mistressofmuses

I am alive!

I just haven't felt like I have much to say.

Work hasn't left me in tears, but it is just a constant demoralizing drag. (I know, "so it's like... work?") Practicing just not giving a shit, which probably is really the best thing to do.

Writing still hasn't been happening. I just don't have any drive or interest in working on anything. It's frustrating, but I'm not making it past the "stare at the document and feel worse about it the longer I do that" stage. I do at least still get brief bouts of *wanting* to work on something, which is better than nothing! It just hasn't translated to being able to do anything about it.

I've let myself doomscroll a little more than I usually do, and I need to cut back on that again. I want to figure out bluesky as a site (as tumblr goes through another biannual "is this when the site finally dies?" round), and I also want to be at least somewhat informed about all the ways the US is deeply fucked... but in combination, it's not been great for mental health stuff. And then I feel bad that it makes me feel as shitty as it does, because I know so many people who are being impacted in vastly worse ways.

Is it the seemingly inescapable creep of fascism? Is it my job getting more and more demoralizing and frustrating? Is it the untreated depression? WHO KNOWS.

Today was at least less of a miserable slog. Still overly busy with too much to do, and no ability to anything extra, but I did get caught up with the things that I had to punt from yesterday.

Still no news of the instructor who didn't come in this week. It feels just really unlike him, so I'm more worried as time goes by, but also don't know how I'd find out anything.

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I think my original plan today was to figure out my TBR list for this year, because... well, rather than shrinking, it's definitely grown! But I don't think I have quite the brain power for that tonight. Though maybe I can at least start to read something.

I also need to sit down and look at my writing plan again. December was sort of a wash on that front, but we were busy enough with other things that it doesn't bother me too much.

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For the first time in a while it actually feels like winter, and was snowing as I left work. (Though about a mile or so away from my office, there was a very stark line between where it had snowed and where it had not.)

We have a lot of fog, which is a nicely spooky atmospheric setting... ~just like Silent Hill~ I promise to not say every single time but unfortunately it is very cold and it sucks.

They STILL have not fixed our heat. I don't think Alex followed up with them when he was supposed to. Understandable when he was sick. My mom loaned us a space heater, so now I'm afraid he just feels like it isn't urgent because the space heater is nicely efficient. I can call them, but it'll have to wait until Monday. The space heater, plus the fact that we're on an upper floor and heat rises, has kept it from getting too cold, but dammit, they still need to get it fixed!

Mostly I just feel really behind. The whole *gestures* everything with the election makes it hard to want to do or say much of anything, but I'm trying to get back to doing... something. Catching up here. Writing something.

My break from work was sort of a nothing span of time. We did almost nothing in terms of "going out to do things" and I did almost nothing in terms of "productive personal projects that would have been worthwhile uses of the time."

I spent a couple nights hanging out with Taylor, Sunday (Oct 27th) through Tuesday (Oct 29th). That was fun.

Unfortunately, that Sunday night, Cy started really having a hard time walking. Just about as bad as the first time we'd taken him to the emergency vet. I wasn't home, but Alex was extremely worried. He did start to slowly improve after that, though! Alex was concerned that maybe he'd had a stroke, because his balance was so bad, and he only wanted to turn to the left. I'm more inclined to think it was still just pain, and that moving right was more painful. He wasn't *incapable* of turning the other direction; just reluctant to. He's been continuing to get better, and was back to wanting to run and play by the end of the week, but it was a bad couple of days.

That same Sunday night into Monday, the first katydid, Greenbean, died. :( I knew that late-October - mid-November was about the longest I could expect to have them, but it was still sad to have him go. It's about a month longer than he likely would have lived in the wild, and he overcame that terrible probable-poisoning, and seemed to have a happy month with us, judging by his enthusiastic clicking and eating of green beans.

I miss the clicking. :(

That Tuesday (the 29th), we did our one "go out and do things," which was going to a haunted house. It was fun, though I feel like Alex always goes through them faster than I want to! But there were a lot of cool sets and fun costume pieces. There were two houses: one was nautical-themed and one was more traditional haunted house. Both were neat, but the second one felt a bit more engaging, like it was just better established, maybe. It was a good time, and I'm glad we went.

Halloween itself was kind of a bummer, just in terms of how little we did, but it wasn't *bad.*

Friday (Nov 1st) we did a big grocery trip, but Alex started feeling sick partway through, so I wound up doing most of it solo.

Saturday (Nov 2nd) was a model show. We'd spent much of the week leading up to it doing prep for that, as this one was focused on collectibility (so emphasis on things like age/rarity/condition) rather than the shows we usually go to, where the focus is more on realism. The show... did not go terribly well for us, haha. Not a lot of winners, though the show itself was good. Two of the few winning horses we had were my two from the last couple years of "NaMoPaiMo" - my wisteria stained-glass styled horse (who got second in her class) and my art-deco peacock horse (who got first in his!) I was quite happy about that.
My mom kindly watched the dogs, even though it meant barricading part of her house off so that the cat wouldn't have to see the dogs at all.

Sadly also on Saturday, the second katydid, Moodring, passed away. We suspected it was coming, as she was suddenly eating far less, and then on Friday night she didn't want to move when I got into her cage to swap out her food. :(

RIP, my katydids. I'm glad we had you for a little while, and I hope it was a decent life of green beans and no predators. I miss the clicking.

We are left with somewhere around 30 or more katydid eggs, as Moodring just kept laying them. I don't know how many of them are viable (if any), as the two weren't housed together for very long. There are a few obvious "duds" - ones that are small and dark, obviously different than the bigger, smoother tan ones... but whether they're *actually* fertilized or not, I don't know. We'll keep an eye on them and figure out what to do if we DO wind up with a bunch of katydid nymphs.

Time change has not been terribly kind to me. I am definitely feeling the impact from having it get dark so early.

The election happened on Tuesday and was a bit of a dismal, miserable shock. I still don't have anything better or more meaningful to say about it. I am still afraid of what will be coming.

The return to work was mostly fine, except that now it's dark by the time I leave, which is tough. One of my work friends (our lead instructor) had to go on surprise leave to take care of his father.

We had a major winter storm come through starting on Thursday. It snarled local roads a lot less significantly than expected (Friday night and Saturday morning were supposed to be basically impossible to navigate, but thankfully we did not actually have any trouble.) The storm total by the airport came in at 20", so it was a pretty significant storm! I was super concerned about the potential for broken branches; with the unseasonably warm weather we've had, lots of trees are still leafed out, and I was afraid the snow would break many of them. Also surprisingly less of a problem than I'd expected!

We had a weird power outage on Friday night. Our bathroom light, bedroom light/fan, microwave, and dishwasher stayed on. Everything else, from outlets to stove to other lights, all went out. We messed with the breakers for a good five or ten minutes before we realized that the lights in the apartment hallways were on their emergency power, so it wasn't just us. The parking lot lights were also out. The street lamps were on, but the traffic signals were out. I've never had something like that happen - as far as I knew, all our power to the building came from the same source, and in the past a power outage has knocked everything out, not left a handful of lights and appliances somehow working.

I haven't wanted to write anything much since the election news, though that'll be its own post, probably.

About the only good thing has been reading. I finished Acceptance and have started Absolution.

This "weekend" I decided to get my covid and flu vax out of the way, while we're still allowed to. The pharmacist who did them for me was great - whichever he did first I almost didn't feel at all, and the second only stung a bit. They haven't knocked me down quite as badly as all the previous covid shots have, but I've still felt under the weather yesterday and today. I'm hopeful I feel a bit better tomorrow when I'm back at work, but shouldn't be so sick I can't tough it out.

Unless of course, I'm just also getting sick. I've felt crappy for much of the week, with intermittent sore throat, but mostly just tiredness. That's worse today, but I'm hoping its just my usual side-effects. I've been falling asleep by 8:00 on some nights, but am still exhausted when I get up the next day. Is it getting sick, or just the depression? I can't quite tell.

Love that. Love that "some threat of 100mph winds" part especially.

It IS extremely windy. I am not extremely comforted as we watch the windows shake. The power has gone out a handful of times, though always come right back on. (As has the internet, this time!) So fingers crossed it stays that way. Fingers double crossed that the windows don't do anything worse than rattle.

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Got my second ever migraine aura yesterday night, around 11:00 or so. Can't say I'm a fan! It doesn't hurt, but it is a bizarre feeling to just have a growing blind spot surrounded by bright zigzags drift across your vision. Fucking weird.

I'm choosing to blame a combination of the weather/extreme pressure change with this wind + work stress.

Our online course has been down for three days now, and it's apparently a platform issue, so our developers are limited in what they can do. I fielded 30-some calls about it today, and am feeling salty about how the manager who was doing them yesterday got passive-aggressive about needing assistance (which meant me. And as soon as I offered to help, she did no more.) I would have loved to call in some sort of assistance to help me today, but I'm literally the only one available, so.

Also annoyed because my manager is telling me it is expected that I attend a new phone system training on my day off. I'll get paid for the time, but I don't want to have to structure my day around being home to do it.
(My manager's manager said in the training invite that no, no one has to attend on a day off, because it'll be recorded, but my manager got snarly about it, and I know it'll be easier if I just do the damn thing. I did tell her I might be at the vet at the time for Cy's followup, and she got snarky about "well, it's an inconvenient time for me when I have to pick up my kids, but I still have to figure it out, so you just have to make it work.")

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ETA: as of about 10:00, the highest confirmed gust has been 96mph in one of the canyons. There's an unconfirmed gust of 114mph in a town a bit farther up into the mountains.

Too many wind!

Had a pretty busy string of days over the last week:

( Wednesday I had my dentist appointment )

( Thursday: snow + organizing project )

( Friday was the model show )

( Saturday: recovery day + swap meet )

( Sunday I came over to Taylor's to hang out )

( Monday was mostly more gaming )

Mostly good days (minus Friday being a letdown), but pretty busy. I feel like I have a bunch of stuff to catch up on, and we'll see how well I manage it as I head into my workweek. This is likely the longest string of days off I'll have for a very long while (six days!) but it feels like they were over in a flash, and like I'm very not ready to go back to work.

Well, that weather change happened fast!

The forecast had been for snow - and possibly quite a lot of it - yesterday, though the timing was a little vague. The morning started off with just rain, and it was easy to get to work and everything. Then late morning, somewhere between 11 and 11:30 it went to shit and it went to shit fast. The rain turned to snow, which iced up on the roads immediately, literally within five or ten minutes. We basically cancelled our entire afternoon, as the roads were not safe to be on. Lots of people got caught already out, and struggled to get home. And then it just kept getting worse. The official measurement nearest my office was 11 inches in about 10 hours, I think?

I wound up having to take a Lyft home, because Alex couldn't make it in the truck. I hate spending $50 just to leave work, but I got home safe. (Thanks, Perry!) I bailed an hour early at 4:00, which was the earliest I got permission to leave. Glad I did, because things didn't improve after that.

The snow tapered off overnight, and the main roads were all basically fine today, though the side streets were still a mess. Had a lot of instructors call out saying they were unable to get out of their respective neighborhoods.

It made for some picturesque trees this morning, before it started to melt off.



( Three more pics of trees + two of dogs )

Ugh.

On Saturday night, I got home from work, we ate dinner, and I almost immediately fell asleep - by probably about 8:30 or so. (And tbh, I don't know where the rest of the time up until then went to.) I woke up long enough to take the dogs out in the -5°F temperatures for the 10:30 jaunt, then came back in and went straight back to bed.

Otherwise I felt okay, I was just so fatigued I couldn't DO anything but sleep.

I was annoyed about it yesterday at work, because I do have stuff I want to be working on, but I literally did absolutely nothing after getting home. So, I set up a plan to get caught up here, to get some writing done, to catch up on some tracking, to maybe do some household stuff...

I still felt fine, though I was really tired, despite having slept a good 11 hours or so. It was miserably cold, and I caved and bought a cup of noodles from the corner store for lunch because eating something warm sounded good. It tasted just slightly off, but I figured it was just that it was, y'know, cup of noodles. Now I'm guessing it was an early sign that I was getting sick.

Came home, still pretty tired... and fell asleep before 7:30. Again, got up long enough to take the dogs out in the -10°F temperatures. I was awake for a little bit longer, but not enough to do much. Fell asleep around midnight.

Woke up by about 1:00 with a sore throat. Hoped it was just how cold and dry it's been, but drinking liquids made it feel worse. After that, I just woke up every twenty minutes or so because I'd swallow and it'd hurt enough to wake me.

Texted my manager and told her to have the other support staff wipe my desk down with lysol before she sat there today, ha. Fortunately today/tomorrow is my weekend.

The roads were pretty bad all day, so we didn't go anywhere (except, again, to take the dogs out in the now "feels like -25°F" windchill.) Maybe tomorrow the roads will be clear enough for a dayquil/nyquil run.

I don't have a fever, but I *feel* like I have a fever. My skin hurts, I'm achey, the inside of my ears feel sore and hot. The worst is definitely the sore throat. It's so swollen it's difficult to swallow, and it is extremely painful to do so. I slept most of the day, and Bella was mostly a pretty good cuddle buddy, lol. (Cy kept nearly shoving my legs off the bed, ha.)
I got the full "staying home sick from school" experience (despite it being my day off), as Alex put on Judge Judy's new show ("Judy Justice" or whatever) for mindless background. Judge Judy was *always* what was on in the middle of the day if I was home sick, haha.

Took an (admittedly expired) rapid test, and did not come up positive for Covid, but we've got flu and RSV and mystery crud going around, too.

Sooooo, everything else is on hold. Not gonna worry about writing or catching up here until I feel at least a little bit better. I hope everyone else is well. I'm glad this likely isn't Covid, but it's still no fun.

Nothing quite like a near-11 hour day at work. (Staff meeting after regular shift, it's fine.)

But I am just... cripplingly exhausted tonight. I genuinely felt like I could have fallen asleep in the aforementioned staff meeting. Coming home I felt too tired to change out of my work clothes. I am just... dead on my feet.

So far this month, I've managed to keep up on NaNoWriMo... though admittedly and deliberately cheating, as I'd already decided. But I have at least made a non-zero amount of progress toward getting caught up on the things I was behind on. I've gotten above the required wordcount every day so far... But I have a feeling that today will be the day I don't. I don't think I have 1667 words in me right now, even cheating heavily.

As is often the case, I'm worried that giving myself permission to slack on one day will lead to me just... kinda quitting, because that's often the way it works for me. (The "ah, the guy enforcing these rules [me] is such a pushover" effect.) But I'll try to get as many words as I can today, and hope that keeps me from feeling like I can just give it up.

I have met with some success on getting things caught up - I've got tracking finished up through the beginning of this month, and backlogged DW posts done up to the last couple days of last month - and I'm pretty close to getting the rest of it caught up. Unfortunately, I have not caught up at all on any fiction writing, fan- or original. I haven't touched the AUgust fics, which were really my main writing goal for the month. I also haven't touched my sort-of-declared NaNo project, though I'm okay with that... turns out it was very much not ready to even attempt to work with. I might still go back to some idea like it at some point, but it's definitely not happening any time soon.

It's been a bit vindicating to realize how much I really do write in an average day... it's just not on the fiction stuff that I'm ostensibly supposed to be focusing on, ha. Maybe once I'm actually caught up on the other stuff I can look at figuring out how to balance my time a bit better. It makes more sense how I wind up feeling like I run out of time every night at least.

I almost completely managed to forget that I gave myself a gift:

I requested Wednesday off, in order to give myself a three-day weekend for Halloween.

At the time, I'd hoped either I'd come up with some excellent Halloween plan that could sprawl intentionally into a third day, OR I'd hoped that I would forget about it and be pleasantly surprised. It has been the latter!

I definitely didn't get to enjoy October quite the way I'd hoped to. It went by extremely fast, and mainly in a blur of... just ordinary things. We really did have a lovely month weather-wise, and the colors were beautiful. Unfortunately, I'd kinda banked on spending this last weekend (my Monday/Tuesday) getting all my yay! Halloween! feelings/plans out, and the snow the last two days has definitely dampened that. (We wound up with maybe... six or seven inches of snow? Not as much as threatened, but not as little as hoped, and WAY too much for the first snow of the season.)

We're upsettingly lacking a plan for what to DO for Halloween over the next couple of days.

It won't be the haunted corn maze: their last night was tonight, and I wouldn't be surprised if they closed last night and tonight anyway. The corn maze is always fun, plus has the nostalgia factor of having been where Alex and I went for our first official date when he came out to visit me the first time. But it was also *better* back then, lol. It's gotten a lot more expensive and crowded and those more expensive tickets let you access a lot less than they used to.

We might go to a haunted house, though I'd hoped to do one earlier in the month so it'd be less crowded. One of the bigger ones is open through the end of the week, so maybe Wednesday to keep the spoops going, but avoiding the Halloween-day crowds?

I think tomorrow we'll maybe go to the Butterfly Pavilion again, since in October they have their "Spiders of the World" exhibits, and we've only got a couple days left to see them this year. It's also indoors, which will be nice, since it's supposed to still be really cold.

I also need to do my annual "Over the Garden Wall" watch. I'm dismayed that I've made it this far into the month and haven't done it yet.

Do we carve a pumpkin? We'll have to go BUY a pumpkin in order to do that, but maybe.

Do we make some sort of silly Halloween baked good? Do we go to a horror movie or two just like a normal Tuesday for us? There's a goth club concert, but that sounds a bit like the bad kind of exhausting, and it's at the club where drinks are $20+. We can car-bar/pre-game it, but still, I'm not even sure how much tickets are.

I will be very upset with myself if we do NOTHING for Halloween, because it IS my favorite fucking holiday, but the snow has pretty much killed my seasonal enjoyment... I'm hoping enthusiasm and inspiration somehow yet strike!

(Of course, it'd also probably be a good idea for me to spend my extra day DOING ALL THE THINGS I'm struggling to catch up on.)

Good intentions, put together a plan, got off of work early (in preparation for a late day tomorrow), and yet!

Finished one fic last night, but at *exactly* midnight, so definitely didn't want to sort out posting. My plan for tonight was to try and write another of the AUgust AUs - the Eldritch Horror AU - so I could post it for Friday the 13th. A good thought, but... not happening. (And I also didn't post the other finished fic.)

My brain pretty well dead-ended as soon as I tried to work on it, and I am 1000% distracted every time I try to do anything. Also one of my eyes hurts, which is a bit annoying, but distracting enough to be a problem when I'm already struggling to focus.

I'm a bit torn between "I'm already two full months behind on these writing goals, what's one more night?" and "JUST ONE MORE NIGHT IS WHY I'M TWO FULL MONTHS BEHIND" and "There is zero wiggle room to get this shit done by the end of THIS month" but... I've also been spinning my wheels staring at a mostly-blank word doc for two hours and it's not helping.

I think I need to check out for the rest of the night, because my brain isn't giving me much of a choice, ha.