i touch the place where i'd find your face

Just a quick hello today, since I've got a lot to do today before I take tomorrow off. This week has been forever long already because I've got a rush freelance project. But I'm feeling optimistic about getting it done on time, thankfully.
Big news: Zoe slept in bed with us last night! She was skittish about it at first, but then happily curled into the crook of my elbow for most of the night. My arm apparently makes a good headrest. She even let my partner-in-crime pet her for a minute.
My band concert is this Saturday night. I think it'll be a fun show. But honestly, I'm really looking forward to May. No band, no rush freelancing. A couple of author events, some work on my novel, some flea marketing . . . that's about all I've got planned for next month so far. It's going to be SO NICE to have some down time. And some time to work on unfucking my life, as I mentioned before. I've got crazy long to-do lists for each room in my apartment, and I'm itching to get started.
Two books:
12) Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, Volume 3: Still loving these!
13) The Red Tree by Caitlin R. Kiernan. This book is creepy. CREEPY. Kiernan did a great job at slowly but surely ramping up the tension. I really felt for the two women staying in the farmhouse near the tree. All the "historical" stuff added an interesting level of fear and drama, and I liked the overlay of Sarah's dreams atop the everyday weirdness. Scary books aren't usually my thing, but I really liked this. Recommended.
Happy Thursday, everyone, and have a good weekend.
Blessed Be!

like a ghost into the fog

That was a long but good weekend. Friday night was a fun drag show followed by a late night of good conversation with J. Saturday was the Drowned Ball; my five cohorts in crime looked great, and we had a really good time. Sunday was brunch and then a lot of freelancing and housework. And now here I am back at work again. It's a blustery Monday morning, very beautiful and Oregon out, and I wish I could just go walk through the city for a couple of hours. Ah, well, maybe later.
I dreamed last night about a little boy wearing a sea turtle costume. Maybe he was six, maybe eight. He was sad, or sick; somehow he was broken. A humongous sea turtle crawled up to him and said "I can make it all better if you come with me." It turned and headed for the beach, the little boy by its side. When they got to the beach, which was lined with people laying on towels and sitting in plastic beach chairs, the sea turtle ponderously swam out a little way and called back to the boy, who was standing in the shallows, "Call the tides!" I'm not sure what the little boy did but suddenly the waves were lapping higher and higher on the beach, crashing over the beachgoers, who weren't leaving. I ran down to the water, shouting to the boy, "Wait, wait! Stop!" Another woman appeared. She looked angry. She moved to the boy and spoke to him in soothing tones, encouraging the tide. Then she stood up and approached me. "Leave him alone. He is my child now." I protested and we ended up rolling in the surf fighting. We chased each other up and down the beach throwing punches and smashing each other's faces into the sand. When we finally stopped we were on the boardwalk near the beach. I looked out; all the people were gone and the ocean was calm. The little boy approached. He took the woman's hand and together they walked away.
And with that, I really must get to work. Next time: a book or two.
Blessed Be!

spring cleaning

I've been in a funk off and on for the last couple of weeks, and I've decided that it stems from the lack of balance in my life. Yes, balance again. I feel like everywhere I turn there is something that needs to be done, that needs to be dealt with, that needs to be fixed. I am constantly on the go, continually working. But I am not sure that it's happening constructively. So this is going to be the goal for the next little while. I'm unfucking my life, as Cat Valente would say. And this applies to every aspect of my life. My apartment. My day job. My freelancing. My writing. My relationships. My music. All of it. I'm still pondering the best way to go about this, but I can tell you this: The first step is to get my social life under control. I love all my friends, but I have been out too much, too late, too often in the last couple of months and I need to rein that in. I can't unfuck everything else if I'm exhausted from being out all the time. This is not to say that I'm not going out at all. Just that I am going to be more particular about it. The second step, I think, is to take a break from freelancing after the project I have right now. A two-week break, at least. Unless one or two very particular things happen, I'll be giving myself this break. This, plus less socializing, will give me the time to figure out how to approach everything else.
Anybody care to join me in the unfucking process? It's going to be a beautiful thing, I think, once I get the ball rolling.
And in that spirit, happy Friday, everyone, and it's time for me to get some work. I hope you all get to sleep in tomorrow and spend some time doing something you love.

briefly

Sorry it's been radio silence for the last week. I've been sick all week, and it's really just taken all of my energy to muddle through the workday and my freelancing at home. So, just a couple brief things before I get down to work. Two books:

10) Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin. This is the sort of timeless middle-grade book that I adore. The writing is accessible but not overly simple. The story is great. The characters are easy to empathize with. It's really just a well-executed folklore novel. It's about a girl named Minli who sets out from her village to improve her family's fortune. Definitely recommended for everybody.

11) Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice. I've read this book before, but it's probably been fifteen years, so my recollection of it was more based on the movie than the book. The writing here is lush, the world-building is evocative, and the characters are intriguing, Claudia in particular. It really made me want to go back to New Orleans and live in the French Quarter. But Louis . . . he's whiny. And self-absorbed. While I understand that of course he would come across that way, as the whole thing is from his point of view, it was still occasionally grating.

I'm now reading a book by Caitlin R. Kiernan, and after that I'm hoping to plow through some of my BEA books from past years, as that's coming up (only two months away!) and I'm definitely going again.

I have a freelance deadline on Monday, which means that next week I'll be frantically working on my novel rewrite before my next project lands. I may take most of May off from freelancing, tempting though the money may be. It's hard to be constantly working. But speaking of my novel rewrite, I think I am at the place where I'm ready to actually start writing again. I'm really looking forward to diving back into it.

Not last night but the night before, I dreamed that I was out in a park somewhere walking my dog when I was snatched by two guardsmen and hustled through a secret door into an elevator that swept me up into a penthouse apartment where my makeup and hair was done, and then I was given more stylish clothing. Then I was forced into a lunch date with a young man of some sort of royalty; apparently the royal family was looking for a good match for him. I was pulled partway through because I didn't give suitable answers to what the young man said to me. They gave my dog back to me afterward. A year later, he decided to look for me because I'd made him laugh. That's really all I remember.

And now I should get back to work. This weekend I'm hoping to fit in some shopping and a beer tasting around finishing my freelance project, but we'll see. Oh, and maybe a movie. Blessed Be!

hanging out with the dream king

Three dreams last night, or possibly one long one and I just don't recall all the connective tissue of it. . . . Anyway.

I was dying. Maybe. there was something wrong with my heart and my lungs, and my doctor said if I didn't die that day, I would start to improve, but that I would likely die. I was in the car--my partner-in-crime was driving--and feeling very weak and tired. We stopped somewhere to pick up my good friend J, who got into the front seat with us (it was a bench), put his head in my lap, and asked me not to die. The three of us went to a big outdoor picnic area, where we were having a gathering of all my friends. (Here's where I'm missing a bit.) The next thing I remember is fleeing the picnic area because a bear showed up. We were running up a mountain, through pine trees, and I was carrying somebody's child. We finally found a slender pass between two rock walls that we could barely slip through, leaving the bear behind. I was trying to calm the child, who seemed oddly intelligent for someone as young as he was. (Here's where I'm missing a large bit.) Then I remember being in an airport with my family. I don't actually remember who had just arrived. But we left the airport, and for some reason I went to this empty house that I was supposed to clean up/take care of, and I didn't. I slept a lot, ate what I could find when I was hungry, and generally hid from the world in this house. Until the day the movers came and I hadn't dealt with anything. The neighbor came over and found me in the closet, and together we started packing up the house.

Dying, running, and hiding. I wonder where all that came from.

let them wash away

Happy April, everyone. How's it treating you so far? Mine is busy. But good. The word of the year is still balance, for me. In light of that, my April goals are going to be about the same as my March goals were, since I started but didn't finish most of those. Two freelance projects. Revise my novel. Work on my apartment. To add to that, I think April is a good time to start taking better care of myself, so I'm going to hit the dentist and the doctor, and try to cut back on the partying vices. (We'll see how that goes; wish me luck!)

There are a couple of events coming up that I'm trying to talk my partner-in-crime into. Dead Can Dance is touring, and I've never seen them perform, so I'd love to see their show. Also, there's a crazy party here in the city commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Titanic. A costume ball with live music and crazy performers. I really want to go to that. Maybe I will with or without the partner-in-crime!

I saw The Hunger Games last Thursday. Now, any of you who know me know that I am skeptical about adaptations. They're so hit or miss. And I LOVE this trilogy, so I went into the movie with some trepidation. But I have to say, I'm pleased with the film. It stayed very true to the spirit of the trilogy. The visuals were stunning. And I was pretty happy with the acting, too. I cried a couple of times--mostly moments involving Rue or Prim--and I don't remember the last time a movie made me cry. This was an intense film, with rapid-fire pacing and lots of tension. Jennifer Lawrence was solid as Katniss; I really appreciated how she let Katniss's emotions shine through. Like the way she shook just before the games began, and her unabashed weeping at Rue's death. Watching this made me want to reread the other two books in the trilogy. I enjoyed this enough that I may go see it again. And I will, in all likelihood, buy both the soundtrack and the sings-inspired-by albums, which if you know me is not surprising.

Have any of you seen any movies recently that really blew you away? Or read any books that did so?

And now, plenty to do, so off and running in the office. Blessed Be!