Home 2016 (Page 3)

Year: 2016

I Think I Need A Planner – Or Something

Wanna hear something scary? I went through my entire day, oblivious to the fact that it was my turn to post a blog here. Normally, I’m plan it in advance, and I get it written early in the evening. Nope. It’s after 10:30pm, and I am now just sitting down to write this. I spaced on a recent TDP meeting. Just…forgot. The other scary thing is that I have a planner. It’s called Commit30, and I thought it would be fun to try. But please note that the last time someone asked me to use a planner (teacher in high school), I did all my planning in my head and then wrote it all up the day it was due. Because I usually plan in my head, and for years, it has worked. I was younger then, and I had a better memory. Now? It seems that I need something more. The planner is cool, but I still have trouble finding the time to write stuff. I still plan in my head mostly. And, oddly enough, I write it in, but I rarely ever look at it after that. Epic fail. I’ve also experimented with using the app Trello. It’s cool because I can do a version of Holly Lisle’s planning: one list for To Do, one list for Doing, and one list for Done. And then I move stuff along as I go. I’ve been using it with great success for camping to do lists, and recently when I was so overwhelmed with…

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So, How About That Plan From Last Month?

Last month I regaled you lot with my sewing plans. (And I realized I never linked you to my sewing Pinterest board, which is here, and which you can see is still getting healthy usage.) And I said I’d check back this month and let you know if I’d actually gotten on the actual sewing part of this madness. The answer is no! But it’s more complicated than me just being lazy (or actually working on writing things, like I was supposed to, though I did do that). I picked out two patterns to do. I cut out the pieces (which was harder than necessary because said patterns are in books and you cannot cut up library books). And then I hit the problem. The average American woman is 5’4″. I believe they make patterns for people who are 5’7″. I am 6’1”. So I cut out my patterns and then remembered that I can’t just use a pattern, I have to modify a pattern. I have to lengthen it in the right spots (such as, say, arm holes) and move darts and all sorts of wizardry. Actually, in the past, it’s been easier to take men’s patterns and make the shoulders narrower than mess with women’s patterns, but it’s been five years and I forgot. (The last clothing I sewed, five years ago, was a brocade vest and spats for a steampunk costume. I made the vest without a pattern, and luckily spats are not picky on sizing.) So,…

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Mountain Memories

Two weeks ago, I blogged about my magical fantasy dream castle retreat, where I wished I was instead of plowing through a difficult month at work. Last week, I got to spend some time in a place that happened to resemble it more than a little. I spent the week in the Canadian Rockies, reconnecting with my siblings while hiking. (But not camping. Beds, showers, and easy meals are too much of a draw when you’ve spent the day walking.) I didn’t grow up there, but I did spend at least a week in the Rockies every summer, and they’re still one of my favourite places on the planet. Here, then, are just some of the things I want to remember, like talismans against the sometimes-grind of daily life… The way my siblings and I can still communicate with a look or half a sentence, or all acquire identical facial expressions at the same time, even though we are very different people and haven’t lived in the same house or even the same city for years now. The Technicolor wildflowers all over the mountainsides. Kananaskis Country, where we were, is famous for them. Some of the meadows are sloped 30 degrees or more, making for a very unpleasant climb, but the flowers don’t mind at all. They’re busy making the most of the short mountain summer. So are the butterflies. I’m no lepidopterist, but we kept seeing orange ones with wings that looked like lace, and I even spotted a…

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A Constant Companion (Fractured World Short)

A Constant Companion by Kit Campbell “…as long as you’re living under my roof,” Jael was saying, but Briony tuned him out, choosing instead to glare at the table. Her hands sat on its uneven surface, curled so tightly in on themselves that she could feel her nails digging into her palms. Behind her, she could hear the laughs of her brother’s small children as his wife told them a story. Their youngest, Brin, would be a year soon, and had taken to copying everything her older brother and sister did, much to the amusement of all involved. Jael should be in there parenting them. He didn’t need to be parenting her. He wasn’t her father. Just because Mother— Briony shook her head to clear it of the thought. “Are you listening to me, Bree?” “It’s not really your roof, is it?” Briony leaned back, crossing her arms over her chest and staring sullenly at the fireplace. It was a silly argument—she didn’t fault Jael and his family for moving back in, not after… and it was nice to not have to sleep in an empty house. But that didn’t mean he had to act like he owned the place. It was as much hers as his. Jael groaned and pressed his fingers to his temples. He’d started growing a beard, probably trying to look older. “Bree, for the love of the Old Ones, we’ve been over this. Mother asked me to look after you until you’re grown.” Briony felt…

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Walls Never Work

So a certain figure currently in the news keeps talking about building a wall. (Don’t worry, it’s just an oblique mention.) Whenever I hear about it, I make the comment “Walls never work. Haven’t these people seen Pacific Rim?” I mean, look. Tonight I was reminded of this, as the “play pen” cage I’d purchased for kitten-containment was breached in less than half an hour. First they climbed it. I fortified it, making climbing impossible. So they jumped it. Two foot high pen, two month old kittens, and both were on top of it before I could even get it properly assembled! We’re fostering two kittens for the Humane Society. They get the kittens socialized and growing up in a home, not a shelter. We get two energetic and adorable furballs that we don’t have to pay to support get to give back when they grow up a bit more. This is Sunset. The mighty hunter. Her royal highness. “Your nightstand? I think you mean the royal bed.” This is Stormy. AKA Flo-Jo and/or Usain Bolt, because this kitten is fast. AKA Piranha, because if the food offered is not to her liking, she is quite willing to explore living food sources. After all, I don’t really need ten toes and ten fingers, do I? Due to a lack of other options (I’m the only one with a vaguely clean bedroom, and the kittens have to be contained and kept away from our dog and cat), these babies are rooming…

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The Magical Fantasy Dream Castle Retreat

Guys, I’ll be honest with you. Right now I’m struggling. I’ve had a bad cold/cough on top of impossible work deadlines all month, and that came after a hectic June and…to be honest, this has been going on for a while. Luckily, I only have to get through this week and then it’s on to Internet-detox-and-nature-with-family time. But that’ll be over soon enough. I need a better solution. So I give you… THE MAGICAL FANTASY DREAM CASTLE RETREAT (There’s no picture here. You’ll see why in a moment.) One day, when I’m as rich as J.K. Rowling (hey, a writer can dream), I’ll build this castle. It’ll be in the mountains and on a fjord at the same time, with a deep dark forest behind and a quiet cove in front. There will be horses and a sailboat and a canoe and a hammock and a hedge maze. The mountains will have caves and high passes and valleys beyond. The forest will have trails (but not too many) and brooks and glades. There will be mighty trees, and a treehouse worthy of an elf or an Ewok, and a magical white deer (or maybe it’s a unicorn) that can only be glimpsed on a full-moon night. Inside, there will be the library from Beauty and the Beast. There will be a grand staircase and stained-glass windows. The bedroom will have a four-poster bed with a canopy, and a window seat, and a balcony. The bathroom will have a hot tub.…

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A Creative Interlude

Good morning! Do you ever have those times when you really should be working on something, but something else comes along that sounds like way more fun? Or, like, it doesn’t matter if anything ever actually does get done, because planning is fun? And shopping for supplies, and picturing doing it, and… …anyway, this is me right now. And what I’d like to be doing, at least theoretically, is sewing. Not sure what exactly has brought this on. It’s probably a combination of having too many writing projects going, the fact that I hate half my wardrobe, and the fact that I used to sew all the time, but haven’t touched my machine in four…maybe five…years. So first I went into the planning stage. My planning stage mostly involved reading tons of blogs about upcycling clothing and starting a Pinterest board. I’ve also checked out some sewing pattern books from the library. Somewhere in the Pinterest stage I went from upcycling clothes to just making clothes from scratch. That might be because I actually did a couple of upcycling projects. The kids and me made slouch hats and arm warmers from old sweaters and hot glue, and I also took an overly large t-shirt I got from giving blood and turned it into a workout tank top. Upcycling urge conquered, I guess. So now we’re on the sewing from scratch phase. At the end of last week, the small, somewhat mobile one and I hit our local Joann’s, where I…

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TV Shows and Endings

This is actually Siri’s scheduled slot, but since I will be out of town in two weeks, we decided to switch. So that meant coming up with a topic rather quickly (a few hours!). Since Castle was canceled, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about TV shows lately. TV shows that had either crap endings or died too soon in particular. It has gotten to the point where I am terrified to get invested in a TV show because it could end prematurely and end on a cliffhanger.  Or just end, period. There were a bunch of TV shows coming out this past fall that I would have loved to check out (Minority Report, Limitless, Quantico, for an example) but I worried that they’d get the ax and/or end on a damn cliffhanger. Those are absolutely the worst, because let’s face it, the chances for a revival are so slim. And it’s heartbreaking. (Of those three, I believe Quantico is the last one standing.) So, let’s get on with the list, shall we? In no particular order, they are: 1) Forever. Canceled after the first season. Had an interesting premise — a man who works as a medical examiner and is immortal. This drew me in because 1) it wasn’t the average police procedural show, and 2) why is Henry immortal  and can he find a way to finally die? Plus there was a glimmer of a potential romance with the woman he works with, Jo. I don’t know the final resolution because as soon…

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See the Positives

Two weeks ago, I spent $560 on my car. The intake manifold was leaking, among other issues, and I had to get through emissions to register her–so I had a  a deadline. I barely got her back, and the AC went out. In case you haven’t heard, it’s a really bad time to be without AC in my neck of the woods. That cost me $322—and they’re not confident they fixed the problem, as they’re not sure how they got it working. Last week Erin talked about what it’s like, living mostly without pain. Putting nearly a thousand dollars into my car over the course of a month has made me think about what it’s like, having a life without lack. People like to complain about their jobs, and their bills, and how their paychecks are gone before they even hit the bank account, and I think it’s important to get that frustration out. I also think it’s important to remember that jobs are good to have. Lots of people out there would love to have a job. Though most of us would love not to need a job, until that awesome circumstance comes about, it’s good to have a job. Bills are good to have. Bills mean (probably…?) you’ve received something you wanted. I whine a lot every summer about my electric bill. When summer hits and we start running the AC all the time, my electric bill quadruples. See above link to the weather. But you know what?…

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Trigeminal Neuralgia: One-Year Update

Well, actually, it’s 11 months, as my 1-year anniversary of my diagnosis is July 17th, but “One-Year Update” sounded better than “Eleven-Month Update.” So, for the most part, I’ve been doing really well. I had an interesting moment while reading an article on one of those list websites. The title caught my eye: The Top 10 Most Horrible Medical Conditions Known to Man or something like that. Guess what #10 was? TRIGEMINAL NEURALGIA. I’m like, “No kidding.” They don’t call it the “suicide disease” for nothing. I am not 100% pain-free, which is okay. Going from 100% excruciating pain while conscious to about 95% pain free while conscious is a BIG, huge improvement. Times I still have pain: when it’s going to rain (this is eerie — I can predict when storms are coming before the weather people), if any kind of wind or breeze touches my face (so fans are bad), when the water hits my face in the shower, and about an hour to an hour and a half before the next dose of my pill. Times I’ve used a loopy pill in the past month: zero. Six months? Maybe once or twice. Compare that to almost every day. Things I enjoy now that I’m not in so much pain anymore: photography. Writing. Sunlight (used to be a trigger). Camping (although the campfires can trigger pain still). Stress is just stress now, not stress+pain. That’s a good thing. The medication does wonders. It is really a life changer. I’ve had…

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