“Burn it down and start over!”

That’s what I often screamsay when I’m frustrated that my house is a mess.

However, it’s not a mess. In fact, after a concerted effort that included bribing a couple of teenagers with Burger King to declutter my front room by hauling stuff out to the garage & up to the spare bedroom, forking over a few bucks to said teenagers to set up my new knick-knack shelf, ruthlessly chucking all the questionable contents of the fridge, spending over an hour scrubbing the hell out of my kitchen and hand-washing every dish that didn’t fit into a single dishwasher load, a whole lot of other miscellaneous effort on my part, and (miracle of miracles!) coming home to a clean kitchen floor and lots of folded laundry compliments of Geoffrey, my house is damned-near spotless.

Not that it will necessarily last. But we fought the good fight, and I’m proud of my very tidy battlefield.

So, since my Grandma Jean had a hip-replacement surgery recently and my whole famn damily is going to visit her on Saturday, I decided (this past Sunday) that I will crochet her a beautiful deep-plum throw blanket in a gorgeous pattern that I’ve wanted to make for ages, and have it finished by Saturday afternoon.

It was a lovely idea, anyway.

I’ve spent between two and seven hours crocheting on it every day since Sunday. It’s a deceptively-simple stair-step design with openwork that looks a lot more complicated that it is. (Unless, of course, you’re me — and you think after the first few rows, “Oh, I know the pattern now, I don’t have to look at the instructions every single row.” Fraking idiot that I am.) Even if it weren’t for the fact that every single day I’ve realized that I made a glaring error in the pattern a couple (or six, or eight) rows ago — and therefore had to rip out all those rows, and redo all that work — it wouldn’t be more than 2/3 done today.

As it is, I bought ten 3-ounce skeins of yarn and due to all the ripping-and-reworking, I’m not quite through four of them. Even if I didn’t have to go to work tomorrow (or sleep at any point for the next 36 hours), and just crocheted straight through, it wouldn’t be finished in time. The border alone will take at least 2 or 3 hours, and keep in mind that I crochet FAST.

It’ll get done, in the next few weeks. Just not by Saturday.

The best-laid plans and all that… (This is one reason why I keep my ambitions small. Accepting crushing defeat is bad enough when it’s just a damned throw blanket on the line.)

Just finished the first non-solitary ritual I’ve done in over a year — well, except for hand-fastings, the first non-solitary ritual I’ve done in a lot of years — and the very first time I’ve done a hand-parting. It was powerful; I think it went stunningly well. Dark-moon ritual likes me entirely too much.

Now thoroughly awake when I should be exhausted, especially after the criminally-busy day I had at work (which included somehow managing to pull a few muscles in my shoulder / upper arm, which hurt atrociously all day but felt tons better as soon as I cast Circle…which is weird even for me).

Time to center & ground, and hopefully sleep like a rock.

I was feeling pretty good when the weekend started, considering that I’d had only 1 migraine in at least a month, and I really, really needed a relaxing couple of days after the very busy workweek (in the course of which I was advised that I get to do more “senior operator” stuff, included helping assign projects, and whatever else I need to learn to become a backup lead operator…more work, oh goody). I was up quite early Saturday because a surprise birthday party was being thrown at 8am for one of our lead operators, a lady I like quite a lot, and I wanted to be there for it. But by noon, I’d come down with a miserable magnitude migraine, and the Imitrex only kicked it down a few notches. That meant forgoing the planned trip to Fabric Depot (outdoor sale!), as well as missing the BBQ thrown by my dear globe-trotting friend Larry. Massive suckage.

And now for something completely TMI…

It was a long, long, long, long week at work. Especially the last few days, when everybody apparently noticed that it was the full moon and become total fraking shits (the callers, not the coworkers). In any case, my weekend officially started 3 hours ago and I’m just starting to unwind…

Since getting home, I’ve finished another Christopher Moore book (Fluke), had a long bath and a short shower, put a whole lot more eye makeup on than I usually do, plucked the living hell out of my eyebrows, slathered the yummy plum-peppermint foot lotion on, and checked my Netflix queue.

My Number One Internet Fanboy is on his way for dinner and dessert, and I expect the rest of my weekend will be chock-full of housecleaning and naps. Right now my blood sugar is so low that I almost gave into the temptation to taste the yummy plum-peppermint foot lotion, but that will be remedied soon. Yay for Friday night!

Damnit, only Joss Whedon could do what nobody else could: make me watch a superhero/villain comic-book-style show and like it.

Go check out Dr Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog. Get updates at the official fan site. (Free viewing only until the 21st.)

Nathan Fillion is hot. So is Neil Patrick Harris. Turns out Neil can sing, too. (Anything Joss Whedon does is an exception to my rule that musicals suck.)

If Joss puts James Marsters in this, I am so doomed.

Damn. It makes me want to get a t-shirt.

It was too hot today to do anything but make a mad dash to Powell’s (a very brief trip, since it doesn’t seem that they have air conditioning), hit the KFC drive-thru, then go home and watch DVDs. After watching my most recent Netflix documentary (Hijacked: American Experience — which has so far been the only episode I’ve seen of the series that wasn’t worth watching), we browsed through the Comcast OnDemand free movies. Mostly the OnDemand free movies are really bad horror flicks, really bad comedies, really pathetic old movies, once-in-a-blue-moon good documentaries (currently Murderball — quite a good one! — is playing), and the occasional good old movie.

When I found out that neither Anxiety nor Lyse had seen Rosemary’s Baby, of course we had to watch it. Not only because it’s an entertaining movie, but because it’s fun to watch a 15-year-old become confused when shown such things as people dialing rotary phones, using a phonograph player, smoking indoors, and using a television clicker (what they called TV remote controls back when they actually made a clicking noise when you pushed a button). The movie is only a year older than I am, but it sure is interesting to see the changes in daily life that have happened in only 40 years.

(I remember when I was 6 years old, and postage stamps went from 10 to 13 cents — and you had to lick them, as they weren’t self-sticking. I wrote a lot of letters to my grandparents, as they often stuck a dollar bill in each reply. Candy bars were 15 cents or two for a quarter. The TV Guide and the National Enquirer — which, in addition to Sesame Street, were how I learned to read — both cost 25 cents. The Tooth Fairy usually brought me either 25 or 50 cents. I can’t remember what anything else cost in 1975, so you can see exactly where my 6-year-old priorities were.)

Anyway, for a gal who doesn’t like classic films, I heartily recommend Rosemary’s Baby. There’s no gore, the single scene with “blood” looks exactly like red paint, and it has only a few minor curse words and a couple of very brief nude scenes (Mia Farrow had very cute boobs, btw). All in all, nothing that would garner more than a PG rating these days. It’s certainly not a horror flick by any stretch, although I suppose it could be considered a psychological thriller. Anxiety was terribly disappointed that you didn’t get to actually see the devil-spawned baby. Poor child had to use her imagination (which is another thing that apparently has gone the way of the 13-cent postage stamp).

Hopefully tomorrow Geoffrey will watch his newly-arrived Netflix movie with me. Yes, it’s a totally awful horror flick, but hey, it’s got a devil-spawned baby in it…and I just can’t resist those movies. (I have got to get ahold of It’s Alive and It Lives Again on DVD!)

My future son-in-law, the Dustinator, is a very bad & wicked man. He left one of his books at my house, and when I ran out of stuff to read, I innocently picked it up and started in on it.

Now I have to buy every damned book that Christopher Moore has ever written.

On the bright side, I spent a day & a half reading — nay, devouring — A Dirty Job, giggling uncontrollably the whole while, and now I have several more books to look forward to. On the not-bright side, that means there are several books that I have to buy, and books aren’t cheap.

But mixed emotions about books are my favorite kind of mixed emotions.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve blogged about something other than being sick. It must be update time.

(I am still sick. Still coughing. It still sucks. Yadda yadda.)

Geoffrey bought himself a new toy (the black model, of course). He’s considerably more bouncy & cheerful than he’s been in ages. On the one hand, I’m thrilled for him — it makes me all melty when he’s giddy. On the other hand, my bike is not running right now (the kick-start fell off somewhere on my way home from work one day, and then the battery charger stopped working, so I can’t turn the blasted thing on until I get those items replaced), so I’m irked that I can’t ride mine.

And now for something completely TMI…

I’m not over my illness yet, although this morning I woke up and felt noticeably better than yesterday. And by “noticeably better” I mean that I no longer have to take my codeine cough syrup during the day in order to avoid those coughing fits that take over my whole body like some kind of hellish demon possession. It’s a good thing, too, because I only have about 2 doses left of the stuff.

I am, however, still taking Robitussin around the clock, and sucking on Ricola cough drops nearly every waking moment. Good thing they come 24 to a bag and are only about $1.25 a bag, since I’ve spent about $10 on them this past week. I don’t even want to think about how much I’ve spent on the rest of my non-prescription medications.

I do think there’s been a pattern to my slow-but-sure recovery. Besides the joys of medication, here are the key ingredients that I believe have helped significantly:

• Taco Bell — when I’m sick and nothing tastes good, I will lose my appetite entirely and basically forget to eat. And not eating is bad when you’re sick and your poor overworked immune system has no fuel to kick the crap out of what’s making you sick. Only 2 things have tasted good to me at ALL recently, which is why I’ve had Taco Bell for dinner the last 4 nights running. (Hey, tacos have veggies! That’s healthy, right?)
• Ice cream — that would be the only other thing that’s tasted good to me lately. Specifically, the original Moose Tracks kind. I’ve had most of a half-gallon in the last 4 days (lots of calcium!). And still managed to lose weight, because the only other thing I’ve been eating is those Lean Cuisine microwave meals (for my lunches). They aren’t exactly tasty, but I choke them down because it would have been stupid to drive to Taco Bell more than once a day.
• Emergen-C — it tastes like crap, but it still tastes WAY better than that Airborne garbage. And I do think it works better (which is to say that I’ve never noticed Airborne working at all). In any case, I’ve felt better when I had 2 or 3 glasses a day of Emergen-C.
• Neti pot — I have no idea if it’s helped the actual sickness, but it sure is nice to be able to breathe more easily for at least for the hour or so after I use it (twice a day).
• Steamy showers — I have to be careful with these, since for some weird reason, if I breathe too much hot & humid air, I tend to get dizzy to the point of passing out (whether I’m sick or not). But I can manage about 15-20 minutes, which does tend to help the congestion.
• Sympathy — while not actually a physical help to my sickness, having Geoffrey make sympathetic noises about how sick I am (such as admonishing me not to die during my horrific coughing fits), means that my misery is noticed, and THAT accomplishes two important things: a) I feel better emotionally in that I may be alone in my physical discomfort but he’s doing everything he can to help me feel better, and b) I whine a lot less about how sick I am, which reduces the aggravation of those around me.
• Reading — again, not a physical help to sickness, but if you get involved enough in what you’re reading, you can at least forget about your physical miseries for a while. I’ve gone through the entire 7-book Incarnations of Immortality by Piers Anthony in the last 5 days. I highly recommend reading the Author’s Notes, which are sometimes a smidgen more interesting than the actual stories.

This week may suck extra-much, despite being halfway to recovered (I’m still coughing & sniffling, mind you!), because I have to go up to Pill Hill for work this week. Grrrr.

Work today sucked, and not in the happy fun way. I had a few horrible coughing fits, and the worst one prompted a couple of people (including my lead) to ask if I was going to be okay, if I needed a break off the phones, etc. I told them the truth — that this is what happens when I don’t take my codeine cough syrup on time, and I would be okay as soon as it kicked in. Relatively speaking, anyway.

There’s good news and bad news this weekend…

Good news: I have a 3-day weekend!
Bad news: I’m too sick to enjoy it.

Good news: The demonspawn will be away at the beach all weekend.
Bad news: The demonspawn (and Dustin) will be sleeping here tonight so they can leave at dawn.

Good news: Tomorrow is our country’s 232nd birthday!
Bad news: For some reason, oodles of idiots will celebrate this by blowing shit up.

I really hate fireworks. Always have. I’d love it if all fireworks were illegal, other than the professional displays. And even those are obnoxious, but at least they only take place briefly, and end at a reasonable hour of the evening…unlike the idiots who buy fireworks to set off for days/nights on end. I have ZERO sympathy for anyone who is injured by fireworks, especially the ones that are illegal in Oregon but are brought across the state border from Washington and blown up here.

Go celebrate our Independence Day by lighting fire to a barbeque or the candles of a birthday cake for America, not explosives.