picture ganked from lele244

I mean, I'm grateful for what the medication has done to me---for me. I've been stable---consistently stable---for the last 3 years. But when I look back at what I used to do, creatively, back all those years ago... I feel something is missing. It didn't take hours of procrastination and debating and bargaining to want to write or draw. I would sit at the computer and type for hours, nonstop, without writer's block. I'd draw for hours... I can't really remember the last thing I drew within the last... 4 years. I don't draw anymore. It took me 4 years to finish Magic & Madness, true part of that time I was having the hardest phase of my depression and had to be partially hospitalized for a month... but it took me 1.5 years after that to finish the book. I feel that creative spark is... not gone.... but muffled. Hidden under a snuffer.

It just makes me think about what I'd be doing, what I'd accomplished without the medication.

• 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.

Yeah. The Geek Squad found 450 infected files. Dammit. Oh well. At least Kiernan is in good health, at $220 for the week it took them to fix him, he better be good.

So today, I just bought myself a really expensive Christmas present: Comcast internet service for the apartment. Someone will be coming Tuesday evening (5-9pm) to install. Yay! I'll have Internets for Christmas! When I sit in my apartment all by myself... yay... woo. Since I work 9-5pm Christmas Eve, I will be missing my family's holiday get-together in Blue Earth, 2 hours away. If I'd drive down there, I'd get there when people would be ready to leave. Dammit. I might ask my sister and BIL to come over Christmas Day so I can open presents with someone... *le shrug* Or I might send out an invite via Facebook to people who close Xmas Eve and see if anyone wants to just come over and hang out and stuff that night, so I'm not alone. I'm doing some pre-emptive damage-control for Xmas Eve. I have a feeling that if I'm by myself that night, nothing good will come from it. But please don't think of that as some horrid passive-aggressive shit to guilt people into coming over or whatever. If you can't/don't want to, that's okay. I'll have my back-up to my back-up plan.

Yeah. Had another snow storm last night. Made driving to DBT fun. Halfway there (and hour into my drive) I thought... maybe I should turn back... but then I'd be stuck in traffic for another hour going home... so I just decided to keep going to DBT. Took me 1.5 hours from Chaska to get to 394/Hopkins Crossroad. Yeah. Fun. Stupid people don't know how to drive in snow. It wasn't like it was really slippery (I did find some squishy spots of snow that made my tires move where they weren't needed) but the roads were decent, the snow was powdery and blew off the road nicely, and there were even tracks on the road for your tires that was clear pavement. Damn. If you've lived in this damn state for longer than 5 years, you should know how to drive in snow. Sheesh.

Well, gotta get going... have 5 million emails to check.... and 4.9 million of those will be crap.

EDIT 637pm
Totally forgot... when I was Best Buy picking up my puter, I went the ran through their laptop section real quick, to see if I could find anything decently priced to replace Vincent (my laptop I bought off calmingsilence and jilrani). I found a nice Dell model that was $499.99, and was super sleek and shiny and silver. Nice big screen, although the placement of the keys was off... but that could have been because of the odd angle of me v. how the laptop was on the counter. I wrote down the model info... where in God's green earth did I put it.... *rummages through purse*.... aha! Success. Dell Inspiron 1525 Laptop. Suggestions? Input?

Kiera likes to help me knit. And when I say help... I really mean she likes to attack the yarn coming off the ball or out of the skien and eat it. And when I say eat it, she just noms on it. So if I don't catch her in time, I come across long sections of yarn that are soaked with kitty saliva. Thaaaaanks, Kiera. You really don't need to help mommy knit anymore. However, she does like to attack the ball/skien when it moves on the floor as I knit away. Kiera's new nemesis is my yarn ball. She stalks it and tries to figure out if it really is alive when I'm knitting, because it moves in time to my rocking chair. So Sunday night, I was knitting and watching movies, and she was inspecting my yarn ball, as normal. Her nose had to have been about 2 inches from it, and she was staring at that thing with an uncharacteristic amount of attention. Then I decided to jerk on the yarn leading from the ball to my actual knitting, to see if she'd pounce on the ball like she always does.

Nope.

I jerked on the yarn and I swear to God, that cat had an aerial lift of about 6 inches and moved backwards a foot from that ball of yarn. Her long fur was all spiked out and her eyes were as big as saucers. And instead of consoling her, I laughed my ass off in my chair, going into my long-dormant "squeaky laugh" and I had tears streaming down my face. It was the funniest damned thing I had seen in a long time, and I regret that I didn't have a video camera running to catch it to show everyone online. Oh lord, that was too damn funny.

I found a large bag of random remnants of yarn in the basement (at my dad's). It's a whole bunch of Crayola Crayon colors of bright primary colors and some fun pastely shades in between. I shall add them to my Movie Scarf. I really need to measure that thing and keep track of how long and heavy it is, and how much it grows each year. I've been working on it for a little over a year now (I started it the week after I moved into my apartment), and it's freakin' huge. I love that thing!

So some of you may know that I had a rough time this past weekend. Well, things are better, after calling in my sister and BIL for reinforcements. Things are looking better now, but not after slipping back a few steps on the progress scale. Oh well. If happens. I hadn't had a rough night like that in a long while, so I think I was overdue for one. What's Murphy's Law again... anything that can go wrong, will?

[if you see a long scratch on my arm... don't worry about it.]

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.

So I just got IM'd by this random ass person who said something in Latin... and I responded with a "right... I don't speak Latin" and they shot back with a "who is this?" and I said "Well, you texted me first, so I should be asking that" and their response was "no i didn't" to which I said "yeah, you did" which got a "yeah, whatever" which got their ass blocked. I hate when I get random ass people IMing me and playing that I started it. Yeah, right. Asshole. I should have asked, "well, if I texted you first, what did I say?" and see what started it. I know I get randomly phished by porn shit on my Yahoo IM... I should just disconnect that. And I'm not even online when they IM me there. Assholes. All of them.

( Cut due to excessive swearing )

And I'm horribly behind on the book for the Romance Book Club at work. The second book we're reading is Dark Lover by J.R. Ward. So far it's interesting... kind of starting out like Master of Surrender, where I'm not a big fan of the main male character, but he's slowly starting to grow on me. But I've been in such a freaking funk lately, that I haven't been in the mood to read it. I'm so far behind... *le sigh* I'll read what I can tomorrow before I go to the meeting... and we'll go from there. Oh well. Life happens. I'm in charge of the new book for the next meeting, and I chose In the Midnight Hour by Patti O'Shea. I've had this book for a year or so... so I figured: "What better book to pick than one I already have?" It sounds like a good action-romance book, and it has a "sequel", In Twilight's Shadow, where it's in the same world as the first one, and the characters are somehow connected to the ones in Midnight Hour. So yeah, we'll see how far I get with that. And I have some other books to finish, like the H.P. Lovecraft collection, Moongazer, and The Amazing Book of Useless Information... blah. Oh well. Whatever.

I should get home... I have so much shit to do... *le sigh* Maybe I'll go get my hair cut and eyebrows done tomorrow... I love getting my hair cut... I have this weird affinity towards my hair being combed, touched, whathaveyou, and having people work with my hair always calms me. And it'll make me feel pretty.

Okay... I'm done...

bah.

Before I do anything else...  jilrani, no my sister is not pregnant.

( Exploits of my St. Louis trip! )

I guess that's about it for now. I'm going to go and watch some [adult swim] for a bit before I head from dad's over to my place. I no doubt have a large stack of mail to sort through and some fishies that need to be fed. And laundry/crap to unpack... and I have to figure out what I'm wearing for work tomorrow.

And I need to figure out if I'm going to have a special guest this weekend....

Still waiting for North Star Press to email me back... how long does it take to read a 330 page manuscript!? Sheesh! =P

But I have decided that I will create a writing webpage via Myspace. It's cheaper, a little bit easier to maintain, and I can do some of the design work myself. But thanks to all of you (jilrani & meowvatar) who offered your webapge savviness to the cause! So keep an eye out for my new Myspace page... I'll have a link up here and if you're on Facebook and Myspace, I'll put up links and stuff there for you, too. w00t!

And I saw a herd of turkeys on my way home from my shrinky-dink appointment. Yay! Turkeys! I love turkeys. They are my lucky bird. Every time I've seen turkeys, it's been a good day. Like yesterday, I saw a turkey on the side of the road (alive) on my way to work, and I had a good day, and was introduced to the definitive book by Diana: Zombies vs Robots vs Amazons. Need I say more? Hehehee.

Happy Lucky Turkey Day!

So you know that new book series I've been obsessing over for the last while, Rogue Angel? Well, my obsessive nature and my tendency to post about my love for certain books has paid off yet again. I was contacted by a researcher from Gold Eagle (the publisher of Rogue Angel)... and well... here you go:

Dear Ms. Trebuchet,
 
I do online outreach for Gold Eagle, and I came across your posts on  
the Rogue Angel series.
 
You may have heard that the series is making the crossover to comics  
with IDW publishing this year; and if you'd be interested in doing an  
advance review (and you can copy up to 6 frames onto your site), I  
have a digital copy of the first comic in the series, which hasn't  
been printed yet.
 
It's 3 megs, so drop a line if that's something you'd like to do, and  
I'll mail it to you in a separate email.
 
Happy New Year!
 
John Mulligan
SEO-PR

How freaking awesome is that!? I know! So yeah, I obviously said "YES", and he emailed 
me an Adobe copy of the comic, which is delicious. Now I just have to spend some time 
looking over the comic and come up with a review that's better than "It's delicious." 
Although, to me, that suffices! Hehehe. I love it how random authors and people in the book 
industry somehow find my LJ and my random posts about their works and want to honor 
me with gifts. Let's see, I got a free signed book cover from Kimberly Iverson's book       Liberty,
I got a free copy of Moongazer from Mari Mancusi (although that was through Myspace), and 
now this. I'm awesome!! ^_^ 

So yeah... today amounted to a big fat nothing. I called in sick to work and slept most of the 
morning. It didn't help that I was up until 5am this morning thinking about crap. Ugh. And of 
course, it was too late to take my Anti-Freaking-Out meds, otherwise I would have done 
so... but then I wouldn't have gotten up for work anyway without being a total vegged 
zombie. Yeah. So I slept, read Rogue Angel: The Lost Scrolls (almost done!) and watched 
Tristan and Isolde. A decent movie; the movie adaptation of the medieval story-turned opera 
of the "first recorded" Romeo & Juliet-esque story. It was okay. Got it through Netflix so I 
didn't really worry that it wasn't something to write home about. Now I'm at home checking 
emails, writing LJ posts about awesomely lame stuff ^_^, and going to watch the Mythbusters 
Bond Special Part 1. Hopefully next Wednesday will be part two. I think Wednesday will be 
my new Laundry-Mythbusters day... then I can come home for a few hours after work and do 
laundry and watch that ever blessed TV! Woooo! 

Okie dokie... nothing else to say right now. Trying to figure out if I'm hungry and/or if I want 
to attempt to make a Rogue Angel comic review post thingy tonight. Hmm... have a few 
hours before Mythbusters... must think.... 

=^_^=