Sadness or Euphoria

Still in Maryland (Until the end of May, we go home on May 30th from the third segment of training) and still loving the H-e-double hockeysticks out of my job and my company.

I knew I was tired of being on auto-pilot. I knew I was tired of sitting at a desk staring at god-damn numbers all day. I knew I wanted to be back out with people. I knew I wanted to work for a company that actually did what they say they will do.

I didn't realize I would get all of that, or that I would adopt their business model to my entire life. A certain someone said last month: Honey, you didn't choose a job...and before he could finish, I cut him off and said, "no. you're right. I chose a way of life." Strong words perhaps, but I believe them. Its a tough environment. Not everyone makes it. But I am not that weak.

I find out where I get to live for the next few years in the middle of May. I'll keep everyone posted, though there have been some rumblings and mumblings about me staying local to Baltimore/Philly, there have also been babblings about me going 'home' to Portland or Seattle.

I don't care anymore. Anywhere I go, you will all be there. We live in an age and a space where I can (and do) have friends that span the globe. Friends who's faces I have never seen. What difference Redding, or Baltimore, or Seattle, or Timbuktu?

Oh, and yeah...I love my life.

I have thought a lot about writing an 'end of year retrospective' post, and a New Year's post, and, and, and...I have done precisely nothing about it. So here's the deal: If you want a retrospective of the year, go back and read this year's posts. :) I'm not going to. I spend a lot of time vacillating between the past and the future in great wide sweeps, like one of those perpetual motion devices, winding into a tighter and tighter circle but never quite reaching the NOW. This habit has robbed me of a hell of a lot of 'now' over the years, and I am done with that - I will make one solid resolution this year, and this is it:

Stay in the present.

Make plans, yes, of course. Use the experience of the past - that's what it is there for, after all. But stay here, right in the now, while it is happening. Chop the wood, carry the water, write the blog post, pay attention to the SO, the family, the cat, the knitting, the dogs...work.

Corollary to that is to find the JOY in these things, find pleasure and happiness in doing things well, completely, with attention. Yes, even the job. They have cut my hours; my boss writes nasty notes on things; my hours cut was spun as 'flextime' but my proposal for flexible hours on various days was growled at. These things are all true. They all make me stressed and unhappy at work. That stress and unhappiness can no longer be allowed to spill into the rest of my life. Which means it can't be part of my work-life, either.

So I will use all my breath to be thankful I have a job to hate. To focus my attention on doing a DAMN GOOD JOB. To 'do the job in front of me' - which is just another of saying 'live in the present moment', really.

Right, now, in the present, Modern English is running through my head and making me smile. NPR is playing an interview that I am not really paying attention to, but I am okay with that. My gingerbread candle is burning, creating a comfortable homey scent in my office. I'm about to take my mandated lunch, eat some soup, do a few rows of knitting, think about upcoming visits, and maybe write some more.

Life, despite all its challenges, is good. Happy 2009.

And the goose is hella getting fat. The scale is moving in the wrong direction! I was so excited after Arizona, where I lost two pounds....and I have gained five since then. *cry* Now, yes, I know this is my own darn fault, and I take full responsibility for it. Less ice cream, less reeses pumpkins and york batties. Less wine. :(

This is what I need to do and I will. However, this also means I will have to cut down on the temptations available to me, which means this year there will be no Holiday Treat packages from me. I /will/ be doing cards though, no, honest, really. If you want one, and you /think/ I have your address, I probably don't. Please to send it to me. I will send mine to you if you ask for it in the sending. (Comments on this post are moderated - if I did it correctly - so you can probably comment here. If you are reading this, you should also have several mail-type methods of contacting me. :) )

Last night, I went to bed after hearing president-elect Obama's speech. I was hopeful and happy for our country, not because I am a Democrat and voted party line, but because here was a man who honestly and...earnestly got up in front of millions of people and said, "You did this. You chose this time and this place to start healing, to end some of the great divisions that have built up over the past decades."  

He gave me hope that this could be so. I went to bed happy....

And woke up to find that my State has voted against Civil Rights. We chose, by a 4% margin, to tell 10% of our population that they are less than human. I cannot even begin to express my sadness over this - I cried in the shower, until I was numb enough and angry enough to go to work.

Yes, I said angry. I consider myself to be religious - not church-going, no. Not even particularly Faithful to one ideology or another, but I believe in God (or Allah, or Diana, or whatever you want to call it) very strongly, and the God I believe in is a loving and tolerant God. My Christian friends, my Catholic friends, my Mormon friends - they all tell me they believe in the same God - a being who loves humanity and inspires goodness and great works and charity and love.

And yet...each of their churches spent millions of dollars encouraging them and others to vote...to choose to say that 10% of us aren't fully human in the eyes of the law. I believe I may have just lost my faith. In humanity, certainly. In god? Possibly.

I do not know yet what I am going to say to be friends who are now suddenly no longer married to the loves of their lives, or to the people whose weddings I wont' be going to next year. I can only think of two words: I"m sorry.

I'm sorry didn't cut it fifty years ago when we told Black people they couldn't marry Whites. It doesn't cut it now. But its all I have. I am so so sorry that my State is made of fail.

The title is wishful thinking, of course. My cat is not coming back without some serious Stephen King witchery happening. Ariel was my first 'real' pet. The first animal I had outside of family dogs and horses and cats with the parents - Mr. Ex got her for me from a coworker, and she was trouble from day one. (Nicknames include demonspawn, MSDOS (Ms. Daughter of Satan, plus yes the oblique reference to the operating system), hellcat, 'that little xxx', needless to say, she was not well loved by many of my freinds and family.

Because she was /mine/. She loved her Mommy, to the point of having to be in my lap or on my belly whenever I was on a computer, on the couch, in the bed (Well, until I rolled over and trapped her in the mattress that one time...). She was noone else's. Attempts to pet, love, pick up, or otherwise interact with her by anyone else usually resulted in bloodshed. Toward the end of my marriage, she did tolerate Mr. Ex, even getting into /his/ lap from time to time while we were WOWing, instead of mine. And she was mine - she was only cat until she was eleven, my baby who got taken for walks, staked out on the leash in the yard, moved cross-country (twice!) and given an entire basket of roving as a bed.

Well, perhaps that was unintentional. When she was around 6 months old, I bought some roving. I put it in a pretty basket in the living room, and she jumped into it, curled up and fell asleep in a puddle of happy purring. Now, I knew plenty of yarn and fiber shops who had shopcats who slept in the yarn and the wool. No big deal to let her use that as a temporary bed (Spurning, of course, the expensive fleecey cat-bed I had bought her). Well, it turns out that Ariel loved wool almost as much as her mommy, because she drooled all over it, and kneaded it, and....made a nice lovely felted bed in that basket for herself. So I let her keep it.

Two weeks ago, on October 18, 2008, she died in her bed, kneading and suckling her wool, and I like to imagine purring like the little Devil everyone thought she was. I found her in the afternoon, after all my family had left for the weekend, and we buried her and that wool with Lobo and Dusty in the cemetery field.

I still sometimes come home and expect to see her on top of the piano, or curled up in her basked (It has a fleece lining now, but the boys won't get into it - I think I'll have to get rid of it soon, but not yet. She lived a good long life, and died after a brief but devastating sickness.

I know she won't come back, but I sometimes wish it weren't so.

Which is almost, but not quite, a song title, yes. It is however the hour at which I awaken three days a week.

Today was one of those days, and I awoke to a bright, clear, starlit morning. Yes, starlit. Not predawn, not dawning, starlit. It was still, not even the rooster was awake yet, and it was warm for the season. So I spent a moment standing in the driveway, keys and purse and gym bag and work clothes in my arms, and just admired the stars. The half-moon creeping ever so slowly to its apogee, the distant light of a house on the opposite hillside.

These are the moments that I live for - I do not like going to bed before all my friends, or leaving the comfort of down comforters and cats - but I do love those little breaths outside, staring at the heavens. Those few precious moments where I am not required or expected to think of anything important, or tedious, or frustrating. They seem to come more often now, in Fall, whether it is because of the seasons changing, or just my inner circadian rhythms, I don't care. It simply is....a reminder to be content.

It was my second to last PT appointment today, too. My ROM has improved tremendously, and we think I won't need to go anymore, which is too bad, I like both therapists a lot. But in good news: My shoulder is getting better!

So I buckled down and went to the doctor today.

The verdict: Dunno. MIGHT be a bone spur, might be a torn rotator cuff. Can't tell for sure without costly MRI.

So, instead: here, go to physical therapy for three weeks, and take these low level pain killers. 

:/ At least I might be able to lift my arm over my head again someday soon.

 

Some of you know how I feel about Fall. The chilly mornings, the scent of loam and rain and woodsmoke, the 'settling in' feeling the world seems to have as everything slows down and gets ready to hibernate for winter.

It is my most restless time - the time when a sudden desire to run away grips me, when I want to get in the car and drive until there isn't anywhere to drive to anymore. And yet right now, sitting in bed on a Saturday morning, watching the clouds drift apart and the sun slide through the rainclouds, I find myself content. Simply, utterly at ease with the changing seasons and my place in them. Yes, there ae places I would like to go, but they are towards, not away. My life, like the seasons, is in flux right now, but it is the good happy kind of flux - the kind where you catch yourself staring off into space with a tiny secret smile. 

I am content, even happy with my place in the world, and with those who are important to me. Life is good.

 As I alluded to in my alphabet post, this past weekend I went to Arizona on vacation. I may or may not have mentioned that I was going there to hang out with a whole slew of people I only knew previously from an online game we all play together. (SHOCKING, I know - Keisha is going to an online gaming meetup?) It has been a long time since the Elendor parties and things, and it was both the same and different from those past experiences.

In short, it was amazing. I hung out. I played trivia, I played board games with friends, I made friends (and more), I drank a litlte. I danced too much, and swam too much on the lake. I am sad to be home, and happy that I went. It was an amazing and awesome vacation, and I did not work at all! Yay not working. :)

Here is what I did do:

Worked until 3:30 on Wednesday. Drove 2.5 hours to the airport. Parked, checked in, etc, had 1.25 hours pre-flight. Got a half hour massage at the massage bar. Got on the plane. Chewed a lot of gum because the plane did not pressurize correctly (I LOVE SOUTHWEST, sigh). Land, get picked up by TB and the people he was driving in with (Discy, Cap, and Kain). Go 'home' unpack enough to have things where I like them, go meet people at TehClubHouse. Come home, stay up until 4:30 with TB doing radio. 

Thursday we got up, went grocery shopping after havig a huge breakfast at th restaurant our landlady recommended, and then arranged to do some shuttling about for RHPS that night. Played Portal, or watched it at our house...shuttled people to RHPS, watched a friend do a belly dance, went back to play games, hang out, etc. Did not watch Rocky.

Friday was suuuuuushi. Delicious raw fish of yumminess. And our clan's potluck - which was awesome and yummy all 'round. Quiche by Umbra, Naamahpie by Fusi, crab dip, fruit salad, etc, etc. I did not touch the food at Dave & Buster's at all, there was so much deliciousness at the pot luck.

Saturday was the big official picnic, where I wound up on a trivia team with glebs, jackman, and tealsac...we came in second, so that was way spiffy. :) Saturday night was a concert, which was very fun. Nowhere to sit, except ONE bench in the 21+ section in the very far back of the club, and since i was hanging out a lot of my time with under-21 person/people....we wound up sitting o nthe floor under the bar a few times instead. The concert was great, I danced too much and bruised my knees.

Sunday was chill and hang out time and Organ Stop pizza (Find the website, check it out - it reminded me of Pizza and Pipes when I was a kid) which was way better than people said it would be for pizza quality. :) Then it was more time hanging out with clan folks.

Monday was a boat trip on Canyon lake. I swam so much my shoulder utterly failed me. But it was amazing and awesome and full of hugs and snuggles and chilltime and feetrubs (Thank you Ribo) and win.

Monday night was a flight home and AGAIn with the no pressurization. My ear did not pop until mid-day on Tuesday. :/

Still, I cannot wait to do it again. Awesomely amazing group of people.

Somewhat inspired by the abc-along and other such things, I have decided to do a stream of consciousness alphabet exercise. I was in the car this morning, going through my admittedly muddled brain, and grumbling about various events of the past few days, and realized I was making an alphabetical list of woes. So, to clear my brain, I subject you to an alphabetical list of...concepts. Whatever comes to mind for each letter, and why. This might not be useful to anyone but me, but I do not really believe in wholly private LJ tags. Also, its under a cut due to length.

( My random rambling - from A-Z )That was fun, and did help with the crankypants changing. I hope it was enlightening, or enjoyable, or at least didn't bore you to tears.
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- Weight loss program is....one step forward, two steps back. On the plus side, I am getting stronger with every week's worth of gym time, and haven't gone up in sizes. Just....stubborn scale. Also, wattles! Ick.

- Job is becoming more lame and sucktastic every day. Part of me really really really wants to be fired. Part of me is terrified of the economy.

- A MUCH BIGGER part of me wishes I had the balls to just DO, instead of dream.

- One week to Vacation Time. Real vacation, without working. I might go crazy. I am bringing the laptop, so it is more likely....I will just work.

- No, not on craptastic job things! On Avalon things. On job hunting. On re-tooling the resume to better show of my mad skills in the industry for which I would like to work. (In which? With which?) 

- I crocheted a swimsuit cover-up in a week. While other projects languished. BUT!! IT is done. I finished something.

Haven't done a public Hey! I'm alive! post in a while, so for those who like to have such things - look. I'm alive. Yupyup. Gained this week, but only a little, and after a 2.6 lb drop last week that I didn't fully trust, even if it DID include three days of a convention. (Someone explain to me how I lose so much at shows, please? If I could translate that into everyday....well. It would be very nice)

Went to convention - ran 'vendor services' (dealer's room, auctions, and flea markets) by which I mean I had three very competent men who ran those things and reported back to me occasionally. We lost all our senior registration staff, though only on one year hiatus for at least one of them, so I also did reg, with help from the amazing and wonderful Jackie. Who stepped in and the desk on Saturday like an old pro, allowing me to go be Vanna in the auction. 

Also went to an old family friend's daughter's wedding this last weekend. Had a very good time there too, the fog parted to make the evening very lovely, even if the music was a bit....top 40 once the dancing started. I rather preferred the 30s and 40s swing tunes they had on during dinner. Alas.

Also also still doing the gym. Didn't do a lot of weights today, but did manage to impress people with my swan skills (Stand on a bosu on one leg. Go flat backed, other leg straight out behind you. Balance thusly. Do not fall OFF the bosu) at the end. Yay having mad dancer skillz, hah. So, things go apace in the 'better, faster, slimmer' plan. Things go apace in general in life too. I am balanced on the edge of decisions. It is...interesting.

Later this month, I will go on the first vacation I have taken since, well...officially since GenCon 2002, but since I wound up putting in volunteer hours there...since 1997. My honeymoon, to be specific. (Edit: Dude, I forgot about Disneyworld. I fail. So, first vacation since 2001 Christmas - I don't count family visits for funerals/weddings/etc. as vacation)

Now, this does not mean I haven't taken time off work, and called that time off 'vacation'. It just means that when I do this thing I call vacation, it does not look the way you might imagine:

Beaches and sunsets and fruity drinks with umbrellas in.

Okay, I admit there are sometimes fruity drinks with umbrellas in.

Many people have been appalled by this. I mean, really? You spend your vacation time working?! For (the most part) free?! Are you totally nuts?

That is the general reaction I get 90% of the time. Perhaps I am. But I don't think so. I work in a stressful field. I do a job that is often overlooked, underpaid, and completely unappreciated by both the company for which I work and the employees for whom I advocate. When I go to work for my vacations I do a job for which I am praised, appreciated, and generally a job that I enjoy doing. I get to deal with the public, I get to make people happy. I get to see a large number of people who believe and act and think like I do - who do not think 'holing yourself up with a table and a bunch of geeks for a Saturday' is a bad idea.

I remember the vacation on which I had 'nothing to do'....it was horrible. I was constantly looking for ways to occupy myself (I didn't knit full time yet, aieeee) and could rarely truly relax. At shows, I work my tail off. And then I relax after hours, completely and utterly. So much so that this upcoming vacation, the one where I wasn't going to plan too much, or volunteer, or do anything but lie by the side of a pool with a fruity drink?

Yeah....I volunteered to help run a gaming table for a few hours on Saturday. At Origins, we got ribbons that said This IS my vacation. I want this to be my vacation all the time. Previous decisions posts have been knocking at the back of my brain. I spoke with some of those aforementioned friend type peoples over the weekend. I want my work to be my vacation every day (Yeah yeah, I know: IMPOSSIBLE) or at least, I want my work to not suck. So, feelers are being put out. Resumes being retyped. Thoughts thunk. Anyone know a tabletop game company looking for a combination HR/Convention Services/Gal Friday person? :)

OH, and yeah...I just came back from four days of vacation running Pacificon. It rocked. I got very tired. I did NOT recover from a cold like I thought, but instead ran for four days on adrenaline. I vaguely remember anything other than there was liquor and Time's Up Titles. Wheee.

I took the two week break between WWW sessions off, limiting myself to random yoga sessions and a little bit of frisbie golf. I also went out and bought a heart rate monitor, after a year of nagging by the girls in the session and our trainer.

It was interesting. 25 minutes of intense biking: My heart rate peaked at 165, while I felt like I was working at 90-95%. Two laps of 'easy' running around the parking lot: 174(171 doing stairs, woo), where I felt like i was working at 80%. Yeah, when I say my body doesn't like running? Not lying. This, in some ways, made me feel good. It means I was not wrong before - and it means I know how to jack up my heart rate when I need to. :)

It kind of makes me want to get a waterproof monitor, just so I can see what swimming does, after so many years of not really being serious about it. But, not enough to spend that kind of money. Or join Masters yet, though I am seriously considering it after this WWW session. Or, at the very least, when I move back to civilization.

And my knee felt really strong, even with the two week break, both biking and doing the leg exercises. We're re-doing my measurements on Friday, and that will be interesting - I did them last on my second session about a year ago.

(crossposting to my journal and LL)

I am putting this up here rather than just in my notebook, so that other people can hold me accountable for following through on the rewards, and on the plan to get there. Part of me doesn't believe in bribing myself to lose weight. Part of me thinks I need some goals to reach for, what with the whole '5lbs in a year' crap since really getting workout serious last February. So, here are my highly tentative goals for the next while. I did NOT put dates on them, or deadlines, because I know better than to do that: I will starve myself at the last moment, make the goal, and then gain 10 lbs. :P

At 170lbs: Get a new phone (One that is NOT stuck in the '80s, cough) - specifically most likely a BB Curve. Meow.
at 160 lbs: Have both rings resized, and take the old wedding set in to have it melted into a necklace as I've wanted to do for a while now.
at 150 lbs: Go somewhere for the weekend. Possibly with someone else.
at 140 lbs: Throw a party. :)
at 135 lbs: Cry. I Haven't thought of a good reward for this yet - it is my goal, and will be lighter than I have been since 1996. Its been slow getting where I am now (52lbs gone, 43 to go, that's over halfway! OMG, I just realized that. WOOOT!), and I know it will only keep going more and more slowly. But dammit - I am gonna do something GOOD when I get there.

Oh, just for reference sake, weigh-in on Monday was 175. Go go gadget weight loss. -2lbs from the week before, despite falling down HARD over the weekend. This weekend will also be difficult, since omnomnom delicious earl grey cupcakes with lemon cream cheese frosting were made last night to be brought to gaming on Saturday. I will ALSO bring veggies. Mmhm.

That is the latest in my 'Promises' - the little foil sayings wrapped around Dove chocolate Promises. I have one every other day at work, in the afternoon, when my patience and energy are flagging.

I save perhaps one saying a week; the best ones come from the caramel chocolates. They are lined up on my monitor shelf right now:

Love without rules.
Listen to your heartbeat and dance.
Remember your first everything.
Lose yourself in a moment.
Go against the grain.

They lead in a neat little line to my Samuel Beckett quote. I wonder sometimes what my boss thinks of my little collection on my desk - I know she despises clutter, so I imagine it just annoys her. But looking up from number crunching and reconciliations and conversations that make my blood boil to see that little parade makes me smile.

It also makes me think. Particularly this latest one, from yesterday's chocolate bite. Love without rules. Love, period, has been a subject much on my thoughts recently - do I throw that word around too much? Do I fall in love too easily with people, things, ideas? I have striven so hard to be myself in all things in life, since the big D. Am I succeeding? Am I loving without rules? In some ways, yes. More so than I ever have before. In others, I am not sure. I'd like to think yes. But there is still fear, the need to be certain, to not be 'lost in a moment', but to ensure that everything will go just like the careful script in my head.

It never does.

And that is okay.

These are sentences I need to learn to live with better. I need to follow through, be pushy, say what I mean when I mean it, and shut the hell up when I don't. Most of all, I need to stop worrying about being loved back. (or liked, or respected, or whatever you want to use - I personally like the word love in all its myriad meanings) There are many things and people I love: Some platonically, some romantically, some familially, some in ways that defy definition. I vow to let more of them know this more often. And in that spirit, a list:

Things:
Sunsets, pretty dresses, thunderstorms, architecture

Places:
Home, Downtown (In any major city: Dublin, SF, Philly, London, Amsterdam - I wish I could list more I have been to), the beach, the top of a mountain

Animals:
Malcolm, Ivan, Ariel, Cheyenne, Anabelle, Roany, Dunny, Titan, Shyloh, Bart (&c) Joey, Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday, Thorlina, Strawberry (&c.), Weenie, Screamer, Bandito, Casper, Jessie, Missy, Brutus

People:
Yeah, I'm not really making a list here. I'll forget someone. Friends, family, lovers, more friends....

So, yeah, just your average 'hey look, I'm not dead yet' post. In four parts:

1. Saw Dark Knight last night.
    If you have not seen it, and are, like me, a fan of the darker version of Batman, and/or a fan of comic book movies in general, go. See it now, in the theatre, for full impact. It is the best comic adaptation I have ever seen, hands down. I had concerns after Batman Begins about Christian Bale's ability to do the role well, about where they might take this one, about some of the 'problems' ranted about by friends who ware die hard Batman fans. (I mean, I loves me the Bat, I do, but some of them are even more hardcore. By  a lot) It blew them all away. The effects were great, the city was JUST the right amount of gritty, the dialogue was perfectly comic, and I don't mean four color four panel cheesy children's comics. I mean /good/ comics. Like Watchmen, and 1602, and the early X-men good.

Speaking of Watchmen - I have such high hopes! I need to read it again (If I can find it in my boxes, maybe I will just buy another copy) before March.

1.5 For the very first time in my life, I went to the movies ALONE.
    No date, no friends, no family. Just me, my snuck-in baked chips, and  the movie. Oh, and the obnoxious teenagers who managed to miss the 'DO NOT TEXT MESSAGE, ITS RUDE' notice before the previews - they kept blinding me with their screens, even after being asked by me (nicely) and another patron (less nicely) to knock it the hell off. I mean, seriously, who can't go 2 hours without? The movie was still excellent. I still enjoyed it. I still froze to death in the A/C (Even with my hoodie on). I did not self-combust in a sudden bout of social anxiety. Now, I know it was just a movie, and not something where I might have had to actively interact with other people - one step at a time, okay? (Also....I did kind of almost go to Origins alone, that counts for something, right?)

2. Gym report!
    I went up in intensity and weights again. A year and a half ago, I could do ten minutes, MAX on the ARC-trainer. At level one. At 70-80 steps per minute. Today, I went up to level 6 for my twenty minute warm-up, after being at 5, with 110 steps a minute for a few weeks. It is a geometric progression, from 1-10. I think next week, I will try seven on Friday (Monday is our hardest day, and Wednesday is legs - I don't really want to hurt myself) just to see if I can do it, though going up to 6, I dropped my step count back down to 90, so I can stay there for a while.

    I went up in weight for the one handed over-head press, too. When I started, I used 3lb weights. Today, I went up to 15lb weights - taking them from the woman in our group everyone looks up to, the one who can do everything better/faster/stronger (Oh, she is 63, btw. I hope to be that cool at her age. :) ) because it was too heavy for her. I did a little internal squee about that. Also, I have caught up to her on tricep pulls - 50lbs. (I started those at 20). I did not get breathless doing time pyramids with jump-rope. Even with the smoke...which has kept both us and bootcamp indoors, its been fun and cramped and difficult, but better than trying to run in that stuff. UGH.

    Oh, and added gym benefit: Hi. I have not used my inhaler this year. Not ONCE. Not even now, when the smoke is thick enough it reminds us of the Penngrove Fog, the nights when you couldn't drive the speed limit because you couldn't see. Visibility is something like 20-100ft on a regular basis. Its worse here in town, but still bad at home. And I can breathe. I am jubilant.

    The smoke is also dissapointing in that we aren't doing any Bridge runs or anything fun outdoors, JUST when my body finally decides it likes running. Oh well. :)

3.  Things I love about where I live
    I had a bad day on Wednesday. One of those 'I hate everything', bad country song days. I hate my job, I hate my apartment, I hate my town, I hate that I can't find a job (that pays better OR is what I want to do OR...why does it always have to be or?)...

I do not like those days, not least because they make me feel like crawling under the covers and never coming back out. But also because really, honestly and truly, I have a good life. I have friends, even when I feel like I don't (see movies alone above), even when most of them live 2+(++++) hours away. I am better off than Dad was at my age, and look where he is now. And mostly, I don't like them because I don't like being negative. I spent far too long in that space, and I want to be done with it forever and for good. So. Here is a short list of what is actually GOOD about living in Podunk Rednecksville (aka Redding);
    a. I can go see a popular movie, show up 30 minutes before showtime, and get the best seat in the house. And it only cost me $7. (For that matter, I could have gone on Opening Night and showed up an hour in advance and been fine - I have done it before).
    b. When smoke is not lying as heavy as fog over the valley, I have the most amazingly wonderful view.
    c. I can walk anywhere, safely, at any hour.
    d. I can blast the Country Music station and noone looks at me funny. :)

4. Sewing Projects
    I bought fabric yesterday, some Very Pink fabric. I don't DO pink. I am a greens, blues, reds kind of girl. But it was $1.00 a yard. And I have the 'dress of awesome' that I get compliments on all the time, and it is a very simple-seeming pattern. So Sunday, I am going to attempt to recreate it. This is a stretch of my pattern drafting skills, but should be fun.

Yes, I know I have knitting to do. The shoulder STILL F**ing hurts, though oddly didn't hurt doing the presses today, just the tricep kickbacks. Very odd.

So my cats tried to kill me on Saturday. If I were one of those clever exciting bloggers, I would have gory pictures of the broken statuary, my wounded head, etc. Alas. I am not.

Suffice to say I was woken up at 6am to a sudden sharp pain and blood. Ice for an hour mitigated the swelling, and I am pretty sure the possibility of an actual concussion. However, four days later I still have a lovely little bruise, and far too many everyday activities make me dizzy.

Also, all heavy items have been removed from the top of the piano/headboard, yes.

I think they are rebelling against Casper's presence (Anyone want to adopt an adorable, loving, adult cat who's family abandoned him for me to take care of? I so cannot have a FOURTH cat in a 500sq. foot apartment :( ) or just wanted more kibble. Or, possibly, are fat roly poly brats. I imagine them up there, though, staring down at me from the top of the antique player piano, little paws poised to send poor Gandalf (Yeah, I have a Gandalf statue. Yeah, its on my headboard. Yeah, I am a dork) hurtling to his doom, snickering quietly, whiskers flicking back and forth. I imagine the conversation between the boys:

Malcolm:  "Think it will work?"
Ivan: "Oh yeah. She'll be a goner for sure."
M; "Mmm, all the kibble we can, HEY! She's pretty big, I bet we'd have food for a week."
I: "Oh yeah..but...but what about scritchi...did you just push it! You pushed it!" He leans over the edge even more, nose on paws, to see if it worked. Or didn't. (I woke up to him like that, leaning over me, licking his nose...)

Regardless, my body IS rebelling - against what, I have no idea. I went home sick yesterday. Made it to the gym today, only to pull a muscle somewhere in my thass region while doing a stupidly simple excercise. NOT COMFY.  Still feel queasy. Can't leave work, since I've already postponed orientation by a day.

Can't sleep, save in brief spurts that are filled with strange dreams. Days filled with an unsettling sense of deja-vu. I want to join the rebellion - get up from my desk and walk away. Drive somewhere, anywhere. Do something more useful than this. It isn't Fall yet, despite the oak trees own rebellion against summer (They believe it is - we have golden leaves and acorns already), but I feel that Autumnal wanderlust settling in already. It is going to be a long winter.

From
klellingson
, again - a list of my favourite songs that begin with a letter of his choosing (To continue the meme, post, and I will give YOU a letter. See how it works? Mmmmhmm, fun). So, in honor of us being 'K's...four songs, in the order in which they entered my head.

1. Reply to this post and I'll assign you a letter.
2. List 5 songs you like that start with that letter.
3. Post them to your journal with these instructions.

Kiss Me - Six Pence None the Richer ("Down beside the pale moon sparkling..." is one of my favorite images in music EVER)

Knights of the Round Table - Monty Python (I do like me a good silly song from time to time)

Keep Your Hands to Yourself - Georgia Satellites (Brings back awesome memories and makes me a little sad -My Chuckles, O'Fiordor, wherever did you manage to disappear to?)

King of Spain - Moxy Fruvous (Again with the memories, and silly Canadian friends)

Keep on the Sunny Side - The Whites (Its a good movie. A good song. A good way to live)

Five songs. With K. :)