Irony is the Shackles of Youth

Thursday and Friday of last week, I felt terrible.

I would go to work, come home, and just have no energy. None. I couldn't write. I couldn't do exercises. All I wanted to do was be warm and not think. Even playing Youtube videos took too much effort. I went to bed at 8pm and woke up still tired.

I could not figure out what was going on.

Then I started my period 10 days early.

Which makes sense. If I'm going to get sick or feel like I have no energy, it's going to be then. Today I feel much better, but I'm still going to take it easy. I do need to catch up on my writing though. I had plans and darn it, I'm going to stick to them.

It's nice to have a explanation though.

Me: (while doing yoga) Why do I do this to myself? Why? This is terrible. Bodies should not bend this way.
Me: (after yoga) Oh thank god, my back is no longer a mess of knotted pain and tightness.

Editing cat has been sitting on my desk (which is the only computer with two monitors) as I finish up the last of the second round of edits this weekend. He’s been doing such helpful things as standing in front of the screen, purring till I take a break and pet him, and pawing at me when I’m not paying him enough attention. He loves it when I edit things.

Now, it is time to do what I always do on New Year's Eve: go to bed at a reasonable hour and wake up to a new year. Besides, if I don't give the cats their evening snack in the next five minutes, I have the feeling they will murder me in my sleep. They are already annoyed at me for putting flea medication on them earlier.

Happy New Year!

Working on the continuation of my weird Undertale fic Never Wake the Sleeping. Only this time it's from the UF!Sans and UF!Papyrus's point of view. Because I figured if I'm going to cram them into a coffin in the basement, we should at least get their side of the story

( Never Wake the Sleeping, Fragment, PG-13 so far )

I am eyeball deep in the second round of edits for my story. The good news is, I don't have to re-write the entire first part again. The bad news is, I still have to do some rewriting. Nothing too bad so far but I'm only about 1/4 of the way through. Thank goodness I had some time off so I don't have to try and cram edits in around my normal work hours.

The thing is, as much as I find some of these edits annoying, it really, really does make for a better story. Even if I don't agree with them. I at least am now aware that someone picked up on something in certain places and it allows me to fill in the gaps even if I do it in other places.

I'd prefer doing all my own editing with no commentary, but I know that that doesn't work. One, because I am even slower at editing than I am at writing. Two, because a lot of times I cannot get out of the story enough to see the weak spots. Still, this will never be my favorite pastime.

Cross stitch progress! This is the piece I’ve been working on and off for about a year and a half. Not because it’s particularly complicated. I just put it down to work on other things or because I screw up and have to take stitches out and then need a break from it.

There’s actually more done than shown (I worked on it while at the in-laws), but I hate taking pictures of my pieces when you can see the half-done stitches.

The reason I love this pattern (and patterns like it) is because you can work it up in sections. I tend to break this pattern down into 1/8ths as you can see from the missing 1/8 of the pattern. I also love monochrome patterns like this because I can focus on the pattern and not have to worry about keeping track of which thread colors I still need. I usually also have a pattern using multi-colors going at the same time so I can switch between the two.

Ultimately, this will be one of three similar pieces for my kitchen. The next one will be in dark gray. Not sure what color I’ll do the third one it. I have the pattern already picked out. I do know that the next piece I will back with some muslin or white cotton so that the threads are not quite as visible through the fabric.

Pattern Source: Antique Pattern Library
Fabric: 18 count

I hate when I'm working on a cross stitch piece and I realize I put in an extra stitch in the pattern like 50 stitch ago. It means taking out way too much to fix it. Then my thread knotted, snapped, and I wound up having to take out even more stitches to deal with that mess. Sigh. If this wasn't the only piece I brought with me to work on while I was with family, I would put it aside until I'm no longer annoyed with it. I knew I should have brought something else as well.

Added some icons, including cat icon #2.

My next big thing is to update the profile.

Man, I really missed by lemmings icon.

I am out of socks.

I just started a load of laundry.

Did that load of laundry contain any socks?

No, no it did not.

I mentioned that I went into business and quickly discovered that it was not for me. What I should have said is I don't mind doing it part-time, but cannot handle it being my full-time, main income producing gig. This means I have a few clients that I have a contract with that use me on an "as needed" basis. It's occasional work that lets me keep my skills strong in ways that my normal job doesn't.

Since I'm on an as needed basis and because I have a odd set of very technical skills, I can charge a lot per hour. And I do. This drives away anyone who doesn't really need my skillset AND ensures that the clients that stay take my time seriously.

I always feel a bit weird about charging people so much just to talk with me on the phone for an hour about projects that may or may not happen.

But not weird enough to not bill them for it.

One of my cats is on a prescription diet. I'm hoping it's as temporary as the vet thinks it will be, because with the cost of the food, he should be pooping gold nuggets. This makes feeding time extra interesting because we have a) the youngest who is on prescription food who occasionally takes over an hour to eat, b) creamsicle cat who is already on medication to encourage him to eat and now eats a normal amount at a normal pace but is not adverse to having a bit more if its available just so he can puke it up later in the most inconvenient spot, and c) our house panther who is the cat equivalent of a vacuum. What this means is that all three cats have to be fed separately.

I swear, it's like playing musical cats. Feed creamsicle cat in the kitchen his food, like a normal cat. Lock the house panther with his food in the bathroom. Then take the youngest his food upstairs and feed him in the locked bedroom. I can't feed him downstairs because he's become super obsessed with the outdoor cats AND because if he takes too long to eat, creamsicle cat with scarf down his food as well. And then puke.

Once that's done I get exactly 60 glorious seconds of quiet. After 60 seconds, house panther realizes that he is locked in a room and WHAT IF HE IS LEFT THERE FOREVER? This is when the caterwauling starts. Mrr-ow. Mrrr-ow. As soon as he is released, he heads straight for any food bowl he can spot and immediately starts licking it clean.

My next stop is upstairs to see if the youngest has eaten his food. If he has, great!, all is well. If he hasn't, then I have to keep the other two out for an hour or two to see if he's interested in eating them. Sometimes he is. Sometimes he isn't. At 13lbs it's not like he's wasting away to nothing, but I would prefer he eat the food especially since it's expensive.

Thus concludes the circus that is feeding time at my house.