Cleolinda everywhere

Wow, it's been a while.

So. I think I'm at the tail end of a mild hypomanic/manic episode that's lasted about two weeks. I think. Using my Make Hay While the Sun Shines policy, I sat down to put as much of Black Ribbon together as I could, and write more whenever I thought of something. There are a lot of symptoms that I eventually notice--don't want to eat, have a hard time falling asleep and staying asleep, unexplained itchiness (often a caffeinated sort of tingle), creativity/productivity, and--sometimes--the distinct giddy feeling that I'm in love, even when there's no one around to be in love with. Turns out? Hypergraphia can also be a symptom of mania. BEHOLD: Tuesday. ( Read more... )

So, a writing update.

( Read more... )

I've been really productive the last few days, but today I sat down with a ton of Black Ribbon notes and outlines--

( YOU CAN ONLY HOPE TO CONTAIN ME )

As such, there is no linkspam tonight, except one thing I am compelled to post anyway, because OMG JANE EYRE TRAILER. 

So yesterday I got absolutely zero work done because my dogs spent all morning barking hysterically at stove repair people. The two guys themselves were nice; they've been out to our house a total of three times to install a new range for us (and I'll have to take a picture of it; it's totally space-age awesome and... a bit difficult to cook on, but we're learning). And then, right as they were finishing up, the lead guy tells me (sounding very apologetic and embarrassed, by the way) that... they need to charge us an extra $85 just for coming out there. Which he doesn't think is fair (particularly since no one told us this ahead of time), but his boss is kind of riding him to collect it.

Dear Reader, I just started laughing at them. I mean honestly just laughing in their faces. And then I dialed a number on my cell and said (and I quote), "Here's the phone, talk to my mother. And GOOD LUCK."

By the time she was done calling around, she'd discovered from the Sears rep that there is no such thing as a "trip charge," and that the stove guys' boss (head of the installation company/department) must be scamming customers as a way of skimming off the top. SHENANIGANS!

Meanwhile, my meds--and I'll go into this for future reference for anyone who might be trying Lamictal: ( My God almighty, let me never experience that again )

So. First of all, I did manage to get some sleep last night, although I woke up a few times, and I was BOLT AWAKE at 7 am again. You take what you can get. I did spend most of yesterday feeling like I'd downed a quart of espresso, and loud/sudden/vehement noise (such as someone venting about the guys hired to fix the brickwork, Mom) was irrationally upsetting, but--I want you to know that this isn't really "mania" as severe as a lot of people have it, or what the popular conception of bipolar mania might be. It is very, very mild, and while it could get worse over the long run--I didn't used to have it at all, after all--talking about it here is part of how I keep an eye on that. It's unpleasant the way insomnia might be unpleasant, or--again, the "too much coffee" metaphor (I don't even drink coffee). It's unpleasant, but it's not life- or sanity-threatening. In fact, I did record a new HBP-themed Made of Fail podcast last night, and (probably by this weekend) you'll be able to hear that I sound completely calm and together and no wackier than usual. I think I laughed a bit loud a few times, but then, I've always had something of a parrot laugh.

Meanwhile--I've been wanting to say something about this, but I want to tread carefully because I understand that most of y'all really, really do not mean to upset me; it is really, truly meant in fun. But: since I started writing about Twilight for various reasons, I've started getting responses and emails and comments from people of a nature that I really didn't get when it was just Harry Potter or Lost or Phantom of the Opera or whatever. People have told me that I'm their soulmate and they want to stalk me and watch me sleep, so on and so forth, [*insert rocking chair joke here*]; I mean, people are being funny, they don't mean it--I understand that, I really do.

The problem is that I've gotten communications from some people who did. And I didn't want to mention it because, for your own safety, you don't want to draw attention to that kind of thing and validate anything dangerous in someone's mind--but really, I haven't gotten anything malicious or threatening, it isn't that. It's mostly people I feel a lot of sympathy for, some of them telling me in all sincerity that they're obsessed with Twilight, I am the only person in their life who understands them, I am the only person they can trust, I must be their soulmate, can they call me on the phone, they just want to hear my voice. I mean, verifiably more than one person asking me this, some of them a bit... insistently. In fact, I feel fairly certain that I got tricked into doing a "podcast"--with someone who had no show plan, no questions, no topics--vanished afterwards and never posted a finished product, never even contacted me again. Just so he could spend three hours talking to me? I don't know.

Here's the reason why I'm telling you this: six months ago, I might have thought "I want to sit in the corner of your room and watch you write" (this is a made-up example statement, no one said this) was funny. Now, it's just upsetting, because even if I can tell that you are clearly joking, it makes me think of the people who aren't. I get that when you say you want to sniff my hair you're totally joking via a satirical parallel to Edward and Bella or the way fans mistreat the actors, but--guys, I kind of have reason to believe there are people who might actually want to sniff my hair, and it freaks me out. (And y'all, my hair doesn't even smell that great.) So--I'm just telling you, I can totally see why Twilight stalking jokes would be funny, and there's no way for you to know that they upset me if I don't tell you. And it is genuinely no one person doing this, either end of it, because no one person would leave me permanently spooked like this. It's a small number of people wanting something from me that I can't give them and a larger number of very sweet, well-meaning people joking around. But taken as a whole, particularly since I journaled here for five years almost entirely without incident and then it all started up after the Twilight recaps--I don't even know. I mean, don't apologize for anything you've said, there's no need for that, because I knew y'all were kidding and you couldn't have known. I'm just telling you now so that you do.

Re: LiveJournal: Here's the press release about the layoffs.

Back at the ranch, as it were, I got so sucked into this afternoon's rerun of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit when Sister Girl was over doing laundry this afternoon--it was one of those L&O specialties where they started off with one crime and midway through switched to another that they discovered in the course of investigating the first one, which was great and fantastic and all except that I kept screaming "BUT WHAT ABOUT BRIANNA????"

... maybe you had to be there.

Meanwhile, yesterday, I ran around doing housework (you know it's bad when I try to procrastinate by cleaning) until I ended up throwing up all over the bathroom. (Which then, of course, had to be... cleaned.) I have no idea what that was about, except that I'd had a heavy breakfast (well, you know: greasy fast-food biscuit) on a nervous stomach. And then I felt feverish and had chills all day (and a good bit of today as well), so maybe I'm legitimately sick, who knows.

I made Sister Girl take the rest of the Mountain Dews with her, though, so that temptation is at least removed. Also, I think the withdrawal headaches have eased up.

I'm also trying to remind myself that I may be in a hypomanic phase (what with the running around cleaning), so if I suddenly crash and don't feel magically energetic anymore, that's not a moral failing. It just means that if I feel good now, I need to make hay while the sun shines.

Apropos of nothing much, one more thing about Prince Caspian: ( Read more... )

Oh, by the way, I got an email newsletter/casting call from Universal Pictures, and when I tried to copypaste the info to pass it along, it turned out to be a series of image files. Huh. Therefore, I will present it to you as it was presented to me (click to enlarge): ( ARE YOU THE NEXT MCLOVIN????? )

Of course, I saw the name "Edward" and ran screaming, but there you are. (Oh, and the MySpace and Facebook links were clickable; at least you don't have to type those in. The latter demands to know whether you are THE NEXT MCLOVIN' OR MICHAEL CERA?!, which should give you an idea of what they're looking for.)

Speaking of Edward, mistress_gwen has started the comm sparklpires for lolfans. Enjoy.

( Catchup linkspam! )

So my computer crashed in the middle of me footnoting "The Prestige in Fifteen Minutes" (and I had just spent like an hour discussing, uh, who I thought was in each scene--if you've seen the movie, you know what I mean) for the e-book project, which was a buzzkill. Meanwhile, my grandmother's sick (a sinus infection similar to mine, I think, only worse, since she's so frail), she's also worried about her money being with Merrill Lynch (yeah... I would too, right now), Shelby's having stomach problems, my stepfather is having a really, really hard time at work right now, my sister's having to do catering deliveries again and she inevitably ends up getting her car totaled by some nut loose on the street, we're going to have to have a plumber come out and look at the downstairs toilets, Tiny Tim needs a new crutch, and I'm just tired of it all, really. And feeling bad for everyone.

That said, I've already posted twice today and I was very productive (the computer crash aside), so I've got that going for me. Actually, I think I'm cycling back through a manic or hypomanic phase again. ( Who wants to make bets on what I'll be doing at the end of October? )

Oh, and apparently Let the Right One In is going to be playing at the Sidewalk Film Festival here in town on Saturday night (!!), although I don't know if I'll be able to go.

Speaking of which: Cloverfield's Matt Reeves Remaking 'Let the Right One In'; Countdown under way for 10th Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival in downtown Birmingham.

More linkspam! ( Hey, it's Alice! In Wonderland! Why is she on a ship? )

I'm curious--I'll get to what set off this train of thought later, but I know a number of people have talked about how they don't or didn't like Zoloft. For those of you who took it for a while and then went through the process of getting off it, what was that like? I'm thinking about transitioning off it entirely, and I'm curious about what kind of side effects that might involve. (Again, there's more to this that I'll get into later.)

Not feeling so good--haven't felt good since Wednesday or Thursday, actually, which makes me think it might be part of the hypomanic episode. But it's starting to wear on my nerves. ( I may end up printing this out and taking it to my doctor )

Oh, and on top of that? There's a mouse in my bedroom, and it's driving me crazy. I think I've inherited it from Sister Girl, although this is the second mouse we've had climb up through the house (we have, uh, proof that the first one is no longer with us). You know how I'll write entries for weeks whining about how I have to clean? Well, there are things I don't like to do, mostly because I feel like I could be doing something more productive, unless you hold a gun to my head. Or, in this case, a mouse. Not literally "to my head," but it's moved from the far end of the room to the wall near my bed. A weekend of this, and I've managed to get more cleaning done than I usually do in a month. It's my mousening and it freaks me out, let's just put it that way.

The worst part is that I haven't actually seen it in the flesh yet. I could hear it rattling around through piles of books and papers, and after I worked overtime yesterday to clear all of those up, it moved to my laundry basket on the near side of the room, where I could see... something moving around under a sweater. So now, of course, I have to wash everything within a five-foot radius of that basket, because it's FREAKING ME OUT. That's the thing: I love animals. I'm not grossed out by the sudden appearance of mice, whereas I totally lose my shit around cockroaches. But I am freaked out by the chewings and the droppings and the general unhygienicness, much the way I would if we had an uncaged pet rabbit bopping around. So, in order to get myself through the night, I decided that Reepicheep was swashbuckling around in the basket. "Back, foul tube socks of the night! I shall avenge my lady against thy putrid stench!" Instead of, you know, an ordinary field mouse BUILDING A NEST IN MY LAUNDRY OH MY GOD I WILL NEVER FEEL CLEAN AGAIN.

Anyway, there is needful cleaning that will now be done. And I'll be getting a humane trap--one of those catch-and-release things--and letting Reep out near the wooded Samford campus. Because I know that Reepicheep is valiant, but I don't like his odds against our cat.

( Linkspam )

Okay, I have a date with Prince Caspian tonight, so here's a backlog of linkspam accumulated while I lost my mind over the first two Twilight books: ( Only the good stuff )