Today has been a day of cleaning and preparing for reorganization. Laundry, laundry, laundry… cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. I will be rearranging and reorganizing the bedroom over the weekend. I have already gotten started on continuing my quest to de-clutter.

Which is very hard to do since my DVD and book collections are viewed as clutter. They are the things that cannot just be tossed out. But they can be put away in a better fashion. It is a slow process, mostly due to the limited area to work in. As it was, I was making movements from the bedroom to the bathroom and back again, having to close the door behind me whether I was coming or going so that the cats would be kept in and out of the places they were and were not supposed to be in. Wow that was a long, terrible sentence! But it is very fitting.

I am almost done with the laundry; I had to finish up what was already down there before I could start mine. And then I had to do my clothing plus the sheet and random items that Lili decided to pee on the other night because she was too lazy to go back around the way she’d come to get to the litter box after her original route had been blocked off. Well, with the new planned arrangement in the bedroom, this will not be an issue again. She is usually a good kitty but there are times where something possesses her to urinate elsewhere.

Charlie has learned a new trick and it is completely adorable. When I tell him to ‘go to bed’, he goes into his carrier or in the space under a TV cart that is next to my makeshift nightstand. He switches between his two spots but it is always one or the other. He doesn’t jump up in bed with me. He puts himself away. It cracks me up. And the carrier is one of those hard ones with the door taken off. When we first arrived in AZ, he refused to come out usually so I just left it as a comfort zone. Now I don’t have the heart to put it away because he loves to sleep in there.

I just heard the washer beep. Time to finish up my cycle of laundry finally!

I’ve forgotten just how much I hate resumes. In fact, I’ve forgotten just how much I dislike monster.com! But there are things that need to be done in order to accomplish the things that need to be accomplished.

Namely, my resume. I needed one that could be printed out or sent as a word document to those that request one outside of the usual copy/paste places. I must say, after spending three hours working and re-working it… I am pleased with the results. I am left with two versions of my resume:
1. a more in-depth version with blocks of text that spans 2 pages in a glorious layout
2. a very succinct, one page resume that looks just as amazing.

I rock.

Now let’s all cross our fingers that I hear back from someone soon. I won’t even go into how many places I applied for over the internet since finishing up my resume. It’s disgusting, to say the least.

My Halloween costume came in the other day. Simple pieces but still cute. Robby is going as a vampire from True Blood. I’ll be going as a Merlotte’s waitress. I’ve got the T-shirt and an adorable apron. Angel is ordering some TruBlood for us. I got temporary tattoos in the mail today as well. They are to simulate bite marks.

I’ve been trying to get into the mood this year for Halloween but I guess it just doesn’t feel like it’s even that time of year. I can’t seem to get into the mode of being excited. On the plus side, Mika will be visiting us over the holiday. Yay! Girl fun!

I realized today that I picked up the wrong book. I’ve been reading the Dark-Hunter novels in order and I managed to skip three books. Oops! So I put that one down for now and picked up the correct one. I’m so used to reading several things at once that this won’t even be a problem for me. And I was only a couple chapters in to Sin and Kat’s story.

I’m still not sleeping well. I wake often even after I manage to finally fall asleep. I don’t understand it. And I feel guilty for waking up so late in the morning but I generally manage to finally get three to four hours in between 7am and 10/11am where I’m not doing the wake up and I’m wide awake thing every hours or so. It just sucks. Bleh. I got some Melatonin because I couldn’t remember how those affected me and I realized the next day that they were one of the ones that left me super groggy and like I’d been run over by a Mack truck. Soooo they’re out. Back to the drawing board.

I decided to choose a random blogging prompt for today. The one that came up was “10 people no longer living I would love to have met (and why)”. I’m not really intending for this to be thought provoking but more of a glimpse into my inner thoughts and workings. Who would I choose?

1. Walt Disney. I am a Disney girl at heart. Disneyland is my Happy Place and it brings back so many wonderful memories. I would love to have met the man behind it all. You hear so many stories about how great the man was, how innovative and creative he was. I just feel like… if I could have been around him for any real length of time and gotten to meet him, I could have been so inspired and energized by him.

2. Princess Diana. A bit of a cliché, I know. But she was a powerful woman and I truly believe she had an amazing heart with an unrivaled capacity for compassion and love. A gentle soul. The empath in me would have liked to have felt that positive force. She was a beautiful woman and the world could have learned from her and benefited from her kindness had been around long enough to do some real, lasting good.

3. Sir Winston Churchill. I love quotes from Churchill. If I were to make a list of my top ten quotes, his would make up at least half of them. To have met him, been around him, and perhaps even heard one of the quotes in person would have been fantastic.

4. Adolf Hitler. So before I completely offend anyone, let me possibly further that initial reaction by saying that he was a great leader. He was! That was part of what made him so dangerous. They say that he was a very charismatic man. It’s one of those things that I would just really like to see with my own eyes.
5. Gandhi. And then on the other side of the coin is the peace-loving Gandhi. This is pretty self-explanatory. I mean, who wouldn’t want to have met him and been in his presence? Who wouldn’t have wanted to learn from him and just listen to him?
6. Anna Nicole Smith. I just have to know how much of her was an act. I am a pretty good judge of character and if someone is being fake. Watching her was like watching a train wreck; but I really, really want to know how much of it was fake.

I can’t even come up with 7 through 10. So I’m listing this as to be continued. HA!

Dark Side of the Moon by Sherrilyn Kenyon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ravyn and Susan. I highly enjoyed this book. It was mostly due to the insight finally given for the Squires; nothing too ‘oh, so THAT’s why!’ or anything but there was more of the inside-information. A few things bothered me about the whole process of events but it still flowed nicely and I enjoyed the characters.

My heart broke when Nick showed up ‘for real’ this time. And then the whole downward spiral had me wanting to yell out in warning. I don’t even know what to think about him right now. Psychologically, I understand. But he had been so wrapped up in the Dark-Hunter world that I found it hard to believe that his descent would be so… severe. I get it. I just don’t like it. At all.

This is the first book to really break free timeline-wise from the other books. This is two to three years later and post-Hurricane Katrina. Which meant that the series had to be transplanted temporarily. But… Seattle? The other time the series shifted away from New Orleans it was to Alaska and had a very good reason. The second time was, well, still in the same region at least. The most amusing thing about the shift in scenery was noting that the author would go to great lengths to describe at least a part of the area while Seattle kind of got a nonchalant shrug.

On to the next book!

Reposted from: Marc and Angel

I stumbled across this blog today and it is going to wind up being something I frequently visit in order to better myself, understand myself, and accept myself. But this post in particular hit me and I thought it would be good to share.

Even in times of financial uncertainty, it’s always important to keep things in perspective.

1. You didn’t go to sleep hungry last night.
2. You didn’t go to sleep outside.
3. You had a choice of what clothes to wear this morning.
4. You hardly broke a sweat today.
5. You didn’t spend a minute in fear.
6. You have access to clean drinking water.
7. You have access to medical care.
8. You have access to the Internet.
9. You can read.
10. You have the right to vote.

Some might say you are rich, so remember to be grateful for all the things you do have.

One of my To-Do list items has been completed! I finally leveled one of my Aion characters up to 30.

I realize that this doesn’t seem like a large task but it is to me. She is more than halfway to the level cap and she has earned the first part of the Daevanion Armor set. Which, by the way, looks hilarious when paired with the remodeled greaves she has; when dyed blue they look like jeans and the armor top looks like something a girl would wear to go clubbing on a Friday night. I’m highly amused.

Another thing I was supposed to be doing was reading the Dark-Hunter novels and get through the Acheron book. Well, I hit a speed bump. I cannot locate the next book. Argh! It is #9 in the series and Acheron is #15. That is 7 books for me to read between now and October 31st. It wouldn’t be an issue for me… if I could actually find the book I need.

I wound up having another good conversation with my father tonight; I told him about my sleeping issues and he gave me a couple suggestions. I really wonder if it’s hereditary.

The thing that sort of cracks me up about being in Arizona is how many people have asked me, in a haughty tone, how I like living here. It’s a lot more than the amount of people who asked me about Pennsylvania. Which is odd to me. It is like people expect me to hate it here, because of the heat and the weather, but didn’t expect that about Pennsylvania except for when it came to snow.

Don’t get me started on the attitudes there. I hated the East Coast. I hated snow. But even I got defensive when people were acting all holier than thou because I had the guts to live where none of them would even think of going. Now I’ve ‘been there, done that’ and I know that the East Coast isn’t for me.

The only thing I don’t like about Maricopa is how far away it is from everything outside of the necessities and basic businesses. Sure, there’s a couple of grocery stores, a Super Wal-Mart, a CVS and Walgreens, along with some banks and auto shops and beauty parlors. But there is a severe lack of restaurant choices. And there is an even more severe lack of my favorite places: Barnes & Noble and Best Buy. Which sucks. If I need anything outside of ‘necessities’ I either have to order them online or plan to be in the car for about an hour. And anyone who knows me, knows that I abhor driving.

What people fail to realize is that I’ve spent many weeks over many summers in Tuscon. I am used to the heat and the storms and the freak weather. It isn’t anything new to me. Sure, I have to deal with it on a daily basis and I’m not here on a vacation but still. I knew what I was getting myself into. What bothers me is that people seem to think that Arizona is like… the trailer park of the United States and are wondering why I am settling.

I don’t get it. It irritates me. I appreciate people asking because they are genuinely interested in how I am settling in but I hate the tone of voice that a lot of people give, like they are just waiting for me to spout out that I hate Arizona.

I’ve been steady keeping up with my handwritten journal for the month of October. There is a swap over at swap-bot that I had joined where we are to journal our October.

I’m rather proud of myself for keeping up with it and just taking a few minutes to sit down and put my thoughts onto paper. It brought me back to my days of journaling or creative writing.

The only drawback is that my hand tends to cramp after an entry. My hands aren’t used to having to hold a pen for so long anymore! Is that what the age of computers has done to us? Carpal tunnel and hand cramps? Well that just… sucks. In any event, I have already signed up for the November version of the swap.

Speaking of November, NaNoWriMo is around the corner! I have to give it an honest attempt. I may not finish but I have to try and I will know if I am lying to myself! If I don’t give it the honest attempt that it deserves, I won’t be able to cross the item off on my Day Zero Project list.

One sick, messed up realization that I’ve stumbled upon is that I do not like to sleep. Oh, believe me, I would love to just stay in bed and sleep the day away. But there has to be certain things in place for me to actually enjoy sleeping. I need quiet. I need comfort. I need my own pillow. I need my mind to shut down.

For so many years now, I have been dealing with insomnia and I have pretty much resigned myself to it. I am a light sleeper. This only creates a vicious cycle for myself and has made bedtime a huge source of anxiety. I begin by realizing that I am tired and that I should head to bed while I am recognizing that I am becoming sleepy. From here I go through the nightly ritual and crawl into bed. I realize at about this point that my body is tense and my mind is racing. Will I be able to fall asleep fairly quickly or will I be staring at the ceiling tonight? Will it be a matter of minutes or hours of unrest and stress? What if I read for a little while, will that help?

This anxiety is only compounded by the fact that I share the room with two cats who are making noise or moving around me. My ears hurt sometimes because I am straining to hear what is going on around me. I am paranoid about something that I can’t even put my finger on. Because I am concentrating on them, I hear every noise they make. Charlie is quick to move onto my pillow ‘with me’ and takes it over completely. It doesn’t matter if I vacate it for the other pillow; he will follow me. I realize that he just wants to be close to me and he has chosen that spot and positioning to be optimal for his own nighttime comfort but he is a cat and I am a human who needs her sleep. Unfortunately, there is no rationalizing with a cat.

Because there is so much paranoia and anxiety associated with sleeping, I have come to hate my bed. Back in Pennsylvania, I hated the bed. I hated the bedroom. I thought that maybe it was because Rick was in there and snoring away or maybe it was just sleeping in the bed with him that put me on edge. I wondered if my hatred stemmed from what the room and the bed itself symbolized for me: frustration, stress, and anger. What sort of environment is that for someone to physically recharge? It was not healthy. The anger is no longer there but the stress is present and the frustration follows.

I do not even know how to properly combat this problem without resorting to finding a psychiatrist for therapy and medicine that I do not want to be on. It is not a route I want to take; I refuse to be dependent on medication. I guess I will just have to continue to suffer while I create more stress for myself and feel lost in the process. Herbal alternatives to the meds do not work for me. I have tried everything that anyone has ever suggested. I have tried things that websites have suggested. I can be exhausted physically but still be completely alert with no sign of slowing. Getting rid of the cats is not an option. I would never even consider it outside of the brief moment I would take to adamantly state that it was not an option.

I just feel lost.