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It Snowed!

Not a lot, but we got a little snow here. 

I didn’t sleep well last night. I went to bed at a decent time, but kept waking up. Then my alarm went off and I just sort of laid in bed for a good hour trying to convince myself to get up. Then I did. 

I’m not in a great mood today. I’m feeling very, mentally blocked and worn out. I keep trying to think about all the moving pieces of my life, what I want from it. It’s a difficult task this time of year. I have to go to work and try to act out this normal thing and it just grates on me. I really feel like a need a solid four days to just decompress and I know that won’t be possible for many weeks, if it even does. 

And today was the day my Dad remembered my birthday (I was born on the 6th) Eh, have not responded to that. Not that I’m terribly angry, but I am a little upset. Nothing to do with gifts or any of that, and I’m not a child who needs to be wished a happy birthday. However I am his child so, there is that. 

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My Dog Is Judging Me

That’s Lu, in the background, judging me all day, everyday for the crap I watch on television. I can’t lie, he’s got a point. I watch an extraordinary amount of junk. That is if I’m not on an youtube binge. He also likes to judge me for my shameless, obsessive youtube holes I fall into. 

Anyway. I had the day off! Won’t have another one of those until Wednesday of next week, and while I wanted to be very productive today, I sort of just fell into doing nothing after I’d done my chores, dyed my hair finally, went to the shops, had a visit and played with some yarn. There is at least still time to work on the garbage story, I suppose or do some outlining but recently I’ve been struggling with being on the verge a cold or something. I’d say I’ve had a  relatively good day, amongst a really, pretty bad or neutral two weeks, so the feeling like I’m catching a cold is very discouraging. No time to really rest and recharge.

I did get a pretty good idea for some meat to fill up one particular character in the novel I’m working on. I guess that’s what I’ve been thinking on, while I’ve been doing nothing today.

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Is It January Yet?

If you don’t/have never worked a retail job, this might be hard understand. I am over the Christmas Season. It can, just, go away. I don’t care about presents.I actually like giving gifts, but I hate the pressure of it this time of year. I’m cool with finding birthday gifts for folks. I just dislike having my family getting all over me, at the end of November to tell them what I want. I don’t know what I want, just get something you think I’d like, I’ll probably like it. I also feel like this time of year, there is such a hard emphasis on having to get people wonderful gifts. I’m a making type person. I like to make people stuff and then give it randomly, kind of a nicer thing to give someone a gift just because. 

And then there are all the people going nuts to put mounds of crap under the tree, to holiday up their houses and all that and it just makes me feel insane. It puts a damper on the usual chilly weather I like. Sweat shirts, jackets, boots, scarves, hats, gloves--all that shit, I like all of that. 

I work in a privately owned pet shop, and this weekend we had Santa pictures. The photographer always goes all out, the photos are so nice and the Santa we use is a real professional dude, I mean, he looks like you imagined Santa when you were a kid so thats nice, but it is two solid days of madness, plus the Friday night before when every crazy person is coming in because, every day from the end of November until Christmas Eve is filled with off the walls, bananas, craziness and this weekend is complete bedlam. How we go each year without an all out dog fight because all the animals are going nuts and people bring in ill behaved dogs, and it’s so nuts that even well behaved dogs and cats and birds and this year even a fucking turkey get a little tense. 

There’s barking and we have to block off by-ways through aisles so then we end up pissing people off who are just trying to buy their stuff and I totally get it, it’s crazy those two days. All the profits go to animal charities, so I’m a little put out by people getting pissy because, this is all to benefit animals who need it and we start advertising the dates weeks ahead of time. Get your shit together people. Really. 

I’ve had a crap, tough time this week. It’s been cold. My house is cold. I only keep the house at 65 (except for the animal room, which is kept at 72 for the bird, the snake and the chinchilla) and I am bundled up in a pair of sweats, a pair of legging, socks, slippers, a tee shirt, a long sleeve, a hoody and a hat to stay warm. I need to dye my hair, but I can’t because it’s so cold. Then, I forgot about the whole needing to eat thing today because Sundays are nine hour work days and ten hours I’m away from the house. And, because it’s so crazy, I get a 15 minute lunch, which was a crap 4 inch sub from subway. I got home and poured myself a glass of wine and then started thinking about what I’d actually had to eat today. It was a cup of coffee first thing and then...oh, more coffee from home...then that sub and maybe ten peanuts, some water..... and ahhhhhh, crap...I just downed this big glass of wine because as a person who cannot function in the world the first thing I do after a shit weekend of work is drink. 

What the hell is my life? 

I should be writing, working on my story, but I NEED to make the map of how all the short stories connect o tel the tale a little bit. Also, my mind was broken open by the lady who runs my writers group because I was blind to how I start almost every one of these short fictions. Now I’m like, “Oh great. I’m a hack. I write total crap, like a 14 year old girl” But I’ll get through that. 

Another reason I hate this time of year, particularly this year is because I am sad and alone. 

That’s as much as I am going to say about all the feels of depression. Or at least all the ones I’m going to say to the internet world. 

Yeah, I know, whatever, so here are some photos.

I’m cold.

Toki’s cold too. Except his butt.

Lu defies cold. He is filled with cold. His heart is ice. He hates all.

I never ate these. Adam West is disappointed with my lack of nutrition. 

That’s it. I would say I will promise to rate, but it’ll all be crap. So.

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Pictures from the new house

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12/21/15

It took me a long time to get a smartphone. Really, I was one of the last human beings to get one. 

Well, while that’s not completely true I will say that I had a standard flip phone until about a year and a half ago. My Dad, Step Mom and Step Dad had had smartphones years before me and recently my Mom just got her first smartphone. Apparently this is driving my Step Dad nutty, now she can send text messages and has discovered emojis. Which brings me to my point--with the exception of my Step Dad, who has only texted me on a few occasions, because like me, be prefers to either call or e-mail a person, the rest communicate with an obscene about of these little pictures to rival the minds of a six year old. A lot of “exciting” things have been happening recently. I had a birthday--I got virtual tiny balloons, pieces of cake, heart eyed kissy faces and confetti(I assume it was confetti). I told my parents we were closing on our house, I got what I would call the insane smiley face, fireworks, more balloons and fireworks. Oh and the hearts....All the hearts. 

It’s an odd way of communicating with other adults. M and I rarely use them with our own texts to each other, though we will send pictures of ourselves (don’t get excited) being silly or pictures of our pets to one another as an expression of wordless communication but the use of multiple emoji still confuses me. It reminds me of my days with AIM and how we used all those primitive faces and pictures. I can remember how much fun it was to create pictures with spaces and different keys so I will leave off with this, my favorite of all time...

      ( )   ( )

    (o  .  o) 

 (’’’)  (’’’)O

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Just getting started on my first geometric patterned crochet project. Eventually this will be a baby blanket commissioned by a friend for a coworker. It's making me wish this was my job

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11/13/15

Friday the 13 sort of snuck up on me. 

Maybe that’s the ominous feeling that I’ve been having for the last week, causing a general sense of uneasiness and possibly needless anxiety. Eh, well, there are a few real things to make me anxious of late and I really do not deal well with tensions or stress. I can handle it mentally but physically my chest will feel tight and my stomach will start to churn. So what can I do but wait patiently for those things to start to fade away from me, maybe color in those books that are supposed to reduce adult stress, or dance around to all my guilty pleasure songs and keep a running tally in my head of all the arguments I’ll have with the people who will or have upset me. 

Work on my fantasy novel....thing...whatever I’ve deemed appropriate to do with my life and free time nearly came to a standstill, a select+all+delete moment because it was not where I wanted it to go. However I was an adult about it and took a little time to refocus and also to pout and returned to it with fresher eyes and the thought that I have a lot of good material, I just need to spin it a little to get it more to what my vision is. Basically it was getting a little to ‘cute’ for what I really wanted and for what my vision of this world was and for what will happen later on. 

Someone said to me the other day “You go from terrifying to adorable in two seconds” and I guess that’s kind of what was weighing down my prose. The idea in my head is dark, but there’s so much cute or crafty junk in there touching it that it starts to get warped a bit as it comes out. 

So what is the solution, I ask myself? Get it all out, down on paper and then edit and play around with it, imagine it again, focus and think and work harder. 

Also I’m trying to mentally prepare myself for what’s to come at my job. Oh the drama! It’s not even worth complaining about in detail. I know everyone will say, at every job there is a level or childish behavior, of disquiet and unhappiness but it’s a daily struggle to keep going there. I wake up in the morning and think, “I’ll just quit, be done with it. I can get another job, right?” But of course, like a good little worker bee off I go, back there and hope that the crazies will not be so bad today. 

That’s my motivation to keep at writing, to get out of this thing that causes so much unhappiness to me. Of course, I am an adult and I have learned that separating myself from what happens there is important. After all, it is just a job and it is not how I define myself. 

Wow, way to pick yourself up...Well I don’t know for sure, but it’s a mantra I have to repeat to myself so I myself do not go insane and start screaming needlessly. 

I also keep telling myself to get some pictures together to put up on my more crafty blog, which has sat dormant for a very long time and truthfully I have been a very busy crafter. I have large piles of yarn and whatnot around me that need to be completed before Christmas. Just another thing to add to the To Do List. 

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10/29/15

I’m re-watching the first season of hemlock grove...read the book when it first came out and waited patiently for what I hoped would be a second. Alas, all my hopes were dashed. So now I’m just going to watch the show.

Strangely typing that jogged my memory about a dream I had last night. I was in the whole Cedar Park world (by that I mean a world I have created for a novel) and I was in the car with Simone, Danny and Sheri but we were driving in the woods-this dirt road though, somewhere I had never thought up before. It was very real with the headlights on the trees. I don’t know where we were going, maybe to the grove, though I don’t know why because it was fall and Jeanette was still alive at that point. Who knows, maybe more will come to me about it. 

I’ve watched a few horror movies, gearing up for when we go and see Crimson Peak this Sunday. I watched The Babadook, which is worth a watch. I won’t say much so as not to spoil it, but i do recommend it. It’s a nice mix of psychological and supernatural monster. 

The other one I watched was Come Back to me...what a load of garbage that one was. Maybe it suffered from being poorly made, or poorly interpreted from it’s original novel. The idea was set up that it could have been really quite good but like most films of it’s kind, I was sucked in and let down. 

I’m hoping that that will not be the case with Crimson Peak. 

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10/13/15

I actually forgot that I had started this...

Well, hello again technology. 

Currently I’m working on several pieces of artwork and some different pieces of crochet and knitting. 

Excitement!

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See, I am not ready for the day...I'm normally a mess in the morning and this morning is no exception. 

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11/30/14

This morning, I am absolutely not prepared to do anything. It could be that I've come down with a cold, or it might be that I feel asleep in my craft room with all the lights on. I'm not sure but I didn't get up until 10 and I have just, too much to get done today. Okay, maybe it's not that many things but only three sips into my coffee, I'm already overwhelmed. 

A few updates on books/movies of recent. 

I am still working through the Club Dumas, but just in the middle of it I decided I HAD to read The Underminer, this book is worth a read. Sorry, I am not at my most articulate in this moment. Here goes: It is funny and dark and tells the story in a unique way. M and I heard an reading of part of this book on This American Life (it's the episode called "The Allure of the Mean Friend" if you're interested) and I guess I just had to pick it up and I have to say I was glad and a little surprised at the ending. I won't spoil it for anyone. 

Blah!---words, use, no good....

Okay, so, why this book is funny: there were times when I was reading it where I just started laughing and thought "Ugh! You're awful!" and "Oh no...what a dick!!" 

It was the influence and almost omnipresence of this friend that made the story dark. You feel like this person is doing these things on purpose, as though they're feeding on the other's misfortune and you kind of get the idea that despite all of their bragging that they are only holding onto everyone else's success and also that they don't have an identity of their own. It's a little chilling, if you put yourself in the main character's(I refer to the person who is being talked to as the main character, just so you know, not the person who is talking) place and really depressing. 

Anyway, I recommend picking it up.

Oh, you have it and you haven't read it yet? Really? Oh, no,no, it's no big deal. I know, you've got all your little projects going while you're out of work, that new season of that show that you're OBSESSED WITH. I mean that in a good way, not obsessed like you're crazy, more--obsessed like you're a teenaged girl, you know what I mean? No, it's really good to have, something, like that. You feel less alone, like there's someone in your little studio apartment.

Sorry, had to give it a shot. 

Now onto two movies I saw recently. 

The first is Small Apartments--it's worth watching, try it out. The music is great for the film as well and I enjoyed the story. Kinda, funny, kooky and dark. I laughed a lot during this movie and just love that the main character is named Franklin Franklin. Franklin lives in a, you guessed it, small apartment with his dog and next to some interesting neighbors. You get a little bit of their lives but it has mostly to do with Franklin murdering his landlord(as the story progresses you discover what brought about the landlords death) and also his mentally ill brother and his dreams of moving to Switzerland. I will leave it at that and say check it out. 

Okay, the next is one I went to see in the theater, Interstellar. M wanted to go see this movie and I was reluctant because eh...I have a hard time with movies about space exploration. There are some, but mostly I'm just not a huge fan because I tend to find the story telling lacking and that they are utterly predictable. Interstellar however was not what I was expecting. Truthfully I was not expecting anything because I told M I would not bias myself. 

I really enjoyed this film, yes it had the threat of the end of the world, food shortages looming in on the population of earth and then the mystery of the wormhole. I find wormholes fascinating. I also believe in them. Yeah, I know people say they couldn't be real but I am prone to believing in other detentions, the unexplained and the possibility of magic. I just think there are things we cannot explain and there are things we do not yet know about. Really the thing that hooked me was the storyline, it was engaging and held my interest through the space suits and ships and whatnot that I'm usually not too hot on. Also the possibility of finding other worlds interests me and the fact that we probably will have to find a way off this rock someday. 

Okay, that's all for now. I have a full day ahead of me....

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11/13/14

Regarding my previous entry about the Lords of Salem and my hopes and dreams that it would impress me more than the book, sadly I must confess that it did not. And for whatever reason I kept being struck by the desire that it was going to turn out to be a romantic horror-comedy. Not comedy like Scary Movie but a new, dare I say, less silly comedy.

Anyway, what I did end up watching was a wide collection of other horror movies on Netflix. Though I would spend the time reviewing them all I am debating whether a simple pass/fail might suffice. Also I watched so many that I can't really remember all of them. Lame, I know. There was also the possibility of just discussing the top three. Let us instead have a combination. 

To begin, I watched the Carrie remake. I would give this a pass, but mostly because I have only seen the original movie, a few very bad previous remakes and have never read the book. Go ahead and sham me for this, I will accept and understand. Would I watch the movie again, possible. 

Next, I watched the Housemaid (also I remake which I did not know) and was generally pleased with this movie though I would not call it a horror film, more a drama. However I do seem to be a little bit in love with Korean, Japanese, Chinese horror movies, or really movies from those countries in general. I liked the story and I would defiantly give it a pass and say I would watch it again. 

I also watched We Are the Night, again, I enjoyed this. It had a lot of the elements of vampire movies that I really enjoy and I would really recommend this movie. 

Moving on the Maniac--let me just say, Wow. It is a disturbing flick, probably of all these previous titles the scariest of them. I do also recommend this movie

Hm. Well. I suppose it's on to the ones that I did not like. 

First, I Sell the Dead. Merp. Not really my thing. Turned it off. 

I tried Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters and I absolutely turned this off. Just boo on this film. They just talked like they were in a modern era action film which I could almost get past if the story were any good or the acting in anyway passable, alas this was not the case. 

Then I attempted to watch the Devil's Carnival and turned that one off as well...I feel like I might have gotten into it but...eh...it just wasn't grabbing me.

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10/22/14

It's almost Halloween and in this most auspicious occasion I have a film in the queue that should be arriving tomorrow morning, which I am hoping I will enjoy. 

A little background: About a week ago I finished up Rob Zombie's The Lords of Salem and...well lets just say it was better written than I was anticipating and the story held real promise. Having said that I will say that I considered the novel a wash (so sorry Mr. Zombie, I don't mean to be a snob). I found nothing truly terrifying about the book, I didn't find it a blood bath or filled with new and exciting elements of horror and torture. Honestly, I was expecting that, really I was. I thought that I would be as horrified by his prose as I was with Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, which by the way if you haven't given that novel a spin and you want to occasionally throw a book across a room and squeal in terror and disgust I highly recommend. Also if you'd like to have various nightmares involving torture and sexual sadism/masochism and the end of the world then you might want to check out Dennis Cooper, Ugly Man or The Sluts...

I've gone off topic, but mostly to illustrate the fact that maybe I am a bit jaded when it comes to being horrified. And besides, this is about The Lords of Salam is it not?

Anyhow, I will say this about Rob Zombie, he has made some decent movies, some, but I was a fan of White Zombie so I was rooting so hard for every movie of his I ever saw and for the most part I have been sorely disappointed. The book, it self, was slightly disappointing. It just seemed to wash out, almost like "Uh Oh, we've gotten to just over two hundred pages, best kill off everyone and bring this book to some kind of conclusion. Yes, some sort of conclusion that leaves you feeling like the last half of the book's detail is lacking. And then it just sort of ends! Pointlessly! I felt ripped off by the end of this book, like "What the Hell? What...what?" 

And I had so been enjoying where it was going. And that is my disappointment, that the promise was so grand and the end just fizzled out needlessly and on a bland note. 

Blah. That's how I ended up feeling. I was getting ready for something great and ended up with a stupid ending. 

Well anyhow, now I have the movie on it's way. I just recently took a look at the trailer for this movie and watching it I was like "Whoa, this looks like it might be interesting" and possibly better than the book(Could that even be a possibility??)

In the trailers I feel like there is more depth and I hope, hope, hope that I am not going to be disappointed. 

More on that, later. 

Now what have I started next? Well it's nothing other than The Club Dumas and if you don't know what that is, it's the book that The Ninth Gate was based on.  First impressions of the book are that I feel great promise. Second the book in the...book...is called The Nine Doors to the Kingdom of Shadows. Maybe because it is a mystery or has to do with the occult I am thus far very much enjoying this book.

In other film related news I picked up the Subspecies set, so exciting, I do love straight to video 90's vampire flicks so I cannot wait to sit down and gorge myself on them.