Cleolinda everywhere

So this happened:




\o/

Meanwhile, here are the songs that get stuck in your head when you are sick in bed and helpless to do anything about it. Like too sick to even get on Twitter and rid yourself of whichever song by inflicting it on others. Yeah. It was pretty bad.

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Usually it was about this point that I would ask for more Aleve and pass out again.

Meanwhile, I am still mulling over what to do about the Dracula recaps, because I am straight-up loath to give up on them. I had a project I just finished out of SHEER GODDAMNED CUSSEDNESS, and on the whole, I liked it enough that I'd kind of like ~Finishing Things~ to be how I roll from now on. At the same time, I have learned--both from my own experience and the very, very painful experience of other people I know--that sometimes you have to know when to fold 'em. And somewhere between the two, I have to remind myself that this is the internet, where you can do just about anything any way you want to do it, and there's no reason I can't try to get this done by taking a completely different approach. I just don't know what that approach is yet--

OH! Official notice: For reasons just discussed, I will not be liveblogging the Golden Globes on Sunday. I'm thinking about doing sort of a judicious live-tweeting combined with collecting the best tweets I see and putting them together on Storify. I've done liveblogs of award shows since--Jesus, I don't know, 2001 or 2002? I feel like I need to move on from a format that exhaustive at this point, given the massive widespread availability of videos, recaps, tweets, other liveblogs, etc. I don't know--the way I look at it is, if I try less labor-intensive formats, maybe I'll be around more often. So we'll see.

One of the more recent health issues I ever-so-vaguely mentioned is chronic back pain--I'm not sure if it's due to some stealth injury I don't remember or if it's related to PCOS--and it's just really hard to concentrate. For the last two or three weeks. (Not the best I've ever slept, either.) Basically I'm overdue on a deadline and I'm just going to have to put everything aside until I can get that finished. I can still take an hour to hang out on Twitter during the show tonight--I'm still keeping up with the show, for that matter--but I'm just going to have to remain cheerfully behind on the recaps for a while.

(Speaking of Twitter, I have been experimenting with Storify and Sleepy Hollow.)

I'm to a point where I go around saying "it is what it is" a lot. Like, if you're stuck in a traffic jam that you clearly can't do anything about, there's no point in rending your garments over it. You look at the time and the place that you're currently in and figure out what to do with that, the best way to move forward or the most productive way to pass the time, and that's the situation, and it is what it is. (I often say this to my mother during literal traffic jams, hence the example.) I've taken a good bit of Aleve and I'm rambling. (Man, you do not even want to know how much I took to drag my ass to Catching Fire last weekend.) My point is that I'm just trying to keep my priorities mellow, or something, and keep putting one foot in front of the other as best as I can. I am extremely, extremely lucky that my moods are pretty stable; my energy levels have taken a seasonal hit, but I don't feel "depressed," and I'm trying to hold on to that as long as I can.

@InterestingLit: Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, was born on this day in 1847. In early drafts of the novel, Dracula was named ‘Count Wampyr’.

@particle_p: Count Wampyr just made my morning.

@cleolinda: People in "Count Wampyr" really should know they're in "Count Wampyr."

So I'm just in time, it sounds like.

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(Continue: 1x03: "Goblin Merchant Men")

heart-of-steel asked: Hello Miss Cleo. So. Dracula. (The TV series that is.) Did you like it, or hate it, or kind of both? (I know a recap is forthcoming on your blog, I was just wondering.)

I’m just kind of staring at my computer trying to figure out what just happened. The more I think about it, the more o_O I get about it. I’m sunburnt from half an hour outdoors and I’m not drunk enough and I think I ate recalled cheese. Everything is terrible.

Stay with me here.




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Okay, I have nearly posted this entry like four different times, then held back for some reason, then needed to update it again, and it's finally turned into this mulch pile of an entry that I keep turning over every couple of days. IT NEEDS TO BE POSTED.

So. Doing somewhat better. Blood pressure is still a little high but nearly normal, after an initial week of self-imposed semi-bed-rest. (I gave up on trying to answer the comments on the previous entry, but thanks for your good thoughts, guys.) The day after that med check that I mentioned, when hypertension came up as a possible cause of my constant headaches, I stayed in bed and the headaches vanished. I've only them on the few rainy days since (which is normal for me). It took a while, and I'm still having to keep a pretty sharp eye on it, but I don't think I'm going to have to go on medication for it. Honestly, I spent the whole week until the GP visit being really anxious, but rationally anxious, like, how bad off am I, exactly? So, scared and a little sad, even.

And now, I think I've gone into a manic upswing, which means that I'm calm and rational, sure, but I can't focus. I'm having a really hard time maintaining a coherent train of thought; my thoughts actively wander, if that makes any sense. Like, to the point where it's difficult to read, the way it's difficult to get through a really dry text at 11 pm when you're supposed to have read it for class the next day, you know? It's like a mental dizziness, not a physical one. I had good ideas on Saturday, then was super productive on Sunday, and then it just all fell apart on Monday. (I had such a good idea for the book on Sunday, almost something of a game-changer, that I'm concerned it's just the mania talking and I'm going to do all this work on it and then sit here next Monday and wonder what the hell I was thinking.) I know, too, that I'm more liable to be cranky or lose my temper when I'm manic, and... that's not good for my blood pressure. Like, maybe I just need to not talk to people, any of them, at all, until this passes. But I digress. Mostly I'm managing it with, like, lavender and lemongrass-based BPAL blends, chamomile tea, and a glass of wine at night. The combination of my actual antidepressants was so difficult--painful, even--to get to a comfortable balance that, if adding on simple things like tea and aromatherapy are enough to settle me down for the week or two I need it--well, screwing with that is not something I would do lightly.

Here. Have a corgi being vacuumed.

Podcasts and TV shows I did (and, uh, did not) catch up on: ( Read more... )