Ohmigawd I felt craptastic last night!  Fer serials.  I went to bed a little later than I intended to, half because the last Blades of the Rose book is ginormous and half because I haven't been sleeping through the night.  I've been waking up too early and then laying there far too awake and without the umph to get up and out of bed.  In theory it was a good idea, but I was just so sicky feeling and uncomfortable I barely slept.  I meant to take some of that night time cold medicine that knocks you out, but I forgot and then woke up in the early hours too cautious to take any for fear that I wouldn't wake up.

As exciting as it was to wake up with cops, moms, and apartment office people hanging around my bed, it's not an experience I want to relive any time soon!  So I suffered through the night.  This morning I felt icky still, but as the day has gone by I'm feeling better.  I've only supped on two Sucrets, which is a big improvement over the 8 I had yesterday.  Yeah.  8.  I had a timer going to count down the minutes and seconds until I could have another.  Today is infinatley better, made so by copious amounts of warm tea and the thought that tonight - tonight I get soup!

Sometime this weekend I have got to start thinking about Christmas presents.  I'm buying for: mom, dad, sister, niece, grandma, grandmother, and family pick.  Each year on Christmas Eve we all draw one name - someone in the family who we buy one present for.  This way we don't have to buy presents for everyone, and everyone gets two presents on Christmas Eve; one from their family pick, and one from Grandma who runs the Christmas Eve party.

Well.  Lunch is now officially over, I've read through most of it, so I must scuttle off to do work things!

(Aren't you proud that I'm blogging again???)

I have Blink 182's old song, What's my age again?, running through my head, only it's, What's today again?

For some reason I can't keep the days and dates straight in my head.  I don't know if I should blame it on taking so much time off of work and focusing on writing to the exclusion of piddly things like dates and days or if it's something to do with this achy cold I have going on. 

Today for instance; I woke up this morning thinking I didn't have to go to work.  Um, yeah keep dreaming!

I should probably pull out my planner and jot down things with a bit more zeal so I make sure to keep track of this stuff and jog my memory.  So that's it.

Well, everything can't always go according to plan, right?

Sunday was a study in what happens when nothing is planned!  I woke up fairly early and did my annual Birthday Shopping Spree.  This mostly consisted of work appropriate clothing; two pairs of slacks, one pair of jeans, a few shirts, and three pairs of shoes.  All in all, I spent relatively little thanks to good sales.  The shopping has become an almost unintentional tradition.

The afternoon was spent attending the Ft Worth TGIO which was the epitome of last-minute-planning, but I got to eat awesome biscuits and gravey, so who cares?  There was a little crafty shopping and then I went home and watched Dr Who stuff and The Secret of Kells and fought with knitting....

At least until the angry policeman arrived and accused me of listening to bass bust'en hip hop and playing video games way too loud.  Now, I am the first person to admit that I like listening and watching stuff on the loud side, but I wasn't last night.  I didn't really appreciate the angry cop routine since I wasn't doing anything wrong except maybe not having cake.  Yeah, I realized today that there was no cake involved at any point in time over the weekend.  How much suck is that?

This has been a nutty weekend so far.  It's almost 1:30am on Sunday morning and for some reason I'm still awake.  I guess I keep thinking if I hang around long enough something uber cool will happen - but I could be sleeping....

So instead I'm going to blog about this weekend.  Since my friend Suzan and I have back to back birthdays we decided we would do an extended weekend of awesome to celebrate.

Friday night - we went to Pete's Dueling Piano Bar.  Incase you aren't familiar with this, it's a bar with pianos and people who play and sing requests of stuff.  They can play just about anything, as long as they know it, and it's a great time to sing along, drink, dance, whatever.  But of course I can't go anywhere without something happening.  As soon as we got there we had a run in with this guy in a wheelchair who is like haunting the place or something.  He came up to Suzan and I thought she knew him, but aparently he just wanted to tell her she was very pretty.  I almost think he followed us to this corner we staked out for a bit because he wheels up to me and even though I'm singing and watching the act he wheels up and stares at me.  Yes, I know I'm too nice to just tell someone to scamper off, so I get dragged into this very awkward conversation with him.  I'm really not sure if he was really not all there or if he was just using the chair and this almost drunken voice to pick up girls, but it was weird and uncomfortable.  He even stood up (um, so why the wheelchair?) and hugged me.  And tried to pull my clothes around to see my tattoos.  Yeah, wasn't thrilled.

After that experience most of the rest of the night was a lot of fun.  Suz and I got pulled up on stage to do the chicken dance and make fools of ourselves since we were celebrating birthdays.  There was a diminutive older guy who was rather drunk that decided to booty dance at our table - not us, the table.  Pete's also must have a hotness test for the bouncers.  And we did tons of singing.  It was a great night.

Today, Saturday, I had the Dallas TGIO for NaNoWriMo.  It was kinda a train wreck since the planning ML got sick and there was a schedule conflict for the space and we got bumped to another room, but everything worked out.

Tonight we went to a Brahmas hockey game - it's a minor league hockey thing.  The game was loads of fun and we sat right on the glass.  The fights were awesome, the game really good once they got warmed up, and I think we're looking to go more often to those games.

Plans for tomorrow have kinda fallen through, so I'll be winging it on my actual birthday.  I'm thinking shopping and then the Ft Worth TGIO and maybe go see a movie if I can find anyone who is interested.

Okay, going to convince myself that sleep is the best bet right now.

My brother came to visit me yesterday.

Maybe that doesn't sound strange to you, but up until a week ago he was living in Florida.  I knew he was going to be back in Texas - but in Longview, now exactly a distance to just drop by for a chat.  We sat around for like two hours chatting and laughing and talking.  It was really nice, especially after NaNo.  We did talk some shop on books and writing but he's a casual reader only so it was more be gabbing and then moving on to other topics.  It was really cool, and it was nice to not feel harried during a conversation because I need to get back to writing like - RIGHT NOW!

I have yet to make it back to the kitchen to start post-NaNo cooking, but that has more to do with my own laziness than anything else.  I have two awesome steaks thawing right now that will be fantastic when I cook them on Friday, or maybe tonight if we don't do our #writersdatenight celebration meet up.

Sometime this weekend I want to get back on the knitting train.  I need to make one book cozy for a word war winner in Atlanta and then do some work on a scarf I've promised a friend of mine come January for her birthday.  I also want to knit this awesome ereader cozy I found on the Lion's Brand Yarn site.  It calls for crocheted button holes.  I'm hoping I can either ignore that part or hand that bit off to one of my crocheting friends to finish for me.

Last night I did manage to get cleaning done in the apartment.  All my furniture is back where it belongs, but there's still stuff where it doesn't belong and I really need to take out the trash and do this last load of Thanksgiving dishes.  All in all, things are coming together, so it's nice.

At some point I'm going to get down and dirty with the Christmas shopping.  Maybe this weekend I'll head up to Kohls or something and start in seriously.  Or maybe not.  I'm not particularly driven this morning - and now it's time to go to work!

My brain feels like it's mush.  Which means that NaNoWriMo is over!  Yup.  In case you haven't heard, I was an ML for this thing called NaNoWriMo - think like a big club and me being one of the co-presidents.  Anyways, I wrote over 200,000 words in one month.  My brain hurts.  So I've been reading!  It's awesome and makes me happy.

But I really don't want to talk about NaNo.  In fact, I want to talk about anything BUT that.  So - what am I going to do now that NaNo is over with? 

I'm going to blog.
I'm going to read.
I'm going to knit.
I'm going to watch movies.
I'm going to hang out with people.
I'm going to watch hockey.
And much, much more.

Mostly I'm probably going to be reading. I've read one book today, and I'll probably read more of another - and clean.  Dear lord my apartment is a pit of ick.  It wasn't that bad - not until this weekend when I had tons of people over and things just kinda got more and more messy.  I still need to clean up the kitchen and put my living room back in order.  Yup.  Super exciting, huh?  So I'm going to go do that now.

i'm going to cook.

i haven't been cooking because i was lazy, and then i was busy, and now i have nano.  i've been going out to eat mostly, and when i'm not out eating at a write-in, i've been eating left overs or microwave meals.  they're not bad, and honestly probably better than something i would cook, but i feel icky eating all of this food that's been packaged and processed and preserved. 

i'm not sure what i'll cook when nano is over, but it'll probably be something i shouldn't. 

ooooh, i forgot about the steaks in my freezer.  i got them a few weeks ago with the intent to cook them, but then stuff happened and nano started.  i'm thinking a bag of red potatoes, sliced and buttered and baked into tender perfection and steak marinated in something decident.  and then i can cook chicken and fish and everything else and maybe i'll feel like working out again.

heck, maybe i'll have TIME to work out again.

Okay, so hate me if you wanna, but the holiday season has infected me.  For me the holidays start with Halloween - because you get to dress up and it's super fun, and it means that it's time to start NaNoWriMo.  If you don't do NaNoWriMo November is all about Turkey - but if you do NaNoWriMo it's a big deal.  It consumes a large part of your life and is like a license to be certifiably crazy and indulge your creative side.  Of course there's Thanksgiving, my dad's birthday, my birthday, Christmas and New Years.  Yeah, this is kinda a big part of the year where lots of exciting things happen.

I went to Kohls to buy my dad's birthday present on Wednesday and they already have Christmas music playing, trees and decorations everywhere - it's like a big dose of Holiday Spirit.  This morning I wanted to start playing Christmas music but I didn't because I didn't want to get out of bed.  Yeah.

This is going to be a crazy two months, because in addition to all of the above, my dad is having surgery and I'm an ML and all the rest of it that come with it.  Anyways, that's it.  I'm busy writing and doing stuff, so there.

Okay, so I'm reading a certain book where some cheating happens - characters that I have been in literary love with cheated, like wow cheated. I finished the book and was so angry I wanted to punch kittens - and I still do. I'm going to be doing a Book-Addicts.com blog about emotionally charged reactions to books, but stemming from this book I've had a few conversations and an eye opening situation happen. So I thought I'd tackle my thoughts on emotional infidelity.

Cheating. I hate cheaters. There's a lot in the world I'm willing to forgive - cheating is something very difficult for me to forgive. It's a complete stripping of trust, no matter if it's someone I'm dating or if my best friend’s boyfriend cheats on her or if I'm best friends with the cheater; to me it says something about their character and as a default - I become wary of trust. There are always extraneous situations, and I won't even begin to claim that I react this way to every situation, but there is always a moment when I utterly question the trust and faith I have in that person.

So what is cheating? What's your definition of cheating? Is cheating a physical action? Or are thoughts enough? Would stolen time or warm-fuzzy-feelings for someone else constitute cheating?

There are a lot of options to consider when labeling someone a cheater. The most obvious is the physical act of cheating on a significant other. You can't deny what happened, maybe the circumstances, but the act happened. But what about emotional infidelity? Cheating that happens in the mind and heart; is that wrong?

I can't help but think about that infamous SmartBitches post recently where a boyfriend questioned his girlfriend’s stash of romance books. The blog is about another avenue, but it proves a point; some people will claim that romance books and porn are cheating because the mind and emotions are elsewhere, not on the significant other. There are people who ascribe to the ideology that thinking about another woman with interest of any sort - is cheating.

That's an extreme side - I sort of wanted to point out the obvious and the extreme, so now I'll hit the middle road which is where most of my questions and thoughts are centered.

In high school I often found myself in the role of "the best friend" the "girl who was one of the guys". Do you know how much that sucks? Thank GOD I woke up and got out of that rut when I hit college; yes, I had guy friends but I was no longer friends with them for the wrong reasons, and I didn't allow them to think of me as one of the guys unless that was the friendship I wanted. Unrequited love is brutal.

You know why I think a lot of those guys considered me part of their "best friend" tribe back then? Because looking back there was something missing with their significant other that I provided. It was high school and most of it was dumb, but it's the illustration I have on hand at the moment. The boys physically dated someone else, but when they wanted to talk about stuff or go do stupid stuff their girlfriends wouldn't do - they called me. And silly me went along with it because one day they'd wake up and realize just how awesome I was. (They never did, and I probably wasn't all that awesome if that was how I was pining after them.)

Later on in life, I found myself in a very odd love-square. I was friends with people who were dating other people, heck - I was dating someone else, and yet emotionally I connected on a level with someone who was not my boyfriend to such a degree that I knew it was wrong to be dating one person but harboring feelings for another.

Feelings happen. We're going to feel things for people who are not our significant other; it's how you handle it that matters. But is there a line of right and wrong? How do you know where that is? You can't really tick off emotional boxes looking at someone - only the person feeling can do that and even then we get our own synapses so crossed and rewired we confuse ourselves. If you've ever seen He's Just Not That Into You, there's a story arc of a married man who has a friendship develop with a woman who is not his wife; there's a point in the movie where he pulls back and says something to the affect, 'This is wrong'. The woman questions him about having female friends - are they wrong? But the friendship wasn't the issue - they both knew the issue was with how they were feeling about each other. By spending time with the other woman and developing feelings for her the character was cheating. Okay, other stuff happens but that's later on.

Drawing the line around emotions is hard. It's very subjective and murky. What I think of as cheating emotionally won't be the same for someone else - and that's where it gets hard to handle, to understand and deal with.

I don't think I answered, explained or stated any questions very well, but I put ideas down and right now that's what matters.

Sunday I finished a first draft of a novel I started last month.  It was a very exciting moment, but I knew I was going to finish it during the weekend.  Heck, I'd planned it that way - because I need two weeks to get ready for NaNoWriMo - and clean my apartment!

So what does life look like post-novel?  Messy.  I'm starting a cleaning schedule.  First everything will be tidied up, mostly put into place so my apartment is presentable - and then I start the deep clean.  I'm going to try to borrow or rent a carpet cleaner I think, and a vaccume - or maybe just buy a new one.  My mom visted me this last weekend and remarked about how dirty my apartment is.  It irked me because it was a little messy around the edges but for the most part it was clean!

I think I got the cleaning bug from my mom - but only after I moved away.  Before I did everything possible to not clean, but now all I want is for everything to have a place and a spot.

Oh my, I'm becoming my mother....