Dear Diary

A 3743-post collection

I'm 44

...and everything's gone to shit. I got rejected by yet another agent, the birthday card from MeMum hasn't arrived yet (three raspberries for the Aussie postal service), and the careful timing of this morning did not account for Beloved dragging their feet until such time that I have to do my blogging on the road. Huzzah.

Thank providence for laptops, mobile hotspots, and USB car charger ports. Otherwise, I would be supremely miffed at my Beloved.

All going well, I will achieve some kind of inertia combatting protocol, because Beloved is not a morning person. I'm not a morning person, either, but I had to learn how to deal. Now it's their turn. Cue evil laugh.

Today, miss Chaos is headed up to her mental health appointment. Good for Chaos, bad for my phone plan. And today, I'm turning 44. What I really want from my dear readers is: (a) lots of prompts (b) lots of reblogs, and (c) some rave reviews.

When I get back home from Buggeritsalongwayoff, you will all be receiving a brand new free short story. A combination of thanks for sticking with me for so long, my birthday celebrations, and a little dash of All Hallow's Read.

It's kind of annoying that my best 'sellers' are the things I give away for nothing. I hope that the free stuff encourages curiosity about the rest of my stuff, but so far, it's not that great a sales tactic.

Ah well, at least I'm averaging one sale of The Amity Incident per week. That's better than nothing.

And tomorrow, when I have the time to fart around, I will be flinging Kung Fu Zombies at yet another agent. And chasing my beta-readers to get back to me about Adapting because I'm nearing the halfway mark with Beauties and the Beastly.

...And continuing the gradual and complete unfucking of the entire dang house...

Lots to do. I'll get there, though.

Swag Day!

Celebrations are done and I have yet to scoop up the wrapping paper. But this year was a decent haul.

Beloved gift-wrapped the meds I sent them to get and the pegs I asked for. Sneaky sod. But I also got some sweet tech out of the deal.

  • A shower speaker that I can blue-tooth link to my phone and blast Steam Powered Giraffe whilst I lather up.
  • A bluetooth radio deelie that I can also link with my phone and have
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...party?

My birthday is this Tuesday, so we're having a little mini-party today. Cake, family, and presents. Nothing huge, hugely expensive, or extravagant.

I still count that trip to Tucson in March as a late-Christmas/early-birthday present combo. That was a budgetary blowout of epic proportions. Therefore anything extra today is a blessing.

Beloved has promised me something I will enjoy but they will probably regret. I have to confess to being interested in seeing what the heck it is. And then try

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Merry October

It's the first of October and I've yet to isolate anything for Chaos' costume, this year. She wants to be her gemsona, sweet child.

That means a wee bit of running around for things. Including the figuring out of how to do the gem on the cheap. Green leggings and arm things. The more skin I cover with fabric, the less I have to cover with makeup. Even when I know where to get some good stuff on the cheap? It's just

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Achievement Unlocked

The plastics cupboard has had all its non-essential and extra-cluttering items removed! Hooray. Now, if we should ever need more than three large or medium Systema sealing articles, we can toddle up to the shed and fetch them. I mean, we have HUGE amounts of plastic containers.

Now, we need no more.

Still on the agenda is the pots cupboard and the gizmos cupboard. The least-use doohickeys will head shed-wards, but the other stuff for pots and pans might be an issue

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Slow starts, low batteries, and recreated inconvenience

Yes, I've stopped using Steam Powered Giraffe lyrics. Well spotted, you.

SPG has helped me cope with a lot of things, and now 'grief' can join that number. I'll try to tone it down from now on. I can be... kind of annoying on the topic of my favourite band.

As you might expect, grief comes with a seemingly endless patch of personal recharge issues. Low batteries, in this case, are mine. Few spoons to drag myself through the day.

And since

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Why'd you have to go?

There is a shady patch underneath a banksia plant. There, a cat lies at peace. She used to hang out there when she was alive, trying to hypnotise the birds down so she could 'play' with them. It's the best place for her to rest, now.

Beloved and Mayhem were kind enough to squirrel away the feline accessories so I wouldn't have to. And I thank them for that mercy.

I'm still sad about it. I expect to be randomly crying about

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'Twas nice to know you

She gave us a scare, yesterday. Life with a cat wouldn't be life with a cat if they didn't give you the absolute horrors for their continued well-being at least once a week. After a month of generally sitting around and not doing very much, Shellebelle decided to wander off for a majority of the day.

Naturally, I feared that I'd never find her again. Mayhem and I took to wandering around the house and yard, trying to spot her. Trying to

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Hello, Goodbye...

Of all the unfair things that this world gives us, it's the fact that our pets don't live as long as we do.

I spent my bedtime last night crying and shaking because I know that my cat has to die. She is not the happiest of campers and spends too much time just staying very still. She'll eat chicken hearts with gusto, but that seems to be all the gusto that she has left.

She can't clean herself. She's taken to

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Maintaining progress

I have my little darlings coming back today. We've successfully minimised all the kitchen drawers, as well as the crockery and glass cupboards. We still have to move all the spare glasses to an OOSOOM1 location.

In my list: minimising the gadgets cupboard, minimising the plastics cupboard, and minimising the pots cupboard. All whilst keeping the floors swept, the remaining dishes clean, and general debris from returning to the household.

NOT helped by the fact that we keep getting Lootcrates, and

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Your fave is human

There's been some... noise... on Tumblr lately, concerning my favourite band and... well. It's not good noise.

Steve Negrete, the band's sound engineer, made some regrettable choices in regards to how he treated a few younger fans. As far as touching them goes, he kissed one or more fans who were on the very cusp of the age of consent, without getting their permission. I know not where the kisses went.

This has been magnified into rumours of Mr Negrete being a

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To the dumps!

Fret not, dear readers, I am emotionally fine. What's happening today is that I am hauling a veritable mountain of accumulated detritus out to the local dump.

I will be counting car-loads. My nifty little TARDIS car does have a carrying capacity, despite all my insistence that its volume is infinite. AND I will be doing this after my writing is done.

I'm still in the process of evicting extraneous plates and cups. I've yet to get around to evicting extraneous glass,

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Embuggerances

I can't do half of the stuff I need to do, at least before noon-ish, because this harness necessitates staying away from large amounts of water, transmitting equipment, microwaves, or my induction cooktop.

Further bad news - even though my Scooba floor-mopping robot has been restored to the point where it can take a charge, it won't go anywhere or clean any floors because it keeps thinking that it's clean water tank is empty. Also, it doesn't seem to be able to

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Here I actually go...

Friendo had an emergency to get back to, so now I'm unfucking on my own. And sending my friendo documentary pix of the progress that I'm (very) slowly making.

It's raining, so all the laundry has to go through the dryer, and Beloved doesn't want to work or go walking because gutsache because meds. But I am doing good! I am making progress.

I put another load of dishwashing in and, whilst I was at it, unfucked the crockery cupboard by evicting

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Ow, and more ow to come

Yesterday was a marathon. It involved cleaning the kids' morass of mess up so that their rooms would once again be live-able.

My back hurt so bad that it was hard to get to sleep. Or stay asleep

And now I have more of the same with an embuggerance in the middle. Because the nice ppl at QML managed to double-book my harness appointment and it's either travel to Tullagawoopwoop for one they have elsewhere, or get another appointment to see IF

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