I think I may be allergic to holidays, not my family

(Sorry in advance for typos)

Ok, so every year my mother teases me and claims that I am allergic to my family (which is the reason I am sick almost every holiday in her opinion)... I claim that I am just allergic to holidays in general.

This year, Beau and I got to/were stuck at home for Christmas due to the lovely winter weather that has hit our area en force. I thought it was a very calm and good holiday, and it was fantastic to just spend it at home. Beau missed his family though and I am sad that he didn't get to see his family on Christmas (we will go see them this weekend though -- weather permitting). There was tasty prime rib (thank you honey for cooking!), snuggles, nap time and hilarity watching kitties that were doped up on catnip!

And despite all that, I still felt like crap. =^>.<^= I had a horrendous headache all day and had a bloody nose a couple of times. (At least I didn't complain about it that I can remember =/). Beau took a good sized nap on the couch and I passed out for a couple of hours in his chair while he was playing the game I got him.

Let's see, Beau got me these spiffy, fingerless/convertible gloves/mittens that I am wearing right now (since the office is freezing), he also got me a Bejewelled game which I like but was a little confusing at first. lol It's a little strange to have to think in circular patterns with a puzzle game but I like it. He also got me the new wrist support/rest for my mouse that I wanted (those things are so damn fun to poke and play with!), and he picked up a WoW book which looks like it will be entertaining to read.

Rather than writing yesterday, I took the day off and played WoW with my friends. That was rather good for my head I think. I had been stressing about what I wanted to happen next and if I wanted to just leave one story line where it was and pick up another until I got over my writers block. My brain came up with something though while I was busy smite spamming some poor "Loot Crazed" hunter in the Borean Tundra... in Northrend on the planet of Azeroth D: (I am way too ... I don't know what but I shouldn't remember what I was killing let alone the specific area I was in. =^-_-^= )

Anyway, I had a writers block break through and that made me relax a bit. Now... if only this cruel headache would go away. Although I would be ecstatic if I could go home early, wrap presents for my parents, get packed up and ready for the trek to Portland tomorrow (if we are even going). I'ld say that we should leave tonight, but I don't think we would be able to get over even on 30 due to ice on the roads. It was bad enough for me trying to get to work this morning with a good yard of ice between my parked car and the driveable section of the street. =^>.<^= Beau came out in pj's though and got my car out so I could go to work (I'm glad that I got to go in though, I would have felt bad for Steve if he had to be in the office all by himself today. Kent apparently broke his wrist when he slipped on some ice and is driving all the way to Vancouver today to see an orthopedic surgeon -- since apparently the one that Astoria/Seaside hired quit after a month and went back to Arizona. LJ is out sick and Kim has the day off so she can spend a belated Chirstmas with her family. Deb came in though... and Deb is simply awesome even though she is on the phone all day long with her clients lol. <3>

So this weekend, Beau and I are going to Portland to visit our families... and I just know that my father is going to throw a hissy fit. Why will he throw one? Well:

1. He wants us to come in tonight
2. He will be gone for part of the afternoon on both Saturday and Sunday
3. Beau's family's gift-exchange party is Saturday night which means....
4. I will see dad for maybe an hour on Sunday which means

.... a tantrum. Personally, I don't think I want to go in at all this weekend since Beau wants us to caravan in so he can stay in Portland and I can drive back. With the roads still icy and my not being able to see at night, I am less than thrilled. I may need to talk with Beau and work something else out because seriously... I really want a drama-free fucking holiday and that isn't going to be the case if I go in this weekend.

It isn't that I don't love my family, I just don't love the drama production that goes on. Ever since I was little -- my family is insane by the way -- Christmas/Solstice/New Years/Thanks Giving/Easter/Halloween/etc has been nothing but stress for various reasons (like procrastiantion, drama, everything has to be perfect, the lack of feeling like just being present and spending time with my family is enough for them..., etc). Now why is my family insane? Because my father is a Catholic-Buddhist (yeah, that's right... Catholic + Buddhism = dad) while my mother is Wicca-Taoist (and people wonder why I'm crazy).

I think my family celebrates almost every holdiay known to man aside from the Jewish holidays (which sometimes sound like a lot better holidays than others)! Anyway, it's just a huge production every year and it makes me think that my father is the holiday-nazi. He tries really hard to provide a happy holiday for everyone... he just goes overboard on a regular basis and makes everything stressful instead. I suppose that really isn't that bad, he could be all super christian and be completely intolerant of all other people and religions which would be much worse. =^>.>^=; I'll just stop griping now and look forward to seeing my family lol.

Maybe I really am allergic to my families -- just more so on the holidays than usual. Actually... make that I am allergic to drama from my family and it's worse around the holidays.

I really didn't mean for this to end on a note like this, but oh well... I'm just rambling now to fill the empty time at work while I am by myself lol.

Writers block ramble #1

It's been another difficult night of writing. At least I did get a little bit of writing done. When I finally got to sit down at my machine I really wanted to talk to Sarah and Emily but neither were anywhere to be found. =^>.<^=

...So I sat and stared at an empty page for almost an hour. Eventually I pushed out three paragraphs and then what I had fizzled out on me which is doubly more frustrating since my head was buzzing all day and dying to get home so I could write.

On a side note, a few of songs for my writing playlist. They are not in any particular order right now but eventually I will put them in an order as the playlist develops into separate play lists for each individual story or character

1.Sing for Absolution - Muse (Gabriel)
2.Dark Blue - Jacks Mannequin (Judas)
3.Here With Me - Dido (Liana)
4.The Truth About Heaven - Armor for Sleep (Liana)
5.Rest in Pieces - Saliva (Judas)
6.Point of Extinction - Motion City Soundtrack (Joseph )
7.Chase This Light - Jimmy Eat World (August)
8.Will I - Rent (Helen)
9.Imaginary - Evanescence (Helen)
10. I Dreamed a Dream - Le Miserable (Helen's mother)

Now before Sarah can glower at me, I just have not run across a song that fits Sitara at this point in time. Strange -- I know -- since the first perspective is hers. Like I said though, some of these will be moved to other "perspective" playlists as the list develops more.

Actually, half the songs in the current playlist don't even belong in this story line. lol

OK, now I am just sleepily rambling. =^-_-^=

Thank you, Honey!

Just wanted to say a quick thank you to my other -- very tolerant -- half for pointing out how to make a PDF file. =^>.>^=

Thank you! <3

Aside from that, writing is still going all right. The night before last night, I had the hardest time writing. I sat there and went through editing and polishing what I had written the night before that. Last night though, I actually managed to drag out a few pages and got myself back on track.

My current -- mighty two -- pre-readers (one of which knows the background of what is going on and the other doesn't) have become fangirls after only 3.5 chapters. One of them really loves the character that the current perspective is being written from, the other one is a Helen fangirl like me and is harassing me to write a perspective of Helen.

That's a tall order since she IS supposed to be a supporting character (highlight below for quasi spoiler).
You see, Helen has a much shorter life span compared to most of the other characters in the story, AND there is a relatively lengthy amount of time before she comes back in to the story. Sure, I could write a short story on why she is the way she is, and maybe I will. I don't know yet if I want to include the entirity of Helen's story inside Sitara's story.
Anyway... /end spoiler ramble

The other thing that amused me last night was the conversation that came up about how my readers think that the current main character looks. I suppose that I shouldn't be surprised since everyone has they own concepts of beauty, but their opinions were different then what I envisioned in my own mind. OF COURSE they asked me what she looked like in my mind (with an actress comparison) since I have said character designed down to the B-W-H measurements in my mind. I am hesitant to give my opinion since I rather like hearing the different visual thoughts that they have. :3

Helen Fangirl

Yes, I know that makes almost no sense to anyone that might possibly read this, but oh well!

Helen is a character in the book I am writing and will possibly be one of the most over-looked characters. At best, people will recognize her as only a supporting character which does bring me a twinge of sadness, but she is so much more to me!

Oh Helen, scary Helen, perhaps I shall write a short story for you someday that will bring you to contentment!

Edit: I also officially have my first car in the book~

Winter Storm Ramble

Last night was a good night for me writing wise. I got to ramble and bounce ideas off of "Nee-chan" (who is actually one of my best friends and surrogate little sister. lol It's a lame but sweet story for why everyone calls her that so it's probably better off not told xD).

Which also reminds me and makes me sad, she's getting married on New Years Day and I can't be there. =^;_;^= Silly living on the other side of the country!

Anyway, so I got to ramble at her for a good 2-3 hours which really lightened my mood. It was nice to have feed back on all of the work and thought that I have so far put into the setting of what I am working on (as well as all of the character concepts I have -- even the partial ones). Later we had fun doing name searches and trying not to laugh at people with very unfortunate meaning names.

So far, three names that I will never name ANYTHING unless they are places or animals that too aptly fit the names:

1. Beverly : BEV-er-lee : anglo-saxon "beaver meadow"
2. Capri : KAH-pree or kuh-PREE : anglo-saxon "the goat"
3. Damaris : DAH-mar-is : greek "heifer"

Steve is still out sick today with some stomach bug, so Kim and I are trying to come up with a plan to keep him quarantined to his office when he returns. Kim is lucky and got to leave early today because it is her son's birthday and they are going to Portland despite the horrendous storm coming into town. I had to shoo her out the door after lunch though so that she could take off before it really hit and now I am all by my lonesome with a years worth of receipts to go through and this months tenant filing (I really wish that they wouldn't give me all of the filing all at once, it becomes an all day project when they do that =^>.<^= ).

Oh well, at least I have something to do!

As things are right now, I am hoping that the power manages to stay on. It has been flickering on and off since 10:00am today. I don't know how the weather looks higher up on the hill, but so far down here on the river front, it has been almost non-stop pouring rain or sleet with very heavy wind. The wind is so strong that it actually blew one of our 50+lb potted plants into the street... I did not have fun going to chase that down. Well, that's not true. It was very entertaining for me to chase a plant that was rolling down the street. Returning it to the office was the far less than fun part! So, since that happened I had to move all of the plants inside the empty office next door. lol I probably should have asked to take a few minutes and move my car closer to the office too. =/ Oh well, a lot of sleet, rain and 70mph wind gusts never hurt anyone, right? *rolls eyes*

Honestly, what I worry about the most right now is that the storm is hitting now, it will knock out power to the area like last years storm did and then the snow will hit so people are going to be freezing... and our fire place doesn't work well due to a broken flue (is that even how it is spelled?) and something on the top of our chimney which is facing the wrong way and causes the wind to blow the smoke back DOWN the chimney into our house. lol

Ok, ok, I'll stop complaining. After all, Jes and Paul are coming down this weekend! So no matter what there is bound to be fun, even if we ARE freezing!

**UPDATE** Kim just called and said that she has to drive all the way to Longview to use the bridge there to get home due to waves crashing over the 101 bridge from OR to WA. :( Poor Kim, I hope she makes it home all right tonight.

Late night ramble~

I went through and finally did a "Christmas List" for my family over the past two days. Apparently, this year is my year for CD wants which I don't think I have ever claimed before since I have -- in the past -- always just bought whatever CD it was that I wanted.

Right now I am really enjoying a group by the name of Jake's Mannequin (sample here).

Story Progress:
Today I finished the general descriptions on my takes of the different races, abilities, lack of abilities, etc and I feel a lot more confident for a setting. I also have some character ideas but am severely lacking for names at the moment. For now, I am trying to come up with my own names for characters rather than use something generic, religious, historical, etc. It isn't that I think some names wouldn't fit so aptly, but some of these characters -- despite them not being a main character -- are so old that language didn't exist as we know it now. So far, this is proving to be a huge challenge. =^>.<^= But that's OK. No one ever claimed that naming something or someone that old was ever easy! =^n.~^=

I can't find what I want to read, so damnit, I'll write it!

So, I spent several hours going through a couple of different online book lists trying to find something that I WANTED to read... and out of about 500 books there was nothing that I could find that sounded appealing. Then all of a sudden I had the urge to write something very badly.... Very, very badly and it has been plaguing my brain ever since.

I hope that I actually have the stamina and patience to write this one this time, especially because this is something I would love to read. Of course there are a ton of other things I hope about it, but who knows? Maybe someone else would actually want to read it.

Right now though, it's all just so complicated inside my mind with so many different aspects! AND it's driving me doubly batty since I am at work with kind of something to do but not really and I COULD just sit here and type away.... So tempting!

Illness & the Power of the Senses (aka, I think I am going insane)

Illnesses can be an odd thing sometimes, so I apologize for this likely insane ramble.

It seems like I have been sick for a long time, but I guess it was one thing that weakened my immune system and then something lingering invaded as well. While I am finally starting to feel better bit by bit, I still tire easily and seem to be plagued and gifted with a few side effects.

Lately, my sense of smell has been returning and it feels like it's ten times stronger if not more depressingly picky. I cannot stand the smell of a lot of things that I used to like to eat, everything just smells like it is tainted unless it's a vegetable really. For the past few days I have taken to eating plain pasta with olive oil and parmesan, but even that smells rancid like it will kill me or something. It's very difficult to even put it in my mouth but I can keep it down. The only things that do not tend to offend my poor nose and result in me resisting the urge to cover my nose and mouth and run to the restroom are vegetables, some crackers, and some breads. This does actually help with my appetite though. For a long time I never realized how much I ate, and this has really pounded into me how much I used to eat and how much food my system actually needs to be healthy. If you have ever had to choke down something that your body thinks will kill you, you might understand how that feels! lol

Last night was a challenge: There was a fund raiser dinner last night (that one of my bosses helps organize every year) and I was a volunteer there. Initially -- from long before I became ill -- I was supposed to be the "lead" server and walk around singing/leading carols. My lungs choose to not cooperate with this job and neither did my stamina so I was assigned to "back of house" where I was supposed to just fill pitchers with ice & water as well as take care of making coffee. Well, that didn't exactly happen either. Somehow I ended up being one of the cooks/food preps (meaning I was the one placing food on the plate and making it look pretty). To say that I was uncomfortable all night is putting it mildly.

Due to my surprise position in the kitchen for the evening, I tried very hard to not breathe through my nose but that didn't help much. After a couple of minutes it was like I could smell and taste the scents of the food... with my mouth. It was very bizarre to say the least and I can only hope that I didn't look like I thought all the food was horrible while I artfully went around placing delicately curling piles of cucumber and carrots on plates, or zucchini spears precariously balanced on steak, crab and risotto. I don't really know how to explain it I suppose, but it was sort of like tasting a room just by breathing... and it tasted like death on a hot plate. =^-_-^= (At least the zucchini was tasty).

And at least I had the chance to escape the kitchen and cool off in the servers room every once in a while.

I can't say that my capability of hearing has changed much unless I am just insanely in tune or familiar with my surroundings. Hah, I rely on my selective hearing too much I suppose because I could swear that I am half deaf most days from all my time spent wearing headphones. My eyesight has become a little bit better since I have not been on my computer so much. I really hadn't noticed how stressed out my eyes were until I was in the car with Beau driving and I realized that once again while we zoomed around town I could pick out individual leaves and details on plants and buildings that have been just a blur for the past year or three. So it's nice to be able to see things like I used to again; however, I don't know if this really applies to night time. I wish it would, it's very limiting to be unable to drive in the dark safely. As things stand now, any light directed where I am in the car threatens a blinding headache, and my sense of depth and color are horrible at night.

My reaction to being touched lately has been weird too. It's like my skin is incredibly sensitive. While we're in bed, if Beau nudges my foot or pets me to help me fall asleep it's like a ticklish, sharp, static shock. The fabrics of the clothing I wear seems more... intense? Or at least more noticeable to me. What I hate though is when I meet someone new, there is the social obligation to shake hands. It's like I can feel every god damned detail in their hands: not just the calluses or scars, but the usually imperceptible ridges and lines in hands that make all of us humans unique. And it's even worse if they have dry hands, or "workers" hands. My skin practically crawls and the hair on the back of my neck and arms stands on end while I try not to grind my teeth. And everyone else's skin is so much warmer than mine which makes them ask me if I am "OK". I hate that.

I hate that so much, even if it isn't just because I run a few degrees colder than everyone else in the world (last doctors visit I was an awesome 92.7 degrees and I thought the doctor was going to freak out when I told her I am almost always cold like that at check ups and that if I am ever much warmer than that I can feel it in a bad way). Chances are I probably look like hell most days. LMAO There was someone that came in from the Redcross at the beginning of the week handing out fliers for a blood drive going on and she actually gasped when she looked at me and took a few steps back before edgily handing me the flier and saying that I looked like I needed blood more than I could give it. I could have sworn that she was going to cross herself when she said that too. And here I thought that I was the crazy one... even if the person crazier than me made me feel like some freak of nature or zombie.

I think my skin could just be in hyper sensitive mode since it's winter.

Anyway... aside from being sick and my different senses being strange, I have been reading a lot lately and sleeping probably nearly as much with the kitties trying to keep me warm. :3

It's actually a little bit sad and funny at the same time since both Misha and Sierpi love to be snuggled and pet, but they both seem to be terrified of Beau. Well, at least Misha mostly tolerates Beau (most of the time). He just wants to snuggle, pet and play with them and they usually flee in terror, look annoyed or hide next to me mistakenly thinking I will protect them. lol

Aside from that, Solstice / Christmas is quickly approaching and I have no idea what to get anyone for presents. Usually my mom has some books or magazines that she wants that I can get for her but she has a huge amount of in-store credit with Powell's and nothing really on her list that she wants for once. Beau hasn't given me even a hint of what he wants and neither has most of his family. Fortunately we have his sister covered and my father mostly covered. Aside from that we just need something for Paul, Jess and Josh. =^>.o^= Again, not even a hint of what they would like. It isn't like I don't see things they would like... but when I do see something I think they will like I tell myself to remember what it was so I can tell Beau later... only to entirely forget about it. *rolls eyes*

Anyway, this has been a tremendous ramble for my normally silent blog. Again, my apologies for letting my fretful insanity out.