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It’s been a while since I’ve written here. I suppose that in general I haven’t felt that much day to day was blog worthy. But I suppose a quick recap of all the little things that have transpired wouldn’t hurt anything. And perhaps it would help justify keeping this blog up.

Summer finally set in and that was my cue to hibernate.  I dislike the heat.  When I was a kid I would play outside and thrived in the humid sub-tropical summers of the Gulf Coast.  But after moving back to southern Oregon and slowly becoming a technical adult I have experienced a growing aversion to heat and, well, sunlight.  And it is a hellishly hot summer here.

You wouldn’t think that the Pacific Northwest could be insanely hot, but temperatures over 100 degrees are not unexpected during the summers here in the Rogue Valley.  They aren’t the norm, but I tend to think August isn’t complete here until you feel like your blood is boiling by stepping outside.

Since I prefer rain, darkness and cooler weather it shouldn’t be a shock that I prefer to completely sleep away the summers here.

I’m eager for autumn to set in. We had are only summer storm not long back and I ran out into the rain like a giddy child… or a dirty hippie.  take your pick.  And I can’t wait until the weather cools and the wet autumn weather washes the dust off the trees.  I want to slip on my peacoat and hiking books and trek through my muddy property.

Also with the arrival of autumn comes my trip east to visit my friend and fellow displaced Washingtonian, Crystal.  I’m super excited for this trip because not only do I get to see Crystal for the first time in years, but we are going to go to a Muse concert. A FUCKING MUSE CONCERT!  yeah, that was excitement.  I mean, I can’t tell you how stoked I am about this.  We have what look like really good seats too. *dances*

I’ve also managed to allow my wrists to get disturbingly weak.  I’ve had tendinitis act up which has put a serious cramp on my knitting/crocheting and my recreational writing.  I write so much that one might suggest that I have hypergraphia.  So now I’m creatively stifled on two fronts.  And it is frustrating as hell.  I’m thinking about buying one of those gyro balls to do some rehab on my wrists with.  If the Local Musician’s Friend has them in stock in their store then I won’t have to bother with online shopping.

Apart from being unable to write nearly as much as I’d like to, I also have to put several projects on the back burner.  One such project, which I am anxious to get back to, is a Cthulhu knitted ski mask.  This mask is going to be epic.  And I feel really bad about not having it done already for Peter, who requested it.

I also managed to drop my iPod Touch on the hard porcelain tiled bathroom floor and crack the screen.

I was a twitchy mess the entire time I was waiting for repair parts to arrive in the mail.  Thank you Peter for buying them for me .  And I nearly had a nervous breakdown at every possible thing that could go wrong actually going wrong during the repair process.  Thank you Peter for calming me down. lol

Whilst my “Touchy” was out of commision and I was unable to knit, I sewed a monkey cozy for it.  Talk about fixation.

I’ve officially lost 25 lbs since going vegan.  All while still remaining an inactive slob.  I’d say that is a very strange kind of success.

I’ve started ANOTHER blog.  This one is linked up in the top nav under “Vamp Lit.”  The sole purpose of this blog is for me to rant about the vampire books I’m reading.  It’s a good outlet for my bitchier tendencies.  It’s nothing but snarky spoilers.  But you should read it anyways.  Think of it like Cliff Notes for assholes.

My father is also a menace on wheels.  And as much as I hate the idea of driving, that deadline for getting my license is swiftly approaching.  The thought of driving scares me to death.  but the alternatives are not pleasant either.  Pray for me.  I don’t believe in your god, but I believe in the power of cake.  and sometimes I believe in the power of positive thinking.  But I believe in the power of cake more.  I’m just saying.

I know there is more I haven’t mentioned but I’m tired of typing.  I have laundry to do.

I’m sitting here in my cave-like bedroom with a cat curled up next to me and the window slightly open so that I can catch to occasional scent of rain. The weather lately has been extremely cool and wet. And although nearly every day is overcast it is in no way gloomy. Of course, I am a little biased. When the sun comes out I run inside and close the blinds.

I’m sitting on my bed. This is something I would advise against making a habit of. You’ll ruin your bed. That is, of course, unless you have a really fancy super duper nice expensive resilient bed. I have never had one of those, so I just keep ruining mine. Because without fail I sit in the exact same spot all the time. Bed’s aren’t designed for such constant wear and tear.

No, I’m not one of those bed-bound people, unable to leave the house. I am a cat.

Years of remarking how wonderful it must be to be a housecat have magically transformed me into one. Not literally, and no, I’m not like those “otherkin” people. *shiver* I do not have the soul of a cat, unless you count my collection of cat souls that I keep in jars on my bookshelf. No, I mean my lifestyle does not differ much from a housecat. A fat housecat that has no interest in chasing bugs, real or imaginary.

I am sure that there are people out there who would read this and think that it must be a very depressing life to just eat and then nap away most of the day. But I can assure you that it is in no way depressing. Sure, there are a lot of things out there that I am not doing. And, yes, life is short. But it’s raining and I just ate and my dreams are so compelling. *yawn* and *yawn* tomorrow is another *stretch* day.

I will admit it. I go from indifferent to obsession rather quickly. It’s the rush of falling in love with something new that gets me every time. So when I got the email update from Muse.mu that they would be releasing a new song on May 17th, I immediately went to their website to preorder it. A shipping glitch made the initial shopping cart add up to just under 11 GBP so I cleared my cart and checked to see if iTunes had it for preorder. Of course, I had no such luck. But if you are stalking me on twitter then you know that not only did I manage to narrowly preorder it the day before it’s release (Muse.mu fixed their shipping glitch), but I also spent the majority of yesterday obsessing over it.

Neutron Star Collision (Love is Forever) is a new song by Muse contributed exclusively to the new Twilight Saga movie Eclipse. But there is a lot of hate from Muse fans because of its connection to the new Twilight movie. Search for any Muse video on Youtube and you will see countless comments from these fans bashing Muse’s appearance in the Twilight soundtracks and begrudging their favorite band the extra attention that they are getting in the states via the obsession of Twi-tards.

I get it. I do. I’ve loved bands from their intimate foundings and witnessed them go from little clubs to the stadium shows. I know the jealousy over your band being embraced by the masses. But having loved a musician I learned early on not to join the hate-race. If you love the band, love their success. If you don’t like the direction a band is taking, that is on you. You aren’t the band.

Some time back Sting joined up with a classically trained Lutenist (is there any other kind?) and did a series of concerts in Baroque-styled music and variations of some of his existing work. A pair of radio jock went to his concert and reported back on their show how horrible the concert was. It was as if these men (and their working man demographic) think that Sting should still be “and the Police”. Nearly 30 years of career exploration and musical evolution don’t matter to most fans. They heard something they liked and they want their artist or band to do variations of that same thing for the rest of their lives.

I personally have been a Sting fan all my life. I haven’t liked all his songs, but I respect him as an artist and am excited for him that he continues to feel creative and inspired to do new or different things. And, yeah, I am an elitist in thinking this makes me a better fan than most of you. And I suppose that was a long way to go simply to tell crybaby Muse fans to grow the fuck up.

On to the actual song…

Neutron Star Collision (Love is Forever) is pure cheeseball in that really good “I’ll gladly deal with the lactose intolerance tomorrow if I can eat this all day today” kind of way. Most of the fans in their on-site forum seemed to have either unrealistically high expectations or undisguised loathing for the song well before ever hearing it. I personally fell in the middle of the road. My excitement was for the product more than the song. I just wanted to show my love by ordering it legitimately. And yeah, I’m going to admit to a little hesitation over a song that is getting a lot of press as “written for Eclipse”. But I tried no to get too worked up over it until it was time for the release.

Upon first listen I think I actually groaned. But halfway through the song I was wiggling in my seat. So when I played Neutron Star Collision through a second time I was already in a good mood from the end of it that it created an overflow of happiness that compensated for what I felt upon initially hearing the song. It kind of sweeps you up in that really fun indulgent energizing way that recent Muse songs have a way with. And as I tweeted yesterday without shame, my iTunes play count for NSC reached 100 that afternoon. I told you. I do obsession well.

Neutron Star Collision is not my favorite Muse song. I don’t even rank it with the best. But it is fun to listen to and that’s all I can really ask for. It’s not as though Muse “sold out” to write a song exclusively for the new Twilight movie that was a complete departure from their own sense of style. So I really wish the fans (she continues to type with mental sarcasm) would just shut up with the whining already.

Not that it should matter, but it does. We are a voyeuristic creature. We want to know the story of a song. Musers, and the public at large, seem to think that NSC is about Twilight. The cheesey lyrics certainly echo the sentiments of the characters. But they also echo the sentiments of every fucking person who finds themselves falling deeply in love. And that is what the song is about.

Just months after the breakup with a very long-time girlfriend, Matthew Bellamy wrote this song that captured that state of inevitable ultimate love that develops at the start of a relationship. If that doesn’t tug at your fucking heartstrings then you are dead. The very definite language of this song in reflection upon an ended relationship makes the power of this poppy anthem just drip with profound melancholy.

I love Neutron Star Collision (Love is Forever). And if goofy looking Matt Bellamy wrote this pwoper love anthem for me I would have litters of his kittens.. and probably eat them. I’m sick like that.

Last night I was in bed writing writing writing. Writing about what? Thtat is none of your business. Anyway, I’m in bed typing away and I notice the sound of the rain beating down heavily on the metal roof. I don’t know how long it had been raining. I had been listening to music on my much loved iPod with my tiny squishy earphones crammed deeply into my ear canal, insuring a high probability of hearing loss. And it was during a long pause that I had yet to edit from a “hidden track” that I took notice of the rain.
I sat in my bed, amused with the thought of how tomorrow might play out. My father would be irritated with the mud, cleaning up after the dogs and the general decrease intemperature. But when I finally shut down the computer in favor of sleep I did so with a smile.
I pulled my sheets up snuggly under my chin, setting my heating blanket to it’s lowest setting and prayed to the almighty cake in the sky-oven that the rain would continue on after I awoke.
When I woke up at two pm today I was certain I would be greeted with dismal sunlight. And from the cave-like confines of my heavily curtained bedroom I had no way of immediately knowing for sure. I set down my stairwell and my eyes turned up to the window set above the first landing. Through my window I could not see ground, only sky. But this sky was a beautiful grey. And the window itself was still streaked from a recent rainfall.
You may not be familiar with what a beautiful grey sky looks like or be equally dumbfounded by my referring to a sunny day as being dismal. And if this is the case then I have to find myself wondering what you are doing reading my blog.
When I opened my front door I was greeted by a sight that will always make me smile. The forest around me was lush. The moss clinging thickly to the oaks were heavy with rain and green beyond imagining. The higher elevation mountain tops around me were (and still are) thick with fog. From a lower elevation and more distant vantage point you would say the clouds were low in the mountains. But when you are an easy walking distance to where the clouds meet the earth they cease to be clouds and take on the more terrestrial moniker of “fog”.
The air had a chill in it that wasn’t unpleasant and the whole world seemed hushed. The dirt that settles on everything when you live on a dirt road was washed away. And the forest floor ws vibrant with unrestrained green life.
Even now, as the sun has set and the scenery is awash in a cool blue glow, the world I currently live in is a hundred times more beautiful and infinitly more magical than any sunny day could prove to be.
This is why I must always live in the Pacific Northwest. I’m not built to tolerate the weather anywhere else. And if anything I need to live even further north and west to take advantage of the weather of our temperate rain forest.
Yep. I am not like you.

So I procrastinated.
The Hell,you say!
Yep.  That whole education furthering possible employment thing sort of fell through the cracks.  Well, not so much “cracks” as huge gaping chasms that I navigated towards with purpose.

I’m not certain if I am self-destructive or just lazy.  A smart man would wager on a steadily fluctuating mixture of the two.  And predictably, I am not too terribly upset.  Some people with vacation homes in Crazy Town might beat themselves up.  But being a full time resident I didn’t really expect much else from myself. Instead, I just picked up the Dick Blick catalog and tried to decide what new art or craft I could take up to pointlessly waste another few months with.  In the interim, the new commitment is towards driving.

I’ve gotten to a point with my anxieties that I’m so tired of thinking of them that I’ve reached a kind of auto-pilot of living.  I’m too tired to listen to my inner critic.  She is a raging cunt with control issues.  I’m using this new development in the way my Avoidance issues have manifested to turn the weakness into a skill set.  Right now, I’m more concerned with not thinking about my anxieties than I am with what triggers them. An embarrassing memory used to leave me flushed and running for the nearest hiding spot.   But now when an unwanted thought comes in I yell obscenities at it and think about something else.  Yes, the underlying condition of my craziness is still there, but I’m using my uniquely honed Avoidant Personality to combat  what I feel is the bigger issue.  So what, if I ‘d rather lay around for a week reading than think about the reality of my life.  Being Avoidant is better than  being afraid to try something new.  So now I am going to just trigger an avoidant tick whenever the other more severe crazies kick in and see how that works out for me.  yeah, maybe it would be mentally healthier to not let my crazies battle Thunderdome style in my brain, but it amuses me.

None of this probably makes sense to anyone not in my head.  At least not the way I see it playing out.   But in case you are wondering, there is indeed a Master Blaster.

A week or two back I was housesitting for my aunt and uncle who travel a lot.  Normally, when I do so, I earmark the cash I am to receive for something specific.  This is the way of one with no income.  No penny is left unaccounted for, even if that means I label $10 for miscellaneous purchases.  Well, this time around, my fee was set to cover the cost of a companion fair ticket to Portland with my mother to visit a friend of her’s in Vancouver, Washington.  And this all worked out quite splendedly in my mind until a couple days before leaving I received a call from my bank, Chase.  Chase wanted to alert me to some suspicious activity on my account.  And as a result I am now over $200 overdrawn.  Chase would not have caught that someone in Rhode Island was charging up a storm in my name even though I am in Oregon.  They aren’t that good and they don’t care that much.  They only noticed when my account became overdrawn.  If I lose money they don’t care.  If they lose money it becomes an issue.

allow me to take this moment to express my extreme displeasure at the demise of WAMU & the unwanted presence of Chase in my life.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

Anyway, a chase representative called my house and mangled my given name (which is in no way an obscure name anymore) and then offered to cancel my debit card and send a replacement.  They then told me that when the charges were no longer pending and had cleared to file a claim for fraud to have the charges reversed.  Um, Hello.  You caught the fraud and brought it to MY attention.  Why do I now have to report it as fraud. The person on the phone then told me how long it might take for my new debit card to come in the mail and suggested that should I want access to my funds sooner I could go to a local branch and they could give me a temporary card….  Really?  A temporary card to access my negative account?  thanks.

I left for Portland the very next day with a few borrowed bucks in my wallet, very uncomfortable with the notion of carrying cash again for the first time In several years.  My mother paid our way through most things and I spent the majority of my money on a couple gifts and a whole lot of vegan junk food at Whole Foods.

Being Vegan on an impromptu trip anywhere is difficult.  Without proper planning you are left eating incidentally vegan food and bland food at omni restaurants with your companions.  On the spot, while there, I could have googled a bunch a vegan options, but sorting through them to find something convenient for my host was far too time consuming and stressful since I did not know the neighborhoods.  And since I was in Vancouver, not Portland, there was very little vegan variety.

Yes, we could have gone over the Columbia to eat, but I felt that that would have been an inconvenience for our host, who had not planned on having to drive me all over the northwest looking for food.  SO I more or less just snacked my entire time there and enjoyed the company of lovely ladies while they ate whatever they fancied.

Apart from being defrauded and lacking a proper meal I had a wonderful time.  It was the Chinese new Year.  Metal Tiger. RAWR.  My niece is a tiger.  I love her to death even though Tigers and Sheep/Rams/Goats are supposed to be enemies.  Anyway, after sitting around eating green beans during a whirlwind Dim Sum session at House of Louie, I finally got my way and we went to the Chinese Garden in Chinatown.  The line was loooong and the gardens were small.  The main attraction, of course, being the lion dance and such.  I really couldn’t care.  I just wanted to see the gardens and go have tea and some incidentally vegan vittles at the teahouse.

While the people were packed tightly around the inner ring  of the garden to watch the dancers I made my way through outer paths and rooms to take pictures and enjoy the sites as best I could.  And it was a good thing I did, because the minute the dancers were done, the crowds dispersed and flooded the rest of the gardens.  When I finally found my way to my conpanions they had yet to walk through the entire garden grounds (though THEY had been there before).  And after they had their fill of walking, and after saying I want to have tea a dozen times in the most polite manner I could muster, we FINALLY went over to the tea house… which was now booked with a waiting list of an hour because EVERYONE waited until after the dancers to come in.  My mother and her friends had already had tea there before so they weren’t very put out.

We left the LanSu Gardens and headed across the street to a gift shop where I was tempted to buy a cheaply made, but very pretty Chinese shirt.  But the crowds were really starting to get to me.  As we walked back to our car, they pointed out a couple places where we could have tea, but perhaps for the 6th time after leaving the Tower of Cosmic Reflections (teahouse) I had to remind them that it wan’t so much tea that I wanted, but the atmosphere.

Don’t get me wrong.  I had a good time, but I could have had a better time.  Our time spent anywhere was limited by the ability of my mother to endure lengthy activities and time on her feet, and her friends’ eagerness to move on from something that didn’t hold the initial wonder anymore.  So next time I am going to have to take events into my own hands and set out a list of things I would like to accomplish and things I would like to do.  Then maybe next time I’ll get to have tea, dammit.

Throughout our stay my mother’s asthma got worse and worse.  Eventually, on the morning of the day we were to fly home we had to take her to an urgent care clinic where they gave her a nebulizer treatment and a prescription for a steroid.  She wanted to avoid an ER because she feared being admitted and just wanted to go home.  So instead of any last day activities, we pretty much drove around the remote areas around Vancouver.  My mother fell asleep.  I wanted to too, having gotten just as little sleep as her, but someone had to stay up and talk to her friend who was driving.  Tiring of nothing to do, we got the the airport a little after 1pm.  We made our way to the gate and my mom fell asleep.  I them wandered the airport for the next two hours, bored out of my mind and eager to just be home.

I’m not angry with my mother for having asthma or cutting short everything we did because of it.  I’m angry with myself for not being independent enough to walk a couple blocks down from House of Louie to the Vegetarian House to get something to eat alone.  I am upset I didn’t go straight to the teahouse alone instead of waiting for my party of four to arrive after the crowds had descended on it like locusts.  I’m upset I wandered endlessly through the overhyped Powell’s Books while they had coffee and tea instead of hitting the streets foe more interesting sights.  I willingly shackled myself to events that weren’t really meant for me.  But the one thing I would have changes, is I would have taken my mother to a hotel instead of sleeping in a small apartment with an indoor cat and dog that inflamed her allergies and asthma.

Portland also made me feel fat and lazy.  Which I am.  Despite all the negative though, it was a good experience.  But how to put that in words is beyond me.

At least I walked away from that ugly unwelcoming beast of a book store with a used copy of a vegan cookbook I’d been sort of wanting but never finding in stock.

I asked a friend what he would do different if he had to live his teen years over.  And at first I thought he would reply with the oft repeated though seldom meant answer, “I wouldn’t change a thing.”  But much to my surprise he actually said he would change things.  his answer to this pointless query was that he would apply himself more instead of just skating by.

A weird thing happens to  adults triggered by a combination of regret and an increase in the perception of their own mortality.  They wish that they had taken advantage of the opportunities that were so ample in their youth.  I imagine a lot of people think that if they were to relive their youth there are mistakes that they wouldn’t have made.  They imagine they might have been better athletes, taken better care of their bodies, taken their academics more seriously or what not.  From the perspective of an adult who did none of those things, the opportunity to be able to have the chance to remedy that must be like a mystical cure-all for what ails them in their current life.  But I also imagine that if you are the type to be discontent in your life and wish you could change something, then no matter how you lived (or re-lived) your life you would still feel discontent.

So, what would I change?
Pfft.  Everything, of course.