Luck

I was reading this article this afternoon (actually, I'm not finished with it while I write these words, but I needed to express my feelings), and it struck me how very, deeply lucky I have been.

The article, in case you don't feel like reading it, is about poverty, and why poor people tend to stay poor. And I remembered several things suddenly, like when the student loan lady told me that if my income was below 150% of the poverty line, I could take some time off from paying back my loan (which I was having trouble doing), and how I laughed when I found out what the poverty line was, and how far below it I was. It wasn't funny, of course.

It was the closest to independent I ever have been or probably will be. My parents weren't paying for my housing, like in college. I wasn't living with a man that I was dating, who took care of most of the bills because he made more money than me, like just after college. I was living in a two-bedroom apartment with a friend, rent and utilities split 50/50, each of us buying our own food. I was working part-time at a grocery store, and had no insurance.

What I did have--and this, plus luck, is what kept my head above water--was two dear friends (H&B), who helped me out immeasurably. Later, they helped me get an appointment at a free clinic, which is the first time I ever had treatment for my depression. They also helped me get a counselor at Vocational Rehabilitation, which didn't end up doing anything for me but get me the official diagnoses of Major Depressive Disorder and Anxiety (NOS)*, and a score in the 99th percentile of a test designed for people who work with computers to test if I have an aptitude for working with computers (answer: YES).

And those I got from my Psych Eval (necessary to determine if I qualified for state help), and my Voc Eval (to see what I was good at (nearly everything) and what I had an aptitude for), not from Voc Rehab itself. I'm sure it's a fine program for most people, but it just didn't do much for me.

Anyway, H&B also got me on food stamps, and helped me legally change my name without paying the courts an obscene amount of money.

I was also dating a gentleman who would sometimes buy me groceries or give me twenty bucks. It helped me float.

Moving on.

I was working minimum wage, part time. I was barely making it. I did not have the physical or mental strength when I got home to try to find a second job, or even a replacement job that I might not hate so much.

It got better when I got food stamps (with the help of H&B**), but please try to understand how it felt when my good friend at work, who had gotten me the job, rang up my groceries one day and realized that I was paying with food stamps. Her face completely changed and she stopped her friendly banter, and just finished ringing me up very quietly. There's nothing like needing food stamps when you work at a grocery store.

Luck: I never got badly ill, or injured. Except for the depression treatment which I wasn't getting, I never needed any kind of expensive medical care. I never needed any kind of meds I couldn't get over the counter (until they stopped making albuterol inhalers available OTC, but by then I had a doctor at a free clinic, and if they weren't able to get it for me for free, then they were able to get it for me very cheaply).

Luck: I did not get fired from my job, despite being late a lot due to sleep issues and generally hating my job and thus not being motivated to try harder--which I recognize is one of those things that people think about poor people, but I didn't just like to complain about my job. Most people tend to treat baggers as furniture, which is marginally preferable to getting yelled at for not being a mind-reader. There were some people who were decent, and even a few who tried to tip me, which was against store policy, but I took the tips anyway, because I was broke as hell, but the majority of the time, I was so miserable that later, when I had a psychiatrist, she actually told me to quit my job because it was making my depression worse. By then I could, so I did. It took over a year to recover.***

Luck: I always had a place to live. For a while, that was with my parents, in a different county from all my friends and everywhere I wanted to be, but still. For about three months, it was with a friend who didn't ask for rent money, because I had just moved back to Salt Lake from my parents' house, and I didn't have a job yet. Then I moved in with my friend, who needed a new roommate, and I was something approaching independent for a while.

I miss that. I don't miss the job that drove me crazy, or the stressing about money, or the ever-present feeling that although I had my own room and was paying my half of the rent, I was merely squatting at that apartment, because my friend-turned-roommate had just lived there for so long that I could never make it feel like home. I don't miss having no energy to do anything I wanted to do, partially from the job, partially from depression, partially from health issues that I've only begun to address ...

But I do miss feeling independent.

Because here's the biggest luck of all: I began dating, and then married, a gentleman who had a decent paycheck, insurance, etc. That wasn't, of course, the reason for our relationship. But looking back ... I know that if I had remained single after breaking up with the guy who occasionally bought me groceries, instead of jumping almost immediately into another relationship ... I have no idea where I would be. Still treading water, maybe, if my luck had continued. Or maybe I'd be drowning, because no one's luck lasts forever.  

But I would not be where I am now: dancing, writing, sewing things for people, with a job that I can actually stand (which I couldn't have if I was on my own, because I don't get nearly enough hours, which is why I have time and energy to make costumes for my burlesque sisters and write stories and try to get them published), and actually pretty happy.  And that is mostly just luck (and some very dear friends).  

***

* Not Otherwise Specified, meaning just general anxiety that can't be categorized as anything specific, which I think is incorrect. My anxiety is mostly a social anxiety, brought on by stressful social interactions, like large crowds of people, authority figures exerting authority over me, realizing I've made another person angry, hurt or upset, talking on telephones, etc.

** There was so much that was, at the time, impossible for me to do on my own.  Going to Workforce Services to try to get food stamps was impossible, because of the mental energy required, the getting there (on the bus), the talking to strangers, and the sense of shame I got from asking the government for a handout.  I couldn't talk on the phone (I ducked calls from unknown numbers for years, because I couldn't deal with telling the student loan people--who were all very nice and very helpful--that I couldn't pay them).  H&B offered support, permission, a ride, and made it possible for me to do things I would otherwise have been unable to do.  

*** I quit in August 2013. I wasn't able to start working again until June 2014, and now, at the beginning of 2015, my doctor and my psychiatrist agree that I can start trying to wean off my anti-depressants. I've lowered my dosage of one of my meds, and hopefully, by the end of the year, I'll be off them both and doing fine.   

Portland Journals

Day one in Portland. I kinda wish I had a local with me right now*, despite my desire to explore alone right now.
I got so lost trying to find this one coffee shop** that Google Maps said had breakfast burritos, which sounded yummy.
So here I am, finally. It's a cute little shop.
I dunno, when I travel, I usually have a couple destinations in mind, but mostly I want to live like a local ... and maybe this is a good place for a Saturday morning when you don't have a lot of groceries in your house***.

Anyway ... my destinations include Powell's City of Books (of course), SockDreams' brick-and-mortar, and Twisted, a yarn store with tea bar and knitting lounge ... looking forward to that.
And of course, tomorrow, the main event: Erika Moen's book release party at She Bop.
Anyway, that's it for now ...

*****

* My host is working, my friend who moved here from SLC is going to meet with me, but a little later.
** Floyd's Coffee Shop
*** Apparently, my host doesn't know how to cook, but just eats sandwiches and cereal. I'm going to pick up a few things that can be microwaved, just so I don't have to eat out for every meal ...

Bluh*

Today, instead of writing at least 1,667 words**, I've been reading about rape, because I'm in too much pain*** to concentrate on writing.  
After you follow those links, I suggest a nice healthy dose of baby animals.  

Okay, let's talk briefly about NaNo.  Because, although I'm ahead of par†, and can take a break from actual writing today, I'm still going to work.  It just may not be word output.  
So, I had an idea for a novel.  It was the sequel to last year's NaNoNovel.  And in fact, I had hoped to finish that around the 15th, and start on book three, and write a trilogy.  
BUT, that didn't happen.  There are reasons, but I don't feel like going into them at the moment.  
So, I'm writing some short stories, instead.  I'm really hoping to write 50K words worth of short stories, but so far I've finished two stories, one of which I will send to an anthology at the end of the month.  Both will eventually go on my website and on my Patreon page for people to read for free, especially the one for the anthology (which doesn't yet have a title), because I'd like to write other stories set in the same world.  

Anyway, I may post some excerpts here and at Patreon, but later.  For now, it's time for me to take a nap (because I'm really tired), and then work on other stuff, like covers or learning to format ebooks or whatever.  
Love you all.  

***

* Despite my best efforts, there are probably typos in this post.  I apologize.  Please just deal with it.  

** Novemer is National Novel Writing Month^, which means I'm trying to write 50K^^ words^^^ in one month.  
^ NaNoWriMo or NaNo, for short.  
^^ At least.  I was trying for 100K, but ... 
^^^ Ideally, I'd be writing a novel, but this year ... I'm doing something a bit different.  

*** Due to being female^.  
^ In case that doesn't make sense, I'm menstruating, despite my IUD.  I'm in a lot of pain+ and that or painkillers or both is making it hard for me to brain.  
+ I got my IUD to stop or decrease the heavy bleeding and the debillitating amount of pain that menses brought me.  It became debillitating when painkillers stopped doing their job.  This is not as bad as it was before, and this is the first time in months it's been anywhere near this bad, so I'm still okay with having the IUD.  

† 1667 words x 30 days = 50K, so 1667 words x today's date = today's par, aka, where I should be if I'm going to be writing 1667 words every day for a month.  

Kale Smoothie Secrets

I love smoothies. We also have a shit-ton of kale in the backyard. So I've been looking into recipes involving kale recently (first was the kale lentil soup, and I'll keep making that), and this morning, I experimented with kale in my morning smoothie, and I want to share the two things I learned.

Pineapple is Edible Gold.
I can't taste the kale in my smoothie, because of how sweet pineapple is. I use canned pineapple chunks, and because of how juicy they are, I usually don't need to add any liquid (milk, juice) to my smoothies when I toss in half a dozen chunks.

Use a Unified Color Scheme
Normally, I don't have to worry about this: my normal smoothie fruits are bananas, pineapple, and oranges, with usually one or two brightly coloured berries (usually blackberries or raspberries) thrown in, and it always comes out looking gorgeous.
HOWEVER, when one of your ingredients is a strong color like green, you have to think about color.
My smoothie this morning is made of (bananas and pineapple, of course--those are my smoothie staples) raspberries, blueberries and kale. It's kind of a muddy color. Next time (tomorrow morning) I plan to use blueberries and blackberries together. Or raspberries and strawberries together. Or if I felt like it, I could go get some kiwis, and go for a green smoothie.

The first secret tip is essential for great taste, and should never be ignored. The second tip is mostly for aesthetics, and while that's important, it's not vital. My smoothie this morning, while strange-looking, was yummy and filling, and I'd drink more if I had any left ... alas.

To be nobody but yourself

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.  -- e. e. cummings

A thing happened today.  Though it inspired me to sit down and write this blog post, this post isn't about the thing that happened, which was frankly triggering for me.  Instead I want to talk about what this thing triggered, why it's a trigger for me, and then probably my general thoughts for a bit.  

From probably the day I was born, I have felt as though who I am, who I want to be, and what I want have been never enough, unacceptable, and/or not real.  I have been told that what I suffer isn't real; I have been treated as though I am worth less than people who made different choices than I did, or who were physically different* from me; I have been ignored; my voice has been overridden or trampled over; I have been ridiculed and abused because of my gender; my wants and desires have been ignored, or twisted for someone else's purpose, or used against me; I have been called disgusting, whore, bitch, merely for being true to who I am.  

I have been searching my entire life for who I am and where I belong, and it shows in my writings and the stories I tell myself**.  

I have fought all my life to be myself and nobody else.  It has been the biggest struggle of my life, and so when the choice is to be myself or to please someone else, my answer, every time, needs to be: be myself.  (It isn't always, of course, old habits being hard to break--but it needs to be.)  For my own sake, but also for the people around me: being happy makes it easier to make others happy, and I am never so miserable as when I'm repressing parts of who I am.  

That is what goes through my head anytime I see something that from the outside looks like someone repressing parts of themselves to make others happy.  Of course, it's likely more complex than that (I understand conflicting desires), but this is still my immediate reaction.  

---

* Mostly, they had penises.

** I'm a changeling, stolen from my home, taken to Faerie, then left in some other human family after the Fae got bored with me.

Fiction Magazines

This week I've spent some time sending stories to magazines.  It always amazes me how quickly some magazines can tell you they don't want your story.  Alas.
I've got four stories that I'm currently sending out ... Two came back after one day; one of those I sent out again.  The other, I saw the email right before breakfast, so I'm about to send it back out somewhere else, but first I had to eat breakfast and watch an episode of Buffy.
Anyway, I'll be getting on that now.

I don't know why it's a difficult, emotional thing now, when it hadn't been a couple of years ago, when I was doing this regularly.  But it kind of is.  Ah, well.  It's part of being who I want to be.  I just hope that someday, I can sell a story to a magazine, because that would be really awesome.

Wish me luck.  

I need your help!

I'm actually working on TWISTING FATES today (yay!), and I need help.
The Gods-tongue is the language spoken by the Gods, and if mortals could speak it properly, then they'd have basically magic.
What I need is: what do you call the written language of the Gods?  I'd prefer the format of the word/phrase to be the same, like Gods-alphabet or Gods-syllabary, only punchier, the way Gods-tongue is only two syllables.  It's an important concept, so the name for it is important.  (Also, alas, I don't yet know if the written language has an alphabet vs a syllabary vs heiroglyphs vs whatever.)
It's really annoying.  

Doll Bones, by Holly Black

A progress report, rather than a review.
According to the book trailer, I think it's supposed to be scary--I haven't gotten that far yet.  Well, there have been one or two hints--like "the Great Queen", a bone-china doll locked in a cabinet, whose eyes flutter.  And I think I'm about to get to the scary part.
But, what makes this such an important book for me is the beginning.  The three main characters, Zach, Alice and Poppy, have this thing where they "play" with action figures.  Except I would call it "role-playing".  They are clearly role-players who haven't yet discovered RPG books.
This is a book for gamers.  Also for writers, because my experience with writing is very similar to my experience with gaming, especially if I haven't got idea one about what I'm about to write (like every November): the characters do have a life outside you if you let them, and they will make decisions you never would have.
This is also a book for people who don't understand writers/gamers: Zach does an excellent job of describing what it's like.  (Or even for some gamers who have never let their characters live outside of them.)

My first major experience with this was with what I tend to call "my first real character"--Aidan.  I had played a lot of D&D before that, and my experience with D&D is that it makes it very hard to have a real character--you don't usually think about why your character is killing creatures and collecting gold--that's just the point of the game.
But Aidan--she was a real, breathing character with wants and desires and goals and a worldview.  And one day, I sat down to write a brief story about how she was coping with something traumatic; I'd had an idea of what would happen, but partway through, Aidan just tapped me on the shoulder, and said, "Let me tell you what happened."  Then I continued writing the story, a completely different story from what I had planned, because Aidan let me know that what I had planned would never have happened.

I had similar experiences with TWISTING FATES.  Every so often, I would be writing along, no real clue what was going to happen, and I would realize that the scene was dull.  Every time I realized that I was bored writing a scene, something would start happening.  Someone would start acting dodgy, or someone would say something that didn't make sense, based on the pages before--and the thing is, I had no idea what was really happening.  When someone was acting dodgy, I had to find out along the way, maybe just a step ahead of my characters, but sometimes at the same time (depending on how important to the plot it was--if it was major, I'd have to make a decision, but if it wasn't ... ).
The Deadlands, a major feature of the geography, and also a pretty big plot piece, were born out of a statement that they would need to buy supplies, when up until that point, supplies hadn't been an issue--villages were close together, and there was plenty of forage/hunting.  

TWISTING FATES (excerpt)

In my dream, the world burns. Angry red light washes over everything, and I hear yelling, screaming, other sounds I cannot identify. A woman stands over it all, watching. I cannot see her clearly, but she stands at the heart of the world on fire, and I do not know if she set the fire or is trying to put it out.  

***

I pushed on long into the night. The dream I had woken with haunted me, and besides, the temple was close enough that it made more sense to push on than to stop and make camp.

I smelled the fire before I saw it--a forested hill hid the glow from me. But when I rounded the hill, I faced the scene from my dream: the world on fire.

For a moment that felt like an eternity, I took it in: Vemzhanvimyimzhyu's temple burning, priests everywhere trying to save scrolls, books, parchments, but hindered by soldiers--not uniformed; they must be mercenaries--the sounds of fighting I had not recognized in my dream. Then I dropped my bundle, running towards the temple. I needed to help the priests save the burning knowledge.

Close to the burning building, two men grabbed me. I tried to fight them off, to get away, but the larger of the men, with long braided hair, held me fast, his grip painful. I screamed, and the other man laughed. "Hold her down for me, will you?"

I struggled uselessly as the braided man puled me to the ground. I tried to scream again, but nothing came out. 

The other one, wiry and short, unlaced his trousers and let them drop, grinning at me, before a strong voice cut through the sound of screaming, of fighting, and the great roaring of the fire.

"Leave her alone! We're done here!" There was a loud, ululating cry, and the soldiers all over the temple grounds moved away. The men standing over me did not move. "Aww, captain! We was just having a little fun!"

I looked up to see, silhouetted against the fire, a figure standing on the steps of the burning temple. "You'll have to pay for your fun in the next village, Yimve. As for you, Wenyi, you've had your fun for the night. I'm not letting you kill that girl. Go on. We're leaving."

The soldiers gathered around their commander, who gestured ahead, to the forest. The soldiers--the mercenaries--streamed into the forest, but I watch the man surrounded by flames.

When he turned his head in my direction, though, I gaped. The firelight revealed the woman from my dream, her features seeming carved from ebony and gilded.

Without entirely understanding why, I got up and staggered over to the woman. "Who are you?" I had to shout over the roaring of the fire.

"You are not a priest," she said, eyeing my travel-stained garb impassively. "Where did you come from?" Her face and voice betrayed no hint of emotion.

I shook my head, and gestured to the grounds, and the burning temple. "Why would you do something like this? By the Gods, why?"  
She shook her head, then pulled a small sack from her belt, and tossed it down to me. "See the priests get this. I--will do what I can." Her voice broke, and for a moment, I saw despair in her eyes. Then she ran down the steps and after the mercenaries.

I looked down at the sack in my hands, confused. It was not heavy, and felt filled with lentils or barley.  I wondered what was in it. But only for a moment; then I rushed to the temple to save what could be saved.  

Cultural Memory

Turns out, I don't have enough time today (at least, not right now) to post an excerpt from TWISTING FATES--I could just copy and paste the super-rough first scene, but I'd prefer to apply the fixes that I've already done on paper, which means a lot of writing.
So here's what I'll do instead.  This is a thing I've been thinking about recently: cultural memory, or the cultural unconscious.  It's different from Jung's collective unconscious, because it only exists on a cultural level, rather than a universal level.
I'd love to get into more detail, but for now, I have this:
I don't think I've ever seen Psycho.  But I don't actually know, because I have memories of scenes and knowledge of the storyline.  Knowledge of the storyline by itself isn't enough for this theory.  But I have memories, in my head, of visuals and sounds, and my theory is they come from the culture itself.  Because I have no memory of actually watching the movie; I have no specific memory of being shown clips from it; yet I have memories of the film itself.
Cultural unconscious.
That's what I believe in.  

Twisting Fates

Hey, all.  I'm currently working on my newest NaNoNovel, TWISTING FATES, which I hope will be super-cool.
I wrote it in November, and now I'm working on editing it, which is going to be a kinda long, hard slog, because I'm attempting to do one pass, to go from super-rough draft to something I can hand to beta readers/writing groups, and say, okay, does the story make sense, with the hope that people will say, 'yeah, it's great!', and then all I need to do is make sure everything's spelled right, and then I can publish it.  So, super-rough draft to practically publishable, one pass.  That's my hope.
(Of course, if I'm seriously missing a plot hole, or something, then I'll need to go over it again, but I'm just hoping that won't happen.)

Anyway, I think I'd like to post an excerpt sometime soon, probably just the fist scene or so.  Possibly later today, maybe tomorrow.  Not sure.  Soon, though.  Maybe after breakfast.  

Unf#cking My Office

Only the after photo, because no before photo could accurately portray the level of mess and stress represented by piles of paper scattered throughout my entire office.
1) Mostly chapters of a novel that has been critiqued by my writing group.  I need to go through and make digital notes of changes suggested, etc. (and then use the blank side of the paper for printing the next run of chapters for critiquing).  Also some original hand-written copies of stories.
2) Important Papers That Must Be Filed: paystubs, medical bills, warranties, etc.  Needs to be filed.
3) Ideas, notes and bits of writing, all hand-written, awaiting being entered into a word processor file so that I can lessen my paper junk.
4) RECYCLING!!!!!!!!!
5) Recent receipts.
6) Notebooks and blank paper.
7) Everything Else: full-sheet edition.
8) Everything Else: small-paper edition.
9) Non-paper things found while sorting through  papers.
10) Because no cleaning can get done without a massive amount of tea.
The Everything Else boxes will be stored under the futon* for the nonce, until I've unfucked enough of my office to have an idea of where I'm going to store very sentimental things like old character sheets and greeting cards, and all the rest of what's in those boxes.
---
*At least, that was the plan.  Truth is, the big paper box won't fit under the futon.  On the other hand, the box that currently holds my recycling (and is overflowing) probably DOES fit under the futon, while the big paper box would hold all that recycling and probably more ... problem addressed and solved.  

First post of the year ...

Wow, have I been neglecting my blog.  It's one of those things, though, that when I look at how long it's been since I've written a blog post, I get discouraged and decide it's too big an undertaking to write a "first post in half a year".  Plus I've been depressed.

But whatever!  Here I am, writing a blog post.  Why?  Because I didn't feel well enough to go to gaming, and I don't want to pack.  I will.  I mean, I just finished packing my 6th box (most done earlier today, when I was feeling less shitty), and I mean to have All The Books (and possibly all the CDs & DVDs) packed up today.
But I thought, "man I'm tired of packing.  Let's look at the computer!"  Only there was nothing to do on the computer: nothing new on Facebook, no new mail, I'd already read all my webcomics ... so here I am.

And yeah, I'm pretty much writing about nothing.  Sorry about that.  But I don't really want to think about the fact that we have to be out of here in ten days and hardly anything's in boxes, or the fact that we're supposed to close on our new house on the 9th but the IRS is holding us back ... and yet, how can I think of anything else?
So, major stress.

So, hey, maybe I'll throw some things in boxes now ...
/end procrastination

New Freakin' Year!

New Year's Resolution #1:

Say "Gorramit" more frequently.*

And that works, because the Wheel of Time curse words (which I tend to use while reading the books) don't really have a satisfying replacement for "Goddammit"; there's "Light!", "Burn me!", "Blood and ashes!", "flaming", "burning" and "bloody", and of course, one of my favorites: "Sheep swallop and bloody buttered onions!"
But none of those fills the same meaning-slot as "Gorramit".

I've started reading The Happiness Project, a Christmas present from my mother.  Though I'm starting a little late for starting in January (not much time to think about what my goals for the year are, though I can make them up as I go, if necessary), I think I'm going to follow the guidelines/principles/whatevers in the book.  Starting with making my bed, getting dressed, brushing my teeth, and going to the gym.  You know, the important stuff.

---

* Which, of course, refers to Firefly.

November: Thank Goddess It's Over

I don't know.  I actually really enjoy November, for the most part.  And I think I'm getting better at this whole writing-a-novel-in-a-month thing, kinda the way I kept getting faster during each successive word war or sprint.  At least, this year's novel-in-a-month has a lot of potential, I think.  It needs some editing, but I think I actually finished the story.  Which is way cool.  Lifechanger took a year to write, because I hadn't finished it during November, and I didn't touch it again until the next November.  So, this is an improvement.

But still.  I basically dropped my webcomic (I'm compiling a list in my head: next year, build a month-long buffer, buy enough canned foods for the month, make sure my laundry's as done as possible, etc.... ), and I need to start that again.  (Tomorrow, when I watch Dr. Who, is a great time to draw.)
The house needs some serious cleaning; there are only clean clothes because I talked my husband into taking clothes to the laundromat for me, so we could have clean clothes, and I could catch up on my novel; the sink is full of dishes ... well, there's a lot to get done.
Starting with sleep.

But anyway, I wanted to just state, for the record, that I am ending the month with 50,183 words, having spent 34 hours writing.  It's been a good month.  

UfYH Progress Report

I'd have put this on Tumblr, but it was giving me problems. So, for background, Unfuck Your Habitat is a totally great Tumblr-blog-thingie (yeah, I still haven't quite "gotten" Tumblr) to help lazy people with messy homes. 

We were given a challenge: pick a fucked-up area of our homes and unfuck it for twenty minutes.  I chose: the bedroom closet (my side, specifically). 

Here's the Before: 

 I finished my intended project (get the clothes off the closet floor so I could put my shoes away, then go through the clothes to find what I wanted to keep, and what I wanted to give to my younger sister) before the twenty minutes was up. So I started a new project. You can't see it in the above picture, but on the other side of the laundry baskets was three zippered men's suit holders (I don't really know what else to call them--you're supposed to hang them in the closet and they keep dust off your suits) belonging to Best Beloved. Only, they didn't have hangers in them, and they had more than one suit apiece (in fact, there was only one suit-set ... the rest were unmatched). 

So, I pulled the suits out, threw away the first suit-keeper, as it had a large tear, and one of the cats had vomited on it long ago (so long ago that it was dry and crumbly, and easily vacuumed up). 

I was in the middle of putting all the pants on suit-hangers, hoping the matching suits would be in suit-keeper #3, when my alarm went off. Twenty minutes were up. 

(And I said, Awww ... but I'm not done!) 

So I kept going. All I wanted to do was get them on hangers (until recently, we stored a TON of extra hangers on the (flimsy) curtain rod above the laundry baskets), and get them out of the way until tomorrow, because Best Beloved doesn't work on Saturday (and neither do I, this week!!), so we could deal with them then. 

As I was hanging the suits on the curtain rod, this is what happened: 

Yep. The curtain rod bent under all that weight (it's only meant to hold a piece of cloth, after all), and the suits, the hangers, the towels and ties and other bits of clothes Best Beloved kept hanging there on a daily basis ... all that fell, right into my arms. So I had to unbend the curtain rod, put it back, and then Best Beloved and I sorted the billion hangers he'd kept for a dozen years (I wish I was joking: BB is a serious hoarder), and then he threw some away. (This is always a big deal.) 

Anyway, we came up with a solution for all the clothes and the dozen or so useful hangers we kept (hanging on the closet lintel), and then I vacuumed some (well, I'd been vacuuming little bits at a time the whole time). And I told Best Beloved that he was not allowed to have more clothes than what fits in his closet and dressers. And I told him we'd deal with that tomorrow. 

So. It begins. We've tried unfucking the house before, but I have faith in this new system (I've cleaned my dishes immediately after using them two days in a row (about to be three days in a row), which Never Happens.) 

I guess we're starting with the bedroom, and we'll probably move out from there, to the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room, my tiny office in the living room, before we tackle the huge monster: The Attic (ought to be the office, but ... it isn't). 

I'm excited. 

Grim Tales

Grim Tales is back. I've been posting it to Facebook, so maybe everyone who reads this already knows. But, after a super-long absence, I am finally drawing again. Health Month is behind it.

Well, technically, my own desire to draw again is behind it, but Health Month gave me the kick in the pants I needed to start doing it again. 

Just a reminder, you can read Grim Tales at: 

http://grimtales.thecomicseries.com

I'm noticing a pattern: things that I once loved, then set aside, almost forgot about entirely, are starting to come back. I think part of that was my decision to ease up on forcing myself to write--which wasn't working anyway--that somehow that freed up space in my heart or mind or brain to go back to other things I feel really passionate about. 

I'm starting to get an inkling into how I can live the life I want, to be a writer and a photographer and a webcomic artist and a costumer and .... and it'll take some time for me to work it out, but I feel more whole just contemplating it. 

Because that's a big deal to me: sometimes I feel like I'm half a dozen people, all stuffed into one skin. So it's important to me that all those different people get to come out and play. 

Health Month!

Health Month is a great site--you set goals, which become rules in a game, but you're basically trying to build habits. And I love it so much that I went from 3 rules in May to 6 in June to 10 in July.
So, I decided that August would be a good month to pull back, avoid burn-out, and not work so hard. I only kept three of July's rules, and one (getting enough sleep) transformed into two rules: go to bed before midnight; wake up before 9am. I decided that making sure I took my meds was more important than making sure I took my vitamins (in terms of having rules for it). I decided that brushing my teeth nearly every day was pretty good as a habit, so I decided to switch that rule out for one about flossing more often.
But there were other rules--or rather, other types of rules--that I wanted to try. So, I'm going to go from not having touched my violin in (mmph) months to practicing twice a week. And I decided to make drawing my webcomic (that I also haven't touched in ... too long) a goal (three drawings a week).

All in all, I now have 12 rules for my "take a break" month ... Maybe I'm crazy. It still doesn't seem as bad. At the end of the month, when you're choosing rules for the next month, you can get suggestions based on that month's rules. HM suggested going from allowing processed food 4 days/week to avoiding processed food altogether! And while that is my eventual goal, I just wasn't ready for that right now.
For September, I'll either take a true rest month, or I'll go back to tweaking my diet:allow processed food 3 days/week, and no preservatives at all, maybe. Add an rule about avoiding white flour. But even though I have more rules this month than ever before, the lack of diet rules is a little liberating. (I figured eating vegetables every day was a no-brainer for me, now ... I also wanted to see if that was true, if this is an actual habit for me now.)

CONduit 22: Time-Lords of CONduit

Please visit the Callihoo Publishing blog for my miniature review of CONduit 22: the Good, the Bad & the Awesome.
I'll probably start working on a brief review of each of the panels I attended this year tomorrow (while I do laundry), but until then, the three panels I felt were most worthy of a mention (for different reasons) have been mentioned and posted on the internets.

Le Métro*

It's a little confusing at first, the Métro. Unlike Chicago, or even Salt Lake City**, Paris' Métro does not have multiple trains running the same line--what I mean by this is hard to explain.

When you get off the #11 train, it does transfer to the #4, and you don't have to leave the station, but you do have to find the Sortie (exit) labelled 4, and probably go up some stairs, walk a couple of hallways, and decide if you are going in the direction of Porte d'Orléans or Porte de Clignancourt***, and then go down some more stairs† to the #4 train line.

On the other hand, the buses run as infrequently as once every five minutes, and occasionally as often as every minute, though it's usually once every two to four minutes.

Also, the plus side of one train per track is that one never boards the wrong train by accident, due to inattention, texting, etc.

Getting off at the right stop if one is not paying attention†† is another matter altogether.

Finally, the sheer entertainment value of the Parisien métro beats all--here's a fraction of what I have seen not only in the halls and stations:

but in the cars themselves:

* I meant to post this yesterday, but there were problems uploading the pictures and videos, and I eventually just had to shut down the computer and start over, and I finally got to it again about 24+ hours later. So now I'm posting one picture and one video. I'll try to get the rest out soon. 

** I did not use New York's metro, so I cannot say anything about it

*** The hallways divide the people going to one end of the sine to the people going to the other end.
† There are a LOT of stairs. Today, even counting the ten floors I climbed Before Leaving the House^, I've climbed 37 Floors^^.
^ Did I mention it's a four-story house? We're on the first floor+, but of course there's the kitchen, and a bathroom that actually gets heated++, all on the Ground Floor. So we go up and down a fair amount.
+ One up from the Ground or Main Floor
++ The bathroom on our floor, besides not having a shower, was once an outside stair, if I remember the conversion-from-carpentry-to-residence story properly. 
^^My fancy pedometer/floors-climbed-counter/calories-burned-counter/etc. says I've climbed Victoria Falls today.

†† The #4 line even announces the stops, but we still missed Concorde.