Tag: tornado warning

Planets of the Universe

Thursday and my last day in the office for the week, as tomorrow is work-at-home Friday. I did feel better yesterday than I had all week, but was off-balance a bit because someone else I know died; it was particularly sad because this was a long-time friend I had to go no-contact with, and there was (is) always a spot in my brain that always thinks you know, maybe someday you’ll reconcile, and I think part of my sadness and being off-balance yesterday is because now that remote possibility is gone. I do mourn the friendship we once had; we had such good times together laughing until my sides actually ached with pain, and of course she will always be a part of my memories of our trip to Italy (one of the highest points of my life). I need to process this more thoroughly, of course, and won’t really have time to devote to it until this weekend.

Obviously, it’s intuitive that the longer you live the more friends and loved ones will die, but that was a very major part of my own obliviousness–losing people I genuinely love was never anything I saw coming or thought would ever happen, which, of course, isn’t particularly smart. Perhaps the obliviousness was a protective thing because I had so much anxiety, and morbid thoughts about the deaths of people I care about would have given me even more anxiety–so I think my brain went into coping mode and developed a subconscious filter as a protective shield of sorts. But seriously, Grim Reaper–could you direct your energies outside of my circle for a while? Please?

The St Patrick’s Day Irish Channel parade is this Saturday, so I will, most likely, run as many errands as I can tomorrow so I don’t have to leave the house and deal with parade nonsense Saturday. I need to go to Costco for sure, pick up the mail, and get some office supplies, pick up a prescription, and I also need to swing by CVS to get some more Claritin-D, the only thing that really works on my sinuses (sinii?) as we are heading into that season again. It’s been hot and muggy all week, with the occasional shower (nothing gully-washing, alas; it did rain for a while yesterday afternoon but when I was coming home after work it was already all over other than the thick, cloying watery air. I made some groceries on the way, too, so tonight after work I can just come straight home, change into my sweats, and do a few chores. I was also very tired yesterday after work, and I feel a bit tired this morning, too. Whether or not I have the energy to do some chores tonight remains to be seen, or I may just sit in my chair, make a cat bed for my sweet Sparky, and watch some more of The Traitors UK. I finished season three last night, so will be delving into season four tonight.

We also had storms overnight that helped me sleep well; I didn’t even know until I saw that everything outside was still wet this morning. We apparently were also in a tornado watch, but…heavy weather always sends me into a deeper sleep. I think I could hear the windows rattling in the wind a few times last night, but immediately went back into the death-like embrace of my deep sleep. I feel rested but a bit tired, typical for a Thursday morning. I don’t think it’ll rain more, but it’s also colder this morning than it has been all week. Maybe we were having some false spring with the heat and humidity? It’s also coming up on stinging caterpillar season. Fortunately, we don’t have any live oaks on the property or our block, so I won’t run the risk of stepping on one. The pollen is also back, and everything seems to be getting a regular dusting of yellow. This “cold” spell–fifties at night, seventies during the day–is more typical of early to mid-March, and this seems to be the case running through the weekend. Maybe–just maybe–this weekend will be the weekend when I get my shit together and get back to reading and writing. Perchance to dream, right?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for this fine Thursday morning. Have a lovely day and I’ll check back in with you again tomorrow morning!

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Shock the Monkey

Saturday morning, and feeling okay. I ran some errands yesterday–mail, prescription, grocery shopping–and instead of going to Five Guys I stopped and got a very healthy turkey-avocado sandwich for lunch instead, on wheat bread, and it was delicious. I used the wagon to bring everything back from the car to the apartment, but after putting the groceries away was very exhausted. I started reading my next book (Lisa Unger’s Christmas Presents) but didn’t get very far into it. I wound up watching the Oregon-Washington game (to see how their quarterbacks matched up against Jayden Daniels for the Heisman; I am biased but was utterly unimpressed with either of them) for a while, and then just kind of zoned out and watched documentaries on Youtube for a few hours till the game started. I am feeling better, but my energy levels still deplete quickly–probably why my surgeon didn’t want me to return to work just yet.

Last night I slept through–didn’t wake up at five like I inevitably always do and then go back to sleep–and woke up at eight, deciding to go ahead and get up rather than loll about in the bed. I figured I could write my blog entry, drink some coffee, and then head over to the easy chair to read the new book for a few hours before trying to get back into writing MY new book. I also need to do some self-promotional entries today to get back on track on promoting my two new releases, and I also kind of need to figure out where I am at with all of my in-progress projects and make a plan to proceed with everything. I think I am going to go back to trying to plan out my year and so forth, because this scattershot method I’ve been using for so long hasn’t really worked out the way I would have liked; but scattershot tends to do that. I have any number of short stories I’d like to get finished, and there are also the novellas; and I have at least two novels in progress that are up to five chapters but have gone no further than that. I also need to get better organized with everything else in my life, too–my desk area looks better than it has in years as far as clutter is concerned, but it needs to be cleaned and straightened up a bit, and there are other things in my desk–the stack of Scotty books, for example–that don’t need to be here. I rearranged the work space before the surgery specifically to free up space on the desktop, and it did work; this arrangement looks better than the way that it used to look. I want to write today–I think I am going to work on some things for the new book too, so I can really dive in headfirst; I don’t have much of a plan for the book other than I know what one of the driving forces behind the plot is going to be; who the villain is; and who is going to die. It’s all mapped out in my journal, but I need to write it all up into a word document so I can easily reference it. Plus, typing shit makes it seem more real to me, which makes no sense to anything other than my twisted brain.

Sparky has discovered the great joy of knocking over the recycling to look for bottle caps, which are his favorite toy and means I don’t need to waste any money buying him anything; why spend more money when every bottle comes with a plastic cap toy for the little darling? He’s inquisitive and he’s smart–he now scales the drawers like a ladder to get up on the counter when the drawers are closed; if he can’t get up there the usual way. He showed off this new trick to us yesterday when we were putting away the groceries; so there wasn’t a clear space for him to jump up, so instead he pulled himself up by climbing the drawers. This tells me there’s really no point to putting things out of reach because he’ll just figure out a way to get there. Scooter wasn’t especially smart, nor was he terribly interested in toys or playing or anything, but Skittle was smart–and I suspect Sparky is even smarter than Skittle, and he’s getting so big! I think he might even wind up bigger than Skittle. Do I want to have a big, incredibly smart cat? It scares me just a little bit, to be honest. But now he seems to have calmed down a bit, and is a sleeping kitten donut on my desk. He really is a beautiful cat.

We had a lot of rain overnight–flash flood warnings, tornado watches all around us in neighboring parishes, the usual–I slept through it all. I didn’t even notice it was raining last night–without my hearing aids, I can’t hear anything other than thunder–but I am sure the rain helped me sleep. I didn’t sleep for a full ten hours; it was only nine. I was thinking yesterday that I need to start getting used to getting up early again before I have to return to work on the 12th, so it won’t be as horrible as it might be. I had finally gotten used to getting up early, and now I have to start getting used to it all over again, which isn’t going to be very much fun at all. But this is a relatively easy month to ease my way back into work again, with the holidays and extra time off at the end, so there’s that. And then again, it’s Carnival shortly thereafter, which I think is late again? I haven’t looked, but I think we have a late Fat Tuesday again this next year.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for the morning. Have a fabulous Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in again later.