How the week has been.
-- Oh, daylight savings. How you completely eff me up. No kidding, I have gone to sleep at 9 or 10 twice this week. Me, the nightowl, who will happily work until 2am. Something about it getting dark so early just makes me want to eat dinner and sleep.
-- As far as Nox goes, with the appetite stimulant, he has been eating, but will only touch dry food. This is fine for now, but in the long run, I want to get him back on wet food. Boy cats and a diet of only dry don't mesh very well. Two vets have given us the diagnosis of "huh" as far as he is concerned, after 2 blood tests, 2 ultrasounds, and an x-ray. So it's treating the symptoms and seeing how he does there. My main goal is getting him in the habit of eating again, re-training his brain to see food as good stuff.
-- Olive hates that Nox has been getting so much attention and has been extra bossy and extra clingy. We bought some Feliway to help him relax, and it had the complete opposite reaction on her for a few days. She became a surly, hissing demon at everyone in the household. I am reminded of what the Pax did to a small portion of the population...
-- To console me on a particularly rough night,
tamnonlinear brought over a terribad 1960's filmed version of the Ballad of Tam Lin, starring Ava Gardner and Ian McShane (as a young stud who had not yet grown into his teeth). It was... innnnnnnnnnnteresting. Better with herbal enhancement.
-- Anxiety sucks. There's just no other way to put it. This time of year is hard for me without any kind of triggers, but add in a major illness for one of my furkids, and it meant periodic crying jags to the point where I actually ran out of tears and started dry-crying. It's exhausting. Hence the herbal enhancement.
-- Work is... okay, I suppose. I delivered a 72 pc wholesale order to a well-known resort this week, and the gift shop manager is thrilled. I'm hoping that maybe that opens some doors. Wholesale may not be quite as lucrative as retail, but it's guaranteed money, which is excellent in the slow months. I'm also keeping my eye on a few vending days for the holiday season. Which-- I'm already way, way late getting started on holiday things. But I'm just not feeling it this year. Maybe it's the Christmas creep that started in fucking September, but I have very little inspiration. I'll be repeating some of my traditional pieces and bestsellers, but for other things, my motivation's a little shot. The remainder of this week is about finishing custom work up, and then I want to scrabble a small holiday update together by the first week of December. Which is late, but, I can't help it. I had an incredibly busy Autumn season, both professionally and personally. Maybe I just need to experiment.
-- I really have to do a Disney post.
-- My sister had her baby shower. And her husband got out of prison just in time to come, isn't that nice? God bless my family. We all smiled tightly and got through it with lots of raised eyebrows and euphemisms.
-- I did host my other, youngest sister for a sleepover last week. She's doing great. Doing college, about to start the process to become an EMT. So it balances, I guess.
-- This icon, by the by, is from a picturetwelvepetals shot for her portfolio a few weekends back. I'll be posting some full-sizes soonish. In the meanwhile, you can go like Vasilion Photography on Facebook.
-- I'm volunteering at FaerieCon this weekend. Vending fees were stupidly high, so I opted out, but I still wanted to be involved. I'll be manning the merch table on Friday for a shift, and then helping artists execute their Faerie Academy workshops all afternoon on Saturday. Probably doing the Bad Faeries Ball.
-- My self-care time has been consumed with reading. I read Seanan McGuire-as-Mira Grant's Feed, which I wholeheartedly recommend for those who like thrillers. I am not as happy about the second book in the trilogy, Deadline. For one, I simply liked George much better as a narrator. Shaun is so damn repetitive. The following happens in the book at least twenty times: Shaun talks to his dead sister. People look at him funny. He tells us it's because he's crazy. Rinse, repeat.
Look, Mira. You lovely person, you. We did not forget that he is crazy. He tells us so about sixty times, maybe more. You don't have to keep telling us. We get it.
Add to that-- the revelation that Shaun & George's relationship was in fact sexual? It took me right the fuck out of that book. Okay, so they're not biological siblings. They were raised together by opportunistic vultures. Fine. But they call themselves brother and sister, and that just should not happen with the person you are boning. Okay? Okay. SQUICK.
Overall, the book just wasn't as gripping as its predecessor. And there were way too few zombies, who only popped up for chase scenes or surprise moments you can see coming pages in advance. What, the only zombies we see for a span of 200 pages manage to rip off Shaun's kevlar and bite him? YOU DON'T SAY. It just felt... obvious. Anyway, I'll finish up with Blackout for the sake of completeness. I'll leave you with a final word of advice: don't read the alternative ending to Feed unless you want to depress yourself into a black hole. Plus, it's just not as good as the published one.
-- As far as Nox goes, with the appetite stimulant, he has been eating, but will only touch dry food. This is fine for now, but in the long run, I want to get him back on wet food. Boy cats and a diet of only dry don't mesh very well. Two vets have given us the diagnosis of "huh" as far as he is concerned, after 2 blood tests, 2 ultrasounds, and an x-ray. So it's treating the symptoms and seeing how he does there. My main goal is getting him in the habit of eating again, re-training his brain to see food as good stuff.
-- Olive hates that Nox has been getting so much attention and has been extra bossy and extra clingy. We bought some Feliway to help him relax, and it had the complete opposite reaction on her for a few days. She became a surly, hissing demon at everyone in the household. I am reminded of what the Pax did to a small portion of the population...
-- To console me on a particularly rough night,
tamnonlinear brought over a terribad 1960's filmed version of the Ballad of Tam Lin, starring Ava Gardner and Ian McShane (as a young stud who had not yet grown into his teeth). It was... innnnnnnnnnnteresting. Better with herbal enhancement.-- Anxiety sucks. There's just no other way to put it. This time of year is hard for me without any kind of triggers, but add in a major illness for one of my furkids, and it meant periodic crying jags to the point where I actually ran out of tears and started dry-crying. It's exhausting. Hence the herbal enhancement.
-- Work is... okay, I suppose. I delivered a 72 pc wholesale order to a well-known resort this week, and the gift shop manager is thrilled. I'm hoping that maybe that opens some doors. Wholesale may not be quite as lucrative as retail, but it's guaranteed money, which is excellent in the slow months. I'm also keeping my eye on a few vending days for the holiday season. Which-- I'm already way, way late getting started on holiday things. But I'm just not feeling it this year. Maybe it's the Christmas creep that started in fucking September, but I have very little inspiration. I'll be repeating some of my traditional pieces and bestsellers, but for other things, my motivation's a little shot. The remainder of this week is about finishing custom work up, and then I want to scrabble a small holiday update together by the first week of December. Which is late, but, I can't help it. I had an incredibly busy Autumn season, both professionally and personally. Maybe I just need to experiment.
-- I really have to do a Disney post.
-- My sister had her baby shower. And her husband got out of prison just in time to come, isn't that nice? God bless my family. We all smiled tightly and got through it with lots of raised eyebrows and euphemisms.
-- I did host my other, youngest sister for a sleepover last week. She's doing great. Doing college, about to start the process to become an EMT. So it balances, I guess.
-- This icon, by the by, is from a picture
twelvepetals shot for her portfolio a few weekends back. I'll be posting some full-sizes soonish. In the meanwhile, you can go like Vasilion Photography on Facebook.-- I'm volunteering at FaerieCon this weekend. Vending fees were stupidly high, so I opted out, but I still wanted to be involved. I'll be manning the merch table on Friday for a shift, and then helping artists execute their Faerie Academy workshops all afternoon on Saturday. Probably doing the Bad Faeries Ball.
-- My self-care time has been consumed with reading. I read Seanan McGuire-as-Mira Grant's Feed, which I wholeheartedly recommend for those who like thrillers. I am not as happy about the second book in the trilogy, Deadline. For one, I simply liked George much better as a narrator. Shaun is so damn repetitive. The following happens in the book at least twenty times: Shaun talks to his dead sister. People look at him funny. He tells us it's because he's crazy. Rinse, repeat.
Look, Mira. You lovely person, you. We did not forget that he is crazy. He tells us so about sixty times, maybe more. You don't have to keep telling us. We get it.
Add to that-- the revelation that Shaun & George's relationship was in fact sexual? It took me right the fuck out of that book. Okay, so they're not biological siblings. They were raised together by opportunistic vultures. Fine. But they call themselves brother and sister, and that just should not happen with the person you are boning. Okay? Okay. SQUICK.
Overall, the book just wasn't as gripping as its predecessor. And there were way too few zombies, who only popped up for chase scenes or surprise moments you can see coming pages in advance. What, the only zombies we see for a span of 200 pages manage to rip off Shaun's kevlar and bite him? YOU DON'T SAY. It just felt... obvious. Anyway, I'll finish up with Blackout for the sake of completeness. I'll leave you with a final word of advice: don't read the alternative ending to Feed unless you want to depress yourself into a black hole. Plus, it's just not as good as the published one.