The Dangerous Existence of Madame Lee

+ Boiler has been replaced, to the tune of $10K, but at least the heat works now. YEAH.
+ Christmas came and was somewhat uneventful. X-chan was going to go up to Grandma's but sprung a flat, and of course there was no place to fix it on Christmas Eve, so she stayed with us. We watched A Christmas Story (after I struck out in my efforts to find White Christmas at the 'Mart) and the MST3K version of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, also ate salmon with avocado and pomegranate salsa for Christmas dinner. (Nomnomnom.) Lolmom loved the new slippers I got her, will probably like sweaters but we don't know how they fit yet. X-chan was pleased to receive the dinosaur necklace so at least that was a hit. (I also gave her Flambards, the BBC series after which she was named.)
+ Went to investigate whether the toilet had overflowed just now, slipped on wet floor, came down heavy on my ass. OW. I can feel a bruise forming, ready to wreak havoc at a time known only to me.
+ Back to work tomorrow. Then I have another three-day weekend and another four-day work week. Then I will have a normal work week, crowned by ANOTHER three-day weekend. Experts anticipate I'll be fucked up until February!

+ First, though this comes very belated, things came from forgottensanity, beldar, and dethorats arrived, and were opened and squeed over and greatly appreciated in general. Thanks, guys. ★
+ X-chan was home for Christmas, which was nice and drama-free; I had worried that there might be drama. But it was great to see her again, and I'm pleased by how well she's doing. (No explanation forthcoming, the end.)
+ I am feeling very self-loathing at the moment, due in part to the fact that I a.) have paid my auto insurance and am now poor, and b.) seem unable to touch anything without immediately breaking it. My trail of destruction has continued with a box of Christmas ornaments and the towel bar (again). Also, more stuff that I'm going to be cryptic about; I'm not worried so much about the stuff itself but about what I've made up about that, and I'm going to have to wait one way or the other in order to find out how accurate it is. ASDFLKAJSDLFKJASLDFJ.
+ I am trying to counter the above with hefty rounds of Int0rbuttz games, fanfiction, and "Ladies" by Sarai on constant repeat, because there's just something about it that makes me happy.
+ At least I have New Year's Day off.
+ Uh, I think that's it then.

This is, basically, a giant brain dump, because I can't be arsed to post on a regular basis. For that, I apologize. Perhaps I will manage to get my shit together by January.

l33: L33 HAS HAND-EYE COORDINATION SUPERIOR TO THAT OF A BRAIN-DEAD ZOMBIE AND CAN HOLD ON TO THINGS
The Universe: ERROR

( BREAKING SHIT is my power! )

( OVERANALYSIS is my power! )

( MISCELLANEOUS BABBLE is my power! )

( BLATANT GREED is my power! )

uigenna: RAIEN. RAIEN. RAIEN. I have hopped on but not seen j00. Also, I have most of Friday and most of Saturday free (though I do have to work for a few hours in the evening). Just FYI. I do want to play with j00!

Hey, forgottensanity, I got the stuff you sent! The Daim bars came a few days ago; unfortunately, they had consumed most of the babies in transit (apparently they resemble turnips in that), and then the adult went for X-chan, so I had to take it out by a chomp to the neck. Its flesh is deliciously toffeelike. :9

Also, the basket was greatly appreciated and has been enthusiastically enjoyed; we all loved it. :D I did share it, simply because I couldn't eat all that myself.

♥ for augustuscaesar and queen_lily_rose. Just because.

X-chan was home, and we got to spend some time together, but now she's gone. This has been yay, except for the part where she had to leave. I've been trying to convince her to move to Kentucky, but Kentucky doesn't do the greatest job of selling itself, so.

I had the bright idea to use my day off on Tuesday to go up to Bloomington and return library books. This would have gone off without a hitch if it were not for the goddamned weather (freezing rain); it was supposed to get better here, and Bloomington isn't that far north, but still. What usually takes about two and a half to three hours took all day, due in part to having to stop several times because some yahoo thought four-wheel drive magically granted him immunity to the laws of physics and went skidding off the road. (I am scared shitless of skidding and was frightened when it happened to me near Huntingburg. Fortunately, I didn't lose control of the car and didn't hit anything or go careening into an embankment; I was able to right myself and proceed shakily through the intersection.) The first time, I felt sorry for the driver; after the third or fourth time, I stopped feeling any pity or human fellow-feeling at all. (On US-231, headed northbound through Martin and Daviess Counties? Uh, yeah. They don't believe in guardrails there, apparently. Not that guardrails are your best defense against skidding.) So by the time I got to Bloomington, the library was closed (and has just reopened yesterday, in honor of duokinneas' birthday), and the roads were still bad (IN-46 westbound was completely blocked off at the Owen/Monroe county line due to the number of accidents, and there were several nasty messes on IN-37 headed northbound), so I wound up having to get a hotel room for the night and shush a panicky lolmom. The Travelodge actually isn't too bad. The weather heated up overnight, it was good to be home, and by the time I left this morning the ice had melted and there was just plain old regular rain, which I can deal with.

I'm getting a little tired of this not-living-in-Bloomington nonsense.

Also, I got to wait on Mr and Mrs Speshul Snowflake on Christmas Eve. The 'Mart closes at 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve and remains closed until 6 a.m. on 26 December. :D Anyway, we were herding people out (after multiple announcements that YOUR CESSPIT LOL-MART STORE IS CLOSING and subsequently that YOUR LOL-MART STORE IS NOW CLOSED) around 6, and the Speshul Snowflakes decided to come in to pick up their meat trays from the deli RIGHT THEN and suffered severe butthurt injuries when informed that a.) we were closed and b.) the deli had given their meat trays to someone else.

Christmas was okay. The X came back from Indy (turned out my father and Pweshus Wifey weren't there for Christmas DAMN I could have gone if I hadn't had to work) and we had breakfast and opened presents and watched A Christmas Story and all was yay.

So. I'm back. I guess I might try to write more regularly in this thing. I'm going to try to pick myself back up in 2009; I've been so angry and bitter for so long that I've let myself get stuck in it, and that's not good.

First off: THXSOMUCH dethorats 4 PCKG. You are now officially my favorite for the espresso chocolate alone, and may possibly hold the coveted post of Favoritest Ever for the Maori folktales. Also, the socks fucking ROCK and match my ttly 4w5um grey pants. Also also, I hope you survived your attempt at better living through dentistry. XD

Mom and I are d0rks, so we celebrated New Year's Eve with a pizza (that we bought with the gift card X-chan gave us) and a stack of movies. (We had been going to go out and see something, but it was dark and rainy and we'd both been driving around all day and neither of us felt like driving anywhere farther than the movie rental store or Pizza Hut.)

H is in Kobe, and likely to be there for the next week or thereabouts. This gives me license to slack on the e-mail front. Also, since I got to see my sister, he gets to see his. Fair is fair even if I am a bit lost without him.

( Blah blah blah gabble gabble gabble )

And now, off to bed.

Everything that could go wrong last week did (the short summary: I broke the showerhead on Monday; I tried to make candy and wound up burning the almond bark and had to get more; I ran all over God's green acre and have no money and then on top of that I did not get my paycheck on Friday and so I couldn't get my car out of the shop because without that money I can't pay for the deductible). But it's the weekend now, and X-chan has just arrived from Parts Unknown and is currently sleeping off her jet lag, and none of the other shit matters anymore.

H sent me flowers, which arrived today quite unexpectedly (I had already gone to the post office to pick up the other things he sent me, which I had to sign for, and am now richer by 2000 yen).

Nobody, in all my life, has ever, ever sent me flowers before.

I love flowers.

It is harder than you might think to find the words to tell someone that he is, easily, the most wonderful person you have ever met in your entire life, especially when your standard expressions of love/affection tend to sound like, "Yo, dethorats! I'm going to skewer you alive and then put fire ants up your nose!" or "Goddammit, imperfectkatoru, I'm going to kick your ass." I've spent almost four hours trying to figure it out, which isn't working, and I think the thing to do may be to come out and say it.

In conclusion, YAY.

There was snow in the northern part of the state (apparently, since I don't tool around in northern Indiana), but nothing down here except some half-assed flurries in Sullivan, not even enough to cover the ground or anything. Nonetheless, I took my coat today, which I don't usually do this early in the winter.

I also finally caved and busted out the big guns: body lotion with shea butter. My skin is extremely dry, particularly the back of my left knee at which I have been clawing intermittently, and other people might be able to manage with less severe measures, but I can't. I actually envy these people who can manage with lighter lotions. (When I was a little kid, my skin thought it would be hilarious to develop seborrheic dermatitis and make everything that touched me hurt me, even my pajamas.) As I was telling duokinneas last year, or possibly in 2005, my descendants would be a race of skinless god-polymaths, if I were going to have any descendants.

If I hear that godawful song about the kid who wants to buy his mother a pair of shoes for Christmas so she'll look pretty when she dances with Jesus, or whatever that song is actually about, ONE MORE TIME, I cannot answer for what will happen next. It will probably involve me running amok and killing people.

Other fascinating things that have happened lately: I have purchased Christmas cards that you people can actually display without getting raised eyebrows (most of the ones I had before said things like "Joy to the fucking world!" on the front, or contained sly double entendres, or contained not-particularly-sly single entendres). These have adorable snowmen, because I like snowmen, and plus they were on special at the 'Mart.

Also, I am re-reading all the Balzac I have (I think I mentioned this project before) plus whatever the IU libraries have in English translation, and suddenly have the urge to start up a cracky RP set in early 19th-century Paris. (On the rare occasions when I want to play fandom, I always gravitate to the obscure fandoms or the fandoms where, as far as I know, I am the fandom. But then again I suppose it could be worse.) Never mind that probably nobody else on the Int0rwebz has read Balzac and would be interested in RPing in my cracktastic little world. I totally call Eugène de Rastignac, in case any of them have and are reading this.

Also also, I love (for "love" please understand "mildly dislike") the pervasive feeling that I am very unhappy outside the Church, coupled with the knowledge that I cannot go back (not right now, and possibly not ever for a wide variety of reasons). I also particularly enjoyed how this epiphany hit me while I was speeding towards Bedford. Why oh why does all the WTF come when I am in the car?

Agenda for tonight: get work out, read A Harlot High and Low, go to bed.

JOB update: Sapping will to live, as usual. Hopefully this will just be temporary. I have an interview in Bloomington tomorrow, and while I'm trying not to pin all my hopes on it (the more so since it would create some not-altogether-desirable stress), it's nice to be potentially wanted.

MOOD update: Not getting any better, sad to say. Probably won't be better for some time to come. H, augustuscaesar, and m0mmy are, between the three of them, helping to salvage what little remains of my sanity. ♥ Also, the holidays are just around the corner, and blah blah blah angst blah blah blah backstory blah blah blah tedious drama the upshot of which is that I hate Christmas, which you probably already knew, so between all that I probably won't be worth much until January. I'll try not to snap at anyone but I may be bitchy. There may be entire entries dedicated to waaaaaaaangst. (Like this one, for instance).

RELIGION update: Flipped through a book of m0mmy's called Faith Rediscovered by Lawrence S. Cunningham, was rather uncomfortably shown myself, have been fiddling around with the faith of my mothers in my head. The short list:

( My Religious Wangst, Let Me Show You It )

In conclusion, WANKYWANKYWANKWANK.

Going to bed now. I have too much to do before Thanksgiving and not enough time to do it in.

A joyous nonspecific winter holiday of your choice to all. :D

♥

X-chan is here. :D

Some of you may be applying the greetings in your Christmas cards to Christmas 2007 D:

Some of you may also be opening your presents on Eastern Orthodox Christmas (7 January, for the uninitiated) D:

Three days until the Epic Confrontation.