gratutous pictures of my cats

Look how much bigger Ninja is...
Kitty cat butt, and Mouka don't care...
Oh no! Another cat struck down by sunlight!

gratitudes

I haven't done this in a while, but I like to, so here you go. I mean, it's easy when things are good, but when things are rough, it forces me to look on the bright side, and that's something I need.

Like, always.

1. I'm glad my tooth pain continues to be managable, and I have hope that it'll eventually go away entirely.

2. I'm glad I have a job, even if it is incredibly boring most of the time.

3. I'm glad that when I lost track of things and misplace my timing, there's really no one that suffers but me, because then I can get back on track in a relatively stree-free way

4. I'm glad all our friends are coming back from their vacations soon.

5. I'm glad all our shows are coming back soon, and that there are more than the usual one or two that I actually want to look into this year.

just another mental

I'm glad I have this blog. I'm.. well, I'm working on getting myself from being a collection of disparate voices all talking at the same time to being a nice chorus. Maybe even a fugue if you will (and I will, because I like that word). And the way I can just fold all the other blogs into this one helps in that process. Because my first inclination is to make them all separate-- food, reading, scifi, tv, makeup and girly things, 1001 things, avon, spirituality, writing, memories, genealogy, crafting, environmentalism... I like having a constellation of things I could choose from, but you know waht? It gets hard. I need to do it the same way I need to write even if I'm never published again, but I go on jags where all I do is post here, all I do is watch tv, all I do is read. I need to find balance and integrate these things.

I'm hoping this Makeshift Surface can be a place to build a new brain on.

things you should know if we ever get married for your greencard: my showering habits

Here's the deal: I'm not a quick-shower-taker. I know, it's horrible-- it uses so much water and the cost of reheating a whole water tank is probably most of our heating bill, but I just can't do it. I've tried. But I have skin that doesn't know how to exfoliate itself-- I can't remember the name of it, but my mom has it too, and it makes for rough, bumpy skin, and if I don't spend enough time exfoliating it for myself, it makes these ugly scratchy patches that don't go away unless I'm swimming in the Springs, which are an hour and a half away at best, and it makes the rest of my skin feel sandy. All the time. Especially across my chest and shoulders, and I just can't handle it. Add to this the fact that I have hip-length hair that's really frizzy and fly away unless I give it a deep-conditioning treatment every time I wash it, and a scalp that flakes off whole unless I'm soaking it in shampoo for at least five minutes, and there you have a recipe for, at best, if I don't shave and forget to scrub my back, about twenty minutes. When I take the time to do that, you're looking at more like fourty. So the last thing I need is a weekly olive-oil conditioning mask added to this mess, right? Only I totally do, because my hair is feeling the almost imperceptible change in seasons more than I am, and it's gone all dry and splitty again.

Another thing you should know: I've been told I have latent engineering talents (or, at least the ASVAB I took in high school says I do), and I've been thinking about this problem. See, so many of the things that green up a household are kind of crap on luxuries like long hot showers that force your pores open. That's why hippies are always kind of... well, let's not go there. But there should be a way to reuse water in a shower. Stay with me, I know it sounds a little gross, but hear me out: most of the water used in a shower is just keeping you wet, and isn't all that dirty or soapy. So if there was a holding tank-- and optional one, that you could turn off when you're coming in from twelve hours of laying sod or something-- that holds the offically accepted prudent amount of water under the drain, it could catch the water you use in the early part of the shower and recirculate it back to the shower head. There could be filters to clean some of the soap out, and one of those as-you-need-it heaters that's hooked up to a thermometer that you can set to the temp you want, and when the recirculated water falls below that temperature, it can turn on and reheat it. This way, when you feel like taking a long shower, you're only using a decent amount of water, and once the bugs in the design are worked out (I'm looking at you, German and / or Japanese luxury engineers), you wouldn't even really need to notice that you're reusing water! Then, when you're done, this thoroughly used water can go into a biodynamic greywater system, filter through the reclaiming swamps, and then water your garden (because we'll all need Victory Gardens of our owns soon enough, I think, and they may as well be integrated into the functioning of the home), then excess can go back into the municiple water system. Best of all, this can be a retrofit, like turning old diesel engines into biodeisel engines-- any house with pipes could be fitted with the recycling system.

By the way, if you're an engineer and you want to build this, go ahead, but you'd better give me credit and cut me in on the patents and such. This is a dated entry-- it's proof I thought of it! ~;)

Also, I can't wait until houses have designs like this all the time.

how to make America a better place to live

Sure, we've got Freedom and we've got Democracy, and when these things work as they're meant to, it's a wonderful thing. But that's not really the issue. The issue, as I see it, is that America isn't taking care of Americans-- the culture and the society and the businesses that define both are incredibly short sighted, and it's already resulting in a massive amount of unhealthy and poorly-informed people. What's the point in having all this freedom and democracy if we don't know what to do with it?

Obama is trying very hard to fix healthcare, and that's a very good thing, even if he's only partially successful, but like Michael Pollan pointed out, the reason we need so much healthcare is because the Food Business is making bad choices that are sort of polluting the populace. But it can still be fixed, if alot of linked things are tackled in the same way healthcare is. Here's my plan, and it's probably very long-term, and I know it depends on people not being idiots in big groups (which seems to be nearly impossible), but that's the thing about dreams and ideals: they can be big.

Healthcare: continue as we have been, and keep improving coverage, safety, access and everything, with an eye toward getting every citizen and those here legally (at least, probably illegals, too, but immigration is another issue I don't have any set opinions on yet) the covereage they need to stay healthy. Shift the focus to prevantative medicine, allowing people to catch and change things before they go bad instead of basically waiting until they're dying or broken to see a doctor. Herd out the doctors that are only in it for the money, and replace them with people who actually want to help their fellow humans (I'll leave it up to the profession to decide how this part works). Run national ad campaigns to get the idea out to kids deciding what they want to be that they can become doctors and that the country needs them, the same way they have the campaigns getting people to join the armed services.

Governmental Reform: Clean out all the people who aren't doing anything. Cut back on all the waste. Form new entities that can keep up with the change in the world and manage the greening and improving of our country. Foster self-sufficiency at all levels so that the whole of the govornment is sleeker and better functioning. Improve checks and balances. Keep strict reviews that make sure no one is abusing their power. Get people informed and involved so less are taken advantage of. Foster new political parties that can stand up to the entrenched old ones. Update and streamline systems. Leaders should study with foreign leaders to adapt and adopt the things that work for the leading countires in teh causes we're fostering in this plan: greening, education, human rights, health, world-responsibility, and so on. Build long-term plans that can't be undone, so that all the people who succeed this generation can keep improving, keep streamlining, keep making this a better country, instead of bogging all the plans down in new leaders undoing what the old ones did.

Food Systems: Move onto the root causes of American's sicknesses, including howe we eat and how we grow and process our foods. Get the health professionals behind it. Bombard the public with the real truths about eating healthy, not the half-truth slants that we usually get, and really seriously fine the coumpanies that make bad things sound good. Tax junk food-- even a little tax will go a long way with so much junk food out there. Require big companies to use local products as much as possible, and to process them only as much as needed, not into unrecognizability. Give benefits to those who comply and fine those who don't.

Foodshed Education: Get cities and neighborhoods and all schools-- not just elementary schools in crunch-granola areas-- involved in the local food sources they have. Make it the pride of the area. Encourage the return of artisan foods. Give benefits to small companies that meet the needs of their communities with local products, and encourage people to purchase them. Set up community gardens wherever there's space, and communal composting to feed these gardens. Get those who need to do community service-- all of them, from kids trying to get scholarships to people working off crimes-- to work the gardens and the intra-city produce network. Take the burden of feeding us away from the big companies that keep poisoning us, and actively put it back in the hands of the people. Send everyone information on their local resources on a monthly or quarterly basis. Foster massive community involvement.

Environmentalism: Encourage people to go from learning about food to learning about other green changes they can easily make-- greywater systems and rainbarrels will be easy when they see them used in the community gardens. Run competitions to see what city can be the greenest-- How much power can they get from solar, wind or water? Where can tehy plant gardens and trees and set up parks? How much of their food can they grow themselves? How many local and sustainable businesses can they encourage? Get city leaders from the ones lower on the list to visit the ones higher and see how they did it and how it can be applied to themselves. Hand out awards, make it public, get people involved. Up the number of green changes that allow people to get tax breaks, and extend the rules about cities and their green spaces. Get the populace behind major green innovations, like wind farms and wave farms and bioreactors and algae farms and mining old landfills for natural gas and recycleables and whatever else-- the bigger and more daring, the better. After the cities are improved, move on to getting those cities to help fix the world, encouraging Americans to take responsibility for what our lifestyle has done outside our borders and getting them to help make it right.

School Reform: Expand the education fields, rather than restricting them. People who grow up learning how things work are more likely to care when they stop working, so teach them more science, more engineering, more nature studies. Teach kids art and personal expression. Get schools out in the community to build monuments and gardens and beautify their cities. Teach citizenship and how the govornment is supposed to work and critical thinking, and encourage kids to grow up involved in their local govornments so when they're old enough to vote, they know what they're doing-- we especially need to get people all over the country to be able to understand what polical speak means so we can't so easily be led astray. Expand education as much as humanly possible. We need well-rounded people to run the future, people who understand the world, not people who can't find Germany or don't know how things started. Recruit teachers, librarians, adjuncts, professors, instructors the way the military is recruited, and pay them better, with more benefits and more freedom-- the future is literally in their hands and dependent on their ability to teach children well.

Mandatory Education: Make Community college or the first two years of a four year college mandatory because it changes how you think about things and expands on the basic educations you recieve up to that point. Make study abroad at least once between starting highschool and graduating college mandatory, because living in another country changes how you view everything. Make at least some trade school mandatory, so people can always have a physical skill to fall back on. You can never learn too much-- that should be our motto.

Civil Involvement: Teach people how things work, and they'll want them to be improved. We need good citizens, not sheep. Everything happening in this country is supposed to be for us, and we need to start embrasing both our power and our responsibilities. We need a country-wide remake, a cleaning-up and updating, and we need the people to be behind that so it can't fail or be lip-serviced out of existence.

And voila! Shiny new country full of the smartest, freest, healthiest, best-kept and well-educated people a nation could hope for! It won't be easy-- in fact, it'll probably be the hardest thing our country has done since declaring indipendence-- but it's something that needs to be done now, when we still have a choice, rather than later, when we have to react or die and have little control over how things go. We want to preserve all the things that make America great, while adding to the list and bringing up new generations who believe in the new ways. Things have to change, guys. It's the only constant in life. We should take control of our change and bend it to the goals we need to have, rather than letting it slip away from us and ruin what we have.

toothache update

If you haven't been following my facebook updates, I've had a toothache most of this week. I can't afford a dentist, I don't like taking antibiotics, and I certainly can't afford an extraction right now (even a much-discounted student one an hour away in Jax), so I looked up a slew of homeopathic cures-- and you know what? They work. Surprisingly. Distressingly well. Here's what I did, but first a backup for context.

A few years ago, when I was working at Mi Casa, I'd had a jaw pain and I thought it was sinus pain, maybe a head cold, so I'd been taking sinus meds at night and loading up on ibuprofen during the day. And then one day, on the way to work, the extra exertion of getting to work, as opposed to laying in bed moaning, but my bloodpressure up high enough that the side of my face blossomed into debilitating pain. I have a pretty high pain tolerance, but this-- I couldn't even see. Breathing hurt. My whole face swelled up and I couldn't swallow, loud noises were like being jabed in the ear with an icepick, my hair was too heavy for my head and so on. So Neisha took me to the hospital because I couldn't function and I couldn't even tell her what was wrong. I could only sit there and sort of wail. They went, 'oh, it's an abcess in your tooth. You need antibiotics and you need it out of your head, STAT.' and they gave me said meds and a list of dentists and some painkillers that were really too strong. Only one dentist would touch me without insurance, and they said they'd take it out for just short of five hundred dollars, since the tooth was broken and would require surgical extraction. Which I had to willingly allow, because the nine shots they geve me kept wearing off and the laughing gas just made me hyperventilate. At one point, my O2 stats dropped so much that they had to stop and let me bleed and breathe so I wouldn't pass out or worse.

So it was bad. I class it, subjectively, as being worse than getting hit by the car the first time, worse than being emotionally and sexually abused by my first boyfriend, and worse than being stranded in Orlando, which just about drove me insane for a few years.

Now, this past Sunday was a holiday weekend, and it was stressful and it was hard work, so I didn't think much of the pain in my jaw, I just took a bunch of tylenol and powered through. But by Monday, it was getting close enough to debilitating that I could identify it-- and maybe it's just that I'm older and less gullible or something, but I didn't flip out and go to the hospital right away. I looked up alternatives.

Apparently, infections get in because of weakness. I've had this particular tooth broken for ten years since I worked at Borders and a bagle took the front side of it out of my mouth. I think it was already undermined by my wisdom tooth on that side trying to come down, and maybe that's why it's acting up again, since the tooth never did come down all the way. But it never hurt, and it never got infected, even when it totally could have when the other one went batty and my whole body was in uproar. But there are natural ways to fix the weakness and to bolster your own immune response-- and this is the best part-- to stop being a medical victim and take your healing into your own hands. So I started taking lots of vitamin-c, twice as much as I normally do, and every day instead of every second or third day like I usually do. I found a suppliment of natural calcium, magnesium and zinc, and started taking that with an Omega-3-6-9 suppliment. I took acidophilis, got an all natural mouthwash, swished with baking soda to make my mouth-environment alkaline instead of acidic (how bacteria like it, apparently), ate yogurt to bolster good bacteria in between, switched to a mostly liquid diet for a few days to keep pressure off my teeth, slept with my head at an angle where I couldn't grit or clench my jaw, and packed the tooth with papertowels soaked in olive oil.

And it worked. Within three days I was better enough that I could brush my teeth without stabbing myself in the underside of the brain, I could eat solid foods again, I didn't have to call in on my opening shift like I thought I might, and I haven't needed an ibuprofen since monday. I still get little tweaks of discomfort, and my cheekbone aches, so I don't think it's entirely cured, but it's under control, and at the very least, I can hold out until I can afford a dentist appointment on my own terms. It's awesome. And it's had other side effects, like that I can taste things better now-- I think the water tasting weird that I thought was the pipes was maybe an early-warning of the infections, and the zinc is probably repairing my busted old tastebuds anyway. And my gums are much less sensitive than they were before, which I thought was just the norm because they'd been persnikety since I got my new toothbrush ages ago.

mergers coming?

I'm havign trouble keeping up with so many blogs, so I think I'm probably going to merge a bunch of them into this one-- especially the ones that I never seem to update much, like Switched-on X-Chromosome, and maybe Sami Does Avon...

But I keep waffling about it. I want to be up to date, but I like having everything in it's own little cubby, and I've got the other blog picking up all of them so you can read them in one place...

I don't know. Maybe it's just another passing moment.

c20

Campaign 19 has come in, and while I'm collecting up payments, I'll be starting to accept orders for the next campaign, number 20! That's the one with the white background and the girl with the blue and green scarf! There's tons of awesome deals there (Jet Femme is only 12.99! That's the cheapest it's ever been!), so make sure you look out for the things you've been holding out on!

I'll be taking orders until next weds (the 16th) at midnight, just email me at pirategirljack at gmail dot com or tell me directly what you'd like, and as always, you can order online at any time. Just go to www.youravon.com/sholcomb and click on the shopping tab at the top!

things you should know if we ever get married for your greencard: personal saints

I'm not Catholic. I'm about as far from Catholic as someone can get, being of the general polytheistic heathen persuasion, in a really non-religious and barely-practicing sort of way, but I do believe that when someone does something special for the greater good of the species, that something should be rewarded in some way, and so for the last few years, I've been collecting up a list of what I call Personal Saints.

And most of them are food-based because that's how I roll / that's what's important to me.

Currently, the list stands like this:

Saint Whoever First Burned Sugar and Convinced People To Eat It (patron saint of caramel, toffee, caramelization, hard candies, creme brulee and butterscotch)

Saint Ancient Chinese Emperor Who First Made Tea (patron saint of tea in all it's forms)

Saint First Chick To Make Bread (matron of all breads, yeasts, doughs, baked goods and baking)

Saint Whoever First Though Bad Milk Might Be Good For Something (patron saint of milk, milking, cheese, yogurt, kefir, butter, sour cream, and lacto-fermentation)

Saint Aztec Guy Who First Tried Chocolate and Brought It Back To Town (patron saint of chocolate, chocolate-making, enrobing, moxing weird things in chocolate, Cadbury's, Kinder, Ritter Sport, and cultural misappropriation)

Saint First Person To Eat That Weird Thing And Not Die (patron saint of pineapple, durian, catfish, rambutan, sea urchin, taro, and anything else where you just go "How did anyone even think to eat this?")

Saint Whoever First Thought It Might Be A Good Idea To Drink Things That Had Been Sitting Around For A While (patron saint of fermentation, wine, cider, perry, beer, pickel-making, saurkraut, kimchee, and anything else that doesn't start as milk)

Saint Inventor of Custards (patron saint of flan, cheesecake, Byrd's, pudding, half the ice creams, and several sauces)

Saint Hey We Can Preserve That In Sugar (patron saint of jams, jellies, preserves, sugar-sauces, syrups, Aunt Jemima, chutneys, pate de fruits, turkish delight, sugared-fruits and flowers, candied fruits and peels, and anything else saved in sugar, including when it's used to disinfect wounds and save lives)

heal thyself: toothache

A few years ago, I had a toothache that turned debilitating-- like, taken to the hospital from work by my boss, unable to speak, whole side of my head swollen up debilitating. That turned out to be an abcess, required two weeks of antibiotics, and an almost-five-hundred-dollar tooth extraction. Which was all my savings, and I haven't had more than 75 or a hundred to my name since, which just won't cut it if I need another extraction (and I certainly can't afford a root canal or whatever, and I'm severely resistant to pain killers, so it required two rounds before and I really don't want to do that again).

So yesterday, at the Day!Job, being as how it was Labor Day Weekend, it was crazy and I was stressed, and after sleeping all night with gritted teeth, I woke up and thought that's why my jaw hurt. This morning, however, I find that it's definitely because of a sort tooth. The pain has matured like a fine wine (whine?) and has become both sharper and more localized, and is definitely to do with one specific tooth.

I looked up holistic remedies to handle it while I still can, and at the very least to buy time so I can maybe make it a few more paychecks and scrape up some money. It seems I need to get my hands on activated charcoal tablets, calcium and magnesium suppliments, probiotic lozenges, baking soda rinses, and plantain leaves to make a poultice. Used teabags can help, and I always have those around, and green tea is proven to be good for teeth anyway. I can do this. These are all natural things, and I can manage them. They are not scary and they don't involve trays of shining tools that look like they're out of a Medieval torturer's bag. I'm planning on going to the store later today as soon as I crunch some numbers (rent is coming up, so I have to be careful), and seeing what's available at our local Tar-jay.

And this bugger is going down, naturally.

rules of acquisition: chadwick's end of summer sale

I'd forgotten that I'd signed up for these mailers, and I get on in my inbox and I'm all, "Chadwick's? Who the heck is Chadwick's?" and then I see these fun summer clothes that are all on sale, and I'm sad I didn't check them out sooner. Who knows if they'll be still on sale next time I have free money, but I do need new tank tops (which are the main sort of shirt I wear all year, so they get worn through pretty well), and the rest is shopping history.

I want this sweater like woah:

Thi obi-belt that I could probably make for myself:

This sundress... and this adorable yellow skirt...

See, here's the thing: I want my life to look like the life in these pictures, and catalogs always have this life-- windswept, sunny, brightly colored, nothing fading in the wash, no chores that make you chose to wear something less fun. I image the house I'd live in would have climbing roses around the door and a big garden full of flowers I could pick and put in cut-glass vases (I don't even own a vase now, only budvases and a big water pitcher), and is near a seashore that's white and blue and can be looked at down a hill with a glass of something sweet and alcholic in hand.

It's probably from reading Sears catalogs when I was a kid-- and living overseas where views like that were more possible than anywhere I've lived here.

But if I can't have it yet (and I stress YET because I will have the idea life at some point, even if it's not until retirement), I can dress like I do on my days off, right?

rules of acquisition: chinese honeys

Tea Habitat has a lovely assortment of honeys I haven't had before that I want terribly:

Longan flower, lychee flower and what they're calling 'winter honey'-- longans are pretty wonderful, lychees are my favorite fruit, and it's almost fall, so I really should be looking for a winter-seasonal honey anyway. And best of all, it's only 20$. Awesome. I want it bad, and if I manage to get it on my next payday or so, I'll review it for you on the food blog.

fat girl goes slim: setbacks!

Work slowed down, the weather got crappy, and next thing you know, I'm off work for four days and I start putting the weight back on. Just a few days less on my feet, and I can't keep it off, it's crazy. So I'm going to try to squeeze in some extra movement again, doing something fun-- I have rollerskates I need to learn to use, and I have a hulahoop, and somewhere I have a jumprope...

And I found something online that said just holding your stomach as far in as you can for as long as you can a few times a day can burn fat the way yoga does.

And I'm going to start biking the long way home-- it adds about five or ten minutes to the haul, and goes over rougher roads.

And I might go on a minifast when I get paid next. I've been eating really poorly lately, mostly carbs and salt, and that's got to be counterproductive, so I think I'm going to get some protein shakes and some low-sodium soups and some lemonade and a bunch of salad fixings and so on, and go off wheat for a week and see if it helps any. I used to do that for most of the summer, but I've been so poor lately that I've been eating poor-people food, and it's not doing me any good.

I think what I really need is to get my flippin' period. I skipped last month entirely-- every time I try to get back in shape, I skip a month or three-- and I keep feeling like I'm getting all the water-gain and none of the water-loss that should happen once it starts, because it's not starting. I think that's probably a totally different problem that I've been battling for years now, but hormone imbalances are supposed to be helped by fixing diets, too...

Okay, now I'm just rambling.

rules of acquisition: bpal bprd!

I need this so much I've started a whole new section about it: Rules of Acquisition will be the detailing of things I want so badly I can feel them in my bones. Very first entry: Black Phoenix Achemy Lab (which could be an ntry anyway, with all the wonderous things it has that I NEED or I wil DIE), has a new line of Hellboy inspired scents.

They are as follows:

HELLBOY
Aftershave, candy wrappers, brimstone, and cat.

TREVOR BRUTTENHELM
A classic men’s cologne mixed with the scent of old, yellowed books, a splash of bay rum, and summoning incense.

KROENEN
Shining black leather, gleaming metal, labdanum, and myrrh.

LIZ
A light, feminine vanilla floral perfume and a swirl of smoke and leather.

PLAGUE OF FROGS
Rubbery, wet, and warty.

ABE SAPIEN
A soft aquatic musk with kelp and juniper.

I hope the line is desperately popular so they can expand the range. What would the Ogdru Jahad smell like? Or Rasputin? Mummies? Clockwork monsters? Old gods or faerie royalty or goblins or Baba Yaga or Anung An Rama or Roger or Johan? The world is so rich and full of things that would translate into this form amazingly.

Seriously, I could DIE. If you're looking for something to get me for my birthday, or for Christmas, or for Aveomas or something, this is an amazing choice right here...

geoengineering

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090901/tsc-geoengineering-could-save-world-4b158bc.html

The article is careful to point out that extreme engineering won't stop what we've already done, but I can't help and feel entirely excited by the prospect. There are several reasons: 1) if it gets to the point where we have to build artificial trees and launch mirrors and sunshields, then there's absolutely no denying that it's real, 2) global crises have the potential to unify people that wouldn't unify over anything else, and 3) it's so very scifi-- it forces us along the path to a more technologised world, and will require that we advance the tech that helps us survive and minimize the tech that will add to what's killing us, and it will hopefully lead to an aesthetic that can be called futuristic. I mean, how awesome will it be to have giant orbiting sunshields? Massive artificial trees scrubbing the atmosphere? Controlled algae blooms and artificial volcanic eruptions altering global chemistry? Right now, we're posied to learn how to control all the processes and resources of our whole planet, and we're at a time where it will soon be necessary; once we get that down, it'll be easier to move onto other worlds because we'll have geoengineering and can therefore terraform. Voila! Perpetual survival!

I wish it wouldn't have to come to this, but people as a whole are short-sighted, and I'm more than confident that it will. Those in power will continue to ignore the signs until something so drastic that we can't ignore it anymore will force us to notch up our technology, or we'll all die off like dinosaurs who didn't have the option. I'd prefer to think we're smart enough to think our way out of any problem and survive, as a species, indefinitely.

little changes: pillows!

I've been sleeping on the same pillows for approximately seventy-two years, and I knew they'd gotten packed and lumpy as bags of cement, but it was sort of an abstract thing. Sure, they used to be much softer, but the transformation was so gradual that I didn't really think about it. Meanwhile, I woke up every morning with a headache, a neck ache and usually a jaw ache from grinding my teeth so flippin' hard (or, more acurately, having my teeth ground into a block of coquina while I slept).

And then, a few days ago, we went grocery shopping at Wallyworld and they had a bin in the middle of the isle with two-for-ten-dollars pillows. I'd just gotten paid, and I thought, what the hell? and bought them.

It was the best decision I've made in weeks.

Headache? No more. Neck-ache? Nonexistent. Teeth? Just fine. It's amazing what this one little change can do, and if it weren't for Archie keeping me up all night with the yowling and the scratching, I'd be sleeping better than I have in years. So now we just need to work on the cat...

letters to the aether

Dear storms,

Are you on the same schedule I am? Because it sure seems like I'm spending alot of time leaving for work early or late to avoid getting drenched. It's kind of awkward, and it's a little agravating-- I mean, I don't mind so much getting soaked on the way home because I can just jump in the shower as soon as I get there, but I can't at work, and that makes it very chilly and horrible. I work with freezers. It's rough.

Love,

Me