Blather, rinse, repeat

As it gets close to the end of summer, I'm starting to realize that we only get, I don't know, maybe 7, maybe 8 ocean days per year. Not counting those times we go in the fall, or Spring. Those don't exactly count, because I'm really talking about those lush, humid, hot summer days when you can actually go into the water. So even if we went every other week, sometimes two weeks in a row, it only comes out to 6-8 or so days per summer. Really not a lot. Which is weird, because, sure, next year we can go again, but next year, Callum will be two. Two is really different to one. Babies and kids change so rapidly. With adult friends and family, you kind of don't change as much, so you can recreate some of those moments from the past. But I only have that handful of days at the ocean with a one-year-old. And then a handful with a two-year-old. Etc. It's weird and kind of sad, right?

Last week, we had our “pre-Disney” summer party. “We” in this case was: Me, CJ, my Mom, Spence, his gf Natasha (I really like this kid, she is a great girl!) Meg, Chrissie, Tim, Gavin, Mason, my Uncle Don, and his gf Jen. We used to do those parties with Gran and my Dad, of course. This was the first one without them. So it was tough. And the trip is going to be tough, too. But still, I'm looking forward to it so much! I'm stoked beyond the telling of it. It's two more months. And we'll only be there for 6 days. But that's enough, I think, with a toddler, and with boarding the dogs. That's really my biggest worry, actually. I know CJ's going to have the Disney melt-downs, and there will be INCIDENTS, and craziness, and I'll probably be way too emotional. But it's just really hard for me to leave the dogs for that long. And I still can't figure out who to get to feed my goldfish, The Doctor, while I'm gone. I have to square that away. Two months is going to fly by. EVERYthing is flying by.

Tomorrow I'm going out kayaking with Dragon. We're taking a sunset kayak tour. Which is super weird, because two years ago, right after I very very very first got pregnant, I went out kayaking on the 28th with Lady Chrysanthemum. I just thought that was weird, you know, the wheel turns and all.

Sunday is already Powwow day! Wasn't I just there a few minutes ago, with tiny little CJ in the Ergo carrier, and my best friend, Glassworker? I bought him a little T shirt, thinking it would be forever until he was big enough to wear it, and he's already worn it a bunch of times. And now CJ will be walking around and probably picking out his own stuff that he wants.

And then on Tuesday, a HitRECord friend of mine from England is coming to visit! Which, EXCITEMENT omg. He's an incredible musician (he did music for a poem that I wrote, and also wrote and sang the wonderful song “Adieu,” for HitRECord On TV, which, HI, we won an Emmy for that show! :D ) and just about the sweetest person.

And then I start teaching a Hula class on Mondays in September – hopefully. If more people sign up.

I took a Saturday off mid-September, too, to have a yard sale. Maybe I can make some Disney money.

Then October and Disney and then Thanksgiving and Christmas and then the loooooooong, loooooong stretch of winter that I can't even bear to think about yet. I'm still not over last winter ffs. I can't deal with another like that. It was too much.

I'm always afraid to say, “Who knows what will be different next year?” because, literally, the last time I wrote that in my LJ, my Gran and my Dad passed within four months of each other. So, I'm not going to say that. I am going to hope that the rest of the year (oh, let's get ambitious and say the next TWENTY years!) can be as good as this summer has been. Even though things change so quickly, can it still be this good? I am going to hope that I will sign with a really rad literary agent (I've still got two manuscripts out, and still waiting to hear back from either or both agents.) I will hope to have less anxiety in general about things. Or, really, to work on that a bit, because it's not going to go away on its own.

Oh, while I'm here: CJ has six teeth, four donor siblings (though I've only been in contact with two families,) and a handful of words and phrases. Words like: hat, out, ant, balloon (“umboooon,”) and “AT?” while pointing to something, asking me to repeat what it is. And the same phrases he's always used: “I did it!” when I tell him he's done something well, OR when I tell him not to do something for pete's sake, (or, “THEY did it!” when I tell the dogs they're good,) and “It's good-good!” when he's eating oatmeal, or when I tell him something is “yucky” and not to eat it. :/ He plays ball, and has an orange car that he loves; a fuzzy, pink rocking horse that he likes to play with but will not sit on; a Mickey Mouse train; a musical chair; various Lilo and Stitch dolls etc. But given the choice, he'll always play with a DVD, remote control, the air purifier, or my cell phone. He loves books more than anything—ANYTHING—and is obsessed with “Go, Dog, Go,” and “Beep Beep.” He likes anything that says “beep beep,” which he copies by grunting twice. And he likes bees, which he calls “DIZ!” because of the buzzing. And he does animal noises, too, and a Donald Duck voice. Sort of. ^_^

I should really update LJ more often, but I get so lazy. CJ goes in for a nap and I usually just sit there looking at Tumblr and reading the stupid, depressing news. I always say that, but I never do it.

Since it's on my mind right now, I'd better go check Amazon for a fish self-feeder or something, and maybe a timer to turn the lights on and off.

I will absolutely check in with LJ more often. Will absolutely try. ^_^;;

A year ago on the 25th, it was a Saturday, and I went to the fertility clinic where they took me in an hour late. So I sat around watching a show about sea turtles and reading a magazine about Doctor Who. Then I went into the office, where I read Sherlock Holmes while I waited, because, as I told the nurse, if this worked, I wanted to have a smart baby. She said, "I Mama is smart, the baby will be, too!"

I left cautiously hopeful, and here I am today, with a little boy sleeping on my lap.

I try to take Callum somewhere for an hour or so every afternoon. It gets us both out of the house – though we can't ever stay for too long because of Haku. Today I decided to take some DVDs I'm trying to get rid of to the Yellow Barn by the library. But the library and Yellow Barn were both closed, and the drop boxes only accept books. I just gave about 50 books to my neighbor across the street for her yard sale.

So there I stood in the parking lot of the library, holding Callum's carrier on one arm and a huge bag of DVDs and tapes in the other, in the hot sun, when a blond woman in a sundress approached. She was on foot, and the only other person in the parking lot.

She asked, "Are you looking for something?"

I explained that I wanted to get rid o all of these DVDs but didn't want to just leave them there.

She said, "I walked over here from the shelter for abused and displaced women. I hope it's not rude of me to ask, but we don't have a really big video library there and one of the girls was just saying that she wanted to see more movies."

Wow, imagine that?! What great timing! I told her she could have all of them. She said, "How fortuitous! What are the chances?"

I gave her the bag, then offered her a ride back to the shelter, since it would be a long walk carrying all the DVDs. She accepted, and so we talked on the way back about astrology and baby names. (Because she really liked the name Callum. And she got it, too. "That's Gaelic," she said. "Colin is another version of it.")

Then I was going to take Callum for a pleasant walk through the cemetery down the road and take some photos, but I had forgotten my damn camera! >_< So instead, we visited my Mom at her work. Drex was working there too and he came to say hi.

It's funny, originally I was going to go to the store b/c I'm out of chocolate, but I didn't have any money to spend so I decided on the library instead. Neat!

Two days ago, I took Callum out to brunch with Lady Chrysanthemum, Empress and Snarklit. I have been missing the hell out of them so it was such a wonderful day, getting to see them. We haven't trained together in so long. I haven't trained in over a year, Empress is in school AND working at a dental clinic, and she now trains somewhere else. And Chrysanthemum has taken time off to be with her daughter, who was waiting on a baby of her own – who was just born yesterday!
She got in a little Grandma practice first:


And here's the lot of us, the old crew:



We talked—of course—about how much we miss Ye Olde Days of training, when we were all together at the cute, cozy school. When the Gold Dragon was there, and a bunch of really nice kids, and all the other folks who used to train with us. When our Kwon was like a family and we all had some TV Trope-ish role in class. It all kind of started to change when we moved schools, and different people came in and old ones left.

I still want that back. I miss it enough that I'll wait to have it again.

Well, we were all just feeling nostalgic, I guess. One day, Callum will train and hopefully I'll be training again, too. These people will always be my brothers and sisters.

Welp! It's been chilly at night and hot during the day, but you can definitely feel a hint of fall even in the afternoon. It's just a smell on the breeze. Jo-chan's school starts tomorrow, so she'll be living here part time. Can't wait for her to come back! Mom, and Boychild and Boychild's Mommy, and Callum and I have been going for evening walks on Mondays. It'll be nice to have her along, too.

Speaking of, she's having a BBQ later that Callum and I are going to. We're going to discuss the logistics of getting us all to Disney in 2014. :D

And so Autumn is around the corner! Yesterday I was looking at the FB pics a friend of mine posted. She's from HitRECord and she has this beautiful little boy. (He's so cute and smart, he's got his own section in the TV show! Which I'm going to be on, too!) Anyway, she has a pic of her and her son at around 6-7 months or so, walking through a pumpkin patch. Callum will only be 5 months in October, but I can't wait to get a pic like that, myself. :)

He's about to wake up any minute, so I have to cut this short!

I've been doing so much stuff at HitRECord lately! For some reason it works out that when Callum is napping I can get a few hours of recording and editing in. Of course, that means that I'm not doing my laundry or cleaning my house at all. Or sleeping. But hey. My baby is not a big napper anyway. 40 minutes at a time a few times a day. Lately he's been going for about 3 hours at a time at night. So I'm getting maybe 4-5 hours of sleep per night. I've learned to live with it. Right now, he's sitting on my lap in the boppy pillow. Actually he's starting to get fussy because I stopped paying attention to him to write this.

And, one feeding and two naps later (actually he's still asleep...)

So yeah, HitRECord. Joe picked a few things that I wrote for the TV show that he's doing, so that's been really awesome. It's super cool that I get paid for it, but really, it's just neat that he likes my ideas and wants to put them on TV. :D One of them is going to be a song about the space between atoms; he said it was really "geeky" and that got him excited about it. Super cool. He also congratulated me on Callum and might use some of the videos that I did of him, as well. ^_^ Neat. Whatever money I get from that will go to Callum.

Speaking of money, I haven't returned to work yet. TMI, but it's really hard to save enough milk to be gone for the day, and I don't want to put him on formula yet. He's only 2 months old.

For the 4th of July, we went to the beach with my Mom, Chrissie and Boychild. My friend Drex has been to visit, and y wonderful bestie Glassworker is coming on Monday. I haven't had time for many other visitors, and also I'm self conscious about the state of my house, with laundry everywhere.

It's been hot as satan's codpiece and no rain until today – still not enough. The grass is completely dead and all my plants are wilting and burnt.

Here's something I didn't mention (well, I haven't been on LJ< that's why.) The first 3, 4 or so weeks after Callum was born, I was super hormonal, to the point of getting really depressed at around 6 PM every night. Like, crying over everything kind of depressed. One night I was crying because I forgot to bake sweet potatoes, and another night I was crying because it was raining. Then once because my cousin's house was so nice and mine hadn't been cleaned in weeks. Just ridiculous things.

I still sometimes feel a little blue around 6 PM, but nothing like it was.

When Callum is asleep and I'm not doing things on HitRECord or having car accidents, I'm trying to catch up on a bit of housework, reading, looking at Tumblr, watching DVDs. When he's awake, I'm feeding, changing, or playing with him. He went through a stage for a few weeks where he just cried and cried all day, and could not be consoled. He still gets cranky at certain times, but he's consolable now. Usually, all I have to do is recite Disney's Haunted Mansion to him. Then I get a big smile.





When I say "I am your host... your GHOST HOST," he just loses it.

Oh, we're also planning a trip to Disney next year, Oct. '14. Callum will be a year and a half by then, which is when most of the kids in the family have gone for the first time. "We," by the way, are: me and Callum, my Mom, Chrissie, Timmy, Boychild, SB and Jo-chan. I'm looking forward to it and dreading it at the same time. My kid gets to go to Disney; I've been saving up for it since before he was born. But, I'm going to see my Dad and Gran around every corner. It'll never be 100% what I wanted. I know there's going to be ugly crying once in a while, and I think it'll be especially hard for my Mom.

But, that's over a year away, and I have a long enough time to stress about that and be neurotic.

Hmm, other than that, I've been watching Battlestar Galactica. I need something to turn on when I'm chained to him, and that's been fairly decent. I also finished watching Merlin (ALL THE TEARS, GOD.) And Hannibal, oh my god. I went nuts for Hannibal this season. The Tumblr fandom might even be better than the show.

I have to pee now, which means I have to get up and put the baby down, which means waking him, ugh!

Don't know when I'll get to do another update. I do miss LJ. But Tumblr is just so much easier to do with one free hand. :)

I haven't looked at my f-list in a long time. Hope everyone in LJ land is doing well!

So this was super nice. I mentioned in my last post that I'd made a little video for HitRECord to say what I planned to do with my check from them. I got this nice reply from Joe:



It always makes my day when he stops by to say something like that. ^_^ And yeah, whatever, I have screencapped all of his replies to me, just because they're always so kind, and sometimes really hilarious.







LOL tasteful.

It's not every day that you write a poem that JGL thinks is "fantastic and sexy." ^_^ Another time he said I was a "provocative and fun feminist writer."

For every rejection letter I get, I'm like, "Yeah, well, Joseph Gordon Levitt likes my stuff, so :P "

Welp, today is a week away from my baby shower. WOW, how did that happen? I'm looking forward to it, because I love any time I get to see all of my friends in one place. That happens so rarely. Obviously not everyone can make it, but a lot of people can and will be there. I just can't wait to see everyone. It's neat when your different groups of people can meet each other. Then you can show them off to each other. "Friends: This is my fantastic family! Family: Check out my awesome friends!"

I have SO MUCH cleaning to do. And not just "Oh, let me move this basket of clothes to this room and I'll get to them later," or your basic cleaning the toilet or wiping the counters and vacuuming. I mean like, shifting things around, scrubbing floors, all sorts of non-fun things like that. And tomorrow I have to go shopping for last minute stuff AND I have to work. That's TWO WHOLE THINGS I need to do in one day. What's up with that?

I just really want everyone to be comfortable on Sunday, have lots of space to move around, find everything clean and nice, and have a good time. And I neeeeed the weather to be warm and sunny. Weather gods, can we have that please? It is still so damn chilly here! We're supposed to be outside singing and dancing! Because yes, there will be dancing.

Mom offered Dad's old dresser for the baby. It's nearly an antique. Or, I don't know, maybe it isn't, but it's from the 50s or so. My Dad sanded it and painted it black in the 70s and it's really slick. I think that's such a cool idea, but I hate the thought of Mom giving up Dad's dresser. I think that's probably going to be tough. I'm a little torn.

I should stop stalling and start cleaning. There's just no way around it!

Gacked from Day Glo.

What cool stuff went on this year?

Joe (or Joseph Gordon-Levitt to the "old media,") really liked a brief essay that I wrote and said he wanted to write a feminist book. He asked for more contributions and he picked one of my snarky feminist dialogues and a naughty poem for publication. He really liked the poem and did a reading of it from the book.

Then I got pregnant. Not because of that, obviously.

I also wrote a porno which I personally found hilarious, and also went over really well, with brilliant voice-overs and show-stopping musical numbers. You get a little addicted to HitRECord, honestly. A few months go by and you've made nothing really fantastic, it gets you feeling a little down until the next time you come up with something. This whole thing really made me happy.

Meanwhile, I got a few more nibbles to a few more query letters, some good feedback, but ultimately no agent. Yet. The HitRECord credits seem to help a lot though.

I had a ton of starlings over the summer and a bluejay in the fall. (The bluejay didn't make it.)

I continued to write lots of poetry as well as fandom stuff, which went over pretty well and was really just for pleasure and practice.

I spent lots of time with Jo-chan, went to the park a lot with the dogs, took lots of walks, went swimming in the pool, hung out with my best friend, got a raise, saw some good movies and some silly ones. I watched Doctor Who and Torchwood, Dexter, Lost and One Upon A Time.

Other than that, not much. I didn't go on any trips or anything, didn't see any shows or do anything super exciting aside from all of that. Well, I haven't in about four years.

I never make much of the new year, but either way, here's to 2013!

I saw Looper on Friday and I'm only getting around to writing about it now. As some of you know, this is a movie I've been waiting for for years. I'm a weak person and I did a bad, naughty thing when I downloaded the script when it leaked a few years ago. I couldn't help it. It was like someone put a pint of Ben & Jerry's in front of me and said, "But don't touch this." It's just not going to happen. The day I read it, I couldn't put it down. And then I went back and read it again.

I'm not going to necessarily get into the timey wimey time travel parts of it in this post, because I'm actually gonna do that in a HitRECord video. (Well, maybe I'll get a LITTLE into it.) But, this post will have SPOILERS, so if you don't want LOOPER SPOILERS, then don't read this post full of LOOPER SPOILERS.

Okay, first, because I have to get it away, yes, of course there were some problems and issues with the script. Nothing is perfect. And I am a big believer in thinking critically about things that I love the most. Especially about things I love the most.

So yeah, the first thing Imma talk about here is the role of women in the movie. I might not even be going into it as much if Rian Johnson hadn't made a snarky comment about the Bechdel test on Twitter. I know that the test isn't always a great litmus for good representation of women in media (because some really good, pro-female works don't even pass it,) but at least take it seriously when someone brings it up. :/ I love Rian Johnson and he is currently my favorite director, so I always get eye-rolly when people I really respect have those human failings.

Anyway, the biggest problem with this script was that, like Brick, the women characters skirted the whole "whore/madonna" trope. Either they are whores who aren't emotionally available for the main character (JGL in both cases,) or they are his savior. Well, not so much with the "savior" in Brick. But definitely in this movie. One woman is literally a prostitute who breaks his heart, the other is a typical, virtuous wife who saves his soul. Old Joe actually even says this. Moreso, she has absolutely no lines at all. She's just there for him and nothing else.

FORTUNATELY, the movie is saved by Sara, who's tough as hell, has her own agenda, and could take or leave Joe. She decides on "take." Which is great, because it's her decision. She's the one who initiates the affair, basically just because she feels like it. He doesn't change her and turn her into "wife material," nor does she change him. They don't fall in love. She keeps her own agenda, which is looking out for her son. Young Joe does change, but it's not for her. His sacrifice is more meaningful than that.

I mean let's face it, it's a movie by a dude, about a dude, with some women in the story. That's just the way these things are. Movies centered on women are usually called "chick flicks" and movies centered on men are just called "movies." I'm not saying that it should stay that way, or that we shouldn't try to have a more even set of films – WE TOTALLY SHOULD. Movie writers should write movies with women characters doing all the normal (or abnormal) things, and have it just be a damn movie. But that is rare, and in the mean time, we have movies about dudes. They can still be good movies. And this was beyond good.

And by the way, Emily Blunt was fantastic.

Just because I knew I was going to love the movie way in advance, doesn't mean I didn't find new things to appreciate. So much of the movie was just how I pictured it. Of course, Joe looked different, wince he was in Bruce Willis makeup, but I got used to that quickly enough. After the first two minutes, it didn't seem so much like "JGL being Bruce Willis" rather than just two guys playing the same character.

There are a few things that Rian does in all of his films, one of which is the whole Tormented Hero thing. He even hung a lampshade on that in The Brothers Bloom. Which, I mean, I LOVE. That is actually my biggest fangirl button; I've said that so many times. Rian Johnson just has a sensibility about characters that really melds with my own. He knows how to write heroes that I pretty much have to enjoy.

And in both of his movies that feature Joe as the lead, he's definitely got this thing for breaking him up into tiny, bite-sized, heartbroken little Joe-bits and then throwing him into bed with The Bad Girl. I wonder why that is. Also, using Noah Segan as the Buttmonkey.

Props, by the way, to Noah Segan. His character Kid Blue had to go from being badass, to ridiculous, to pathetic, to sympathetic, sometimes all in one scene. Talk about whiplash. One second you loved him, the next he was the bad guy. One second he's awesome, the next second he's stupidly hilarious, the next second you feel profoundly sorry for him. Well played. That must have been hard.

Bruce Willis was Bruce Willis, which is to say, really badass, obviously. I saw him in some interviews and he seems really softspoken and nice.

Lemme talk for a second about the major difference between the (ILL-GOTTEN) script* and the movie.

( SPOILERS )

Okay, aside from that. The scene with Seth, oh my god. That was creepy as hell in the script, but in the movie, it turned into HIGH OCTANE NIGHTMARE FUEL, wtf. I almost couldn't look, it was so horrifying. Extremely effective, just subtle enough that you didn't have to see everything. Any more would have been overkill. Oh man, body horror.

So there's a lot of Timey-wimey mindscrewing in this movie, but, for as much as I love the concept of time travel and could discuss it all day, (and have,) that's really not what the film is about. It's really just about making a huge sacrifice in order to break a cycle of destruction. I know there are some people who are taking a cynical standpoint and saying "I still think nothing changed," but to me that's pointless. To me, it's not that kind of nihilistic movie. It means something. That was the whole idea of it, I think: to do something with meaning. Otherwise, why bother?

Oh, and Joe was perfect for the role, since, duh, it was written for him. Still, there would have been ways to screw this role up, but he just gets better and better. It was hard to realize that I was even watching him, and that's not really because the makeup, either.

So, problems aside, not only was this my favorite movie of the year, but I think it's actually my favorite movie. I think it knocked The Usual Suspects out of its top spot, goddamnit. Which pisses me off, because that movie has been there for years.

On a side note, I knew there was going to be a HitRECord collab to put stuff on the Looper DVD when it came out. I got crazy excited and did a crapload of stuff about Time Travel. Because I mean, what a huge concept, time travel, there's so much you could say about it. And it's a time travel movie. How tremendous! But, no. They made the collab about LOOPS. Man, STFU and get out my face, both of you. I'm just full of piss and vinegar over that, I mean really, "loops," wtf even. >_< Now I have to do all new stuff and I don't feel like it. Dang.

But anyway, it's a great movie, and people, if you haven't seen it, do. You won't be sorry.



*Don't ask me for it. It was years ago, and now Rian is going to release the licensed version to the public soon. So if you want it, you'll get it soon enough. :D

So a couple have things have gone on, some good, some bad, some still up in the air.

I'll start with the bad first, because it's what's on my mind. HitRECord, you know, is a nice little community - okay, it's really not so little, but you do get to know some folks. One of my pals there is a gal named Inky. She lives in Hawai'i and for a while we were working on some poetry translations on the site. Then she went away for a long trip, but had to cut her trip short because her boyfriend Niko (Honeyboy on HR) was very ill. Cancer at only 30, unable to get chemo due to a heart condition.

Inky and Honeyboy went traveling around the islands of Hawai'i together for a few short months. During their trip, they were taking photos, writing, tweeting, and exchanging packages of goodies and trinkets with other HitRECorders. Every Friday was Aloha Friday, where we would all send songs to each other on Twitter. Niko sent lots of my favorite music; I'd have fun identifying the singers and bands.

Just last week I went out and bought all sorts of Long Island goodies to send to them: local chocolates, trinkets, and some local honey for Honeyboy. I didn't have a box to send it in; figured I'd get to the store last Friday and bring it to the post office.

But Thursday night, Inky posted to let us all know that Niko had passed on Wednesday evening. She sent his last photo from his phone to his Twitter: a picture of the sunset out his window, titled "Goodbye Sun."

So everyone is heartbroken, and I have this package of stuff sitting here, addressed to both of them, and I don't know if I should still send it.

I came home from work today to find two packages had arrived. One was the HitRECord book that two of my writings made it into.

The other package is from Inky and Niko. It has a card from them. "Sending you lots of aloha and hugs and kisses, XOXO Honeyboy," and "Lots of love to you! XO Inky" They must have put it in the mail that Wednesday. And I just don't know what to do with myself over this. I think I should send the package anyway.

That was the most important, and of course the worst, thing that went on this week. Me, I can feel sad and cry and go about my business, but I know that his family and friends don't have that luxury today. My week still has some happiness in it. I get that.

Some of my happiness this week is, as I mentioned, getting that book in my hands. It's gorgeous, so much better than I thought it would be. The whole intro by Joe is about patriarchy and sexism, and why he changed the ending to the story. The second "intro" is by his Mom, which details the War On Women and why books like this are necessary. She talks for a while about the terrifying bills that are being put on the table (and some passed, barring women from testifying,) and then says,



My two pieces are in here, surrounded by beautiful art. Here's the funny thing: the first one is on page 39 and the second one is on page 45. I have a thing about numbers adding up to 3 and 9 so I'm like "OMFG IT'S A SIGN."

I also finished up the revisions requested by that one rad agent. I "finished" them, I should say, and then I stressed and stressed, and hemmed and hawed and fussed and revised again, and then once again. And then, yesterday, I sent them out. Now, I'm convinced that I only made it worse. I could only have screwed it up more. I just don't know what to do sometimes, who to listen to!

But also, a few agents held a "Twitter Pitch" contest, which is what it sounds like. You reduce your novel to 135 characters (leaving room for the tag,) and pitch to them via Twitter. Well, the one agent who showed a little interest in mine has a thing against stories with a time travel element. BUT, she also said it sounded cool anyway, and I could go ahead and query her to give her more info. I know it's not the kind of thing she represents, but something must have sounded kind of good for her to say that! So I figured, why not? And queried her, too. Can't hurt. :)

I am running out of agents to query, though. I'm getting a few nibbles and a few "You're good, but I'm not in love with this." What if no one falls "in love" with it? Then, I guess, I shelf it, start up with some of my other books and such. Get one of those to sell. Then maybe someone will be like "Do you have any trunk manuscripts?" Haha, yeah. But I don't want this to be from the trunk. It's my favorite.

So that's more or less what's been going on, aside from the stuff I'm going to put in the locked post. Today is the first really hot hot day, and my first day in shorts (once I came home from work, that is.) About two weeks ago I fixed the aviary door. I just need to put another latch on the bottom, just to be on the safe side (didn't need one for ten years, but I'm not going to make that mistake again,) and then hose it out, set it up, and put my twelve bastard starlings into it. Will probably do that tomorrow. Then maybe I'll get my winter clothes put away. I did that much earlier last year, I think; maybe two weeks earlier. But it's been super chilly this month.

Oh, in the meantime, hey. You can order this gorgeous FEMINIST retelling of a fairy tale, with poetry, stories, thoughts, essays and really beautiful art. Scroll down to the $20 one. ^_^

Yesterday, it turned out that we didn't end up going to dinner after work. So I picked up Haku and came home. Still, it was our receptionist's last day and I was very down in the dumps about that. I've had a lot of fun working with her.

You know what I forgot to mention, Sano's been off pred since last Saturday. That's awesome. For future reference: yes he is still ravenous, and yes he's throwing up some. That's what happens. I just always like to keep track of things like this to see if they match up year to year.

Oh my god, the weather has been down to freezing. I hate that, it's ridiculous. I already put most of my plants outside for the season. Hello, IT IS ALMOST MAY. What is this crap, and we didn't even really have a winter. I've said this before and all, but it's been like, 35-40 degrees since October. SUCH a bitch.

And since we didn't have a winter, the bugs are insane. Okay, so in the past I've had a problem with ants, since I live on the ground floor. They're always all over the floor, and last year they were in my bathroom, too. They took over my jade tree and got into a few other potted plants. This year, I spent an entire day submerging the plants to get rid of them, and trying to drown the queen (if that's even possible. Who the eff knows? Maybe she holds her breath.) Only a few days later, the ants were back. But that was nothing compared to today.

Today, I went to change the cartridge on my water filter that attaches to the faucet. I unscrewed it, and hundreds of ants poured out. OF MY WATER FILTER. WHICH I HAVE BEEN USING. It looked like they'd been in the aerated spaces and not the water spaces, otherwise they would have been coming out in the water, and they probably would have drowned, right? At any rate, I was horror-film screaming in my mind. I boiled water and submerged the entire filter. Then, for two hours I had to keep cleaning it over and over again, because you can't take the damned thing apart; all those tiny little holes, and no way to clean inside of it at all. I just kept dunking it under water and shaking it out. For TWO HOURS I did this, and more and more dead ants just kept coming out. So I did it until everything was out, and then I boiled it again.

So, awesome, right, that's all done with and they're all gone. New filter, everything should be fine, right? BUT NO. About an hour later, I saw another ant crawling on the faucet again, and then another, and another, like they were trying to get back in there. OMG, for effing what? I killed every last goddamn one, disinfected, nothing left. It's not like there's food around there or anything, it's an effing water faucet.

I just don't know wtf to do about these ants. What I do know is that no ant will ever receive quarter from me again. I'll destroy them all without mercy. This is my destiny.

No, but really, I was so horrified and I'll probably have nightmares about it tonight.

And while we're on the subject of nightmares, I started watching Lost (I know, I'm what, seven years late on this?) and the whole plane crash thing gave me some mad plane crash nightmares, too. The show is interesting—so far it's giving me more thoughts than feels—but I can't really get interested in too many of the characters. I like Sayid, Hurley, and Locke. That's about it. Everyone else I kind of want to punch so far.

That aside, I've been revising the manuscript writing other stuff instead (I know, I know,) and I did a few little things for HitRECord, like a ridiculous porn parody that people are getting a kick out of – and I find myself so damn funny, I just can't get over it. Going for walks and jogs with the dogs, going to work, Kung Fu, doing laundry, killing ants. That's about it. So exciting right now, I don't know how anyone can even stand reading about it without biting their fingernails clean off in suspense.

Just sit there and try to cope with how riveting my life is right now.

Today is a fine day. Yesterday was, too. For the first day of Spring, we had 70 degree weather, and the same today. It's clear and sunny. Yeah, maybe a little too hot for this time of year, and that is kind of worrying. But it's hard to focus on that when you can feel the sun again. (Although, isn't that always nicer after a hard winter? We hardly had a winter at all this time.)

So today I took the dogs on an hour-long walk through the woods by the lake. We climbed hills and they went into the water. Haku is still a little drugged, and Sano has a hard time keeping up because of the pred.

I like to document every year when I hear the treefrogs for the first time at night. Well, it wasn't night, but they were making a ton of noise in the woods today, so! Treefrogs.

Also, after a decent sleep, I woke up to find, first thing, a feminism collab on HitRECord, with Joe citing my written piece as a source. ^_^ It's funny, before I went to bed last night, I checked HR and I saw that he'd given a heart to that piece I'd written in November. I was like, "Why's he necro-hearting? Is he going to use it for something?" And then I was so pleased that he did. Not only that, but for something that means a lot to me.

As you can see, the feminism collab already has TONS of entries in it. So inspiring and awesome! I love that people are catching on. Especially when we've got an actualfax war on women going on in the government.

So I wrote two more pieces for it: Asking For It, and But What If I Want To Be Eaten?

(Also on HitRECord recently, I did a video about my birds, called Fly Away. I'm really proud of that one, and mostly because I worked with my awesome cousin SB. That's his amazing music you hear there.)

So that's made me pretty happy.

Also, last year's redwing blackbird Reid came back to the feeder the other day. Or maybe he's been back the whole time, but this is the first time I've had my door open and been able to see him. Still, that made me happy.

What is making me sad is that the receptionist at the fabulous clinic where I work is leaving in May. I get along really well with her and we always have so much fun. I have no idea who's going to replace her. I'm worried.

Also harshing my shine is that my arm is really freaking hurting a lot of the time. I woke up this morning and it was pretty much on fire. I stretched and it went POP! And then it felt better. I did see the chiro about it and he was like, "Hmm. Well... hmm. Hmm." Looks like either bicipital tendonitis, a mid-delt tear, or maybe a trapped nerve in my neck. None of which is fun.

Ugh, and I have to do my taxes still (or rather, get them done,) and I'm going to owe. MEGA-owe. Dang.

Well, eff it. I'm going to water my plants and play Skyward Sword. BECAUSE I CAN.

I made a thing for @hitrecord. IT'S SILLY, OKAY, but I had fun. And it's got 12 hearts so far! :) It's a little thingie-thing about seeing movies at the cinema, and my thoughts on it, and how my early cinema experiences affected me.

Also, some talk about porn.