Cleolinda everywhere

So! Titans are clashing very slowly for a number of reasons, one of them being that I keep getting air pressure headaches from the changeable weather, because apparently I'm one of those Old Folks who creeps around complaining about how their knee's tellin' 'em it's gonna rain. But it rained LIKE HELL last night--so hard it actually woke me up--so that ought to be settled, and also, all the pollen washed away! This is a good thing. Seriously, I walked outside yesterday morning, and the entire deck was a charming shade of yellow. Do not want.

I have pets conspiring to keep me from working, but I'm doing my best to reclaim the couch.




While we're here, I feel like we should document the current state of Sam's fluff before he gets his summer cut this weekend.




Yesterday on Tumblr I had a general blue theme, and today is mostly vampires with a little general goth thrown in. Tomorrow will be a steampunk aesthetic, I think. (While you can use Tumblr for a number of things, my current explanation for it is "Picspam: The Website.")

Meanwhile, I seem to be a nominee for a thing! Specifically, the Author Blog Awards at Completely Novel.




I am pretty sure Cleolilnda and Cleoloinda, Destroyer of Lulz, are going to go conspire against me in an evil lair somewhere (but Cleolilnda will eventually come down with a bad case of remorse and switch sides in penitence). And I hope to lose things to Neil Gaiman for many, many years to come.

So all the snow was supposed to come yesterday, and it was nice and swirly but the temperature was above freezing so it didn't stick, and it was kind of lame and nothing really happened.

Then I looked up from my computer this morning sometime after 8 am, and we've got a minor blizzard going.

Snowfari 2010, featuring Scout and Shelby:

( Read more... )

I went on another yard safari this week, but ended up posting so frequently that I didn't want a picspam to get buried. And now that Scout has so many fans, I feel like we need moar Shelby.



And also, I have moar from my yard, because I'm sure it is so fascinating. ( Read more... )

Fact: February is the beginning of spring in Alabama.

Evidence: Pictures I took in my backyard earlier this week. ( Spring has sprung )

Bonus: Sunday morning at the Jones house. Apparently my dogs went on a bender last night or something. And now you know why Shelby's nickname is Right-Angle Dog.

A surprisingly good day. I think I definitely need to invest in a full bottle of BPAL's Siren for my oil diffuser when I have some moneys, because I felt very workative despite the joyless rainy gloom outside. Maybe it's the ginger? I have no idea.

(So... why are fireworks going off behind our house? I can't see them or anything; it just sounds like Bosnia out there. Either that, or the orcs are coming. Shelby is huddled up on the couch with this haunted look in her eyes.)

(DUDE I THINK THEY ARE GETTING CLOSER)

(Oh, it's stupid Samford's stupid homecoming. Thanks for terrifying my dog, asses.)

Today's journal flashback: a tale of Salt Lake City shenanigans. ( More linkspam )

The bad news: Pete's worse, and he's gone back to the vet. Sister Girl left him with me all morning because she couldn't afford to take him, and then he threw up twice on my watch and just lay there curled up and pitiful the whole time, so my mother came home, took one look at him, and said she would pay for it this time. So he's back on an IV. And now I'm left washing towels and cleaning the hallway carpet.

I'm not even going to tell you about the hip dysplasia surgery that Shelby needs that we can't afford. At least it's not life-threatening.

(So no, the True Blood recap isn't finished.)

The good news: I couldn't talk about this before, but someone who works for my stepfather had filed a frivolous discrimination charge against him (I say "frivolous" because she was a problem employee from the start, and then when she got pregnant she finally had something she could claim he was "discriminating" against her for; her accusations included "he slammed a door this one time" and "he emails me once a week to tell me to make my subordinate do her work." O HAY THAT'S YOUR JOB), and they finally had the hearing yesterday after three months of him worrying and stressing about it (him with his heart condition). So--well, he signed a confidentiality agreement, but basically, he won, and she didn't get the five-figure settlement she was trying to shake down the county for. So basically I've spent the last three months worrying that he would somehow lose his job, because it's just been that kind of year, or keel over while waiting for the hearing.

At least that's over, then.


ETA: It was a sock. Pete ate a sock. He's about to have surgery to get the rest of it out.

Okay, our dishwasher is now on its last legs. I mean, it'll still turn on, but it's been so spotty for so long that we're obviously going to have to replace it in the next few months. Yes, we can get by washing dishes by hand. It's not so much that the dishwasher's dying as it is that this will be the eleventy-thousandth appliance to die this year. And Shelby's going to have to have surgery for her hip dysplasia in the next year or so, and we're still paying off the Unexpected Pension Taxes, and somewhere in there we've got to buy Tiny Tim a new crutch. The really stressful part is that my mother is now looking to me to finish my writing projects and hopefully bring in enough extra income that we can get on top of the bills and pay more than just a tiny bit, the interest, and sneaky late fees (everyone wants payment just before the last paycheck of the month) on them. You know. No pressure or anything.

And then my computer crashed in the middle of the "King Arthur in Fifteen Minutes" notes, and I lost all yesterday afternoon's work. "Document recovery" my ass. This is why you didn't get a linkspam, because I was too pissed busy trying to redo my work to deal with it.

(Also, Semagic came thisclose to eating all of tonight's linkspam when my computer crashed. "Load automatically saved draft" only pulled up the earliest version, until I finally thought to try "Load Draft" and see what came up.)

Let's go to another happy jewelry place! Damn, I need one. It's an old favorite, but what the hell: Sweet Romance Online. Favorites (and man, is it hard to narrow it down): the rose pendant; the art nouveau "Futura" set; the morning glory suite; the lily of the valley suite.

Linkspam! ( Superman reboot, Lost in Austen, Marion Cotillard IS (not) Catwoman )

Oh my God, Shelby just collapsed and we don't know why.

ETA: And... she's back. She keeled over, they carried her off to the vet, and then half an hour later or whenever--now--she comes bouncing back into the house. I have no idea. They're running some blood tests now to see what the hell that was all about.

Arghhh. It was 17 F this morning (we finally got up to a high of 40 by late this afternoon), and may I remind you, I live in Alabama. I couldn't let the dogs play outside very long, so they spent most of the day driving me crazy. Thanks for all the get-well wishes for Mom, by the way; she's weak and a little feverish, but she seems a lot better, and hasn't thrown up since about five this morning. She spent the day either in bed or sacked out in the recliner in the den watching The DaVinci Code, which would have been fine except that she kept asking who this was and what was he doing and did they know who she was. I wouldn't have found this annoying, except that I was trying to read one of my Black Ribbon books, and I wouldn't have found it odd, except that she's already seen the movie three times. But, you know--after all the years she took care of us when we were deathly snerfy, taking care of her was the least I could do. I think it would have been all right if the dogs could have played outside; as it was, they were constantly fighting or barking or chewing or bodyslamming the back door to get in or out, and there was a point where I just ate lunch standing up, plate in hand, because it was just easier to deal with them that way. So, because I was downstairs early to look after Mom, and because George seems to be coming home later than usual this week, it was a very long day, and I felt very tired afterwards. Do you ever feel tired from not getting to do things? I don't mean the the sluggishness from being lazy; I mean the frustrated weariness of trying to do something all day and being continually interrupted. It's the tiredness of sitting in a waiting room all day, or waiting in a line, I guess.

But I did finish Virginia Rounding's Grandes Horizontales, which is something. I need to write up some book reports, as it were, but I'm too tired just now.

Meanwhile, at Snopes: The Webkinz Murderer? ( Read more... )

Oh my God, I am so tired. (Yes, I am going to begin every entry with "I am so tired" until I stop being tired.) We now have two puppies, for a total of four dogs and one Bad Cat, and I ended up not getting today off from Witchfinder Dogsitter General duty. (Mulch this, okay?) Fortunately, Shelby (who spent most of the week pitifully thin with a stomach bug) and Scout (who somehow managed to emerge fat and sassy from parvo quarantine at the vet) immediately fell to wrestling. Shelby is the Sunny Baudelaire of puppies, to the point where she will actually bite the air if she can't find anything else, and while Scout is more of a licker than a biter, they both enjoy chewing on each other's faces. Sam and Meko, meanwhile, were getting baths at the vet and were somewhat nonplussed to come home and find that Shelby had doubled. Sam, in fact, was getting a little stressed out--he actually had little seizures the summer we had the deck rebuilt, because his pomeranian nerves couldn't handle the noise--but once I was released from duty, he got to go upstairs with me to the Fortress of Solitude with the working AC and the absence of puppies.

Which is also to say that our air conditioner downstairs is broken, and it was over 70 degrees this afternoon. I was trying to hold on to winter in hopes that we'd get another cold snap, but, sorry to say, I think spring has officially sprung--the buttercups are in the front yard and the bumblebees are in the back. I mean, that's great for puppies, but not so great for someone whose wardrobe is mostly long-sleeved at this point.

That said, I'm almost in the mood for spring because Thursday and Friday's Morning DVD Commentary was POTC2--no, I still hadn't watched the extras after three months--and after umpteen hours of watching fluorescent turquoise water and sugarbowl beaches, I was kind of ready for a trip to the beach myself. I have a feeling that most readers around here haven't bothered to listen to the only writers' commentary (which you really should), else y'all would have immediately run and told me that they 1) confirm the Tia Dalma Theory and 2) mention that the production finally built an entire free-standing Black Pearl. Where did they build it? Alabama, the center of the universe, of course.

After a week of trying to acclimate to constant puppysitting (and getting the three DVDs I wanted to watch out of the way), I'm thinking of what I want to do with my mornings as this settles into a routine. Which is to say, I've already decided, and don't want to jinx it by actually saying it out loud--I'm worried enough about actually following through and being productive as it is. Also, I've been online for all of half an hour today and I've already managed to make an ass of myself twice, so I think I'm calling it a night just now.

( A little linkspam )