Environmental issues

The past two weeks have been interesting, and not in a good way. Our AC broke, our water pump decided to die, and my cat vanished. All of the above have been resolved finally, to our relief. But the one thing I noticed while all of these were going on was how it affected my writing.

I found that when it was blisteringly hot, as in even the box fans weren't keeping me cool (we got up to 106 F one day), I couldn't think. I just wanted to lay there and do nothing. I was having problems reading, let alone trying to get something written.

Now that things are mostly back to normal, I'm finding it easier to connect with life again. I realized that my environment plays a huge role in what I do and how I do things. The heat turned me sluggish. The water pump breaking sent me into an environment not my own. Losing my cat pulled a vital component out of my environment, which made things more difficult. (Reidar is home and fine. He just took a 4 day vacation. And we still don't know how he got where he ended up.)

I know I have environmental cues for when I'm out of the house that will trigger problems. Crowds of people can set me off. Loud noises bother me and I get anxious. Heat drains me and unless I find AC relatively soon after getting hot I get tired/irritable and am not a pleasant person to be around.

Our environment is a large part, I think, in how we react to things. If we're in our comfort zones it's easier for us to respond to stimuli. If something affects those comfort zones, people have a tendency to react in a negative fashion. The more uncomfortable a person becomes, the worse things get for them and possibly those around them.

What about you? How does your environment affect you? Is there something that will give you trouble every time?

Sunday 'fess up - It's been a week

It's been a week, that's for sure.

I finally made a breakthrough on both of the stories I'm working on. I realized what was wrong with Rescue and with Birth of the Silver Lady. I'm hoping to have BotSL ready for publication around Christmas and Rescue in January. The other two to follow shortly after them, assuming I can find beta readers and critique partners to review the stories for me. I don't want to put out something that isn't polished to its finest. If you're interested in beta reading/critiquing leave a comment, message me on Facebook, or @ me on Twitter and let me know.

Thursday night I had another seizure and managed to give myself a concussion. I lost most of Thursday and managed to irritate Himself because of my insistence that we go to the emergency room. But it was a good thing we did. Knowing me, I'd have neglected to inform the necessary people until months from now that I had another seizure and by that point I could have had at least one other seizure, possibly more. By going to the ER they've increased my anti-seizure meds again and this time I have high hopes that it will work and keep me seizure free.

Himself is still working away on several projects. It's keeping him busy and though it leads to some cranky moments he's having a good time and that's what's important to me. He has high hopes that this business venture will finally pay off and some of the problems we've had in the past will disappear as a more steady and stable income will be provided for the family.

I'm reading a lot more now. I've finished Game of Thrones and I've moved on to Clash of Kings. It's definitely gotten a little easier to read now that I'm used to the head hopping. Though I will admit that the two characters I care most about are Arya Stark and Daenerys Targaryen. And I'm fairly sure I spelled that wrong. Arya fascinates me because of how strong she is for a 10 year old girl. And Daenerys has baby dragons. Who wouldn't love baby dragons?

I'm changing up the blog again. I realized that it's getting harder for me to write well thought out posts because I'm always scrambling to come up with ideas and the quality of my blog posts has been suffering. So I'm dropping down to three days a week. Monday will be my usual rambling on any subject that interests me. Wednesday will still be my posts on writing. Some will be informational. Others will be me putting up random snippets for your entertainment and possibly your help. Friday is vlog day and I'll post my vlog and some random music videos for you to enjoy. That way I'm not inundating everyone with badly written blog posts and I can get back to spending more of my time working on my WIPs.

My goal is to have the rewrites of Birth of the Silver Lady, Rescue, The Soldier and the Lady, and The Pigeon and the Fiddler finished by the end of September. That means I'm going to have to get cracking and quit goofing off but that's my goal. I at least want BotSL and Rescue done for sure.

That's it for this week. This will be the last Sunday 'fess up for a while, until I get things figured out. So keep an eye out for the new blog content and schedule. Thanks for sticking with me and I look forward to reading your comments on all things that I write.

Here's a vlog post (yes, I know it's been a while). Also, some music videos for your enjoyment.

Sunday 'fess up - *sigh*

You may have noticed a lack of blog posts this week. That's because my computer contracted a malware that my anti-viruses couldn't kill so I pulled a nuke and pave on my computer. This means I had to download everything again. This includes drivers, Windows updates, and even Open Office so I could keep writing. Thankfully I had almost everything writing related backed up to Google Drive and Dropbox, so the only thing I was missing was the hastily written pathetic little outline/timeline for Cracked World. Nothing vital, and I can easily rewrite it.

This also means that I've been dealing with my computer shutting off at random times and rebooting as Windows downloads and installs "critical updates". I think it's finally done so I don't have to worry about it anymore, though I expect I'll have more updates to download as it usually takes several days to catch up to everything. I'm still using Windows 7, and I'm not looking forward to making the switch to Windows 8 when I (eventually, not in the immediate future) get a new laptop.

I'm focusing on getting my three interconnected short stories rewritten and polished. Then I'm going to format them. (That's going to be fun.) And then I'm going to publish them as e-books on Amazon and Smashwords. I don't know when they're going up so I'm not going to give a time frame now. I'll post more on it when I'm getting closer to being ready to publish. I hope that I can entice all of you to support me and buy copies of the e-books. If this goes well, I might do up a novella that I've written and put it up as well. We'll have to see.

I had a bout of insomnia on Thursday night, coupled with having a freaking huge ass spider run across my legs. I know this because the damn thing ran across my foot as I was working on one of the short stories. I figured since I couldn't sleep I might as well get some work done. I almost screamed out loud. The spider was fast but not as fast as I can be when confronted with something the size of a quarter, legs included. It made a satisfying pop, and then I buried him at sea (a.k.a. flushed it down the toilet). Ew.

Himself is working on his project. I can't say what it is, but it's a big one. We have high hopes for this one producing some ongoing work for his company. That would be a huge benefit and a relief to me as well. So fingers crossed for good things happening.

Lastly, I'll leave you with some music videos like I usually do. As things get better, look for my vlogs starting up again. I know you're all excited about that.

Sunday 'fess up - Not such good news after all

Hey everyone!

You know how last week I was so excited to go back to work, right? Well if you've read my blog post from Thursday you'll see that I'm not back at work like I wanted to be. I've had to quit my day job permanently because of my health. If you're really that curious, ask and I'll tell you privately. Otherwise I'm not going to talk about it anymore here.

Himself and I got into a discussion this week on how, now that he's bringing in a steadier income from his business, I've gotten into my old habit of "spend, spend, spend" again. He's right. I have. And that's proving troublesome because I can and will run us out of money. All the bills still get paid, but the rest of it is spent on frivolous things. That's partly because I want nice things and partly because of the bipolar. I need to work hard on stopping this habit before it leads us too much further down the road of ruin. We've already been there enough times in our lives. I don't want to visit that place again.

On the writing front, I'm slowly making my way through the timeline of major events in the world of Aleran. I realized, after a discussion with Himself, that I need to know the history of the world I'm writing in because events in the past will color the present of my characters. So I'm working on that. Then I'll work on the outline for Cracked World. Then I'll see about starting that one over again. I'm also polishing three of my short stories that are interconnected with the intent of self publishing them and getting them on Amazon and Smashwords for sale. We'll see how well that one goes.

Sunday 'fess up - Grrrrrrr

This week has not gone at all like I planned. Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed myself immensely this week. But I didn't get as much done on the story as I hoped to. I've been distracted by running errands and getting out of the house with Himself most of this week. It's been pleasant, if a little busy.

The main reason I'm frustrated though is my clinician's office still hasn't called me back to help me fill out the paperwork I need to have filled out before I'm allowed to go back to work. They keep telling me they'll pass on the message but nothing has happened. I'm going to keep calling every day until I get a firm answer. It's not that difficult. Read my file, copy down the info from my file onto the paperwork, and let me get my ass back to work. It's that simple.

Of course, they apparently don't think it's that simple. I could fill out the paperwork myself, except that's kind of illegal. Medical fraud and all that. Don't think the thought didn't cross my mind though. But knowing my luck they'd call my clinician's office to verify the information and I'd get caught. I'd not only lose my job but I'd probably get criminal charges laid on me. I don't want to go through that so I'll just be the exceptionally annoying squeaky wheel.

As I said, writing this week didn't happen. I maybe got 2000 words this whole week. So I'm going to try to improve that number this coming week. It all depends on how things go with Himself and with my clinician's office.

Himself signed a rather nice contract to build some kind of web page for a client that's netting him a fair bit of money. I don't know all the details but it's nice to have a steady income coming in now from him. That's why we've been running every place this week. We've been taking care of some things we've neglected because of a lack of funds.

Well that's enough rambling from me today. Hope everyone has a great week!

Sunday 'fess up - Anni's a little disappointed this week

Well, this week didn't end the way I intended it to.

It started out all right. I've been making progress on Cracked World, even though I pretty much started over from scratch because I didn't like how it was going. I like it well enough, even though I still think I'm taking too long with the beginning. I'll have to see how the story plays out.

I think I've made it pretty clear I was intending to go back to work. I've talked about it enough this past week. Well Thursday I went to my med doctor and got something to help with the anxiety that's inevitable at my job. Life was pretty good up to that point.

Then we got to Friday. Friday was the day I went into see my clinician. She'd fill out the paperwork and fax it in and I'd be all set to go back to work by the end of next week. Easy, right?

It didn't go that way. Because my clinician is an intern, and a summer intern at that, she's not "qualified" to fill out the paperwork. I now have to wait for someone else in the office who doesn't know me to fill out the paperwork. I don't know when that's going to be. I do know it has to be soon or I'm going to lose my job. They'll only hold it for so long and so long happens to be September 10th. After that date, I will no longer be employed at the bank. I'd rather not lose my job over something this stupid, so I'm going to keep hounding them to find out what's going to happen.

So that kind of derailed my plans for next week. If I haven't heard by Wednesday, I'm going to call and pester someone to get me an answer. Because I need them to fill out the form so I can go back to work.

I did hear from my boss on Saturday. The problem there is she may not be my boss anymore. They did another shift bid while I was out on disability and if there isn't a position on her team, I'm going to have to go back to someone I don't know as well. At least, I hope it's someone I don't know as well. There are a couple of managers that I'd rather not get again. Talk about personality clashes. I'll know more on Monday. Another thing she told me was that we're losing the smaller accounts I was working with, probably going to another center, and gaining one large account to work with. Should be interesting when I go back.

So that's my week in a nutshell. How was your week?

Here's the music videos for your amusement.

Sunday 'fess up - Anni had a pretty good week

Well, it's that time again.

This past week hasn't been too bad. I got a weekly appointment moved to the afternoon on Fridays because 9 am was just too hard on me and Himself. We've worked out some financial difficulties we found ourselves in. And my roommates finally got us a new hot water heater so no more driving to my dad's for a hot shower or biting the bullet and taking a freezing cold shower. (Those were not pleasant.)

On the writing front, I surpassed my 60k goal for this month and I'm still going. I still fully intend on finishing Marked by the end of July and I'm on track to do that. On  Friday I had a little issue where I'd written myself into a plot hole big enough to drive a semi through. So I ended up backtracking 100 pages or so and starting from that point to rewrite the scenes to get rid of the plot hole. I didn't have to delete much, which made me a lot happier. But I got everything sorted out and this plot hole is gone. I'm sure I'll find more when I go back to edit, but this particular hole was preventing me from moving forward so I had to take care of it now.

That's it for this week's 'fess up. See y'all next week!

Um...yes, I'm still alive

*cough, choke*

*removes spider webs*

Uh....hi?

I haven't had much to say lately so I haven't been saying it. Which is quite apparent since the last time I posted a blog post was in November. I feel rather bad about that and I appreciate all of you who have stuck it out during my blog absence. I can't guarantee how frequently I'll post but I will be posting more often.

A lot has gone on in the last four months. Himself has had a few more contracts come his way. I've been told I'm not allowed to go back to work, so I'm dealing with that. I've started writing full time since I have so much free time. I finished a first draft in less than three months. I've now burned myself out on writing but the first draft of Burning Dreams is done. That's the book I started in November, won NaNoWriMo with, and then scrapped at the end of December and started over fresh in January.

I attempted the Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest this year. I didn't make it past the pitch phase. Which is fine. After everything was all said and done, I realized Only A Name, which I thought was finished, really wasn't finished and needs a total overhaul. I'm going to try it again next year, probably with Only A Name again since that's the book that starts everything.

I've also moved. We were living in a small town pretty far out from where we needed to go for shopping and Himself needed to go for work. It was a pain getting to my doctor appointments. Now we live in town and everything is within a 20 minute drive of our new place. We'll have new roommates by the 15th, but for right now it's just us and the cat in the house.

Reidar didn't take too well to the move at first. I think he was rather offended by the fact that I wrapped him in our bath towel and held on for dear life as we drove him back from the old house to the new. We didn't have a cat carrier for him and I needed some way to prevent him from tearing holes in me while Himself drove. He hid himself on a shelf in the bathroom and wouldn't even acknowledge my presence for the better part of a week. He's resigned himself to the new place and has since gone back to flopping on me every chance he gets, but for a while I was beginning to think my cat was going to hate me forever. :D

Things are progressing forward at a slow pace, but good things are coming our way. We're slowly optimistic that things are going to continue getting better. We've embarked on a new chapter in our lives. We're going to see how this one will be written before we progress on.

And because the butterfly is so symbolic of how I feel right now, this picture was posted by user seiyastock on www.morguefile.com.

Just a quick update

Life threw me another curve ball and I landed back in the hospital for 5 days. I got home late on Wednesday so I was home for Thanksgiving but it was a toss up to see if I'd be spending the holiday in the hospital or not. I got to spend the holiday with family so it was a good ending to a bad situation.

To the ROW 80 crowd, I'm still pushing forward towards my goal of winning NaNoWriMo this year. I'm behind on the word count at the moment but I'm still out of work so I've got a chance this week to make up for it. Everything else got put on hold because of the trip to the hospital. I'm getting back to normal so I expect I'll be back to work on my usual stuff by mid-week.

De-stressing, an admission, and another #ROW80 check in

Let's start with the first admission: I'm horrible at de-stressing. I can stress myself out with ease. But when it comes to unwinding from the stress, I find it difficult to achieve that calm state. I've had to learn fast over the last couple months because there has been literally NOTHING I could do about Met Life being arseholes and dragging their feet about my short term disability. (Yes, it finally came through. That was a huge relief to me too.)

Let's start with the definition of stress. Merriam-Webster online dictionary has an excellent and comprehensive definition of stress here. We're most interested in two of the aspects of this definition: a physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation and  a state resulting from a stress; especially : one of bodily or mental tension resulting from factors that tend to alter an existent equilibrium <job-related stress>. 

Stress can be a cause for a lot of short term problems. Tension headaches, back aches, neck aches, body aches in general. It can cause loss of appetite, sleep loss, tension between people. It can also lead to a depressed immune system because of the physical depredations on your body caused by the stress, which opens you up to every sickness out there.

Now, if you're like me, being sick stresses you out too because damn it, you don't have time to be sick. There are books to be written, chores to be done, people to be dealt with. Life has to go on and you don't have the time to deal with being sick on top of it. Yeah, that doesn't help you any either. It just makes the sickness linger longer, I've noticed.

De-stressing is a must in these kinds of situations. I'm not a person who de-stresses easily but I've found that these specific things work best for me. First, shut off all the damn electronics. Yes, even the cell phone. Yes, the laptop/computer/tablet. Everything. Turn out the light. Bury yourself under the covers. Take a nap if you feel like it. But if you don't, spend some time just curled up in the dark. If your mind has a tendency to wander to topics that stress you out in times like these, force your mind away from these thoughts. Make them go to something else. For me, I made it go to one of the books I'm writing. I worked my way through several scenes that way and it helped relax me.

Music. I know it's been said before to listen to music. But you have to pick the right music. Music that increases your heart rate is not going to help you de-stress. Pick music - or some kind of nature sound if that's what you prefer - that is going to lower your heart rate and soothe you. I recommend Ed Van Fleet's "Oceans". It combines the sound of the ocean with gentle music. It's very nice and soothing if you like that style of music. While you're listening to it, try not to think of anything. Just focus as hard as you can on the music. It's hard at first. Your brain wants to run through everything that's stressing you out. But don't let it. Focus solely on the music and let your body relax. It'll help.

Tea or hot chocolate. Try for non-caffeinated tea if you can find it. Caffeine does drive up heart rate, which can lead to a higher stress level. I know chocolate has caffeine in it. But the caffeine level isn't as high as it is in say green tea or black tea. Besides. chocolate triggers all those lovely endorphins in your head which lead you to happy places so hot chocolate is beneficial in that way too. Forego the coffee when you're stressed, or go for decaf which has less caffeine in it if you must have coffee. But try for something with as little caffeine as possible.

Finally, find something that makes you happy and do it. Writing can be stressful for us writers, so sometimes we have to put the pen/word processor away and move on to something else. I knit, so when I got really stressed out this past month I dug (and yes, I do mean dug...the stuff was buried in the bottom of my closet again) out my knitting and started knitting a scarf. I need a new scarf anyway and it gave me something to do that kept me busy but helped me relax. I watched movies. I read books. I knitted. I steered clear of being online or writing. And it helped. Sometimes unplugging is a good idea to help with your stress.

These are only the things that work for me. There are so many books, self-help gurus, podcasts, vlogs, blogs, etc. out there on how to do this that I'm sure you'll find a hundred different tips on this. These are just what have worked for me. Please find your own and use them to help you out of stressful situations. If you've got one you'd like to share, please do. I'm always looking for new ideas to try to help with de-stressing.

I'm feeling much better these days. My stress levels dropped significantly when I was able to pay my bills. But by de-stressing I was finally able to start to shake this nasty cold/allergy/thing that's been lingering for the past month and a half. I actually feel better today than I have in weeks and part of it is due to the fact that I'm no longer as stressed as I've been. It really does help. The main thing you need to keep in mind while de-stressing is it isn't going to work all the time. Sometimes you're just not going to be able to shut down the stress receptors. In that case, practice your de-stressing techniques to minimize the stress and try to get past it faster.

ROW 80 update is below. You don't have to read on if you're not interested in that.

A second admission, and this to the ROW 80 crowd...I've missed the last couple check ins. It's had to do with the stress levels in my life being so high I haven't wanted to be online much and I'm sorry. I'll be making the regular check ins from now on.

Writing - NaNo is fast approaching so I'm anxious to get started on that project. That's the novel I want to start that's the first in the series. I decided to start with it for NaNo as a kick in the pants to get it done. Jaelon's story is started but not finished. I've tweaked a few thins in Mkai's story again because I've altered a few details in the world building. Taereah's story got completely deleted because I realized in order to write her story I need to have the outline for CRACKED WORLD written out so I know where she comes in with that story so I can figure out what I want to write with her. I kind of need the same thing for Jaelon's story because both of them tie into CRACKED WORLD and the as of yet unnamed novel series I'm working on starting in November, so I need to have past and present details worked out before I can work on their stories.

Personal - I didn't follow through with vocational rehab. It just didn't feel right, and they told me the best they could do for me was find me a job that paid me $8-$9/hr. I need something $10+ just to survive these days so it wouldn't have worked out. I'm still forgetting my afternoon dose of pills so I've started setting an alarm in my phone. It'll be easier once I start back to work because I'll have an afternoon break and I'll be able to take the pills regularly on that break. I'm mostly just stretching every other day when it comes to exercising. It's not much but at least it's something. I haven't wanted to do much of anything lately because of how crappy I've felt but I've made myself go through the same stretching exercises they taught me in the hospital so I'm doing something.

Work - I've talked with my boss about a few new developments. The big one for me is they're changing our schedules which means I'm losing my shift differential (that's almost $100 per paycheck). There was a shift bid, which I would have missed if not for her, that was due on the 23rd. She emailed me the shift bid and I sent back my preferences. I'm not likely to get what I want since I'm low man on the totem pole because of my stats but we'll have to see. I'll know the first week of November, which is right after I go back, and we won't actually have to make the change to our new shifts until January. They're getting rid of most of the night shifts and putting us all on days. Blech. I like my night shift, thanks. Practicing my anti-panic attack exercises now so I've got them down for when I go back to work.

General life update & ROW 80 update

I bet y'all have missed me, haven't you? *grin*

Things are a little tight these days since I'm out of work on the leave of absence. But we're making things work. My dad loaned us some money that we'll be paying back as soon as we can, though it's going to be a while. But between that and the limited amount of funds I got for my short term disability, we're scraping by.

I've gotten my outline for NaNoWriMo finished. This is a new thing for me since I've always been a pantser. I've even categorically stated I'll never use outlines. Well, I'm eating my own words. I'm going to try my hand at writing with an outline this year. If it works, I might actually win this year. I'd like to break my losing streak from the last three years.

I've gotten most of the histories written. I'll revisit them all before November because some of the things that show up in the histories get touched on briefly in the novel I'm planning on working with for November. It's the first story in the series. I'm not sure how many books are going to be in the series, how many books I'm going to break the outline into, and all that good stuff...but I'm going to get it written.

I go back to work on November 1st, supposedly. Not sure yet if that's going to be the precise date or not but that's the general timeframe I've been given. I'm not looking forward to it but I'm making sure I don't overstress myself too much.

Now, for those of you who weren't aware, I'm participating in ROW 80 as a way to hold accountability for my goals. If you're curious, follow the #ROW80 hashtag on Twitter or follow the link that should be set up in my sidebar. I think I did it right.

So, quick update on the ROW 80 goal posts:

WRITING: I finished Jaelon's story. I still need to do some more work on Taereah's, but I've gotten it started.

JOB: I had to put a stop to my job hunting while out on a leave of absence. Funnily enough, my current employer sort of frowns on that while I'm out on their dime. *shrug* I'm still going to the voc rehab on the 15th and we'll see what they say.

PERSONAL: Exercise is going well. I'm at least stretching every other day, and I've been out on walks twice in the last week. Still good on the meds. No missed doses so far this week either. I'm meeting with my counselor on Friday. I did call today to find out about meeting with the doctor and about the FMLA paperwork that I need to get paid for being on my LOA. They're going to call me back with that info. I've spent time away from the computer, though I've used it for background noise. I'm reading Warrior by Marie Brennan. It's a book I picked up at Hastings used (along with its sequel) for $3/book when I got out of the hospital so I'm trying to read them. So far, so good.

I had this great blog post idea

No really, I did!

Then I went to bed without writing it down.

So now I don't remember what I was planning on writing about.

So I'll just give you a general life update and a writing update like I usually do.

I know you're all excited, aren't you? *grins*

Life update is as follows: I spent 8 days in the hospital. Dehydration + extreme stress = one messed up system. So I stayed in until I stabilized and now I'm trying to extend my FMLA/short term disability while I deal with therapy to get me completely back on my feet. I'm also trying to apply for permanent disability because honestly I'm probably going to end up back in the hospital from the stress and anxiety this job causes me.

Yes, I know I could look for another one. I have been. I'm not having any luck. And really, any job short of something that requires NO interaction with people is going to trigger the anxiety and there aren't too many jobs where you don't interact with anyone. Actually, there are no jobs where you don't interact with people. Not even if I went to writing full time, though that has less interaction with people until you're published than other jobs. Not NO interaction, but less than a normal job requires. Then again, I'd get lonely if I didn't have someone to talk to occasionally so being completely isolated is a bad thing for me.

Boy, that rambled on a bit.

Writing update is as follows: I did a lot of world building and note taking while I was in the hospital and I've come to realize that things are going to need some tweaking. Yes, again. Aleran is a constant work in progress. I've redefined the world and the characters enough times in the last 20 years that one more time won't matter. What matters is that this is the last time for the world building tweaks and that I'm finally ready to take the plunge and write the main series that I've been playing around with for the last few years.

This means no more slacking. I'm writing out the "histories" to sketch out the characters, and then it'll be onto the main event - the 6 book series that revolves around the two guys. Poor Anila is relegated to secondary character status in Reidar's books, though I may elevate her to additional MC in one of them to explain something that's essential and has to happen. I haven't quite figured out what to do with her yet.

In regards to roommates: Himself (who is not by definition a roommate since we're, you know, married) bought me a Milky Way to celebrate me coming home. Hey, we're broke and it was a sweet (ha, ha) gesture. Twitchy bought me a chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich today from the ice cream truck lady to celebrate my coming home. It's not anything big but it's the little things that make me smile.

In regards to the cat: Reidar (yes, he's named for one of the characters in my main novel series) is still Reidar. He hasn't changed, other than being pissed off at me for the first day I was home. Now he's back to face planting in my arm pit and licking it. Got to love weird cat behaviors.

Pretty much that's it for this blog post. If I remember what the cool, awesome, probably-been-done-before-but-not-by-me blog post was I'll post it too.

Have a great weekend everyone!

I need a blog post naming guide or something

First, a little self-promotion.  I have two Tumblr blogs that I'm running now. *points to the links below*

A World of Images - Pictures, political ranting, fangirling, random things
The Story of Aleran & Vassa - Writing excerpts, updates, writing exercises, and various posts on my writing process

Now, on to my adventure today...

Today has been rather...interesting.  I was supposed to be at work at 7:30a.  I was going to work from 7:30a-8p.  My usual shift is 7:30a-4:00p, and I was going to pick up four hours of overtime.  My insomnia hit very hard last night.  I was in bed, asleep by 11p as planned.  I woke up at 1a.  I didn't go back to sleep again.

When my alarm went off at 5:30a I got up and climbed in the shower.  I closed my eyes...and opened them again when the water turned cold.  I had passed out in the shower.  What was truly frightening is no one heard me fall.  I am not a small woman, and the sound of the impact should have woken someone up.  There are three other adults in this house.  No one heard a thing.  Had the cold water not woken me up, I would have lain there until the five year old got up and needed to use the bathroom.  Perhaps not even then.  That was truly frightening.

I crawled out of the shower, called my manager and told her I'd be in late, and curled up until the waves of vertigo ended.  I got into work around 11:30a, which was perfectly all right with my manager since I was supposed to work until 8p.  When I tried to sign into my computer, I was locked out of the two main databases we use.  Which means I couldn't access any of my programs.  None of them, except the base Windows log in and my email.  I had to request resets on both of the passwords.  One of the database passwords reset within 5 minutes.  The second?  By 4p when everyone else was leaving, I still didn't have my second password reset.  My manager just sent me home at that point.

I was very grateful to be sent home, to be honest.  My shoulder and head hurt from the fall, I was still dealing with the attack of vertigo caused by my fall.  I came home, laid down and dozed for an hour.  I feel a lot better tonight but I'm still exhausted.  At least I now have another experience to subject my characters to - passing out and waking up when their shower runs cold.

Life can lead to some painful experiences.  But no matter what they are, as long as you take something from them and add it to one of your stories it's not a complete loss.

(But I highly recommend avoiding passing out in the shower.  I could've gone my whole life without that one.)

Life update and a random bit from one of my WIPs for your amusement

Hi all!

As you all know, I should be at work and doing 14 hour days.  Instead I'm at home taking care of a sick Himself.  He's getting better but he's still not up to moving around much.  So I'm hanging out at home (hooray to my awesome boss who got me 4 days off through my remaining vacation days so I get the time off AND get paid), cooking and cleaning and generally just hanging out while he sleeps.  The medication is good for knocking his butt out so I don't have to listen to the whining that he doesn't feel good.

To be fair, Himself rarely ever gets sick.  When he does, oh damn does this man get sick.  It used to be we'd have about a week a year where he was sick but still functional.  As we both get older, it's getting worse.  This is the first time he's been seriously this sick during the summer AND to this degree.  Usually he saves his worst sickness for December, like I do for mine in January.  This past year has been one of multiple medical emergencies.

However, he's getting better and I'll be back to work on Saturday.  I'm grateful to my dad who has helped us out this week with the medications since I have no money until Friday.

So...I've been having a lot of writing time.  And one of my projects has really taken off.  It's not one that's listed on the blog post that lists my projects.  If I keep adding to it, that thing is going to be monstrous.  But I do have a fun new character I'm loving.

This is just a sample of what's going on in the story.  You want more details?  Ask!  I'll be glad to share a few more hints about this project.

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Rachel smirked as Nick stared at her.  The tight pants, corset top, and high heeled boots made her look very different from anyone's idea of a psychiatrist.  "So, are you my new therapist?" Nick asked.

"Actually, I'm a bartender," Rachel said, grinning as she sat down.

Nick smirked.  "A bartender?"

Rachel waved one hand dismissively.  "Budget cuts.  Do you know how expensive an actual psychoanalyst is?  Since I get paid shit to listen to people's problems anyway, they decided to bring me in instead to see if I could get you to spill your guts."

Nick snorted.  "So do I get the attendant alcohol with this analysis?"

Rachel shrugged.  "Sorry, government facility.  No alcohol allowed."

"So what makes you think I'm going to talk to you?" Nick asked, leaning back as best he could in the chair he was shackled to.

Rachel leaned forward.  "Well, you can talk to me or you can go back to solitary confinement with only your shadow for a conversation companion.  Which would you prefer?"

Nick tilted his head to one side.  "So, do you want to hear about my horrible childhood?  Or how I have daddy issues?"

Rachel sat up.  "Let's start with the childhood.  I'm a sucker for hard luck cases."