WHY!?

I am a smidgeon frustrated today.

For the past week or so, I've been putting off the major cleaning/organizing kick I need to go on to get our apartment clean before my older sister comes to visit this weekend. Well, today, I finally got the impetus to really get started. YAY, right!? The bedrooms are mostly done, and I did the dishes! I could be finished with the rest this evening...

Which is where my problem lies: I have to go to Goodwill this evening, from 4pm to 9pm, to clean up after other people and try to make the monotony pass as quickly as possible. I could call in - and I considered it - but Mark told me not to. Plus, it is my second-to-last shift there, and they'd know I wasn't really sick or anything.

Ugh.

It's not really that big a deal or anything. I mean, I have tomorrow and Thursday and most of Friday to get the rest finished. It's just that I felt like complaining. And I'm at that point where it's really hard for me to give a shit about Goodwill. I owe them nothing anymore, and I'm so close to finished... I keep wanting to flip out at annoying customers because, come on, what are the managers going to do at this point? Fire me?

But no, I have no backbone and too much of that I-don't-want-to-destroy-a-reference-however-shitty-it-may-be thing.

But yes. Just wanted to vent for a moment.

K bai.

Crafty Cravings

I am craving some crafting today. The urge will probably pass before I can afford the fabric and other whatnots required, but today I am dreaming. :)

What brought on the urge was this bag tutorial (I'm just posting pics, not the actual tutorials.)

It's pretty simple and doesn't look all that great when done in plain beige canvas, but imagine it in THIS AWESOMENESS!

Looking at awesome fabric made me go through all the tutorials I've bookmarked, and decide that I also want to attempt this dress, possibly using the fabric above as the bottom part of the dress. (Is that cool, or too weird? Hmm...)

The only thing I've never done before is the ruffles thing, but there's a whole separate tutorial on how to do those, so it's not like I'll be stumbling blindly through the process. (If I do ever actually make the thing.)

The idea of sewing clothes made me search through Burda's pattern catalogue, which made me desperately want to create this vundebar, comfy-looking shirt:

Possibly with this fabric (or the many other cool jersey knit selections I found):

Sooo...yeah. That's all I have to say for now. I just wanted to share my ideas and get some feedback.

So, yeah.

Aftermath

I'm not even going to apologize for not writing in so long, because I have no doubt that I'm not going to post again for a while. Possibly a long while. I'm just lacking in motivation lately, and what little I do have I need to use up on things like laundry and dishes. (Example: I have yet to unpack my suitcase from my trip to MN back in February. Pathetic, oh yes. I am aware.)

Lots - and yet nothing - has been happening around here lately. Ben (the baby currently residing somewhere inside my abdomen) is kicking around a lot, growing nicely, and going to be present in around 4 months. Crazy, right? I'm getting a little nervous. Not so much about the labor itself (I know that's not going to be a bed of roses, yet I'm keeping as optimistic as possible), but about the aftermath I've been hearing of lately. Namely, the (forgive me if I'm somewhat graphic, for those of you who are sensitive of stomach) ridiculous amount of blood and whatever else that will be flooding out of me in the weeks after birth, the bruising, the flabbiness, the (possible) hair loss, sleepless nights, depression...

Hoo boy, they really gloss over those things when you're thinking about getting knocked up. And, once you do succeed in that arena, suddenly everyone is like, "OH BOY! Guess what's going to happen to you! It's not going to be pretty!"

I really shouldn't be freaking out. It's *mostly* temporary, and if it was so horrible that you couldn't get past it, no one would have more than one babby. It's just that element of preparing for the unknown. Postpartum symptoms can vary in intensity and whatnot, and I don't know if I'm going to be one of the unlucky ones or not. I guess I just need to apply that same optimism that's driving away fear of labor to what's going to happen afterward. There's really nothing else to be done about it, because it's going to happen whether I want it to or not.


Other than baby stuff (Ben already has sooooo many clothes! And I have not yet started on baby shower thank you notes. What utter nonsense thank you notes are. Not that I don't believe in thanking people, it's just... bah), I've been in the middle of a job transition lately. I put my two-weeks' notice in at Goodwill last Thursday. Only four more shifts before I'm done with the place.

I've already been working half-days at my new job. It's a small coffee stand located on Mark's Navy base. It pays about the same per hour, but the tips are fairly good. And I get to work by myself most of the time. And my "supervisor" instructed me to bring a book for down time (of which there is quite a bit.) It's not difficult, all stuff I've done at coffee shops before. The hours are a bit early - 6am to 2pm - but it does guarantee that I always have evenings free. Plus, it's only a couple of days a week. And they're not open on weekends. #winning

So, needless to say, I'm rather pleased with the new job.


Writing has been at a dead standstill for quite a while now. It's starting to really bother me, like an itch I can't scratch. It's not that I couldn't write if I wanted to, it's just that I so rarely feel like I have the energy. (Terrible excuse, I know.) Writing requires so much concentration, and I often feel like I struggle to concentrate on the simplest things. (Plus, you know, the thing I mentioned earlier about motivation and whatnot.)

What makes me feel even guiltier lately is that my husband - who dabbles in writing, but has never really professed a desire to be a writer - has been working on a new story idea of his own, and he is so crazy motivated. He spends hours brainstorming and typing up story notes. (Which is not writing, really, but still.) I haven't even been doing that.

Elise and I are supposed to Skype tonight, though, and I'm hoping that, between the two of us, a spark will get us going again.

I know that the story we're working on has the potential to become something really great, it just needs to get frigging written.


But...yeah. That's what's up with me.

Oh, and my older sister is coming to visit in a week and a half! :) So excited!


Oh, and Blogger changed their formatting.

I don't like it.

Just Realized...

I never posted the awesomeness: another commission from the vundebar Anna Stansfield.


The oh-so-devilishly handsome Quinn!

And a portrait.

Rawr! He's so sexy and evil, isn't he?


Note: If you have no idea who I'm talking about, perhaps it's time you read this: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1592954/1/Two_Captains

Kurt Vonnegut's Rules For Writing

Creative Writing 101

Now lend me your ears.  Here is Creative Writing 101:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist.  No matter sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person.  If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible.  To heck with suspense.  Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Elise and I definitely followed number 6. And often.