Sleep and I are at odds again. It took me a while to fall asleep last night and when I finally did I woke up three hours later, groggy and confused. Fell back asleep. Woke up three hours later again, reeling from a very vivid, gory dream. Fell back asleep and woke up two hours later. So it's no surprise I've been a bit spacey all day, with a headache. I meant to write the dream down earlier, because I wanted to remember it and because I so rarely have these very detailed dreams anymore. I used to have them on a semi-regular basis and I kind of miss them even when the content is disturbing.

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It sounds like a nightmare, but it wasn't, exactly. I don't remember being frightened in the dream, just a little anxious and full of adrenaline. When I woke up, my nerves were all fired up and on high alert but I felt exhausted at the same time.

Sometimes one's inner serial killer has a field day with one's unconscious mind, I guess. I've been working on a vampire short story and reread Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla for inspiration. Maybe that's what did it...

Every few months or so, sleep and I sort of hit a rough patch in our relationship for anywhere from a few days to a week. I don't know why, but my brain gets disgruntled with the whole "lying down and slipping into a restful sleep coma for 8 or perhaps 10 hours" arrangement that's been working out so well for us, lo these many years. So lately I've been falling asleep, then waking up maybe 3-4 hours later for no apparent reason before (eventually) falling asleep again.

Lately that's been accompanied by weird auditory incidents, the kind that happen when you're just at the right point between asleep and awake. A voice I don't recognize speaking sharply, as if someone's in the room with me. "Pick up!" it said once. And just, "HEY." Another time, it was child-like laughter, which sounds like the beginning of a horror movie, but I was too tired at the time to be properly creeped out. Then yesterday it was the intro to Bowie's TVC15 with that little drum into piano bit. That confused me more than anything else, because I thought, oh, my phone. Some of the people in my contacts are assigned specific Bowie tunes. One friend is "Aladdin Sane". Another is "Strangers When We Meet". The general ringtone is "Sound and Vision". Nobody has been assigned "TVC15", which I realized after a few groggy seconds. Also my phone isn't even in the bedroom.

After learning about Bowie's passing, I listened to his music for a couple hours, then abruptly turned it off and I haven't listened to any of it since then. Like me and sleep, it's not a permanent hiatus, just a rough patch. But I thought it was funny that even though I haven't been listening to it, it still lurks in my subconscious and pops out at odd moments.

... and Bowie fans could use one today of all days.



It's funny. A lot of people are saying how prescient many of the tracks and lyrics on Blackstar seems now, particularly "Lazarus". They're not wrong, but Bowie's lyrics have always had mortality as a recurring theme. It's just that now it's no longer merely a creative choice but a sad reality.

David Bowie Dead at 69

Confirmed by his official website, Facebook and his son.

I didn't really think he'd live forever, but...

In a moment of weakness, I bought a giant bag of panko-crusted chicken nuggets from Costco. Guess what I've eaten for dinner for like, three nights in a row now? It gets worse. I'm eating them with rice and a mixture of ketchup and mustard. Mind you, I'm an adult, I can cook, and I have real food in the house. But it's almost Thanksgiving and I feel like an apathetic, lazy slug of a person.

The neighbor across the street has gone all out with those inflatable lawn decorations in the shape of ghosts, jack o'lanterns, etc. As an added bonus, there's an accompanying soundtrack. More than one, in fact.

Scary noise #1 consists of:

1) Murdered duck sounds
2) Booming demonic laughter

Scary noise #2 consists of:

1) yowling cats
2) Garbled Black Speech of Mordor*
3) Pterodactyl calls

* Okay, not really, because that would be sort of cool. It's just unintelligible hag-like muttering.


The noise isn't constant, so I think they're motion activated? Which is a bit freaky because they go off at odd times, such as 4pm for five minutes straight or 2 am or you know, right now. And I don't want to get all horror movie on you, but I looked out the window and there's nobody there. NOBODY I CAN SEE, ANYWAY.

So the trailer for the Victorian era Sherlock Christmas special is up and it looks so pretty I might watch it after all. I thought season three was... okay, I don't really know how to describe season three, but after seeing it I wasn't sure I wanted to stick around for season four.


On a completely unrelated note, I can't believe I missed hearing about this back in April: Florida man finds human skeleton hand and treasure map in attic. It's like The Goonies is happening, but in real life! There's nothing in my attic except old boxes and pesky squirrels. This was my favorite quote from the article:

"Well, it certainly is a hand," said Rodney Kite Powell, curator at the Tampa Bay History Center.

Good job, Rodney.

I just finished John Harwood's The Ghost Writer, and while there's a lot to process, I quite liked it. It's a bit like The Woman in Black or Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger, with a creeping sense of wrongness and dread that keeps building. Lots of lovely gothic detail, too-- family secrets and mysterious photographs, unsettling paintings that haunt the viewer, a gorgeous house fallen to ruin, etc. However...

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Still enjoyed it, a perfect atmospheric read since Halloween's around the corner. If you like older horror like M.R. James, you might like this.

... I bought myself a machete. It was on sale. There's a sheath and a thingy to attach it to one's belt loop and it's pretty much requiring all my willpower not to pretend it's a sword. I have to remind myself that I'm not a kid anymore, I have poor hand/eye coordination and if I chop myself in the shin or lop off a finger not only it is going to hurt like hell but my dignity will take a serious hit, too.

A fangirl confession: If you're a Bowie fan, you know that after a ten year dry spell since Reality, he surprised the living crap out of everyone by releasing a new album called The Next Day in 2013. I bought it, of course. But... I have this weird thing where I find it difficult to listen to new music right away. I'll buy them and they'll sit and gather dust for a while and I couldn't even really tell you why I do this. It's a combination of general apathy and aversion to change (good or bad) and some twitchy anxiety over whether or not I'll like the new music. My method of coping is to pretend there is no new music, and voilà, problem solved!

I honestly do not know what the hell is wrong with me.

Anyway, I'm listening to it now and marveling that there is such a thing as new (to me) Bowie music. This would be a good thing even if I hated every single track and it was silly of me to put it off for so long.

While leaving the kitchen with a banana (which I may or may not have been brandishing like a gun, pretending to be James Bond), I accidentally stepped on a spider in my bare feet. It made a tiny popping noise, like stepping on a Cheerio. I was super grossed out but I feel better now that I've shared that with you guys.

Last night, I thought I smelled something weird, a very faint sour-ish odor that was too elusive to identify but wasn't dissipating. I actually started to think it was just my imagination and was walking around the house thinking... did I leave something out of the fridge? Has the milk gone bad? No...

I went out this afternoon to run errands and when I came back, I happened to glance down the street. There was a furry black and white heap on the neighbor's driveway and I thought, awwww, a sleeping cat. So naturally I start walking toward it thinking I'd just give it some scritches. Only as I got closer, I thought... wow, that looks like one intense nap, because it's not moving. Then I realized that it had only just stopped raining with hail and it's not likely a cat would've had the time or inclination to... OMG ABORT ABORT ABORT IT'S A SKUNK ABORT ABORT.

Mostly likely a dead skunk, given its stillness and uncharacteristic daytime appearance, but you know, I wasn't going to get any closer just in case.



I know that's a bad picture (taken from a very conservative distance) but come on... it looks cat-like. Sort of...

Not really, anyway. But I've been forced to confront the sad realization that at any given time in my life, I have three juggling balls: social interactions/family, health and writing. I can only keep two balls up in the air at the same time. I've tried doing all three and cannot sustain it for long periods. To be honest, most of the time I can only manage one... and a half... ish. Social interactions/family isn't exactly optional and as I get older, the health one isn't really optional, either. Things I could let slide in my teens and twenties are no longer slide-able.

And you know, it feels horrible and frustrating because I think surely... SURELY I should be able to adult better than this. Isn't everyone else doing it? When I was younger, I assumed that being a competent, responsible adult was just something you automatically picked up as you go.

[insert bitter laughter]

Apparently, you don't. Yet it's kind of comforting to know I'm not alone in that and I suspect it's a pretty common feeling people have. Everyone's struggling with something and feeling like a huge fraud or a failure, especially when other people have it so much worse and are STILL handling it better, etc. etc. If a friend told me this, I'd tell them that they need to give themselves a break and not be so hard on themselves. But I think I give myself too many breaks. Contradictory, but there you have it.


Via scatteredlogic, have this heartwarming article on fandom: Fan is a Tool-Using Animal. Fandom has its flaws, of course (whoo boy does it ever) but it's nice to see a story where people work together in a very fandomish way. All from an outsider's POV too, which is also interesting.

I don't like to do a lot of hiking in summer. It's hot and humid and flying insects continually divebomb your eyes, ears and nose.



( But sometimes it has its rewards...Collapse )

I'm mostly okay now, except for an annoying, tickly cough that isn't fading quickly enough for me. If I never have to taste another strawberry menthol Halls again, that would be fine with me. On the other hand, this meant I finally had the time to watch The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies, which was a disappointment. It's not like I was expecting a whole lot (the first two movies cured my high expectations) but damn, that was a mess. Poor pacing, way too much time spent on that Alfrid character (seriously, WHY), too many ridiculous Legolas fighting stunts and just... I don't know. An overall poor balance of stuff from the books and overblown action sequences. I suspected this might be the case, which is why I wasn't in a big hurry to see it. But even so it seems to me that the Hobbit trilogy cost twice as much to make as LOTR and was half as pretty. What a shame. :-/

It's spring storm and tornado season here. Fortunately, my tomatoes were all planted a couple weeks ago, but I'm sneaking in two cubanelle pepper plants this week. Sliced cubanelles sauteed with garlic, onions and Italian sausage is a beautiful thing in summertime. I'm also trying to grow arugula in a window box, but something --squirrels, maybe-- keeps digging around in the dirt and the seedlings are not loving this AT ALL.

And ooh, Pineapple Ice Cream has gone on my list of recipes to try.

I've got a nasty head cold and my sinuses are currently engaged in the Great Mucus Rebellion of 2015. It's slowly evolving to the coughing-up-a-lung stage, so I picked up a bag of cough drops only every cough drop has a motto on the wrapper. It's annoyingly cheery stuff like, "Show your strut", "Put your game face on", "Flex your 'can do' muscle" and "Let's hear your battle cry". Do you know what my battle cry is at the moment?

*harrrrkcoughcoughwheeeeeezeCOUGHCOUGHnghhhurkkrglrrgl*

Yeah. Thanks, Halls Breezers.

I made a small error in judgement. It's been unseasonably warm and this is usually the time of year I get a hair cut and lose 3" of winter growth, rife with split ends. This time I got too much taken off. My hair usually falls past my shoulders; now it just brushes the tops of my shoulders and when I looked in the mirror... horrors! That is my twelve year old face staring back at me complete with petulant expression. It's also too short to tie back properly and I'm doomed to have sweaty strands of hair in my face and sticking to the back of my neck till it grows out. Dammit.

On top of that, my allergies are going nuts and all I really want to do is lie around in the shade, preferably eating ice cream. But somebody has to go outside and hack the weeds to death and these tomato plants won't plant themselves. I made these cherry limemade popsicles again, so at least I can have something cold and tart when I'm done.

I keep meaning to post more and then I don't. Mostly because so few people are on here anymore and it feels redundant to do this and e-mail people. But on the other hand, there are people here I don't talk to via e-mail but I'd still like to keep in touch. LJ was so good for that... nowhere near as banal or klutzy as Facebook, but a nice way to keep up with peoples' lives even if you're only in them peripherally.

Things have been going better. I don't mean to be cryptic exactly, but things have been Not Great for quite a few years now and I wasn't comfortable with sharing personal details. It sort of went: Not Good, Not Good, Really Not Good, Dammit This Is Worse, Crappy and Kind of Hopeless, Not Good but not Awful, Meh I can Deal if I Have To I Guess and now I'm cautiously optimistic that things are a little better. I'm writing a bit, original fiction but also a little of the next chapter of Dark Hour of Night, the fic that's only mostly dead, but not dead dead. Much like my creativity and sense of purpose!

Spring is here at long last. The blueberry bushes I planted last fall survived the winter and have put out leaves, huzzah! I don't know if they'll flourish or if/when they'll fruit, but I'm happy they made it through an unpleasant winter. Today I bought a few tomato plants and now I'll have to brave the pollen-laden outdoors and get them in the ground this weekend.


Terrible fangirl moment: I missed seeing Battle of the Five Armies in the theater. I meant to go, I just... somehow didn't. Then I thought well, it's not like I don't know how it ends. *cough*

I kind of forgot that it was Easter, which is fine except that this means there are no chocolate eggs in the house. Nooooo! I love having small bits of chocolate wrapped in pastel colored foil that's easily disposed of so nobody really knows how many pieces I ate. *cough*

I got an e-mail about the Bring your friends back to LiveJournal! thing and it was both hilarious and sad at the same time, as if LJ is stretching one skeletal hand from the grave and going, Come baaaaaaaack, fandom! Tumblr might be all shiny and full of meta, but it doesn't love you like I doooooo... I think if I had any friends or acquaintances were who still inclined to use LJ, they'd be doing it on their own and wouldn't need an invite from me, but... ah well, I suppose it's the thought that counts.

Of course, these days you can't completely discount ancient institutions because who ever thought The X-Files would come back? I certainly didn't, not after all this time.

Terry Pratchett and the Discworld series has been my go to comfort reading for a long time, especially when I need cheering up. He'll be missed.

"The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it’s as though you always get in 10 minutes after the big picture has started, and no one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues." - Terry Pratchett

I realized I forgot to mention that I'd actually finished my Winterfest fic by the free day deadline. Yay! So the entire thing is here:

Title: Fairytale of Chicago, Part One, Part Two (Labyrinth/Dresden Files)
Rating: G
Summary: Chicago's only professional wizard has landed an invitation to the most prestigious event in the Underground: the Goblin Winter Ball. Underdressed and socially awkward, Harry needs a makeover, but who can take on such a herculean task?
Author's Note: A sequel of sorts to En Fuego. I've tried to write this so it makes sense to people who aren't familiar with it or The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, but... it kind of helps if you are. No series spoilers within.


It's a dreary winter, you guys-- a dusting of snow, maybe an inch, tops. I'm glad it's not the Snowpocalypse of the east coast, but it can stop being cold ANY DAY NOW and I'd be okay with that.