inthemortalcity

Oh hey I still exist. It is a new year and this one needs to be better than the last, because another like that will kill me.

We are in a house instead of a trailer now, which is excellent, except that we are still lacking important furniture like bookshelves, neither the office or the bedroom door closes, and we are still waiting on someone to come to put curtains or blinds in the windows. My anxiety makes me feel like someone is always outside watching me at night, so that last part? Not fun.

( Cut for drama and people being assholes, because not everyone wants to read that nonsenseCollapse )

I am working on worldbuilding for On a Saturday (which is still being restructured, though I'm more sure of what I'm doing now) and Fairies Stole My Girlfriend, because apparently I can't write a single short story without an entire elaborate universe built up around it. (Mostly I just need to know what kind of fairy this minor character is, and a few background details about the setting my main character won't even know about in this story, but because I have to do everything from the ground up, I have to get other things in place before I can decide that. Siiiigh.)

...eventually this universe will have a slightly less ridiculous title, though I'm probably stuck with it on the wiki for the rest of time. I'm okay with that.

I have wasted this entire week trying to acquire blood test results so I can start getting treatment for what may be the entire reason behind all my physical problems. I have failed. For the entire week. Literally all I need is for them to print some shit out, so it shouldn't be so hard, and yet.

I guess just giving me the test results before I left the ER would have been too easy?

At least they're closed today and tomorrow so I get to rest for a couple days before going to bash my head against that wall again on Monday. I swear if they give me any trouble I'm going to cry. Right there in their office.

...so yes things that have happened in the two months since I last posted:
- A few depressive downswings, which is why I haven't posted in two months, I'm sorry, I still live.
- A visit to the ER because we thought I might have had a heart attack (I didn't, but we have no idea what happened other than that it wasn't a panic attack).
- Morrigan is not pregnant, and was just having a false pregnancy. I can't say I am disappointed about this. She is now buddies with the other cats and the biggest troublemaker in the house, who loves to start racing around the house just when we are trying to sleep.
- We rescued and adopted out an eight-week-old kitten who randomly wandered up to our house. She was precious but annoying as hell and I am glad we found her a family so quickly because dear god I don't have the energy for kittens rn.
- None of my pets died on the anniversary of Simba's death, which was a nice surprise for my anxiety. My sister's cat who lived with my grandparents did, but he was like seventeen so this was not surprising.
- I started writing a story that was originally for an anthology but that deadline has passed and idk what I'm going to do with it because it is going to be kind of long for most publishers? But I'm in love with it, so still working on it between meltdowns. Not this week. This week is just Too Much.

I will now attempt to catch up on my reading list until I get frustrated and give up. Please inform me of anything important that has happened in your lives that I may have missed.

So I have a new cat. This was unplanned, but it is not that much more expensive to feed one more cat, and she needed us. We are not 100% for sure keeping her yet - it's kind of waiting on her FIV/FeLV tests, because we can't afford to infect our other cats - but if that comes back clear... yeah, she's almost definitely staying with us.


Her name is Morrigan, and she is a lilac tortoiseshell Siamese mix... a little darker than the weird green lighting in that photo shows. We're pretty sure she's May's sister - she's probably the same age, has the same Siamese facial features and giant ears, and genetics that are frankly very unlikely to find in a random stray (half the cats on the property look like they're some variety of Siamese mix, so we figure someone must have dumped one or several at some point in the past). She also has the same demanding, imperious Siamese personality, so at this point there's very little doubt.

She showed up a couple days after the incident with May and her kittens and the police, obviously pregnant and way, way too skinny. She wouldn't come any closer than sniffing my fingers that day, but I fed her some and kept an eye out for her, and she came back the next day.

That time she let me pet her, so I picked her up by the scruff of the neck and brought her inside... where she promptly flipped out, sliced open Mat's hand and flung herself at a window that does not open in an attempt to escape. She calmed down pretty quickly, and warmed up very fast, so we think she just must not have had much human attention or been inside in a very long time, though she's friendly enough that at some point she must have been owned by someone. Our current theory is that someone had her and May and at least one possible sibling as kittens and dumped them when they moved away. It seems to be a common problem here.

So yes. One new cat. Who knows how many kittens very soon, which I am both looking forward to and dreading. Vet appointment at the low cost clinic on Wednesday, which I can only pray we'll be able to actually afford (we should be able to, it's just tight enough to be worrying). Morrigan is very sweet and very demanding and is going to rule the house as soon as we allow her out into it, and I cannot wait. Maybe she will stop grabbing my hand for love while I am working then. (She probably won't.)

I come back to the internet and my journal layout is broken for some reason. I've had this layout for years and nothing has ever broken it. I do not understand. (Other journals with custom layouts are being slightly weird too, but in different, less obnoxious ways.)

But I've been meaning to maybe change it anyway, and that'll be easier than digging into the CSS to see if I can fix whatever's going on, so whatever, Dreamwidth. Whatever.

So anyway, I exist in a house (well, trailer, whatever). It has air conditioning, and it (mostly) doesn't leak when it rains (and that can be easily fixed), and I have an office to myself. It is great.

Slightly less great things include:

• I can't really unpack because I have no bookshelves or drawers or anywhere to put my assorted crap. I miss not living out of boxes...
  
• Still have not heard back from literally any clinic we have called. Still am not medicated. Still very unhappy about this.
  
• We have very little money, and caring about food is hard when I don't get enough variation in my diet. It's also hard when I'm not medicated. I resent the fact that food is necessary to live.
  
• I am so tired all the time I am beginning to wonder if I'm being secretly sedated, or have been cursed by an evil fairy or something.
  
• Our neighbors refuse to feed, vaccinate or fix "their" starving cats (including near-feral kittens), but will come to scream at us and literally call the police when we do something about it. Though I haven't seen the cats outside since the cops came over (the second time), so maybe they are actually taking care of them now that they've been threatened with Animal Control? I hope???

Literally all I want right now is my own space with a door I can close that is not constantly the hottest place in the house.

I just want to get something done, but the house is too hot and loud, and I can't put headphones in without getting too wound up about whether someone's going to walk up behind me to actually focus on anything. I am bored and cranky and there are things with a deadline I want to do and I know I won't be able to because I can't get comfortable enough to work.

And I feel like I am just making excuses, so I just keep getting angrier and angrier at myself on top of everything else. I am so sick of waiting for something to change.

I keep getting really frustrated at myself, all "GOD WHY AM I SO ANGRY AND SAD ALL THE TIME THE PAST FEW DAYS? WHY DO I FEEL LIKE CRYING FOR NO REASON? WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?"

It's because you are unmedicated. Dumbass. Please keep reminding of this fact if you catch me doing the thing.

...so the temperature in the house got up to 94-96 degrees yesterday. Mal's mother chased us out of the house and drove us to the library before we got heat stroke, but I still don't quite feel well, and basically collapsed as soon as I got home. And slept for fourteen hours. Maybe more. Ugh.

At least I woke up to a nice storm and much cooler temperatures so that's not a problem today. Thank you, Ororo.

Now I desperately need to do something productive today, to make up for everything I didn't do yesterday. Blargh.

Woke up and immediately lost my phone. Way to go, self.

I am bored and cranky at my brain. It refuses to work in the heat, and past a certain point in the morning, literally everywhere in this house is hot and awful - there's only one place that's even remotely liveable for most of the day, and it is right out in public where I would prefer not to be. October keeps following me around like she is actually my daemon, which is cute and really sweet, but she refuses to accept that it is too damn hot for cuddles. I want a house that is not miserable all the time and a room that is my own and a shower that works. Soon, please.

Slowly working on my Ever After Wood verse, as the heat will allow. I need to reread my main source material (four children's books, so not a huge deal) and pick through obscure fairytales for other characters. All of this is a lot easier than writing, but also harder to convince my jerk brain that it is actual work.

( Cut for name ramblingCollapse )

Sports Night is on TV now, so I am going to watch that and read old RP threads and sulk until the world is cool enough for me to exist in it.

Freaking out about everything.

( Cut for barely-coherent panickingCollapse )