Not the girl next door...

I really didn't intend to take a five-year break from posting, but since I've never been the most reliable poster, it's not really a surprise if no one is still subscribed here besides me.

I was listening to Keira Marcos' radio show today while spinning on my new Lendrum Saxony wheel (the reason for our trip to Pennsylvania this week), and she was discussing the whole Livejournal server move to Russia thing. Having Russia involved in our elections is out of my control, but I agree that I don't want Russia involved in my own journal. So my LJ account has been deleted, and when I can be arsed to remember this account, I'll be posting here again.

Where have I been? Mostly Ravelry and AO3. I've resisted the black-hole time suck of Pinterest so far, but I fear it's a matter of time as long as all the interesting Google results keep going there. Still no Facebook, and my Twitter feed is mostly for raising my blood pressure (and because my employer has a rather strict social media policy; if it has my name on it, I don't tend to post to it.)

So I'm still spinning, still knitting, still baking bread. I miss writing, but it seems like the words just aren't there anymore. It's like a missing tooth; I keep poking the space with my tongue because even though it doesn't hurt anymore and I can still go about the business of living, the empty space is still there.

A lot has changed in five years, a lot has remained the same. Same house, same husband, same job. Different office, different country, different government. Lost one cat, adopted two more. Totaled one car, replaced two more. Sold one spinning wheel, bought two more. (We won't go into the yarn purchases.)

I think that's enough for now.

So I spent Wednesday afternoon of my staycation getting my annual mammogram, just like I have for the past four years. No sweat, just fifteen minutes of contorting myself and getting squeezed to the edge of pain. I then went home secure in the knowledge that I'll get a card in a week or so saying that everything is clear, just like the four times before.

Except.

I got a phone call this morning from my OBGYN's office. There's a nodule on the right breast, and the radiologist wants either more pictures and/or access to my past mammograms to see if it showed up there too. I took a deep breath and told the nurse that the last three have all been at that hospital and they should have them on file. She made sure to tell me that nodules come and go, and it might not mean anything.

Yeah. That's not really working for me.

She called back this afternoon; evidently the radiologist wants to see any images prior to 2009. I had one done at an outpatient imaging center, so they're going to request that one and see if the radiologist still wants more images and an ultrasound.

So not only do I have to worry about my $2,400 insurance deductible, my weekend is pretty much shot to hell until I hear back on Monday.

After shivering my way from the parking garage at work this morning, a cup of hot tea sounded like an excellent start to my day. While I was waiting for the coffee machine to trickle hot water in my cup, our HR guy came in to get a glass of ice water (we have a separate little machine that does nothing but make ice and cold water, and dispense it into your cup). He got the ice, but no water. No water in the breakroom sink either.

I suggested that he try the water fountains on the other side of the building and headed back to my desk. I have good tea bags in my desk drawer, because something about the water at work makes Lipton taste like crayon water. As I approached the windows by my cubicle, I glanced out and saw water sparkling. Huh, I thought. The road by the building really looks wet, but it stopped raining at eight last night.

We're five stories up, but there are several very tall oak trees and a de-construction area between us and the street outside, where the company is tearing down a bunch of one-story buildings to make way for a green area. I moved to the right, my attention caught by the large area of standing water in the field across the street where I knew there were no water features the day before. And then I saw the water fountaining up at the corner and flooding a foot deep across the road. Yep, water main break.

Several things in a business office besides human beings need water to work properly.  Like toilets. And sinks. And coffee machines. In a six-story building full of people with no access to caffeine or working bathroom facilities. This was going to get ugly fast. I grabbed the chance to use the restroom while there were still a couple clean toilets, since I had a big bottle of hand sanitizer at my desk. So what do I do when I'm done? Walk over, stick my hand under the soap dispenser for a good squirt, then stick my hands under the hands-free faucet. Yep.

Idiot.  It must be the same ingrained habit that makes people flip light switches on when the power is out. I toweled the soap off my hands as best I could, then used copious amounts of hand sanitizer to get the rest off so I could work. Because of course, they wouldn't send us home for something like this.

Two hours in and water is still pouring onto the street, but several trucks from the water utility have arrived. I'm starting to plan my lunch around a place with decent bathrooms, when our Coordinator comes by to ask a question. He is completely amazed when I tell him about the water issue; he hadn't noticed. (To be fair, he's allergic to caffeine, so he doesn't drink coffee or tea.) It's working fine, he says, then looks out my window where the utility workers have started to flush the main out through the fire hydrants.

As soon as he walked away I made a beeline for the bathroom. Ah, relief.

Strange how we can get dependent on such a relative luxury as running water. When I was fifteen, we spent the winter in an old farmhouse with frozen pipes. My mom and I carried five-gallon buckets of water from the well pump into the house all winter long until the spring thaw. Way to develop an appreciation for doing dishes and taking a bath without the extra step of hauling February-cold water and heating it on the stove. Someone said once that civilization is only three meals away from breakdown. I'd have to add that it's also about three toilet flushes away as well.

So my husband does not have Restless Leg Syndrome. It doesn't wake him in the night with the burning urge to get up and move. No, he has the oh-so-fun Periodic Limb Movement Syndrome. Which means he can sleep right through kicking me every five seconds all night long.

I am a bit sleep-deprived right now.

Last night was another all-nighter; I actually tried sleeping on the couch from 2:30 to 5:30 this morning (when he came in to apologize and woke me up about fifteen minutes after I got to sleep). This following another night where CPAP mask issues made it sound like the Arctic Breeze was blowing through our bedroom all night long.

Funny how sleep-deprived and three shots of Jack feel a lot alike. I am so far beyond safe to drive, so I am again working from home this afternoon and praying that my putative "boss" is understanding that I'm doing the best I can to make sure everything is taken care of regardless of how crappy I feel.

I am just waiting for my doctor's visit next week, when she's going to lecture me again about getting more sleep.

So Livejournal is currently down under another DOS attack; I might get to bed on time tonight after all. Unfortunately this means I won't get my H5-0 fic fix, since I just got home from Knit Night. Fucking hackers, ruining things for everybody...

Speaking of hackers, the Epsilon security breach has pushed me one more step toward ignoring email completely. No, I'm not going to click on your handy in-message link. I don't care if you say you're from the IRS, my insurance provider, my bank, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I don't care if you know my name or not. If I hover over your link and it says anything ending with two letters as the domain name, I will click my flaming "Junk" icon. I've used these guidelines for years. And given the current state of private information "security" at most companies, I think I'm well within my rights to just assume all email is spam phishing trash by default.

By the way? Sending me emails saying I have notifications on a social platform that I do not use is kind of stupid. But then, I've been getting Viagra spam for years, and I still don't have a penis.

Today it has been NINETY DEGREES AND SUNNY. It is APRIL in the Midwest, y'all. However, Mother Nature will smite us at 3AM tonight with a huge thunderstorm (bonus possible tornadoes), so I guess it all evens out. (Yay WeatherChannel Hour by Hour.)

There has been much sadness here (lost another member of my family, quite unexpectedly). In self-preservation, I have evidently fixated on the new Hawaii Five-0. I am writing again (three fics in various stages of completion).

In the process of researching something for an in-progress story, I came home Friday and wore out the TiVo on the second scene of Mana'o, where Danny is trying to find Grace's Dolphin Trainer Barbie.

(Small back history: I admit that I have a "type", and the "type" is definitely the tall, dark and handsome end of the spectrum. Adrian Paul. Leonard Nimoy. Paul Gross. Joe Flanigan. Alex O'Loughlin. Cue the cliche "Love is blind", because my husband is blond. The universe loves irony.)

That said...Oh my dear FSM, Scott Caan is seriously beautiful in this scene. The morning light, the golden blond hair, the reassuring daddy face. The very broad shoulders in the very tight dress shirt. I wish I had the ability to screencap, because I really need an icon of this.

And sheafrotherdon was kind enough to post this Scott Caan picspam, and now I want to knit him socks. Really loud socks, because he has the moxie to carry them off. Crap. And a scarf, because from the pictures he really likes scarves. *headdesk* *headdesk*

Maybe it's for the best that I'll likely never have the money to vacation in Hawai'i.

What happens when you mainline Hawaii Five-O fanfic (the entire AO3 archive) with a simultaneous intro to Firefly, with pre-existing addiction to Leverage?

You start developing your own original fic.

Well, at least you do if you're a glutton for punishment. I'm having hell trying to name my main character in a way that doesn't crib off any of the other hundred fandoms I'm in. No Stephens, no Nates, no Jims (Sentinel, and doesn't really fit the character). I've since expanded that to no names to anyone I'm related with, dislike, or who was cruel to me as a child. That narrows down the choices more than you'd think. I had settled on Tyler, but the nickname is too close to one of the nephews. Plus, I really don't think Tyler is going to fit the character. I can see this character, hear his voice, and I have no idea what his name is.

On the other hand, I have one character that I want to rename, because I keep typing his name wrong. So I researched a good Irish name for him, came up with Kieran, and breathed a sigh of relief. Only to be informed rather firmly that his name is Micah (aargh, just mistyped it again), and I should just learn to deal.

I love fanfic. I love reading it. I love writing it (when I'm able). But I'm starting to see that writing fanfic is sort of like making Hamburger Helper. All the ingredients are already there in the box, waiting for you to cook it. Worldbuilding for original fic is like cooking from scratch with an entire grocery store's worth of options. Both have their place, and both have their challenges. Trying to come up with an original plotline in a well-established fandom is difficult, and so is creating a cohesive story from infinite options. Especially when you're trying not to copy from so many different fandoms at once.

We've had medical emergencies over the weekend; my mom's been in the ICU since Wednesday night with viral pneumonia/influenza and a possible heart attack. So the weekend mostly involved a lot of driving across the rivers to visit her. So in order to catch up, you get a Three for One post today.

Sunday's family story:

When M had his heart attack almost two years ago, my mom came to stay with me. It was good to have the company, but given her mobility issues, it made the logistics of getting back and forth to the hospital a bit difficult. My big, burly Maine Coon cat (who hates all other living creatures other than me) didn't even wait for her to get in the house before he ran downstairs to hide.

After three days and nights, I guess he got desperate enough for cuddles that he decided to brave the upstairs filled with interlopers (all one of them). I told Mom if she didn't talk to him and didn't look at him, he might come closer. He not only came closer, he even let me pick him up and put him between us on the couch. Mom and I just kept watching TV and trying to wind down enough to sleep for a few hours. Eventually, he even let her scratch his head. It was the first time since we got him twelve years ago that he voluntarily let someone other than me or Michael touch him. Maybe he knew that I needed the cuddle that night even more than he did.

Monday Review:

Between work and Mom, we're just happy everyone's still here and the house is still standing. Deadlines got met, I got to take off my first Martin Luther King Day since high school, and I taught a friend how to spin on her Christmas wheel.

This week is another filled with work deadlines, crappy weather and calls to check on Mom. I'm setting my sights low; I'd like to get in a 20-minute walk twice this week, get the litterboxes cleaned most nights, and either blog or Tweet once a day. And if I can fit a little spinning and reading in there, I'll be happy.

Ten on Tuesday:

This week, Carole has Ten Favorite Games From Your Childhood. I had to think hard about this; I didn't have other kids to play games with most of the time when I was young. I had a lot of Barbies and a good imagination instead.

1. Jacks. In grade school, there was always a new popular game each year. This was the popular game in third grade.
2. Simon. I didn't have my own game, but one of my friends did. All the lights and beeps -- it was like Close Encounter of the Third Kind in your living room.
3. Uno. Our family could play this for hours.
4. Pitfall, the old Atari version.
5. Chinese Checkers.
6. Clue, when there were enough people around to make it worthwhile.
7. Solitaire. I was an only child until I was fifteen.
8. The Pole Position game at Pantera's Pizza. Our parents sunk a tidy sum of quarters every Saturday night to get me and John away from the table so the grownups could talk while we played. The only other choice was Galaga, which  just wasn't as much fun.
9. Life or Monopoly. Again, a lot more fun if you had at least three people.
10. Rummy, Gin or regular.

Wow, on the surface I had a pretty boring childhood. I had to stretch to get ten.

Three Rants for Thursday:

1. Stupid people who leave guns where kids can reach them. A three-year-old in North St. Louis shot himself in the head today, because his parents didn't put their gun out of reach. It's not like he dug it out of a top dresser drawer, or opened a gun safe. Why not just leave a butcher knife on the coffee table, and maybe some bare electrical wire in his Legos? This was 100% preventable, just by giving a damn and thinking about your kids.
2. So-called "Christians" who picket military funerals, little girls' funerals, and anywhere else they can get on camera. I hope the next place they plan to picket reacts the way my home town did. How dare they use the pain and grief of the bereaved families just to get a little airtime for their bigoted agenda? Kudos to everyone who showed up in the cold, 500 strong, to support the family and stand between them and those small-souled hate mongers.
3. Politicians. I have maintained for years that anyone who actually wants to run for office should automatically be disqualified, because so few really want to do it to serve people. The liberals are attacking Palin over the shooting in Tucson (rightly or wrongly, I won't argue); Palin whines about unfair media (again), and the tension and combativeness that got a nine-year-old girl gunned down in a Safeway parking lot just goes on building. At this point, I'd be willing to bet that most Americans don't give a damn about who started this un-civil war of words. We just want it to stop, and for our elected representatives to start doing the jobs they were hired to do. And since they seem to need a reminder, that job is to SERVE YOUR CONSTITUENCY. Not your own re-election, or your own wallet, or your old-boys-network buddies, or your struggling reality show.

Whew. See what happens when I let myself watch the news when I get home?