Breaking Point

There comes a point when there are too many things going on. Too many stressful things. Taken separately, they're manageable. But when they become layer upon layer several high...there is a crushing weight on your ability to handle them all.

For a change my layers are not the unbearable bad luck that happened on the Worst Day Ever two years ago. No, my stress mountain that I will be under for the next two week is fairly normal, just all coalescing at the same time. I find myself dreading it all but not to the point where I will concoct some grand, elaborate, convoluted scheme to avoid everything.

I haven't been to a doctor in about three years unless you count that trip to the ER for slicing my hand back in September. Say what you will, but it hasn't been a priority in my delusional mind. So not only did I have to find a NEW doctor, but they're insisting that I get the complete physical. >.<

My Aunt and cousin from New York will be arriving on Friday and staying about 10 days. She is a typical New Yorker prone to yell and bluster when she doesn't get her way, but she has a heart of gold. She's bringing my cousin who is about 30 years old, but mentally is just like any 7 year old kid. So those ten days will be a lot of touring, wandering, shopping and entertaining and buying my cousin a lot of decaf coffee.

Their arrival also means a lot of get-togethers with other members of the family on this coast. Which means entertaining them all. And my family when together is a weird mix of "the Cake Boss", boring history lectures, and just plain old Chaos. Oh yeah, and I expect to get the third degree about Boyfriend Jon since I haven't told her anything about him.

Also arriving the following Friday is my brother Michael all the way from Texas. This of course was sprung on me only two nights ago when my parents asked for my help looking up flight information. As usual, the last to know. I'm just wondering where all these people are going to stay since their days here in Seattle overlap and my parent's house is only so big.

This also is not to mention that I'm still helping out with the wedding. The wedding that I have realized that I'm far too nice for my own good when it comes to good friends. This realization came after I allowed myself to be talked into not only making the two tiered wedding cake, but also 200 cupcakes for the reception. And in helping with the wedding, there is also shopping, planning, and thrifty-ness to be considered.

And as if all that wasn't enough stress....the gorgeous dress which i bought for the wedding (25$ heck ya!) has some seams which pucker in a VERY embarrassing way. read: Super erect nipple effect. So i have to pull my sewing machine out and hope that i can fix it. If not...I'm going the sweater route.

There. The Epic Saga of my next two weeks. I'll let you know how I am when i come out the other side.

Wedding Cakes and Monday review.

Wedding season. Also known as summer. Three friends of mine are getting married this year and another pair have announced the date for next summer.

Perhaps I shouldn't be so happy about only being invited to one wedding ceremony. But my budget is a little limited to be dropping the socially acceptable 50$ on people I hardly know and haven't really talked to in the last few years.

I am happy though, that the couple who did invite me are two wonderful people who have actually been the sole reason I still believe in True Love. I've known the groom since fourth grade. We had a very weird and rough start to our friendship (mostly my fault) but I count him among the Select Trustables. People who understand me, esoteric though I am, and still can care about me despite all my faults. Through him, I met the bride. Another no-nonsense, anti-silly and non-air headed female who shares my preference to be outspoken and sassy. They overcame their own version of Romeo and Juliet minus the tragedy and in just a couple short weeks will become Mr. and Mrs. ......not to mention the first of our junior high group to fall to that title.

After talking with the bride, it sounded like she needed a helpful set of hands to help with the wedding more than she needed a crystal candelabra or a crock pot.
My contribution to this couple is the wedding cake. I took the Wilton's decorating class, and after a couple practice cakes, felt confident in my abilities to complete this task. That was...until. the first practice cake for this wedding...took a flying leap off of the platter I was transporting it in for the taste test. I had to salvage it carefully and was horribly upset with the results. But I didn't have nearly enough time to start over. So I tried again the next week. The results the second time around where great. The bride LOVED the changes to the recipe I made and was completely satisfied with the design, the flavor, the filling and the colors.

Behold the Devil's Food cake with cherries and shaved dark chocolate in the middle with my dad's special butter cream icing recipe, fondant and pearled sprinkles.

From Firefly's Haven

Also...putting up deck railing....leads to lots of stiffness and muscle pain the next day.

A day of "Who Cares?"

Let's play a game. I'm going to spell out a scenario, and then I want someone to answer answer their own opinion of who cares about said scenario. I'll give you an example.

BP's Oil Spill. People who care: Those who think that gas prices will go up, those with investments in Oil who could be affected by negative press and PETA.

Ok? Catch my drift? Let's go then. Edit: And because my temper rose as I was writing this, I'm going to answer them myself as well. Feel free to add your own commentary.

1. There's a dead coyote at the bottom of the driveway to my work. It's along a very busy road which a lot of people drive on twice a day. It's been sitting there for three days. Apparently...not too many people. Because the Animal Control only was notified today.
   
2. Three seconds ago, a child died because they live in a third world country with no access to medical treatment and not enough food to survive on. Probably just the family and the few people who found out about it after the fact. And by the time they've finished shedding one tear...another child is dead too.
   
3. Seattle council members put a ban on the Bodies exhibit because the organizers couldn't prove the cadavers had signed consent forms to be put on display. But then again...neither did King Tut. Those who found the display educational and now can no longer go....and those who thought it was "morally reprehensible" in the first place.....and the politician who is getting more publicity now.
   
4. The coffee urn at work (free coffee by the way) was empty. The person who had to refill it thus wasting exactly forty-five seconds of their precious time to be courteous to another person in the building...and nope....we can't have that! Instead, they'll just walk away and wait for someone else to fill it for them....and the person who did fill it for them: me.
   
5. Lindsey Lohan finally got sent to jail because she didn't follow the laws. Probably just LiLo.....and how unfair it all is.
   
6. Lindsey Lohan has her OWN two bed cell. EVERYONE ELSE who has ever heard of her or been sent to jail before and under no circumstances would have received such tempered punishment. Wait...did i just hear the cries of "justice" just start changing about that "injustice"?
   
7. There are still thousands of people who are homeless thanks to Katrina. The people who don't have homes and those who they are staying with.
   
8. There was a roll-over accident on the Alaskan Way Viaduct which blocked traffic for hours this morning. Everyone who drives to work on the Alaskan Way Viaduct and was cursing the person who made them have to wait.
   
9. That roll-over....was a fatality. Just the paramedics and police who had to deal with it, and the family of the people involved.
10. I taped up a calendar at work on top of a poster next to Miss Queen Bee who didn't like it and had to inform me that I'm not "allowed" to do that. Oh wait....I know the answer to this one.................could it possibly be...No one? Not even me?

That's right. Anne is fed up today with petty nonsense and holly-er than thou art bullshit.

I realize that we're from FIRST WORLD. We only care about things that inconvenience, annoy, or limit us in some way. Stuff that happens far away (unless it's displayed over every media format about a celebrity) doesn't matter! We're not supposed to worry about that kind of stuff.

We'll just brush it under the carpet and pretend it doesn't exist while we bemoan the obscured (out of date) poster or the empty free coffee pot or the snarled commute.

Heaven forbid that we get a little perspective to make us realize how precious life is and just how GOD DAMN GOOD WE HAVE IT.

Family

I had a dream about my grandma last night. And it made me think that on November 11th, 1911, my grandma would have been 100 years old. That's not too far away.

Technically, she was never related to me by blood and thus not a true grandma. But I called her so, thought of her so, and sent her finger-painted pictures address to a woman called Grandma. It made me think of two very distinctly different, but related things.

I have never put much credit in blood ties. I think of the boys i grew up with as brothers, even though they just lived in the neighborhood for most of my childhood. I somehow managed to adopt our elderly neighbor, Mrs. Reed as a grandma like figure before she had to move away. I've even adopted a co-worker as a fictitious Uncle. And while my immediate family will always come first, I can't help but notice just how much some of these non-traditional ties have meant to me.

Children have ways of making up their minds about people, instinctively adhering themselves to people they believe are good. If i put a lot of credence on blood ties, it would have led me to people i have reason to dislike. And since, my experience with certain blood ties was severely limited, either due to death or distance, I found ways of filling those holes positively.

Perhaps that is why i get so irked when a "close" relative completely misspells my name, even when it was the same spelling as their mother's, but a boy whom I haven't even seen in more than a decade, still remembers to spell my name with an E.

The other different but related observation was this:

• My grandmother never learned how to drive
• she never went out much, much less to parties
  
• she never drank more than a glass in a night and only on holidays
  
• her house was immaculate, but she never had a house keeper
  
• she was fit as a fiddle well into her 80's but she never went to the gym
• when we came over, there was no TV. We played with her antiques, or Majong, or cards, or read stories
• she wore gloves and a scarf when she went out
• her house was locked with a skeleton key (real secure there, yeah)
  
• when i was bored, she would pull out a random cardboard jewelry box and i would decorate it with broken jewelry and glitter and sequins.
  
• And when she died, i found every single box i could remember making

And yet, I never remember ever not wanting to go, even in my rebellious stubborn teenage years. I don't remember asking to watch tv; not when there was the beautiful view of the Puget Sound Canal when there were boats and binoculars to be had.

I also never remember thinking there was anything wrong with it either. That it could be a better place with a big screen TV, or video games, or extravagant things. You know the coolest thing in my grandma's house....

Little blue light bulbs in the living room instead of overhead lights. I will forever remember dancing around in my Christmas dress in her living room with all the lights turned off except those as she watched and clapped her hands and laughed and my pure joy.

Oh yeah, I was 14 when this memory happened...shortly before she died.

Oh no, it's plot bunny time

Ah summer. How I adore you. Warm days, swimming at the lake, the sunshine, the plot bunnies....
Wait a second. No! Summer just got here...how can I be longing for November and Nano?!!

Yup. It's the inevitable time of year when my mind starts to wander and seize hold of some obscure piece of information and holds onto it with a vengeance. I start to weave and whittle a elaborate plot around it, pulling and distorting the characters to better suit the essence of the plot, discovering how to bend the laws of physics to make it possible and to create, and rewarding and torturing my characters.

The first year of Nano was built around a story (which could be true or not since my family is known for tall tales) that my uncle told me. It was about a time that he got mugged in a New York subway and they looked at his ID before backeding away apologizing profusely thinking he was related to a different person with the same last name who was a prominent gangster. Around this story, I built a new one, of a young woman taking control of a scattering mafia and crumbling political system in future New York City. Through her father's training, her uncle's support and guidence, and even love, she exposes corruption at the highest level, and gets her beloved city back on its feet.

Last year, for Nano I read an article about the likely hood of aliens by the esteemed Steven Hawking. What spawned from that article was 50,219 words of a crazy idea about enormous birdlike aliens, learning how to interact and understand another culture, and the problems caused by intolerance. Not hard to see the moral of that story.

This year, my inspiration is a notorious local criminal. Colton Harris-Moore, aka "The Barefoot Bandit". To be clear. I do not condone lawless actions, defiance of police officers, or endangerment of innocent bystanders. He is my inspiration this year for his ghost like ability to disappear when the heat is on and the (in my opinion) unfathomable following of supporters he gained on a two year, multi-county/state/country crime spree.

But November is still a long way off. So I found myself building an entire justice system that would fail to hold this uncatchable thief. And when I looked at it complete, then I began to think about how such a system would come into power. What would cause humans to allow themselves to be controlled with an iron fist. And with those thoughts in mind, yet another story emerged.

It looks like I have a solid foundation for a trilogy. The set up of a system, exposing the flaws of that system, and the fall of that system.

Currently in the first book, titled for now as "The Larkspur", I'm about 14,250 words in. And I have until October to reach 50k.

Now if only i could see my laptop screen while sitting in glorious direct sunlight.

Crows, and The Blob

I don't know what evolutionary reason that crows are up before dawn, but I sure as hell don't like it.

I've said it before, and I'll remind you. Rude awakenings make for a VERY crabby Anne.

My bedroom window faces the trash area of my little apartment cul-de-sac. It's far enough away that i never smell it, but it's within earshot. And every morning, i hear the indignant caws of the crows fighting over the trash. The loud, grating, inconsiderate argument over a bananna peel or a burger wrapper. Were i still at home, i could easily pull out my blow gun (yes, i own a blow gun) and stalk the stupid birds until i was close enough to shoot them with a paintball pellet. No, i'm not completely heartless; I use non lethal force to get them to go somewhere else. But here in the apartment complex, the last thing i would want would be someone to call the cops cause there's a crazy lady with some kind of weapon shooting crows.

So i am left, every morning, starting at about 4am, tossing and turning to their debate over garbage. Anyone have any ideas of what else i can do?

In other news, i tried a new recipe for my bread machine. This one was offline since following the recipe in the booklet for this specific model yields dense salty bread. Standard recipes are so bland, it's like eating flour paste. But I must say this new recipe was delicious! It's called Springtime loaf and i simply left out the raisins and optional extras. It has a nice sweet taste and it's light and fluffy. Maybe a little too fluffy. I went to bed before it finished, and I awoke to find the dough had seeped out from under the lid and crept all the way down to the counter. I had "The Blob" in my kitchen. Obviously, this recipe was meant for a double or full sized bread maker and not my small version. Not to worry, halving this recipe should be reasonably easy. And as luck would have it, the part of the over zealous loaf which was in the tin....was PERFECT and i was able to cut off the extra non cooked dough.

Oh yeah, and today is 8 months with the sweetheart. I don't typically celibate monthly, but I felt like he deserved an acknowledgment for putting up with me recently. I love you!

Food, fireworks, and sun....or not.

I haven't posted in a while for a variety of reasons. Most of them are personal and have taken a toll on my stress level. I'm worried about certain family members and trying to bite my tongue on the "I told you so" that threatens to pop out at any second.

The fact of the matter is I haven't felt like writing anything. I'm just trying to get through work and weekends one day at a time. One foot in front of the other, trudging along.

The closest I felt to normal in the last two weeks was Fourth of July weekend. I invited friends and the sweetheart down to the cabin on the 3rd, and we launched off nearly $200 worth of fireworks. But even then, it was a little off. The weather in the northwest has been unseasonably cold since April with weather patterns more akin to fall and late winter (minus snow). However, on the 3rd, the sun peaked through the clouds for a few hours and we were able to do some sun bathing and some very cold swimming. Normally, for 4th of July, it's warm enough to swim even at night.

So with the weather barely cooperating, we celebrated a day early, and I was very thankful for that. 4th of July this year, had a heavy drizzle and bleak gray skies. Hardly any fireworks could be heard after sunset on that day.

However, finally the weather decided to break it's gloomy mood. Today we should be clearing the 75 degree mark, and the rest of the week will be even better.

It's been making me think about my apartment. It's the first time i've ever been on the bottom floor and friends are telling me that in their experience...bottom floors are a lot cooler in the summer. If the weather this year is going to hit into the 100 degrees, I'm looking forward to that added bonus. The only downside is that i won't be able to open my windows and doors at night to let the cool air in, unless I'm staying up late and have my bat handy.