Cakeboy reads facebook and not LJ, so my whinging about calf cramps caught his eye (he's a nurse, my Cakeboy) and he informed me that it might be a blood clot, which spooked me badly enough to call my doctor. And blood clot it is.

Technically, I guess injecting myself with blood thinners every twelve hours is the actual life-saving part, but let us not fret about how a chip of me could break away and lodge in my brain, lung, etc., shall we? Also, if you could focus your collective mindpowers on telling my body to dissolve that sucker STAT, that would be much appreciated.

In other news: Mr. Pants and I got to hang around Portland on Sunday and Monday, and meet up with the lovely and talented runpunkrun. I owe her about three years worth of letters, so I'm starting with her Christmas card first.

You, my lovelies, have been busy without me, birthing children and bandfandoms galore and etc., and I have been thinking about what I'll be writing for the two Yuletide stories I signed up for this year. 17 days away! I'd better get off the stick, man.

I would also like you all to know that I had eight different kinds of potatoes for Thanksgiving this year. Eight different kinds.

As you see, I have achieved much in my time away.

In closing, if you have yet to buy holiday gifts for you and yours and you feel that someone close to you should learn the potential outcomes of attacking zombies with a chainsaw, perhaps you should send them a copy of Zombocalypse Now? Look at that bunny's little face!

Be excellent to each other. (And buy the book!) </ now I shall end my shameless shilling>

I went outside for lunch today, which I don't generally do. The Great Burning Eye and I are not buddies, you see. But today was one of those spectacular days that autumn seems to specialize in: cool, sweet air, bright, cloudless sky, busy rustle of the trees, stuttering rap of the frolicking jackhammer... Well, that's the city for you.

I sat out on the terrace and let the sun shine on me, getting that roaring volcanic orange glow behind my closed eyelids, and my hair was hot to the touch, probably glowing like a stove filament. When I opened my eyes again, the sun seemed so bright that it had leached the color out of everything--everything was old silver bromide, like a classic Astaire film.

I'm sure you've all noticed that I haven't really written anything since I started dating Mr. Pants... nearly two years ago. It is probably because my writing was such a solitary endeavor, and I had a lot of free time, a lot of alone time, Pre-Pants. It's also due in part to the fact that almost everything I wrote came from a place of longing, and I don't seem to have that anymore--or anyway, not to the same degree. I don't want this to be true. I love writing and I like what I write and yet it feels like... I am happy and I have nothing to say.

That makes me feel... unsettlingly domestic and weirdly un-feminist. And dudes, let me point out that Mr. Pants does the cooking and I'm not exactly beating my laundry against the rocks of the river or anything like that. Let us also note that in this time, Mr. Pants has written, illustrated, designed, published and is in the heat of promoting his own book. Mr. Pants likes what I write and does what he can to tempt me with screenplay projects and collaborations, saying he feels like it's his fault that I haven't been writing. While that's not strictly true, I mean, I'm not NOT writing in order to cater to his every whim or anything like that, it sort of feels true.

I've been neglecting LJ in particular for some time, but that was long before Mr. Pants, as I was wary of work net access and the insatiable time sink that is LJ/fanfic reading. I fear that I've earned some downright enmity in some areas by being away so long and so completely. But people with children, I don't even know how they feed themselves, and time management has never been my strength, and this ridiculous job has been so absolutely draining that I felt I could barely lift my head at home, let alone bust out the laptop and be at all amusing.

I don't know, kids. I should be focusing on discipline, working out regularly, eating 5 small meals a day, starting an actual savings account, paying down 5 K of credit card debt, writing for an hour every day...

I wish I had the kind of money that buys you an in-house nutritionist and a trainer, but I guess I'll just have to nut up and be responsible, be DIY, be the change I want to see, etc. (g)

I saw Persepolis last night; I'd read the first novel, but not the sequel, and it only intensifies the feeling that I should keep my middle class American whinging to myself: I love Mr. Pants more than buttered bread, I have no relatives actively at risk in Iraq or Afghanistan, I have a job and health insurance, Mr. Pants's brother has long since moved out. Boo freakin' hoo, right?

Introspection! Your eyes are no doubt bleeding with boredom now.

In other news: Mad Men, I am glad you exist. Also: I love me some fuckin' recaps.

A Cop, A Mountie and a Baby is on, and I can't help but notice that this one musclehead thug was the cab driver in two previous episodes, and also the random heavy in at least two more. Is he somebody's brother or what? Do they only have one musclehead heavy in Canada?

Today has been a veritable mountain range of peaks and valleys. Let's recap, shall we?

Of the good: My hair looks supercute today, I swear and I'm not even lying.

Of the bad: All the hair cuteness in the very world won't help dig me out from underneath the dayjob.

Of the good: I love my dayjob, and I adore the people I work with.

Of the bad: I have a dayjob. Where's my ninjillion dollars and throngs of adoring massage therapists?

Of the good: My apartment is so groovy.

Of the bad: I need some curtains. And someone handy to hang the curtains.

Of the good: I paid off a credit card today! Woo! Also this month: paid off a ridiculous medical bill, and FINALLY paid off my freakin' school loan.

Of the bad: I'm tight 'til payday. But a week is easily managed.

Of the good: I'm cozy at home, curled up on my excellent couch.

Of the bad: I'm cozy at home because I was so totally stood up by Unicorn Mike. Aw, Unicorn Mike, no!

Of the good: Three likely contestants in the dating game.

Of the bad: I had to wade through an assortment of vaguely creepy emails to choose said contestants. So many people on the skin of this Earth, and so many of them are so desperately lonely that they're well-nigh frightening. Plus some of them sent me what seriously could have been prison photos, man. Yikes.

Of the good: Friday night! Sweet, sweet SGA shall be mine in just a little while!

Of the bad: There is no bad. Rodney and John make everything shiny!

In conclusion: bitchinparty!

My rent check cleared at long last, for which I am profoundly grateful… as my bank account has fallen prey to one or more immoral wankers who have picked my virtual pocket. Almost a grand has been funneled away from me so that someone of dubious literacy can shop at Toys R Us and Linens N Things.

As I spent most of this last week sick unto death with bubbling lungs, I am in no mood to rally. Theoretically, I can claim this with my bank once it posts officially on Tuesday, and really, the bank called me to alert me to unusual activity, so I believe my chances of getting my dough back are good. But still.

I am counting the hours until I can crawl home and curl up in my delicious non-stolen bed. I do in fact plan to sleep 18 hours a day for the entire long weekend. The world doesn’t need me conscious and coughing up a chunk of alveoli while I stare at my bank balance and weep copious tears.

At least I have new SGA to look forward to. Once someone posts it for me to steal.

A fair few of you have had varying health issues of late, and I don’t mind telling you that I wish each and every one of you speedy recoveries (if needed) and luxuriant health if not.

I’ve been gainfully employed in a full-time capacity for well over a year here in Seattle, and… Well. My time is my own, aside from the random necessity of a 12 hour day at the office here and there, and yet I’m feeling a bit ground down. And I don’t have children or anything in particular really chewing at my private time, and yet the sheer speed of days recently is beginning to give me the jibblies, man.

My memory is ridiculously poor, and I’m sure that’s part of it, and I’m sure my brain cells are dying by the ninjillions now that I’m on the downside of 34 and… it’s almost time for Yuletide again. Yuletide! I remember the stories I read for it like it just happened, but a year has swirled away from me like a continent snapping off a shelf and floating away on the high seas, and I’m. Freaking out, maybe. A tiny bit.

Is it because my days are so similar they all blur together? Is it because my memory is just as bad as it’s always been? Is braincell death really an explanation for the downward slalom of this entire year into a golden November in what feels like 12 seconds? I mean, it’s Thanksgiving next week. Wasn’t it just summer, like, yesterday?

Maybe I’m not the only one. Like many of you, I’m in the cagematch of days where it’s an achievement to struggle out of bed and put shoes on, pay my bills, fill out my allotted stretch for The Man, and I think maybe I just need to be rich and idle a vacation.

I keep dreaming about eliade, that she has this sprawling, lavishly appointed basement apartment and a ton of hippie-bearded roommates who wear corduroy and glasses. I miss runpunkrun. And it’s so pretty here, people, you should come visit me.

When I am at home, I’ve been reading really glorious ds_match stories and some promising SGA stuff by sardonicsmiley. Sweet, sweet fiction, hold me ever to thy bosom and comfort me, comfort me.

First of all, the germs seem to have backed off and I'm not feeling flu-ish anymore, so hooray!

Secondly, I don't know how I forgot to mention this, but last week, I went to a costume dodgeball going away party for my friend Vinh. I went as a Valkyrie. Vinh was supposed to go as a geisha, but be came as Harry Potter instead. There is video of the kids in costume, beaning the hell out of one another with dodgeballs, at his page.

I was worried that I'd be the only one in costume, but that was not the case. One kid came as Death, complete with skeletal hands and feet, one guy came dressed as the sweetest girl you ever saw (he had legs for miles! And was so demure!), there were kids who came as Tennis Pros (an in-joke, seeing as how the dodgeball teams are constantly at odds with the local tennis players, who claim that dodgeball isn't a net sport and is inappropriate use of the courts) Red Riding Hoods and Grandmas and Wolverines and Zombies, a guy who played in his bathrobe and bare feet (he said later, "I thought I was the only one in costume, but then I saw your horns, and they drew me on like a beacon!") and a fellow from France, complete with saucy beret and drawn on curly pencil mustache, and my personal favorite, a luchador who had a blue bath towel tied around his neck as a cape.

On my walk home after leaving the game, I apparently caught the eye of every tourist in the city. A Ukrainian guy asked if he could take a picture of me "menacing his brother with a sword", so I obliged. At the bus stop, two very tall, very blond Scandinavians asked me, "Are you from U.S.? Can we take a picture with you?", and a pack of British sight-seers grinned at me and the woman in front said, "Fantastic," and elbowed one guy who was looking out at traffic to tell him, "You've just missed the highlight of the evening."

( This is a fairly terrible picture, but you get the idea. )

Good times. Vinh said that at one point a friend of his counted 80 people on the court, so he had quite the grand send off.

Of course, as tonight was his actual last game, I actually played for the first time. And paid the price! I got totally smashed in the face with a ball; half my head was numb for a while, and my glasses got bent to hell, but I managed to poke the nosepiece back into place. After the sting faded, I realized that there was... dampness. That's right, kids, bloody, oozing contusions! Hard core! I hope it doesn't bruise too badly, as I'll feel pretty silly at work on Monday explaining over and over, "No, I got hit playing dodgeball."

I can hardly wait to watch SGA!

Today I cleaned my bathroom. That was about my only accomplishment. Later on, I managed to get a friend's car locked up at the library. In an effort to make it right, I will try to see if I can get the car out of there when they open up the library in the morning before they tow it. ::waves guiltily at shortrthanyu84:: Also, katallison has a cold, so use your powerful mindbeams to melt the germs away!

Also, y'all know my love for yuletide is huge and vast and sunny, but son of a fuck, my ability to read simple directions declines every twelve minutes and every. motherfucking. year. I have to fill out that form at least four times. Sadly, I am not even exaggerating. I'm sure I'll be smarter in the morning and get it right this time. ::weeps quietly::.

That said, the year has passed in an eyeblink and I can't believe it's Yulteide just around the corner!

( SGA 4.02 )

I left work early today, as I was battling day two of Headache From Hell. This email was waiting for me when I got in.

Hey kormantic,

I have practice tonight after work. I'll be home later this evening. I wanted to email in case I missed you this evening. I got a call from J and Boeing wants him back desperately. He is planning on coming back home to Seattle by the end of this month. We've talked a lot about this before, that when he came back, we were going to take the step in moveing in together.

I wanted to get this email out to you know so that you are prepared/give you notice that by the 1st of June you would need to move out.
This was unexpected as I thought, as did J, that he would be down in San Diego for at least 1 yr. If you need any help with anything, please let me know.

Thanks, and if you'd like to chat further I'll most likely be home by 9ish.

~ C

I have a lease. A month to month lease, yeah, but a lease. I wasn't planning on moving out. I was, in fact, planning on having guests that weekend, because my birthday's around then.

Fuck me sideways.

There was a boy with a black felt cap and a long blond ponytail playing a guitar at the bus stop on Saturday. The day was very fine; there was a married couple turning the earth in flower boxes they'd built out of two-by-fours and while I waited for the bus, I listened to the boy's guitar and poked at the mossy stone walls everyone has here; they're all draped with curtains of flowers. I've never seen so many flowers and tiny plants pushing out of the ground—everything is alive here. When the bus came, the boy packed up his guitar, but he kept fingering chords on all available surfaces and moving to the music of his headphones as the bus zipped down the hill.

When I got to Market Street, I stopped and spent too much at a CD shop. I thought about getting some lunch, but I decided to go to the library first. It was a sparkling day; I had new music and my laptop was comfortably seated in its case in my backpack and I was crossing the street to the library where free wifi and a pleasant afternoon waited on me, followed by a dinner in one of Ballard's billion little restaurants. ( Except that I stepped in a hole and wiped out spectacularly. )

Since I had plenty of time on Sunday to lounge around and think about Billy Collins poems
(It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I would shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees, I bleed.)
and eat All Natural Brown Cow Cream Top Creamy Coffee Yogurt, I figured I'd put together a soundtrack to my move from Orlando to Seattle.

I quit my job in July, so it's taken me most of a year to get here, and I don't mind telling you that there were a fair number of crushing disappointments, lost loves, blind alleys, doglegs and cul de sacs along the way. Still, I'm here now, I'm home here, and you should all make plans to come visit me at your earliest convenience.

Many of these songs came from you originally, and so I thank you for them and pass them around the table again for new kids to enjoy.

( music: across the universe )

I can say that I've lived here
in honor and danger
but I'm just an animal and cannot explain a lie
down this chain of days I wish to stay among my people
Relation now means nothing
having chosen, so defined
And if Death should smell my breathing
as it passed beneath my window
let it lead me trembling, trembling
I own every bell that tolls me