Chocolate painkiller cocktail, stat!

Some days, dear reader, you just don't feel like trying to be clever on your blog. Some days, all you feel like doing is sitting on a couch with a pillow tucked behind you, drinking hot tea and eating things that are cheesy and/or chocolaty, watching marathons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's most angstiest episodes that never fail to make you cry, and cursing your woman parts for being cursed. And cursing your job's new sick leave policy that essentially says you can't call it a day and go do just that if you want to keep on doing things like getting paid full wages. At least I have the pillow, and the tea, and something cheesy to nosh. But I could inflict some serious violence on someone to get some chocolate right now, and also some painkillers that actually kill pain.

But hey, you guys, it's not all pain and suffering and PMS clichés here in the land o' Jean! Because today I finally took some initiative and did something I've been blathering about for a long time (maybe not to you guys, but trust me, there has been blather) and enrolled in a copy editing course online through Mediabistro. I also ordered my books and submitted all of my receipts to HR for reimbursement. I should probably be writing this all up over at Bauhaushold, but please see above re: not feeling like it today. Although I should probably suck it up and go do that anyway. Anyway, I'll be letting you know how that goes, and whether the class is worth the $425 they charge for it. If I felt better, I'd be full of excitement and squee; but as it is, I'm closer to feeling terror at the prospect of taking an intensive six-week class while trying to revise my novel. I just have to keep reminding myself that the novel took this long to write because I've taken longer breaks without giving up on it, and it will still be there in six weeks, and this class can only improve my revisions, all of which are very good reasons to chill. So I'mma be gettin' me some more ejumukayshun, hopefully of the sort that will finally start me down the path away from low-paying administrative heck. That would be nothing less than peachy keen.

At least there's a reason for all this wackiness.

This morning's shot. I got in early, but instead of writing I flitted from distraction to distraction and got not a single word written. Unless you count the e-mail I sent to a Craigslister advertising a really cute, recently renovated 2 bedroom duplex in one of our target neighborhoods, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't count.

The upside is that some of my distractions involved job-related tasks, so I can charge that hour and get some overtime. Overtime is good.

Here are some random links I came across in my scatterbrained wanderings this morning.

Joss talks of Angel: Season 6. Two thoughts make that three: one - Eeeeee!; two - I don't normally go in for non-canonical Whedonverse comics, but now I have to get Spike: Asylum; and three - that shot at the bottom of the article always chokes me up. Always. *sniffle*

The Fantasy Writer's Exam (via Miss Snark). Test your book to see if it's yet another a Tolkein ripoff. Mine passes (or maybe it fails? I'm not sure what the perspective is there), probably mostly by virtue of being an urban fantasy. So it's more of a Gaiman/Whedon/Butcher ripoff, really.

Isn't this a cute duplex?

***

Update from about an hour later, because I got distracted and busy and forgot to hit "publish," which should tell you a little something about the kind of day I'm having.

I must be PMSing. Exhibit A: Yesterday on the drive home, my regular radio station wouldn't come in for some reason, so I switched over to the news (our CBS station comes in on the radio here; I have no idea if that's universal), and apart from bawling over a segment the local news did on a VA Tech victim from Tulsa, when it went to national news and Katie Couric started talking about Iran becoming a nuclear power, I very nearly had a panic attack. It was the same kind of tight-throated, constricted breathing, sick stomach, scared poopless feeling I used to get when I was a kid at the height of the Cold War and we lived in fear of The Button and our teachers made us watch The Day After and write reports on it and ensured we wouldn't get any more peaceful sleep that year. Which was, I admit, a little over the top, and not really my normal reaction to that kind of news, and I think that's a pretty good indicator of PMS right there.

But if that's not enough, I give you Exhibit B: CAG called in sick (again) this morning. I have a ginormous drawing package going out this evening that will likely take up most of my day (and probably get me another hour or two of overtime tonight), and now I'm also responsible for whatever her team's got going on today. Sure enough, one of her people called to tell me he's also got a major drawing issue going out today. I didn't quite have a panic attack that time, but I did very nearly have a meltdown, and after I hung up the phone I had to put my head in my hands and sit that way for a while, taking deep breaths and willing myself not to cry. Also an admitted overreaction.

I managed to pull myself together, by the way, and when I mentioned it to one of my project teammates he reassured me that the other team's drawings and distribution lists are really small compared to ours, and that one should be fairly quick and easy to handle, but if I still feel overwhelmed, they'll find me some help. I work with nice guys.

At any rate, the weird panic and overreacting plus the more-extreme-than-usual scatterbrained-ness plus the dwindling supply of blue pills in my birth control compact all add up to PMS. Happy happy joy joy.

The Joys of Womanhood

Yesterday was a bitch of a day. The last few days have been pretty bitchy, actually, but yesterday was definitely the bitchiest. I'm not going to go into the details. Suffice to day that there were cramps and uncontrollable crying and depression and the inability to focus for more than three seconds on anything other than an intense desire to go home and claw my uterus out before it could succeed in killing me. But it turns out that it doesn't want to kill me. Oh no. It merely wants to punish me for suppressing that for which it was made, and so, like an angry Niska getting his jollies torturing Mal Reynolds, it pushes me just past the brink of my tolerance and then brings me back so that it can inflict more punishment on me later. I guess I should just be thankful that it can't slice off my ear.

Things are getting better today, though. There are still cramps, but Frauline Uterus seems to be getting tired, and its heart just isn't in the torture anymore. And this morning my husband managed to tell me that he'd like to go out Monday night for our First Date Anniversary instead of on Sunday, the actual anniversary date, without having me burst into tears and wonder, cryingly, if he still loves me and what this all means for our marriage, so that's progress. I even find myself possessed of the rationality to understand how blessed I am to have a guy who even still cares about celebrating our First Date Anniversary now that we're married, all good signs that I'm finally snapping out of it. Thank God.

My energy is still low and I'm still feeling pretty bleah, but at least I don't find myself wanting to punch anybody in the face. It's almost like I'm myself again. Praise be and hallelujah, the demon of hysteria is back in its cage for another month.

Oh, and speaking of hysterical demons and totally OT, but did anybody else catch Gary Busey hunting ghosts at Waverly Hills Sanatorium on VH1 last night? Gary crazy. I'm pretty sure the ghosts were more scared of him than he was of them. I know I sure was.