I stopped sweating the small stuff years ago, so burrito keeping us up all night on Japan time or whatever isn't phasing me much. Like my Linked In profile for example, I amuse myself to no end with private ironic jokes. My avatar on Linked In was on one of the roughest weeks I'd had for awhile at the time, snapped it in a public restroom in a hospital after another event monitor had been installed underneath my clothing for possible tachycardia/arrhythmia events that turned out to be an accidental hyperthyroidism complication from years of birth control pills. We later found out I had driven into town that day in bradycardia, was so loopy I wasn't sure how I made it 20+ miles in and couldn't figure out how I didn't run lights and smash into anyone, guess I accidentally took my blood pressure pill twice that morning, a really rare thing for me. My memory got so shot over several years that I developed a solid habit of never putting pills in my mouth without writing down time and date in a tiny spiral, and I have stacks of those spirals, so it was an especially wonky day if I didn't write that down. Anyway, I still get my delights out of my 'professional' head shot ironically being just another loopy bathroom selfie like so many people do during much more self serious moments.

I really do think this sometimes.

So now I've gotta kick my butt into gear and get ready for a burrito party with a buncha crazy people. That was very misleading, I don't mean fun crazy or drunk crazy or even crazy crazy. I mean a truly bizarre combination of people that defy all normal statistical odds and exist in this special dimension and no other parallel world. These are truly one of a kind people that when you put into a room all together make life seem surreal, and you kinda wobble away wondering if you'll ever look at sunshine the same way again.

I make jokes with tweeps about alcohol, have even confessed I gave up alcohol myself a long time ago before it totally destroyed me, but my very real life is surrounded by people who *didn't* make that choice and literally destroyed their lives and bodies and emotions and brains. There won't be alcohol at this party. I just want to say to anyone out there who thinks you can quit drinking any time and life gets normal and healthy, no... Years of drinking does things to people. Even if they go dry for years, the effects linger on into far reaching consequences, and these problems affect me personally in ways that irk the crap outa me. I'm not against alcohol, and I'm not against drinking, but I'm really really tired of my life being immersed in it from all sides even long after the pickled people dried themselves out.

Today will be a fun day, yes. To a point. Because I helped orchestrate it to be that way. Pictures are important. We need pictures of wonderful times because sometimes there just isn't any other proof they exist.

I was a very serious drinker in my 20's, much to the lasting chagrin of my liver and immune system. I stopped drinking over two decades ago. Burrito's real gramma (I'm a step) will be at the party today. She is my age. She looks 20 years older and never expected to be here this long. This time last year she underwent a life saving surgery from years of damage. This year she has her first grandchild. It's been heartbreaking to watch this and think about it and be part of it, because I raised burrito's mama for this woman.

This movie helped me understand why some people need to drink. It took me awhile, but once I realized how utterly depressing it is to wake up every day having to face that you wrecked your life and abandoned your children and how in the world do you not kill yourself while you beg money off other people for years, I also realized alcohol IS suicide. It's just very very slow for some people. And it's very sad, like this soundtrack theme song. Skip it if you're not in the mood to deal with it.

Trees Lounge is a really good movie. I originally watched it because I'm a big Steve Buscemi fan. Here's the trailer.

The kindest thing I can do today is go hang out at a burrito half birthday party and smile, because the people who love her are still here to see her have a half birthday, in spite of all the odds. At least 4 of them who are supposed to be at this party almost weren't here several times already.

The secret to if I had you- many years ago I realized *I* am the person I'm looking for to save me. We all want to be saved, to be swept away and made important to keep around, but if we are all looking for that, who does the sweeping up? Is anyone left to be the hero or white knight or soul mate? It's ME. Like Weird Al says, I can be my own best friend and send myself for pizza.

That's my big talk for the year. You guys are on your own now. Become who you wish for. It's the only way the world gets better.

Yes I'm awake. No I haven't slept a wink yet. Yes it's because burrito is spending the night. No it's nothing you can give me advice on. She's like her mama, hyper as an Energizer Bunny hooked up to a car battery. I've said for years it's a good thing these people are so cute because living with them gets pretty rough. 

So I made coffee at 1:30 in the morning and I'm thinking about getting some work done, because she *finally* conked out on her tummy on Scott's tummy with the Sirius Spa channel turned up. Really hoping Scott gets some sleep now because this coupled with stopping my zyrtec has triggered my own insomnia and I might be pretty useless by the time the party rolls around. Finally figured out the knee, feet, and leg pain I'm having the last few weeks is weird fluid retention, and found out that is considered a more severe side effect of zyrtec, which has been helping me sleep, whee. There's actually quite a shocking list of zyrtec side effects, so I'm glad it's only been fluid retention, although this has been alarming enough by itself. I worked too hard to become sustainably mobile again for something as dumb as zyrtec to knock me back down in one short little month. If you're totally new to my stuff and you're wondering what the heck, that stuff is on a different blog.

Anyway, starting my new day very early and maybe this is a good time to work on minor fixit stuffs. Let's get something fun going while I work.

Today is burrito day!  

Today is making cake day. I'm getting a very slow start because it's so terribly cold out, but soon it will be ~FUN~ around here.

My theme song today-

Getting 'official' accounts set up for later, still have all my phalanges crossed I can roll this out like I planned, only it keeps getting bigger. Not going to be a quiet roll out that just springs forth, like I first envisioned. That was before I met all the people I know now. @XistentialAspie and @JanikaBanks are ready to go, and I'll get them linked into my dotcom sometime later this winter.

I've been ignoring calls from my publisher again. I can tell they're not used to dealing with someone like me, acting a little frantic that I keep disappearing since we contracted at the end of August. They keep telling me the contract will be valid as long as I need to take, but they keep wanting to check up on me and push push push. Aaaaaand.... it really is time for me to push the final product out of my head now. I've got just about everything I need for final compilation edit, now what I really need is uninterrupted spacetime. Which will never happen in my universe. Burrito has a half birthday coming up, and it sounds like the cake might be getting baked at my house, not sure exactly when. Who started this half birthday stuff???  A pox on them.

I was a scattered mess yesterday, even after all that sleep. Last night was like a train wreck trying to sleep. This morning is like waking up in a different century on a parallel earth after all the vivid dreams I had. I seem to do this every time we get a drastic temp drop. I blame the ions. Stuff like this is why I depend so heavily on my daily planning blog. Let's see, what is going on today?

I've got just enough roast left to make a nice beef broccoli stir fry for supper, yum!  Time to sort laundry again. I appeased sumall with my all-day twitter romp yesterday, so maybe I can spend today gathering my stack of spirals and locking down my outline. I've changed it three times already. Time to commit.

I am this kind of author. Click the pic to read it on pdf, it's cute & witty & dark. I have an Edward Gorey collection, love the guy. Some day I'd like to visit the Edward Gorey House.

Time to GET TO WORK!

Dang, 8 hours nearly straight through last night. Ready to start some trubbas.

First things first. Must jaunt into town and see what they couldn't put into my PO box. Monday was a holiday, so whatever it is had to sit there. Then I need to spend quality time on twitter this week, have severely dropped my numbers and Sumall is super cranky with me. Twitter has been very useful for watching real time traffic, so definitely need to keep that party going. Sometime today I wanna scope out a good survey to start on for bluejacky. Years ago I was chided for 'wasting time' on surveys, well guess what- 5700 hits on one survey isn't wasting time. I've been experimenting with driving traffic via linking and hit my all-time traffic high last year with Shop Till You Drop last May. I really haven't had the spare time for surveys since my girls successfully passed their DNA along, plus other goings on, but it's time I got back in my groove. I was really rockin it this time last year.

Yeah, you wanna know how I got 5700 hits on one post when those charts don't even total up to that. The 5700 came from Xanga's internal trackers, those were direct hits from search engines. The charts are from sitemeter, not the best tracking in my opinion but I like the cool charts and world map. Sitemeter moved to new servers in another town roughly about 18 months ago and I lost tracking for a couple of weeks, then Xanga moved to new servers 5 months ago and I lost internal tracking completely, which I hope comes back soon. Basically, the discrepancy you see in the trackers is that site meter doesn't catch near the hits Xanga used to, they have a lengthy explanation as to why, but mostly their filter is so aggressive that it chops out everyone who breathes funny, so all the new browsers and services just point blank don't show up, although the world map still looks pretty cool. So yeah, that last survey I did was showing up in search engines all over the place because of my linking and tagging, and now that Xanga has migrated to WordPress I'm going to start adding categories and see just how much traffic I can drive again. I have always gotten excellent visibility with Xanga. I'm hoping they don't adopt WordPress site stats because those are pretty lame in my opinion, too. WordPress will show off to you how much spam they blocked, but then NOT count the rehits from people who really like your stuff and keep coming back, which would be good to know if you're trying to evaluate what sort of content pulls the best traffic. I WANT people to rehit. Just counting new traffic is only counting the stumble ons, as it were.

This is my last 100 bluejacky visitors. If I paid I'd be able to see 500 like I do on my Lexx blog.

And don't fuss at me about there are other trackers out there. ~I KNOW~. If I could build my own tracker code I would.

Finally finished the Walking Dead marathon yesterday. I stand by my 'why the crap does no one ever KILL the governor' stance, after all the regret they go through. That show is genius for pointing out every flaw in humanity during survival crises, but I beg to argue that homo sapien sapiens didn't survive the Ice Age and everything since then for naught. Humans are genetically coded for tribal survival, and although I'll agree that throwing a psycho into the mix has both stimulated and decimated histories, we're not seeing a realistic response on the Walking Dead to that psycho. I'd have shot the man so many times by now, especially if I were standing behind him watching him massacre his own people, so the real dogs in the show are the people who *didn't* kill him when they had the chance. Really wish they hadn't killed Merle off so quick, two psychos going head to head would have been awesome.

Ok, need to FOCUS!!! >=l Gonna be one of my 'free associate and get hung up on minor details' days, very aspie of me. Got things to do, places to go, people to bug on twitter.