Life Viewed Through an Amber Focus

...I love this medication. Love it. I fell asleep by 9:30 last night and slept straight through until 5:00. I felt incredibly well rested when I got up. And having a couple of hours to myself is nothing to be sneezed at. I can't believe how much better I feel in just a week on this stuff. My sleeping pattern has been so wrecked up until now. It is great to be back on a normal one again.

Well, I suppose I should go do my math homework. I am teaching myself the Fundamentals of Algebra and Geometry, trying to stay one day ahead of my son's learning. Today is the unit test. I figure if I go through it with him this year, and do more algebra with him next year I will learn the stuff pretty thoroughly again. I am considering going back to college at some point in the future and I'd like to test out of the math if I can. Since it has been 22 years since I took college algebra, I don't remember a lot.

I have a degree in accounting, because it was practical, but I always wanted to get a liberal arts degree, too, just for fun. Well, mostly I want to take creative writing classes, art, history, and more science. I have taken environmental biology, geology 101 and 102, and glacial geology. I'd like to take marine biology, astronomy, agronomy, archeology, chemistry, and possibly physics (which I never had the math for before). It'd be slow going, maybe one class a semester, which would be all I'd have time for until the kids are grown. Not to mention afford, since R will be going to college in two years and T in six. I have no intention of taking out student loans for them or me.

Okay, back to math...

Edited to add: Got 40 out of 42 problems right. The two I got wrong were careless errors with negative numbers. My bugaboo. Oh, well, it's still 95%.

Am I just doomed to jackassery amongst public school PE teachers forever?

Why, yes. Yes, I think I am.

Taking my daughter to the doctor's office now.

1.  People who do not use their blinkers to signal their intentions on the freeway during rush hour.

2.  People who tailgate when you are already going 5 mph over the speed limit and there is NO ONE in the passing lane, conditions are good, and they still will not pass you.

3.  People who pass you and then proceed to slow down to 5 mph slower than the speed limit.

4.  People that pass a semi-truck (lorry for you Brits) and do not give them enough room so that they have to slam on their brakes and fishtail, risking every other life on the freeway.

5.  People entering traffic who are supposed to yield but refuse to.


Can you tell I had to drive on the freeway today?

Also, to not leave things on a totally negative note, seen on a t-shirt in the high school parking lot:

Haikus are easy
But they don't always make sense
Refrigerator

I will be glad when school is out.


I appear to be over my writer's block (or perhaps canon cockblock is a better term).  Things are coming along slowly but surely.


I am rewatching Fringe. ( Spoilers if you've not seen Fringe and intend to watch it which you really should, I mean come on, JJ Abrams out Josses Joss )

Why are there not more Fringe/Doctor Who Pete's World crossover fics?  The setup is perfect, much better than some of the ones I've seen for other shows.

Sometimes I feel like fall/winter is one big cold interspersed with a day or two here or there of actually feeling well.  My mind has pretty much shut down this week, although there have been brief moments of clarity where I did some writing.  LoF is squeaking along slowly but surely.  I've got 3 fics I need to beta but honestly every time I even think about it my mind goes, "Focus?  What focus?"  So hopefully I'll get around to it.  If any of you want to send them to other people I won't be offended.  I'm just so out of it.

It snowed Friday night.  We had about eight inches by Saturday morning.  Now it's mostly just cold and ice with snow on top.  We were pretty much snowed in all weekend because they didn't plow our road until about 4:00 p.m. today.  I went out and got snow boots for T.  He walks home from school so he definitely needs them.  Also waterproof gloves and a hat.

There is just about nothing funnier than watching chickens walk in snow for the first time.  It was hilarious.  The general consensus is that they don't like it.  We scattered some hay on the surface of the snow and they seemed to like that better, but spent most of the weekend in the coop.  The ducks didn't mind it, as long as the ice was broken in their little pond, they were happy.

We spent a lot of time in front of the tube since we were snowed in and it was so cold outside.  We watched all of the kick ass Martha episodes of DW, which means Human Nature/Family of Blood and Utopia/Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords.  Then we watched End of Time parts one and two (Martha was so, so pretty in that ending scene with Mickey and oh, squee that moment with Rose!) and then the first seven episodes of season Five.  Rose had only seen the first two and T had only seen the first one.  You know what?  I really, really loved season five this time.  Even the Skittle Daleks episode (which was still bad science wise and history wise, but it was way more fun watching it with my children than on my own.  Part of that might have been my daughter's comments.) was enjoyable.

I think it's because I'm so far away from my expectations now.  When it first came out I had such high hopes and such eagerness for it to finally be on the air, and of course a lot of that was disappointed, but it was such a fun romp and I saw so many subtle nuances in it that I missed last time.  There are far, far more allusions to Rose and Donna than I ever saw last time around and even one that I noticed to Martha.  And there is a surprising amount of subtlety to Matt Smith's acting that I didn't notice before, either.  I'm seeing a lot more hidden pain in the Doctor.  If you really watch his eyes and these micro expressions he makes, you see it.

I'm not nearly as annoyed by the big crack either.  It's still omnipresent and in your face, but because I've seen it all play out I don't mind it so much.  I did notice some things referred to in End of Time that came to pass in season five, especially the weeping angels of old reference.  River continues to grow on me.  I find myself falling in love with Amy again.  She's smart (maybe a little unbelievably sometimes) and quick and clever and that's good, usually.  I fell out of love with her towards the middle of the season before, but I'm seeing a lot of little things in her character that I missed before.  Not massive character development, mind you, but knowing how the season ends I am firmly convinced now that that was on purpose.  And Rory, of course, is love and always will be.  We're going to watch the rest of it over the Thanksgiving holidays and I'm actually anticipating it, though I'm not sure if anything will overcome my dislike of the Silurian episodes.

The kids have dentist appointments tomorrow, so that's going to be one big two hour block of boring.  I need to remember to take a book.  I've got some Doctor Who books I've never read so I'll grab one of those.   My son's conference is Tuesday.  I hope they've plowed the parking lot.  I don't want to try to walk two blocks to his school in the ice when I've got a bum knee.  It's doing fine, but if I do anything to twist it or torque it or fall down, who knows what will happen?  They don't expect it to start melting here until Wednesday with rain on Thanksgiving.  Which reminds me, I need to take the turkey out of the freezer.  Better go do that now.  Hope everyone's weekend was nice.

Put this under the category of things I should never do again:  eat a dill pickle and follow it up with a glass of orange juice.  That...didn't go so well.  Didn't stay down either.  I'm pretty sure it was the acid/acid combination and not the cold I'm trying to fight off, since I had no stomach symptoms until that brilliant culinary move.  Anywho, moving along now.


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1.  Day One.  Open laptop, open blank Word document, promptly spill water all over keyboard.  Turn off computer.  Wipe up mess.  Wait for laptop to dry out before using again.

2. Day Three.   Open laptop, open blank Word document, stare at page.  Hear, "Mom, Grandma fell in the back yard and can't get up!"  Run out to help Mom up.  She's fine, just the mud was too slick to get up on her own and didn't do anything else but coat us both in it while I pulled her to her feet.  Chase all the chickens and ducks, who made good their escape, back into the fenced area.

3.  Day Four.  Totally get distracted by Battlestar Galactica and don't even open blank Word document that day.

4.  Day Five.  Get call from Elementary School--Your son has left school grounds and we cannot find him!  (He walked in the front door literally two seconds later while I was still on the phone).  Go to elementary school with said child in tow and deal with resultant fall out.  No real consequences as his reason for leaving was yet again a child messing with his lunch.  School got an earful about not stopping bullying in regards to his food allergies.

5.  Day Six.  Husband is home from Alaska and wants to snuggle.  Have no desire to protest said turn of events.   Doubts fic for this challenge will ever get written, but is still attempting to try since they've moved the deadline back a day.

No, not really, but it feels like it.  I went to the doctor today and when my blood pressure turned out to be perfectly normal and all of my other symptoms were still pointing at either a kidney infection or UTI, they took another sample and it immediately showed up as infected.  Like it couldn't have done that on Tuesday and spared me all this grief?  So I'm on medication now, both an antibiotic and something purple that turns my pee orange and wondering about the lovely side effects of artificial food coloring which I tend to avoid like the plague, but the headache is still there.  I hate it.  It isn't constant, but it's here enough that it just drains every spare ounce of energy I have for life and stuff. 

Chris and I were supposed to go out this weekend to celebrate our 20th anniversary of our first date (which isn't until the 23rd but he'll be in Alaska then), but I'm not sure that is going to happen.  I'm bummed a bit, because we were planning on going to Blender at Ryan Stiles' comedy club, but I can hardly grocery shop, let alone do something like go to the theater right now.  I was really looking forward to it.  He has a house here and sometimes he shows up to do improv with the locals.  You just never know.

On the bright side they weighed me at the start of my doctor's appointment and apparently I've lost 10 pounds since the last time they weighed me.  I don't get on the scale normally and I didn't ask what my weight was, either.  I did notice that my jeans were getting loose and my bras were getting a bit roomier, and attributed it to all the swimming.  Anyway the doctor was quite pleased.  I was just...yeah, great, can I have meds now, please?  Not that I'm not happy about it, I am, but pain overrides nice news like that.

I haven't done much but lay in bed.  Gotten a fair bit of writing done whenever the headache eases.  I'm about 1500 words into chapter four of Three Hour Tour and written a bit more on LoF.  Oh, and watched Astroboy with the family even if I did have to get off the couch every fifteen minutes to pee.  Did I mention I hate UTIs?  Astroboy is really good.  I was surprised.  A very cute, very sweet, very effective family movie.  Also am watching The Order with my husband.  It is none of those things.  Except good.

The kids' first week back in public school has gone better than I could have ever hoped.  They both love it and are thriving.  I am so glad.  I cannot even imagine homeschooling the way that I feel right now.  This is also the best time for the athletic club to be closed for it's yearly maintenance.  Maybe when it reopens on Tuesday I will actually feel like exercising again.

Yay, me.  Both my children are now officially enrolled in public school.  And the best part is that Rose got both her Japanese and Drama classes, which were her primary reasons for wanting to go back to school.  I was afraid with all the run around that she'd get locked out of the classes she wanted to take.  Orientation is on Wednesday for her and on Friday for Tobias.  I'm just really happy she got Japanese.  She wants to live in Japan some day, possibly teach English there like honorh or do something in the computer graphics industry for Ninetendo (which you know, she could do here in WA, but that's not the point).  She's wanted to live there for a long time, so this is like step one on that path.

The smut-a-thon got it's first two entires today, so I'm happy it's officially off and rolling, as well.

Took the weekend off swimming because I've been sick to my stomach.  Hopefully going back to the pool tonight won't be a mistake, but my body feels very tight and swimming makes everything loosen up again.

After that I've got a fic to beta and then some writing of my own to do.  I'm hoping to finish up a couple of smut fics.  I did a massive catch up on comments yesterday and today.  So if you got an answer to something you left in early August, yeah, that's why.  I've been kind of crap at answering them lately.  I will try to do better.  Now that the stress of getting the kids into school is lifted I'll be more active on LJ again.