mistressofmuses | (no subject)

Finally got that fic posted! How long it took to post it (three days after finishing it) feels even sillier than how long it took to get it written. Predictably, no progress on another fic... I just keep running out of time, even when I'm not TRYING to put it off.

Answered 35 voicemails today, and still had 15 unanswered when I left. One of the three people on the "team" gave her two weeks about a week and a half ago, so she hasn't done a single one since then. The third person on the team had answered... 2. I'll see if any of the other 15 were done or not. If not, I guess that's my problem tomorrow. (Though at least it's only my problem for two more days.)

Tomorrow is a class close, and Sunday is a class open. I hate when we have no turnaround between class series, especially with all the new shit we have to do for them. A class close day means that you have a minimum of about two hours where you can do NOTHING else. But for the class opens, there's now about an hour of prep work that you have to do on the day before the class, which means about three hours out of my day tomorrow is already spoken for, when Saturdays are also my day to do tech support, babysit the general inbox, plus the voicemails. I'm guessing tomorrow is going to be rough.

I still have one or two trackers to post here, but also didn't do a tracker at all for this week, so now I'm faced with having to do a complete week retrospectively, which I don't like trying to do. (But skipping it, and forever having NOTHING in my journal for the week would be worse, lol.)

This "weekend" (my off days on Monday and Tuesday) will be the last chance to get things ready for our road trip, so we HAVE to get some stuff done, ha. As much as I'm looking forward to that mini road trip, I've now hit the point where I'm more anxious about it than anything else. Our rent went up by $100, and the impending government shutdown means that Alex likely won't be getting any of his aid, which puts us in the negative by quite a bit more, which is NOT great timing. We should be okay, but... I'm still worried.

That road trip is supposed to start on Friday, so I've just got a week to go, and I am so desperately looking forward to it... except for the anxiety, heh.

Also, the neighbor thinks her apartment is haunted, apparently.

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Oof, that's a lot to deal with.

Charge your neighbor for a paranormal investigation? What could go wrong?

My neighbor is telling everyone (including us, including her church) that she knows this is because the man who lived in the apartment before her died in the bedroom, and how she's always known the bedroom was creepy, and how she refuses to go in there...
Except... Alex and I were the first people to move in on this floor when the apartments were finished. We knew very first residents of the apartment next door. It was a nice young couple with two chihuahuas, and they moved out because they found a house with a yard to rent. They were the only ones who lived there before current neighbor.
NO ONE DIED THERE.

I mean, we do have the world's dumbest ghost story about our apartment, but I am #skeptical of her claims. Maybe her apartment is hella haunted, but it ain't because the previous resident died there.

She is putting lines of consecrated dirt and salt outside her door though.

Yikes, that is worrying. She is having a situation and I hope it doesn't wind up effecting you too much. There is always the off chance that someone is screwy with the venting or wiring system and there is something causing her to freak out about the bathroom. 'Ghosts' turning out to be a problem with the building is always possible, but it doesn't sound like offering to go check it out would go well for you.

I'd ask why she's putting lines outside her door if the bathroom is the origin, but I doubt there is a good answer to that.

Yeah, same. It's the bedroom she's worried about and erroneously believes someone died in, not the bathroom, but it does make me wonder about things like wiring. Or the basics like... carbon monoxide or radon and whatnot.
She claims it includes things moving in the rest of the apartment, like things falling off walls, or falling over when no one is around them, and she says she sees a "black shape" moving around sometimes, which again... makes me worry about proper venting or wiring and such.
She also says her dog runs around and looks at things that she can't see, but considering he barks whenever he hears us open or close our microwave (and the walls aren't particularly thin!), I think he's more likely just reacting to things in other apartments.

Apparently the dirt and salt was what she was told to do by her priest (she is evidently very Catholic) and someone came and blessed the house, but all the spooky things started happening again a few days later. Allegedly he was going to come do another blessing or something a couple days ago, but hadn't come by yet.
Though lol, that was my exact thought - if you think the spooky haunting thing is *in* your apartment... why are you blocking the exterior threshold? Wouldn't that trap it inside..?

Yeah, could be environmental, could be an undiagnosed medical thing. My photosensitivity deffo does things to me that are out of a horror film.

Man, weird to find a priest these days who would actually provide that. Huh.

Right? She has some health issues, though mostly more physical ones as far as I know (knee problems and such.) But yeah, I've dealt with things like sleep paralysis, which is common horror movie-fodder, and I understand why! It's bizarre and creepy and scary when you don't know why it's happening, and I get how people experience it and come away thinking it's a demonic presence. So many health conditions have symptoms that can impact your senses, and even increase feelings of paranoia and the like.

Though yeah, I was a bit surprised to hear that, regarding the priest coming out. I thought that was not so much a thing these days. Though I'm also very much not Catholic, so perhaps I'm just not aware of what they do as a matter of course, ha.

Yeah, I've been downright startled by visual symptoms and how alike to they are to ghost stories and even horror film effects.

Right? I know that "an illness was the real horror all along!!1!" is a particular subgenre that people hate for a lot of perfectly good reasons, but there really ARE some ways in which it can feel like a horror story. (And not even in the metaphorical sense. Just straight-up feels like supernatural horror.)

Yeah, it's terrible for story-telling the vast majority of the time. That is the sort of reality people are trying to escape via spooky stories. I would be pissed if that was the twist unless it was a story told by someone who really, really knew what they were doing

I legit get startled by a black shadow everyone once in a while since my health crisis a few years ago. Right eye, always the same place.

Right? It can work as some sort of metaphor, but it's almost always a terrible twist. "she was just ~~~crazy~~~" is the fucking worst.

I have floaters in my eyes, and there's one specific one that looks like *something* in my upper right peripheral vision. It's small, so usually I just think it's a bird or something overhead (which disappoints me when there is not actually a bird), but it also still fakes me out even years into having it. So yeah, seeing shadows, even if it's in a "predictable" place? Still would be startling as fuck!

Either 'just crazy' or 'just old, darkness and decay comes for all of us'... nope. Like, an absolute master of horror and storytelling could make that work for me but in 99.9% of cases I am going to be all 'ef off with that BS'.

Yeeees, the "age is the real horror" is ALSO a trope I fucking hate.

I don't mind things that have some ambiguity about what "really" happened, or things where the horror is real, but is also working as a metaphor for a more mundane fear. However, I really just in general do not like anything that sets up the potential for something supernatural, only to do a "nuh-uh, it was utterly mundane all along!" at the last minute. (Same as the "it was all a dream" twist or whatnot.)

I'm sure it could be done well, but it would be difficult to pull off.

Congratulations on posting!!

Wishing you the best of luck with everything else :( I hope the road trip still manages to bring some joy.

Thank you! Haha, it shouldn't have been such a hurdle!

And thank you. I'm really hoping the trip is good - I'm very much looking forward to it, I just always worry about something going wrong, ha.

Hooray for fic posting! ^_^

And just ooof to all the balls in the air at work. :/

Finally, I at least got one done!

Though yeah, work has been juggling just way too much lately, and I feel like I'm going to drop something before too long, ugh.

yay for the fic! i hope you enjoy the road trip and everything turns out okay financially *hugs*

Thank you! *hugs* I am looking forward to the time away! <3