits

2011-08-05T16:46:00.000-07:00

For some reason, I feel that the level immediately below Eagle Scout should be referred to as Vulture Scout. I have no ready explanation for this.

Too many blueberries will evidently turn your poop nearly black. It's fascinating. No swirls of dye like with beets, though. I feel moderately cheated.

Also, I think Precarious Widget is a great band name, and if such a thing ever exists, it should release an album with my sprawled cat on the front of it, entitled Limbs Akimbo.

INSTANT GOLD, PEOPLE.

Gigantic eyeroll here.

2011-08-04T09:05:00.000-07:00

Why is it that bicyclists can get away with any rule breaking they want, but cars have to obey the traffic laws? I have seen so many bikers just blow right through red lights that it's ridiculous. And I am not talking just-turned-red lights. These suckers have been red for a while. They pay absolutely no attention to anything around them, and if you hit them it's almost guaranteed to be your fault.

I think we should be able to run them over. If they insist on riding like that with no regard for any laws or vehicles other than themselves, we ought to be able to cream them with a bumper. Kill a few dozen of them and maybe the rest will figure it out.

This doesn't seem to work with rats or roaches, but perhaps it would with bikers. And if it didn't, we'd still have fewer of them on the road to annoy us afterward.

These assholes also don't seem to understand that the city doesn't build giant paved roads for them. The roads were built for CARS. With four wheels. Made of metal (usually, unless it's a Kia, in which case it's made of spit and used Kleenex). The bikers just act like entitled little bitches and zoom all over the place.

As I told Patrick this morning, it's like they're daring you to hit them. It's not just red lights either. They ride the wrong way down roads, turn without signaling, make turns where they're not supposed to, cut you off, dash out in front of you from some embankment where you can't see them, and the list goes on.

Basically I need a flame thrower on my car, is what I'm saying.

Totally fulfilling games. Really.

2011-08-03T16:47:00.000-07:00

Patrick: I'm glad you don't play something stupid like Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic. The game where everyone's a Jedi.

Me: Isn't there a Sith thing too?

Patrick: Yeah, well, two kinds of Jedi. Whatever. I mean what else would you play? Droid repair technician?

Me: That'd be thrilling.

Patrick: Or you could be a merchant and sell parts to people. Jedi and bounty hunter are the only things anyone plays. You can't even be a smuggler and have any fun. Being a smuggler is why Han Solo was cool, but playing one would suck.

Me: I know, you could just queue up in a Customs line for 10 hours. I NEED TO PLAY THIS.

I love this weather.

2011-07-20T14:30:00.001-07:00

I really do.

I wish it would be like this all the time. It's in the 60s most days, sometimes in the 50s. It rains off and on, and usually there are clouds, but we get a few sun breaks here and there. There's currently a cool breeze through downtown, and it's utterly pleasant.

I can wear all the clothes I like (read: sweaters, boots, long skirts, pants, occasionally coats), and I don't have to worry about unwanted sweating. Also, if you're me, you have issues with the skin on your thighs rubbing off if you walk for too long in a skirt and it's hot. I'm a delicate flower, y'all.

I hear people complaining about how we haven't had a summer, and if you like a bunch of heat and sun, I can see how that would be upsetting for you. But I do not. Look at the midwest! They're having a horrible time of it. Apparently the east coast is going to get it pretty soon, too.

Patrick and I actually bought an air conditioner a month or so ago, just in case it was going to be like that one horrible summer we had here where it was 105F. That was a nightmare. I spent most of the night lying on the living room floor naked with a fan on me and my arm in a bowl of ice water. It did not noticeably help. This was back when I lived in a 4th floor apartment and could get away with such things. I suppose I could now, but I'd have to pull the blinds.

Anyway it's nice just to have it. Because you never know. I absolutely hate trying to sleep when it's hot. Speaking of hot, the heat came on this morning! I was in the bathroom for my morning routine and noticed an airy sort of sound, so looked around and sure enough the heater had come on and was blowing up out of the floor vent. Mind you, we keep the house at 65F.

I love this place.

So I think the millipedes are vanquished. Maybe. bangs on a plank

2011-07-19T16:47:00.000-07:00

I have not seen any since The Great Millipede Eviction, but that means nothing in the world of indoor gardening. They're like ninjas without the cool suits.

I went to the doctor yesterday for anxiety issues, and I think she was twelve. Years old. Or something like that. Am I really that old? Seriously? I'm only 30. Anyway, she looked more and more horrified as I went nonchalantly through my list of issues with this sort of "How are you STILL ALIVE?" expression. I think she's a first year resident. Which means she started just a little bit ago when med school got out for the year. Comforting.

She kept nagging me about my support network and wanted to give me resources, whatever those might be. I told her she could if she wanted to. There was some mention of making me do this dialectic behavioral therapy business, which I staunchly refuse to participate in. You basically sit around and talk about your feelings, which might help if you are not adamantly opposed to sharing anything with strangers. I am. I think it's supposed to make you feel better because other people have your same problem, but I already know all that and it doesn't matter a bit to me. Mostly I'm happy the way I am these days. I just want something to deal with the stupid anxiety!

Oh yeah, I should probably fill you in. The entire reason for this little escapade was because I had nightmares Sunday evening through til Monday morning which woke me up three times with an overwhelming desire to vomit. Salivating, hard to breathe, the whole deal. I'd get up and walk around, get some distance from the dream, and the urge would fade. Poked around on the internet and it appears that these are panic attacks. I've never had them at night before, although I've had loads during the day. I always used to think they (except two really obvious ones) were asthma! Goes to show how much I know... The Albuterol never worked, I suppose that should've been the first clue. In my defense, a few doctors got it wrong too.

SO! We get to me at the doctor's office. With Patrick, who was quite helpful and didn't once tell the doctor that she was rather useless. She gave me Ambien, which is for people who cannot fall asleep or stay that way (not the issue I have), then referred me to the psych department. Fine, whatever. I filled the Ambien but decided not to take it since A) I don't actually have the problem it supposedly solves and B) I don't fancy waking up in jail. Apparently people have sleep-driven while on it. Yes, that's a thing. I know those side effects are rare, but I see no need to take a drug for something I don't have. If I'm going to put up with side effects, it'll be because I'm taking something to cure an actual issue!

Right, it's the next day and the psych department calls me. I talk to them for a bit and it turns out that they don't actually treat you. Ready for this? They give you a "consultation", a diagnosis if you look like you need it (?), then refer you BACK to either the original referring physician for meds (because they won't write you a prescription themselves) or someone else if you need therapy. They do NOTHING for you other than tell you what's wrong with you. More appointments. So you go back, get your meds filled, they presumably need to be adjusted/don't work/whatever, so you have to return to the primary person, get referred again, see the psych some more, go back.... See where I am going with this? Yeah.

This is the most ridiculously inefficient bullshit I've ever heard of. Why on earth wouldn't you write the prescriptions and deal with the patients yourself? Meds take months to get right! Sometimes years! WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?

Needless to say I told them I wasn't about to put up with that and I'd go elsewhere. So next week I'm going to call around and see about finding a psychiatrist that I can actually go to and get them to treat me themselves.

In conclusion, the rhubarb is flourishing (read: not dead yet) and I firmly believe my sleeping mask smells like eyebrows. This puzzled Patrick, but I am sticking to it.

A horrible story involving millipedes. And some other stuff.

2011-07-14T09:15:00.000-07:00

I guess this story is only horrible if you hate millipedes, as I do. Or any other brand of insectoid life with too many legs.

You know that jasmine we bought the other weekend? It has (had?) millipedes. Lots of them. I kept throwing them in the toilet with tweezers and then sprayed the dirt with poison. This did not kill them, other than a few unfortunate ones who happened to be on top of the dirt during the spraying, so I then took off the spray top of the bottle and attempted to drown them in poison.

This ALSO did not work. We read all about getting rid of them, and some people say that you should drown them in a bucket. Others say you should wash all the dirt off the roots and with it the stupid millipedes.

At any rate we decided we regretted the entire business and planted the jasmine out by the fence in the yard. For some reason this reminds me of a narrated line in the execrable You've Got Mail: "Once I read a story about a butterfly in the subway, and today, I saw one. It got on at 42nd, and off at 59th, where, I assume it was going to Bloomingdales to buy a hat that will turn out to be a mistake - as almost all hats are."

I think the plant thing turned out to be a mistake... oh well. Anyway, we thought the millipedes gotten rid of, although I had suspicions since I'd seen one on another of the plant pots in the house before we evicted the jasmine. Sure enough, today I found one crawling on the bottom of the fig's pot. I threw that in the toilet and moved it and the other little plant next to it away from the black-eyed susan vine in the vain hope that perhaps the horrible monstrosities hadn't migrated yet.

I HATE things with too many legs! DIE! I will find a way to murder these somehow or other. Why don't cats eat millipedes? They eat hair and chewed up mice. And sometimes other bugs. Maybe millipedes taste gross. I'd believe that.

In other news, did you know that apparently in the Texas region of the US there is some sort of ghastly musical abomination of mariachi bands mixed with polka? This sounds truly terrible. File that under Would Have To Be High To Enjoy And Maybe Not Even Then. At least I assume so. I've never actually been high, but it seems like something that would be a necessary step in order to listen to anything that bad.

Really, I should just record Patrick and I having conversations or something, because they're hilarious and then I forget them. Which leaves me blankly staring at my blog, wondering what to write about.

Monkey has finally figured out where Widget sleeps at night (next to my head), so now I've also got her piled up next to me every time I go to sleep. That Orange Thing sleeps on Patrick's feet most of the time.

On the cat naming front we've got Sunshine, Dr. Jones, Orange Thing, Fuzzybutt, and occasional names slightly less nice when he's being rotten. I said that Orange Thing was not an appropriate cat name. Patrick agrees, although that's what he keeps getting called, so hopefully this doesn't turn into something that sticks.

Google decided the other day that when I looked up "theobroma" (chocolate), I actually meant "throbbing gristle". Yes. That sounds exactly like what I really wanted. Thank you, technology.

Oh la la la

2011-07-08T09:15:00.000-07:00

What to write about? It's Friday. I really wish it were Saturday, but I also don't. Because on Saturday we still have to get up early and do a whole bunch of garbage (name-change, vehicle title change, joint account opening, etc). So it might as well just be Friday. SIGH.

Couple evenings ago we ripped more Satan Weed (tm) out of the yard. Turns out it's morning glory. We discovered this in Montana when describing it to my mom, who knows her weeds. Patrick wasn't kidding. That filth comes back with a vengeance. I guess it'll just be an unending battle. A neighbor stopped by to chat* and told me that apparently if you spray it with Roundup and cover it with a garbage bag it will eventually die, but how are you to do that when you've got a zillion other plants around and you don't even know where it's coming from? We also ripped out a bunch of dandelions and some sort of tall grass business.

This yard is going to take ages to completely set right. Maybe I'll just try to maintain some semblance of decency instead of going whole-hog for "nice". Because really? No. It is a LOT of work. Except maybe yes, because I'll probably talk myself into it. And then it will give Patrick mental anguish to see me yanking things out of the dirt myself, so he will have to help.

It's a vicious cycle, people.

When Jennifer and I were walking back from lunch the other day, some creep with no shirt on waggled his groin in what I assume he felt was an enticing manner at us. We ignored him and mouthed, "Wtf?" at each other once we had passed. Must be back in the city... Too bad you can't stab people like that without it being felony assault. Oh sorry, I haven't had anything to eat yet this morning and my bloodythirsty nature is getting the better of me. :p Stabby, stabby!

Speaking of stabbing (no good can come of starting a sentence this way), I've always wanted to learn how to throw knives correctly. I just think it's a neat skill. I mean how do you even do that? Does it turn as it goes through the air? Or is it a flat gliding thing? How do you not just bang the hilt on stuff and have it fall to the ground?

Also, lockpicking. You never know when you might get thrown in a gulag and need to pick your way out. I really need a sandwich.

When I was trying to fall asleep last night, I had all three cats piled up on my side of the bed. I think they missed us. You'd think with the cat to side of bed ratio that they only missed me, but that is false. Patrick is just so huge that they can only fit on my side. This does not endear them to me as I am a total sucker for sleepy kitties and then feel compelled to curl myself in a ball so as not to disturb them. /eyeroll

I hope you're all having a good week. Go eat something tasty.

*This was good, since I'd been feeling a little guilty about how antisocial people around there probably thought I was. When G lived with me, we received an invite to a barbecue, but for some reason that I have since forgotten, we couldn't go. I'm sure they assumed we were elitist snobs or something. Anyway, this was a very friendly interaction, and I think we are invited to a barbecue in August, so maybe we will make some friends. Unintended isolationist problem solved!

Happy!

2011-07-06T11:33:00.001-07:00

I know this isn't much, but I'm both busy and happy. I am so happy I married Patrick. Best life decision ever. I hope this feeling I have never fades, that I need to savor every second I have with him.

Obviously you have to live forever, dear. Otherwise what would I do?

P.S. I promise I'll get my act together and write something other than "Eeeek, I'm so happy!" soon, but right now I'm still blissfully floating. Patience!

Perhaps Jane Eyre said it best of all.

2011-06-30T21:17:00.001-07:00

Reader, I married him.

The car works! Mostly.

2011-06-28T17:11:00.001-07:00

Last night we went and got a new battery and headlight from an auto parts store, then spent a bit of time putting those in. Batteries are heavy! We finally got it done and everything worked. Lights turned on, car started right up. We drove it up and down the freeway for a bit just to make sure everything was in proper order.

The only thing that was annoying was the stereo, which apparently fancied itself stolen. I guess after you change a battery you have to input a code into the stereo again to make it work. Never having changed a battery (in 9 years!), I didn't know this previously.

We looked through the glovebox and didn't find anything, so we went inside to have dinner and ponder it. Dinner had spent all this time happily steaming up the house (we roasted two pans' worth of vegetables in order to have enough for a couple meals), so it felt like a sauna in there. All the windows were fogged up and it was 74F! The temperature outside was 60F, for comparison.

While we ate, Patrick looked up options for us. The internet informed us that if we had to take the car in to the dealer, it could cost $100 for this code(?!), but we found a video showing locations on the car that the code is sometimes stuck on.

After finishing the meal, I went back out, determined to get the entire thing sorted in one day. So I was poking around in there with a flashlight and Patrick had come out to help. I gave him the flashlight to look in the trunk and decided to fish through the odds and ends that had been slowly decomposing in the back pockets of my seat covers.

Various garbage, batteries, blah blah.... hopeful-looking blue plastic thing! I rifled through it and lo and behold, there was the card with the number on it. Happy day. So we keyed that into the stereo and it is very pleased with itself. The code and rest of the documents are now safely stored in our firesafe for the next time I need them. Whew!

The car also started right up this morning with no issues, so I am thinking it was just a battery that (unsurprisingly) needed replacing, along with a burned out headlight.

Hooray for being a simple fix! (Please don't develop other problems because I've accidentally tempted The Powers That Be by saying that. Thanks.)

P.S. The "mostly" part in the title of this post is because the right window won't roll down (burned out motor) and the remote entry hasn't worked for ages. I don't care about the latter and can't afford the former right now, so they will just have to stay like that for a while.

My Weekend in Plantopia or The Story That Never Ends (Updated)

2011-06-27T09:17:00.000-07:00

I have an enduring fondness for most types of plants. Some I despise, but on the whole I am a genuine lover of green leafies. I remembered this idea I'd seen in an Eddings novel about having two plants (trees in the book) representing both people in a relationship and binding them together as they grew. I thought it was a lovely idea, and Patrick liked it too, so on Saturday we set off for Molbak's in Woodinville.

Sadly, Patrick thought I said Issaquah, so we had a more scenic drive than expected in order to get to the plant store. Fortunately we only made it to Bellevue before it dawned on me that Bellevue looks nothing like Woodinville and something was not quite right.

We arrived and browsed for a time. I love that place. It's so warm and humid, full of flowers and growing things. It's like a gardener's church. I actually found some specimens of Brugmansia (also called Angel's Trumpet), but they didn't have the color I wanted, which is Grand Marnier. It has beautiful golden yellow flowers that hang all over it. There were a few varieties of Angel's Trumpet, but most were pink and the few that were otherwise were either pale yellow or white. I'm going for the full-on golden look. I will bide my time...

We looked around some more following my Brugmansia drooling, sniffed some lemon blossoms (SO amazing!), and stared at this plant that looked for all the world as if it were the mounted dead antlers of some prehistoric thing, complete with plaque behind it. They also have an 80-yr-old saguaro cactus that looks distinctly un-huggable. It was not for sale.

Finally we ran across something that looked lovely, but was unfortunately intertwined all through a sort of latticed arbor/archway structure. I have this weird disinclination to ever ask anyone at stores for help. I think it's because I feel like once they help me find something, I'm obligated to buy it. Like a thank you for their effort. I don't know. Patrick does not have this problem, so he went and asked someone if they had any more, which I am grateful for. They did indeed have one remaining plant, which was something ridiculous like 8' tall (it grew on bamboo sticks they'd set in the pot). It's a black-eyed susan varietal called Spanish Eyes. Giant vine thing with flowers.

Per my vision, we needed a second plant to intertwine with this one. Since we'd found one vine, we thought another would be nice, and found some pink jasmine. This plant was also massive, about the same height as the Spanish Eyes.

In my vegetative frenzy I wasn't exactly thinking very clearly about how we were going to get two giant plants home in an Acura. Further, we'd had a conversation earlier about whether the car would work to transport stuff we purchased, which I conveniently forgot about 0.2 seconds after having it.

"Is this car big enough to carry plants home in?"

"Of course it is, it's not like we're going to buy giant trees or anything! hahaha"

Yeah. We did. Oops.

We got the enormous plants out to the car and regarded the relative sizes of both car and plants with dismay. However, this would work. Somehow.

It was decided to have me try to hold one of them and possibly wedge the other one in the back seat. I got into the car and strapped myself in. Patrick handed me the bottom of the Spanish Eyes and I crammed the pot down by my feet, then tried to pull it into the car. No way was that thing fitting.

The obvious (and insane) answer? Sunroof!

So now we have me sitting in the car with a giant plant being lowered down through the sunroof. I grabbed the pot and brought it gently down. It went down between my feet, and we were actually able to guide the bamboo poles and rest of the plant through the sunroof, sort of leaning it on me and having it rest on my seatbelt. Yes, this was hard to see around. There's a picture of me that Patrick took with my hand sticking up out of the greenery. I haven't got it yet, so you can't see it, but trust that it exists. Update: Patrick sent me the picture, so here it is. It's actually of both plants wedged into place on top of me.

Next plant! I was already covered in vine, so this was harder to negotiate. Nevertheless, we managed to get the jasmine's pot into the back seat and have part of it still sticking out the top. We spent the ride with me semi-snuggling with one vine and holding the bamboo poles of the other in the hope that the wind wouldn't rip off all the jasmine leaves.

At one point I thought we'd accidentally gotten onto a freeway onramp and made various upset mammal noises until it turned out that it was just the way to get onto 522, a highway leading home. Whew. It's quite bad enough hanging onto jasmine when the wind is blowing and you're going 35-40mph. I was not prepared to attempt it at 60-65.

As a sidenote, this was considerably harder than when we carted an amazingly crappy couch home from Goodwill by tying it to the top of the car with fishing line. For one thing, the couch didn't give me a rash. It appears my skin does not like hugging black-eyed susans. Fortunately it faded after 10 minutes or so. But before it left I was one itchy mess!

After we got home, I lifted the pots out to Patrick through the sunroof and we were mercifully done with that part of it. His poor car needs to be cleaned, and hopefully we'll get to that soon. It looks like a yard waste bin threw up in it.

We initially had the plants in the living room near the south-facing window, because they like a lot of light, but it dawned on us that the lilac outside had gotten so large that we'd either have to trim it or find another location. Bathroom! The bathroom has a skylight and everything in there loves it. The light is incredibly bright and mostly indirect, but there is some direct light that comes through for you if you are a very tall plant, like both of these are.

We maneuvered some stuff around and miraculously both fit. The Spanish Eyes is on the left side of the sink next to the shower, and it just barely fits under the ceiling there. It looks, as Patrick said, almost like an impossible structure. You can't see the support bamboo under all the vines, so it looks like the vine is supporting itself on air and just twining up through nothing. The jasmine fit on the cabinet across from the sink, and it fit nicely under the ceiling, which slopes upward as you go away from the shower. Update: See? Huge.

The plan is to put small hooks here and there on the walls and ceiling to hold the vines as they grow. Eventually they'll twine together and hang down a bit, giving us an interlaced ceiling of flowering vines. Very Amazonian! Although apparently black-eyed susans are from Africa, but whatever.

The morning after we got those installed, I got up to learn two things:

1) Patrick was having intense foot pain and so couldn't walk on his left foot (chronic thing) and

2) Some Cat Who Will Remain Nameless had tried to get up on top of the cabinet where the jasmine was and knocked off one of the other two little plants up there (the one whose species I can never remember, it was a gift).

So there was dirt and broken pottery all over the floor in the bathroom. Yay. As I was cleaning that up, I had the door mostly shut. I'd picked up the rug and tried to shake the dirt out of it, then set it up on the sink.

Monkey decided she needed to come in and investigate, and tried to jump up to her usual spot on the counter, which was covered with rug. This freaked her out, so she jumped back off, knocking over an orchid on the toilet which crashed on the ground. The loud noise from THAT, coupled with me going "Aaaaah!" and her banging into the mostly closed door on her attempted egress made her zoom around AGAIN in a frenzy, this time knocking off the plate the orchid had been sitting on, then finally managing to make it out the door.

Poor Patrick was meanwhile lying in bed in pain listening to various screams and crashing coming from the bathroom. What a morning. I went to Fred Meyer to get him some pills for his pain and cherry juice, which is supposed to help. Came back, everything was all fine. I did laundry, he played video games. It was an invalid sort of day.

Later that evening (5:45) I got ready to leave for my massage. Car wouldn't start. What. Are you even kidding me right now? Ohhhh no.

Tried it a bunch of times, nothing. I sometimes got this little feeble clicking noise that sounded like it was coming from behind the glovebox, but otherwise not a flicker.

Borrowed Patrick's car and learned to drive an automatic again very quickly. I managed to navigate myself to Déja's new place, that Dragonfly Holistic Healing location in Fremont, and it was a lovely massage as always. Apparently one of the ladies who works there had her mother pass away recently and her cat named Lulu was in need of a home. They had fliers. Things like that just break my heart, but I already have three and I cannot turn into That Crazy Cat Lady. As Patrick rightly says, we must give the ones we have a good quality of life and not end up on Hoarders.

I went home after and we jumped the car. Luckily after having been off his feet all day and swilling painkillers with juice, Patrick could stand for a while. It turned on after jumping it, but the right front headlight is out (brights work on both sides), and when I turned on the brights, the lights inside the car flickered. Not enough battery juice yet to support both? Don't know. We drove it around for a while afterward and are going to replace the battery and the right front headlight either today or tomorrow, and I REALLY HOPE that solves the problem. Or it's the alternator. We shall see.

But in the meantime this makes me wonder which car we ought to take to drive to Montana. I didn't want to take his because his requires more expensive gas and has no rearview mirror (it fell off, he tried to get it fixed, it fell off again, etc). Although I suppose that is better than a car that won't start? Ugh.

Wish us luck...

Because I felt like expounding at length

2011-06-24T13:13:00.001-07:00

It's funny how half the stuff that makes it onto this blog has been sliced down from its original form. I'll write a bunch of sentences, decide they make me look like either a lunatic or a moron, and delete them. Then start again from scratch. You'd think that the actual content of this blog would be better.... oh well.

I am the happiest I have ever been with this man. He isn't perfect, and neither am I, but he's perfect for me. He's kind and respectful to me, makes me laugh, and cooks amazingly. He's got a great sense of humor (which is to say, like mine!), and he knows how to use it appropriately.

For example, last night I was cutting up grilled pineapple for our lunches and he felt compelled to serenade me with an extra-horrible version of The Pineapple Song (or whatever it's actually called) from South Pacific on trombone. I gave him the steely eyeball for that, but it was rather funny.

I love him because he can play the bass part on piano sheet music and I can play treble, so we can actually play an entire piece together that neither of us could play separately. It's been years since I could read bass clef, and he always plays in it.

He frequently says those five little words every girl longs to hear: "I'll go clean the catbox." He can pick up after his own damn self without me having to act like his maid, mother, slave, any of those.

I love him because he thinks of things like taking us for a romantic picnic lunch in the arboretum while the rhododendron glen was blooming. We found this secluded little location and had a splendid lunch, capped off by lying on the blanket and staring up at the trees in companionable digestive bliss.

He doesn't lie to me. He's very forthright about what he thinks and feels, and I cannot express how important that is to someone as literal as I am. I frequently have issues with understanding whether someone is being sarcastic or not, and he is always very clear. As well as patient when I'm not.

I love him because he's passionate without being volatile. Stable without being boring. Game for fun and outings without being a raucous drunk or bad for financial security.

He is never embarrassing in public. And manners are included. You don't get as good a deal with batteries half the time. He encourages me in pursuits that I enjoy and never makes me feel anything but special and adored.

I love him because he remembers little things that I enjoy and finds ways to give them to me. Like my favorite type of tea, or a scarf I mentioned liking that he snuck off the rack and stuffed in a hat to stealthily carry around the store until he could buy it for me. Or my favorite type of flower. A love letter thoughtfully composed.

Prince Charming, indeed.

Whirlwind

2011-06-24T12:03:00.001-07:00

Looking back through some of my archives, it appears I was far more introspective and intelligent-sounding in prior posts than I am today! I blame this mostly on Patrick. How can I possibly be expected to write decent content when I'm constantly a-whirl in a miasma of happiness and cheerful lust? I can't. That's all there is to it.

It's not entirely his fault, though. I didn't bother poking through enough entries to test this idea, but I always feel much more contemplative in the fall and winter months than I do in spring and summer. Seasonal affective dimwittery? I have no idea. But I suspect it might be the case. Lack of proof never kept me from advancing assorted hairbrained theories.

We have less than a week to go, darlin'. You're like a zillion Christmases at once to me. All combined into classical trombonist form.

I love you!

Stuff I love and/or want

2011-06-23T13:39:00.000-07:00

Book-a-Minute. Never heard of it? It’s AWESOME. You will save countless hours and burn calories by laughing. SF/F, bedtime and classics sections. Also, Movie-a-Minute. Possibly even better.

You knew I couldn’t let this post go by without a bunch of Etsian garbage being mentioned.

Sweater coat thingies! These are both by the same lady, and I think they look delightfully swingy and cozy. Coveted… Clicking the images will take you to the site and you can see bigger pictures. Yes, they are disturbingly overpriced. I am not going to BUY one, I just like drooling. The dark one would go with more stuff, but the brownish looks warmer to me.

MOAR Etsy stuff: I love this dark coat or cloak or whatever it is. I think it’s got a hood, so cloak? The sleeves are made of fabulousness, and I love the embroidery on them. How completely rad would I look in this?! I must learn to do makeup at some point. These costumes of mine would be SO much better with a little actual skill in that department.

Check out the pictures on the side of the listing. Obviously this initial one is a little weird. Plus I love the model's hair, but I have too much tangle fear to ever get dreads in my own.
There used to be this site called Who Would You Kill? The Full House version made me absolutely cackle, but sadly I think it’s defunct now. Too bad. Just the entertaining little picture on it and nothing else. Come back, WWYK! You provided me endless hours of maniacal laughter! Sigh.

Mmmmmm, massage. My girl Déja has finally branched out on her own and opened up Alohilani Massage Therapy! It’s in Fremont, and my first visit will be this Saturday. I’m interested to see what she’s done with the space. I doubt it will be much like Spa Noir, which is very distinctive, but I’m sure it’ll be lovely. This girl is a genius, y’all. She gets rid of pain and makes you feel unbelievably good. I heart her.

Bliss Central at Spa Noir
LEMURS! Because how can you not love something with eyes like that? The text says “Life on white”, it’s part of some photography project. Try to ignore it and focus instead on the unbelievable cuteness.

P.S. Only a week til I get married! And nary a chilly toenail to be found. ;)

P.P.S. Seriously, Blogger? You couldn't find the links because the quotation marks in the HTML were italicized and that made you throw up on yourself and die? And insert annoying pointless gibberish HTML into my text whenever I used your stupid little built-in thingy to try redoing the links? /eyeroll

This Google doodle scared the crap out of me today

2011-06-21T11:41:00.001-07:00

I mean seriously. Doesn't it look like it might eat you? How is THAT festive?

Maybe it wouldn't be so disturbing if everything in it didn't have its mouth open and look like it was lunging at you. And the flower on the right even has a demented-looking third eye, along with FANGS.

Happy first day of summer. Now with excessive amounts of teeth.

Ring pictures (finally)

2011-06-16T15:13:00.001-07:00

If you lovelies are interested, here are pictures of the beautiful ring Patrick gave me. I call it my fairy castle. FYI, it's actually rose gold. For some reason the pictures make it look like yellow gold, but such is not the case.

I am one very lucky girl. The ring is just a bonus...

P.S. If the pictures look huge to you, try refreshing your browser. Mine required that too.

Happy birthday, Mom!

2011-06-16T14:51:00.000-07:00

Pretty much what the title says. ;) I hope you have a wonderful day, classy lady. I love you and I miss you! You're the best mom ever.

A letter to my past self

2011-06-13T16:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Past Self,

I know it sometimes seems like you’ll never be happy, and you’ll always wonder where everything went so wrong. How you quit reading romance novels because you figured they were just prettily packaged lies. I remember how you decided that marriage was for fools, because yours was so unhappy (and just look at the divorce rates!), so you should never embark upon it again. All those days you spent stewing about how Prince Charming was never going to come and wake you from your ongoing nightmare.

But you know what? You were wrong.

Your life is going to take a lot of crazy twists and turns, and you’ll hate some of it. Just as you will love other parts. You will be angry and sad and happy and lonely and fulfilled and content and loved. There will be a lot of work, and more sacrifice. You will find yourself having experiences you never imagined could occur outside of a movie set. And perhaps not even in there.

You will learn to forgive and love, compromise and laugh. And in the end I will be so proud of you for making it through and becoming who you were meant to be. You will find someone who makes you happy and who ought to have ridden up on a white horse, so very fairytale-esque is your story going to become. You will learn to like yourself and deal with all the emotional turmoil you were born with. Everything will be so much more manageable with the buoying influence of a certain musician. You won't ever feel like you're drowning again.

Sleeping Beauty won’t sleep for very much longer. The prince will come, and you will live happily ever after. Keep on going, learning and becoming. I promise you’ll like what’s in store.

I love you,
Your Future Self

In which cat vomit charades are described and I find myself classily hollering about excrement in the middle of the yard

2011-06-09T10:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening Patrick and I were cooperatively cleaning up the yard. We spent about 20 minutes ripping this awful strangling vine thing off the fence and away from all the trees and bushes it was trying to throttle. He says that if you leave it alone it will murder everything, rip the fence apart, and then chuckle evilly at you while whispering that you’re next. Evidently it will be back in two weeks, and then we can go all homicidal on it again.

I had to go into the house to get something at one point and nearly stepped in the ubiquitous cat barf that had appeared magically on the entryway rug. As I’ve said before, I did not adopt cats. I adopted furry vomit dispensers and food disposals. Also, poop generators. Anyway, I cleaned it up and came outside to tell Patrick about my wonderful cleanliness. He had the mower on and I had earplugs in with music going, so neither of us could hear the other.

Enter cat vomit charades.

Cat ears with fingers, universal bleah motion for vomit, scrubbing with hand, then mimicked pitching of barf-covered paper towel into trash. HE TOTALLY GOT IT, then mouthed, “Thank you!” I am a genius at charades, y’all. At least, I am when they involve puke. He suggested I make a video of myself doing this, because the visual was amazingly better than any text description, but I don’t think the world needs that.

We kept on doing stuff in the yard, with him mowing and me raking the grass clippings. No, we do not have a mulching mower. We enjoy horrible activities.

As I was raking, I came across what appeared to be strange looking leaves. Further inspection revealed that these were actually slightly petrified dog turds. I tried flinging them over to the edge of the yard with one side of the rake, and apparently the underside was still fresh and wonderful, because there was a nice smear left in the grass. I didn’t want Patrick to step in it, so I waved to get his attention, pointed down at the poop smear and said, “Dog shit!” rather loudly.

He didn’t get it. By his own admission later, he thought I was complaining about either the landscaping or the work, which explains why he looked like he was in hearty agreement about the existence of poop in our yard.

Me: “Dog shit!”
Him: “I know, I hate this too! This sucks!”
Me: “What?”

Then he turned off the mower. Which would’ve been really great except I had headphones in and didn’t hear him turn it off. And I evidently don’t know enough about mowers to remember that letting go of the thing on the handlebar makes it stop. So in a heroic effort to make my point and save him from himself, I found myself screaming, “DOG SHIT!” across the yard at 7pm, unmuffled by any convenient mower noise, while stabbing emphatically at the ground with my finger. I simply cannot roll my eyes hard enough at myself.

The neighbors are undoubtedly used to this sort of thing by now.

Motivational Conference of DOOM. And horrible traffic.

2011-06-07T15:18:00.001-07:00

I hate motivational speakers. I could never see the point. What exactly do they motivate you to DO, anyway? Quit eating cheetos? Go to the gym? Get a better job than working at the dump? Who goes to these things? The entire Pacific Northwest, apparently, judging by the people on the road this morning. AND their damn dogs.

Seriously, the entire Seattle road network today was flooded with pre-motivated assholes all eager to get over to Key Arena and hear about what unique snowflakes they are. I had one slam on his brakes (he was speeding ridiculously) behind me when I got into the carpool lane on the freeway this morning, and then honk and attempt to flash his brights at me.

Hint: that doesn't work when your car is teeny and pathetic. All you do is illuminate my license plate really well for a few seconds.

Anyway, the soon-to-be-motivated jerkoffs THEN decided that that wasn't enough, so they actually pulled off into the breakdown lane when traffic slowed down and pulled alongside my car with their window rolled down.

What exactly did they think was going to happen here? That I would roll down my window so they could yell at me/throw things/spit phlegm into my car? I looked over, was so amused that someone would actually try such a thing, and started giggling involuntarily. I think that just made them madder. Then sped up and went on my way as traffic moved forward.

They got stuck behind a motorcyclist going 10mph for a while and I finally lost track of them after a brief bit where I suspected they were following me. Which would've been hilarious.

Yes, pair of scrawny-looking hipsters, PLEASE try to accost a martial artist and her 6'4" fiancé. Please. I'm asking you ever so nicely.

Kisses,
Adra