• Put an offer on a bank-owned townhouse/condo and the bank has accepted said offer. If all goes well, we'll close the deal and I'll get the keys to my new home June 18th.
• I've been slowly recovering after three 12 hour work days last week, and those days were in a row: Thurs-Fri-Sat. Worked both jobs those days, spent 12+ hours at the mall. My legs turned to Jell-O Saturday night and I could barely walk at work. My whole body is just shutting down and I need so much sleep (so I really should be in bed now instead of writing this @ 130am). Need to talk to manager @ 2nd job to keep that from happening again.
  
• Kiera has decided to become a 2 year old, demanding new food at 4am because the stuff I gave her at 11pm before I went to bed isn't good enough for her anymore. Her incessant mrrowing starts at 4am and goes until about 6 when I finally drag myself out of bed and feed her... to only find half her food has been eaten. We have been having little battles over this, but I think the scruff-of-neck-grab-and-throw-to-the-bed move I put on her Sunday morning calmed her down a bit.
  
• The publishing of my book is going insanely slow. I need to email North Star Press about the editing and to see if I can start revising some of the stuff the do have done. The way this is going, the promised release in summer 2009 might turn out to be winter 2010. Bah.
  
• Learning that it's really not the mold in my apartment that has been making me sick, but my cat. Have official medical proof from the allergy test that I'm allergic to cats. Mold is a strong second, but there's not enough mold in my apartment to make me sick. My allergies were just triggered by the normal amount of mold in the air, since my system is more senstive to stuff like that. So my pride, ego, soul, whatever, was knocked down a few pegs after my "righteous" hatred of my landlord over "his indirectly causing me to be sick" was proven false and I was really making myself sick by demanding I have a cat. Bah.
  
• Speaking of books, slowly working on Relic Chosen #2. Got stuck on a fight scene because I'm not too good at fight scenes, and whenever I get around to writing on it, it's 1am and I'm tired.
  
• Finished Pride and Prejudice last week and it was lovely. Had to move on to Rogue Angel: Polar Quest (#16) because I've packed up most of my books in preparations for immenent move, so Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is in one of 10 boxes of books. Ugh. But I will read it soon... prolly when I get all unpacked and settled into my new place.
  
• Have been in a funk lately, mostly due to stress of finding a place---and securing said place---by the end of August (when my 2 months' notice said so), and trying to adjust to working 2 jobs while trying to find time for hobbies, relaxation, time for friends, family, and writing. Ugh. Not enough hours in the freakin' day.
  
• Kiera is snoring.
  
• I'm going to delete my Myspace account by the end of the month. Hopefully before then, if I remember. I haven't gone on that bloody page on a consistent basis in in years (really since the last ex and I broke up) and I think I've been on the site with a purpose maybe 5 times this year. It's going. Might be replaced with something else... a writing/Relic Chosen/author page...? I dunno. We'll see.
• I am insanely tired of being single. You really have no idea how tired of it I am on so many levels I won't go into now. But it needs to stop. Which leads me into Events & Adventures, the horrible waste of time and money that was supposed to fix the aforementioned problem. Ha. Yeah. I didn't go to any events from Feb to April because of severe sinus infections/allergies/bronchitis... May I bailed on the one I did sign up for because I went to go hang out with people who already are my friends, and I haven't signed up for anything in June because... eh. Nothing sounds interesting. Big. Collosual. Waste. Of. Time.

Last night my sis, BIL, and myself rearranged my bedroom. It's very lovely, and clean. Hehee. I made supper, a thai curry shrimp noodle thing... that didn't really sit well with me and my sister. She thinks that she might have had a minor allergic reaction to the shrimp, since she felt her throat kinda tighten up. But we love shrimp and other seafoods, so she edited that to "cheap shrimp". Sorry! I bought my shrimp from Target's Market Pantry brand. :P I didn't feel too good most of the night, and I think it was the curry. My system isn't used to spice, and a few months ago I made curry cous cous for Jenni and Luke, my stomach didn't like me either. Oh well. Curse my Scandinavian digestive system! But despite minor food related discomforts, we pressed on with our main goal of rearranging my room. I also begged my sis and BIL to go to Target with me last night at like 730pm to get a new bookshelf, so I can put my overflowing manga and nonfiction books somewhere than in front of my other books in my main bookshelf. So now I have a nice neat, organized bookshelf and a lot more space in my room now. I went to bed last night, with my feet facing the shared wall with my amorous neighbors, and snuggled Kiera and slept soundly. Then I woke up at like 7am to muffled noises... oh God, not my neighbors again! I can't get away from them! But no! It was Kiera snoring! Yay! So I kicked her to make her move into a nonsnoring position, and I drifted off to sleep again. Hehehee.

And now some other updates...

Halloween was fun, got sent home 2 hours early Friday from work, so I had time to get ready for my George A. Romero zombie movie fest. And on the off chance that kids would come by my apartment, I bought some candies. Nope. So now I'm stuck with a big bag of assorted candies. Ugh. But I watched Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead. Both were excellent. And to add to the funness of zombies, I had some Bacardi Strawberry adult beverages to help the night be more fun. But since I'm prone to panic attacks, and zombie movies tend to exacerbate those, I had to watch Futurama: Bender's Big Score to wind down from the zombie panic.

Saturday at work I somehow got erased from the schedule, so when I arrived to work Rodney told me I wasn't on the schedule, so I could go home if I wanted. Uh... nice. Could have told me that before I drove in. But since I was there, I decided to work. I needs the money. So Rodney gave me project time the whole shift, and I totally made the Cookbook section my bitch Saturday. Apparently we're doing a lot of shifting of sections in the Cookbook area, and making new New Arrival Bays in the cookbooks. So I did that all day. And now Ged is also my bitch because that was his project to work on for the weekend, and I basically did 85% of it for him. Rodney suggested I hold it over him for a long while. But then as Rodney tried to get Ged to take over the project from me, Ged bounced his duties back to me; which I didn't truly care about, I had a groove going with the project, and one more thing wouldn't matter. But then Rodney found out Ged made me do the thing he had told Ged to do, he frowned and said "The bastard" to me, then walked away. I giggled. Hehee. Love it. But now my legs have been hurting all weekend due to lifting stupid heavy cookbooks from one end of the section to the other.

And... that's all. Tomorrow is election day. I have no idea when I'm going to get to the polls. I can't do it before work, because I know I'll be late for work--although legally they can't be mad at me for being late because I was voting. And I have DBT tomorrow, so if I vote after work, I'll be late for that. But my DBT instructor did order us to vote, and if we were late, that's no big deal. I might just do that. I don't want to wake up any earlier tomorrow to stand in line for 2 hours behind some crazy Pro-Republicrat or Anti-Demolican. Ugh. Well, either way I'll be forced to suffer them. Hope your voting experience isn't too hectic. Or, if you were smart, you did an Absentee Vote, and avoid all the lines together. I wasn't smart. *le pout*

Today I'm in an odd mood. Just very... eh. Stand-offish. If that's a word. I dunno. I just don't want to be around people, and a lot of customers at work today made my soul ache for the human race, compounding my annoyance with people and their existence. A lady got mad that the Cosmo magazine was at the eye-level of her 10-yr-old son, and that's not appropriate for children, so could I go please tell my manager? The hell? Ok, Cosmo too risque for you, we'll just slap a Hustler or an Unzipped up there for ya. Seriously? The only thing that's "offensive" are the titles of the articles. There's no nudie pictures on the cover, or sex positions typed on the cover in 72 point font. Now if your little brat had been poking around the sexuality/love section 10 feet to my right/your left, then I'd understand your concern. Seriously. He's going to have to learn about all that stuff in about 8 years anyway, so why not start him early, eh? *eye roll* But the best one was a lady who returned a $2.50 greeting card today. Really? You returned a greeting card? Her reasoning: she thinks she gave it to her husband for his birthday a few years ago. So you wasted the amount of money you got back in gas to return a card you could have saved for another occasion or something? Wow. Wow. No wonder our economy is shit. We don't know when not to spend money to "save".

And my stupid shrinky-dink clinic place dropped the ball on refilling my meds. I think I barely have enough to go throughout this week, and I called them a second time that I need my meds now. And I left a message. What clinic doesn't have their receptionist there? Both times I've called. I know I flaked on my last appointment, but seriously, take my call. I found out they hadn't gotten my first message when I went to Target to get my refill and the pharm tech person was like... "Uh, nothing sent in. Are you sure you called your doctor?" No, I willed a refill to magically appear. Argh. But as I was leaving Target, halfway to my place, my shrinky-dink called me and said that somehow their messaging system was either dumping the messages somewhere in the horrors of the universe where the Great Old Ones live, or the secretary was melting down; but she'd be calling those refills in ASAP. *le sigh* So I crashed at dad's to calm down and regroup. I'm just... on edge right now. I bought a new purse (the 19th sign of the coming of the apocalypse, I'm sure of it) because the one I have right now isn't quite big enough (my cousin Erica would shit a brick if she heard that; she's been trying to "feminize" me more for the last few years), so I busied myself with organizing that and putting my stuff from Old Purse to New Purse (dad didn't understand how that would be fun---not fun, relaxing). Organizing somehow helps my anxiety... I dunno, some mild OCD thing... *le shrug* I guess I'm going to run back up to Target tonight... maybe. I don't know if I want to do that. I really just feel the need to go home, get into jammies, maybe watch a movie or something, eat bad comfort food, and sleep. Sleep sleep sleep.

Yeah. Maybe I'll get up early tomorrow and grab my meds before work. I just don't want to deal with anymore people anymore. Too much run around for my brain right now. I think I'm just going to go home, order a pizza, get some laundry done, and watch Disc 2 of Rescue Me Season 4 (fucking amazing! as was Bourne Ultimatum--watched it last night).

'K bi.

(I originally wrote this on Tuesday morning... I'm not backdating it so it's not lost in the cyber miasma of friends' lists)

Because I'm nocturnal. I've always been more active and apt to staying up later than most of the people I know. My sleep cycle, circadian rhythm, whatever that thing is, is set 12 hours later than others.

And it doesn't hurt that I'm a vampire.

I just finished reading In the Midnight Hour about 10 minutes ago... and... ow! *le swoon!* So good! The last like... 40 pages just zip by and you're going "Holy shit!? How is this going to be concluded? This can't end this way! No no no!!" But it all ended good and it was such a good story. Now I have to go and get the second one in the series. And the cool part is, the series is set in Minnesota, because Patti O'Shea is from here. w00t! I'm glad I picked this for the Romance Book Club. I also got to chat with Diana, who is also in the club, and she said she liked it too, "a lot more than [she] thought [she] would." Hehehe. I do admit, when you read the back of the book, the brief description on the back is a bit confusing, so I understand the slight hesitance the rest of the RBC had when I showed them this title. But it was good! Woooo! Yay! So worth staying up 4 hours after I got home from work.

But I'm also up this late because I can't stand going to bed hungry. Why not eat something, you may be asking. Well, I can't. I'm 9 hours into my stupid fast for blood work to be done tomorrow... this morning... whatever. We're going blood tests to see if I have diabetes and some other crap, to rule those out as possible diseases/syndromes that could be causing my PCOS-esque symptoms. And for blood work fastings, they say you're not supposed to eat anything for at least 12 hours before your testing. Dammit. Sadly, more than one issue has the set of presenting issues that I have, so we have to rule a lot of crap out. Ugh. And the stupid lab work is at 845 in the fricking morning. Argh! Well, when I made the appointment, I figured that it's my day off, so I can just go get my blood drawn, and after 20 minutes of being in the doctor's office, I can come home and sleep for most of the day until DBT at 6pm. Well... now the lab work is going to be taken in 5.45 hours.... ugh. I shouldn't even go to bed! By the time I get to bed, and wind down, it'll be almost time to wake up again, and it would almost be better at that point to not have tried to sleep at all. Right now I'm way to revved up for some reason... don't know if it was the awesomeness of the book... nerves about the lab work... or... what. I dunno. Maybe I'll play some PS2 and relax... that's right folks! Yesterday after work I splurged and bought a used PS2 from Game Stop, and got a used copy of Burnout 3: Takedown. And it was even in the original case, not the stupid Game Stop default one. w00t! So I played some of that yesterday when I got home from work. However... sadly... the PS2 didn't come with a memory card... so all the awesomeness I did last night (including awards, special things unlocked, records made, etc) are all lost and I have to do it again. Ugh. Oh well. I'll get a memory card after work on Wednesday. Stupid, I should have asked if it had one, but I was dumb and assumed it had one in the box... and we all know what happens when you assume! *rolls eyes*

So yeah... that's about it for now. Yeah. Kiera is being psycho... I think she's not used to me being up this late. She makes the weirdest squeaky/chirp noises. It's freaking cute, but I don't remember ever hearing another cat make such noises. Odd. Oh well, suits me to have a weird ass cat.

Well... yeah... I guess I should get some amount of sleep. I know I'm just going to roll out of bed, slap some non-pj clothes on, and drive to the doctor in the morning---I ain't wasting time to take a shower, get properly dressed, and all that shit just to sit in a chair for 5 minutes while they draw a few vials of blood. Hell no. But I know that after my stupid fasting, I'm going to drive over to Perkins (within a stone's throwing distance from the doctor's office!) and have a big old ham 'n cheez omelet with hash browns and maybe a big ass muffin... or bacon... something like that. I hate fasting! I have been living off water for the last 9 hours! I'm starving!!! My Potbelly turkey sammich was not meant to sustain for more than 4 hours! Bastards!

*le sigh*

Today I went home early from work... not even two hours into my shift. But I got all the opening cashier stuff done, so that was a load off the opening MOD's mind. I'm not really sure what happened this morning. I got in my car and pulled out of my driveway... and just started crying. I really don't know why. I think it may have been residual emotional build up from last night. I'll explain last night a little later. So I'm driving to work, crying, trying to get it under control so I can drive safely and do my job. I get to work and just lock myself in the cash room and get my HC duties done.... while sobbing. I ask my MOD if I can go home, because my head just felt like it was going to explode (my ears felt [and still feel] like there's water or something in there, and the pressure was making me slightly dizzy, like my ears won't pop or something), and he said he'll see what he can do. Our five minute meeting rolls around (our little "Target Team Huddle" before we officially open) and I'm ready to lose it. I follow the MOD to the mall gates and tearfully ask if I can talk to him. He says yes, gets someone to cover the register for me, and I head to the back office. And he's nowhere to be found. I'm about freaking out now, so close to blowing my already-paper-thin cover of sanity for the rest of the employees... and I run into him and he says "You can go, Amy, I'll call someone to come in." I'm about ready to wring his neck, but I just get my coat and bag and clock out. I'm sobbing all the way to my car, and sobbing on the drive home.

I pull into my driveway and see my dad sitting at the kitchen table. "Fuck." I wait in the car a little bit to calm myself down, but when I get into the house, dad is downstairs. I hurry to my room, close the door, get into my pjs, and go to sleep. That's at about 930am... I wake up again at 2pm. *le sigh* I'm sitting watching Spongebob, eating a PB&J, and my dad comes up and asks if I had another panic attack. I just reply, "Or something," I'm not really sure what it was. Nor did I really want to discuss it with my dad. I just wanted my peanut buttery goodness. He suggests that maybe my early hours and new HC schedule is triggering this. I shrug and we let it drop.

Now what transpired last night. Last night... last night was crazy insane. Yesterday, Tuesday, was my day off, and I had a dentist appointment. Apparently, the dentist nurse helper chick and my dentist (who is super hot!) think my teeth are perfect and glorious. Yay! I go have a celebratory meal at Culver's, and decide to make some phone calls about apartments and making appointments to see them. I connect with a land lord who has a 1 bdrm in Chaska for $525/month, and we set a walk-through that night at 6pm. I'll miss DBT, but that's okay! I'm not going to pass up a chance to see this apartment! Then at 1pm I have a meeting with the new vicar at my church over drinks at Caribou. It was actually a good meeting, and we know people from the Concordia University system, as well as some people at Concordia Seminary. It was fun, and we had a good discussion about our frustrations with the church as an organization, as well as how to get more people in our age group to be involved at church. Good times. But that got me all hyped up for some reason, in a slightly aggressive position towards the church. Me and the church have had a love/hate relationship for a few years. Anyhoo.

I go home and get ready to go look at the apartment. I tell my dad of my plan, and right away he's all negative about it. He's not sure how he likes the location of the apartment in Chaska ("you might be in a building with all Mexicans or low lives"), and if I can afford it... blah blah blah. But I told him that I'm just looking at it, I haven't signed any papers yet, so what harm can it do to look? He offers to come with me, and I agree, so that he can see for himself, and also ask questions I might not think of. So we go and case the apartment building first before we meet the landlord, and just by looking at the outside of the place, my dad just dismisses it. It's an 100 yr old building, so it's not going to be that fantastic on the outside. All original brick, design; I love it and think it has character. We finally look through the apartment at 6pm, and I just fell in love with it! Such a cute little apartment! Not big, but I really don't need big. A nice starter place. It's just so cute! My dad seemed to have not be so ready to burn the place down, so we talk with the landlord, I get an application, and we go on our way. I'm just about ready to jump out of my skin I'm so excited.

Then my friend Phil calls me! Woooo! I haven't talked to him in a long time, so it was good to talk to Phil again. We had a good... damn, 3 hour conversation on the phone about what I've been doing, work, Fallcon, the new apartment hunt, my future trip down to St. Louis, his last year of seminary, his future placement, all that. Then we get started on my visit with the vicar. And my hostility comes up again, and we get into a long discussion about my feelings of faith, church, where my life is going, where my faith is... if I even have faith anymore... it was deep. We even prayed over the phone, and Phil prayed for me. It was powerful. Then we talk more about zombie movies and my zombie books, Christmas lists and stuff. Yeah. It was a crazy night.

So... yeah. That's about it. A crazy crazy night last night. And I think I might have missed my meds yesterday... because I was a day off my BC packet... so... hmmm. I dunno. Maybe that's why I was all crazy hyper yesterday. And weepy today. I know some of the things that upset me and would have caused me to cry... but I've been worried and freaking out over those things before and never had a two hour meltdown like that. I think I'm going to call into work tonight and tell them I can't come in tomorrow... I need to get to a doctor of some sort tomorrow.

Or I might fear I won't have a job to go back to. O_o

... Don't try to fix me, I'm not broken. Hello, I'm the lie living for you so you can hide..."
Hello by Evanescence.

I swear to God something is wrong with me. Really honest to God, wrong with me. For the last two weeks I've been exhausted. But strangely restless all at the same time. I get home from work, sit in the glide chair, but only stay there for maybe 40 minutes because I'm tired of moving and shifting in the seat trying to find a comfortable position. Then I move to the couch, curl up with some pillows and my fire blanket (i made it btw), to watch after-work-cartoons... and I wake up almost 2 hours later, not realizing I had fallen asleep. Then for the next few hours before I make myself go to bed, I bounce back and forth from couch, to chair, to computer desk, to couch, to chair, to couch, computer desk... then it's about 1230am and I have to get up in about 5.5 hours to get to work... Something's wrong with me.

I'm listless, restless, yet tired and lethargic. My brain is fuzzy and it's hard to concentrate at times. I still see those damned little black/silver flashes at the edge of my peripheral vision... and nothing's there. I see shapes while driving home (mostly at night) that I swear to God are things... people... animals... spirits... I don't know. I feel strangely excited at times, almost super anxious, with that tight feeling in my chest, with this odd lingering feeling something is going to happen, this faint cloud of dread just hanging in the background... for no apparent reason. My mind skips and jumps from one topic to the next, making it hard to respond to people when they ask me a question because I have to reign my mind in to organize a thought to say. At my DBT class, and even at work, when my instructor/MOD asks me a question, I have to pause and stare off into space for a moment while I smack my mind back into cooperation so I can answer their damned question.

This all started about a... a month ago. Before Monday's big incident. I was seeing my psychiatrist for my then 3 month check-in, and I told her about the seeing things out of the corner of my eyes, and the feeling of "heightened excitement", even borderline racing thoughts, and my doctor said to keep an eye on it, since it could be my body has finally adjusted to the 112.5 mg of Effexor XR I've been on. And it is a slight stimulant, so it could also be playing little stimulant games with my senses. Well... after this week's little incident... I'm going to tell her that it's not just the Effexor bumping up my senses like Wolverine or something. Especially with how foggy and intangible my mind has been lately... that's not a good sign. I've also been pouring over my DSM-IV-TR to see if I can find some possibilities... but not to any luck. If meowvatar is right in her assumption/suggestion and this might be a Thought Disorder or an Axis I issue... then I'm up a creek without a paddle. I don't know those as well as the Anxiety or Mood Disorders (both of which I'm diagnosed with). Axis I disorders are more clinical (physiological) in nature, so they need tests and all those fun things to figure out if there's something physically wrong with my head. I had a CT Scan on my head two years ago, when I was having a lot of migraines in a short period of time, and my (normal) doctor thought that maybe there was something structurally off with my brain; but the CT scan showed nothing structurally (physically) wrong... so... I dunno. Can something like that change that much in 2 years? Or do I maybe have a more serious diagnosis than Major Depressive Disorder, Recurrent, Moderate, w/ Anxiety NOS. (Yeah, I remember my diagnosis...)

*dug out my DSM-IV-TR* Ahem... I am... (as close as I can get it without consulting my psychiatrists' files on me...)

Axis II    296.33     Major Depressive Disorder, Recurrent, Moderate
             300.00     Anxiety Disorder NOS (Not Otherwise Specified)

*le sigh* My head hurts.

Finished Death Note 12 tonight. Wow. I'm glad I stuck with the whole series. At times it did drag on for a few too many volumes, but overall, a good manga. Yay. The last volume did surprise me in how it ended, with the main character kinda going a little insane towards the end. But it was kind of inevitable, considering that he was using a shinigami's (god of death) notebook to kill people and considered himself the new god of justice of the world. Neat. Now I can fully devote my manga focus to Claymore. Finished Claymore 3 tonight as well... since I had the time... *le sigh*

( Oh... crap. )

Here's to a better tomorrow.