megatronix

Good god. I really dislike that so many things make me so anxious. This pandemic helps no one by the way. Like I got out of the habit of doing harder things and now doing those harder things is extra hard!! So I’m at the vet. And I hate going to the vet, because it feels like 1) a memory test, 2) a morality test (not from them, they’re so low pressure, but it’s like this ‘do you love your animals enough to get the best for them?’ Kind of feeling I feel from an invisible judgmental society in my head), and 3) an obstacle course. Because I’m supposed to do these virus protocols, and I do, but then I sit in my car anxiously wondering if I'm answering the "I approve" email correctly, and I don't want to be charged $800, and I can't remember if when I took my dog to a different vet for his teeth extractions/cleaning, if they did vaccinations there, or...

They reminded me I had vaccines done with them. I barely remember that. Doesn't help that I had Petal in there, and the only memories I have concrete in my mind are of sitting and waiting in my car. Sometimes it's easier to remember when they get a vaccine when you also remember the vet tech's scrubs or something, or the way that person laughed when the tech said something kind of funny, or I don't know! It's just it all muddles together when we're in our homes and cars and that's it.

Obviously, I highly support staying in our homes and doing what we need to do to stay safe, I just am more annoyed that my own brain can't handle remembering these things AND that I forgot to write them down AND that I can't find the goddamn records in my email, so who even knows what happened.

Anyway, I'm home now. I dropped like close to $300 today for a vaccine, prepaid fecal, heartworm test, two new tabs of heartworm preventative, probiotics,...... I think that's it? Oof.

AND I cannot find Homer's math thing he's supposed to be doing!!! It is making me crazy, it was right here. We have to get more organized. I feel like I'm constantly losing my mind because it's hard to keep track of things. blah.

Ok, well, just for fun, let's talk media now ~~

TV!

I've been enjoying The Weakest Link. Jane Lynch is really funny. We like to see if we can get the answers, especially when they do the two person face off at the end. Jen takes one person, and I take the other and we answer only those questions and see if we can beat each other, hehe! I've beaten Jen once and she's gotten me like 3 or 4 times or however many more episodes there were.

I tried to watch the premiere of This Is Us, and I got like ten minutes in and thought... no. I'm not up for this. Then I tried again and made it like ten more minutes and realized I was right the first time - I just didn't want to watch family drama, or watch characters navigate the pandemic. I don't care. Get back to having meaningful epiphanies and sweet conversations and dramatic arguments and whatever, characters. I don't want to see pandemic shit played out in front of me, I already live that. I'm sure I'll back to it, but last night was just no patience night, apparently.

We watched The Haunting of Bly Manor, and I loved it! Spooooookyyyy!! And awesome actors. The woman who plays the gardener was like.. *swoon*. And I also really love the woman who played Hannah Groves - I saw her in that other drama, it was like 30 years in the future or something. Then and Now? Is that what it was called? Ok, fine I'll go look it up....... Ok, her name is T'Nia Miller and the show I was thinking of is .. Years and Years. Yeah, I wasn't even close, huh? haha! She was also in Doctor Who and Sex Education, which is another great series that I highly recommend.

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Movies!

Recent viewings: Dog Day Afternoon, The Witches.... I'm sure there were more, but that's all that's coming to mind.

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Books!

I just finished Louis Sachar's There's A Boy in the Girls' Bathroom this morning. I was nearly toward the end when a bit of a memory floated up, and I realized I read this book when I was a kid. I thought I'd never read it, but I totally have. I finally remembered Ronnie, the red bunny toy. What an odd thing to latch onto in a way, and in another, of course she was the detail that would cause me to remember the book at all - I was completely enamored by all of my extremely beloved stuffed animals.

I'm also reading Furthermore, which I'm loving. Tahereh Mafi is a word magician. Beautiful, beautiful writing. It's about a 12 yr old girl navigating the magical land she lives in. It's just so good.

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Writing!

I want to do NaNo.

Ideas:

- middle grade adventure type book, basically resurrecting an idea I had when I was a child to write a story about a young girl who looks outside her bedroom window and sees a pegasus sitting in her lawn. She goes down to see it and gets on, and is carried away to a magical land. That's all I've got for that one.

- crime story (kind of). Woman leaves abusive boyfriend who's involved in drug rings, escapes to suburbia, has to figure out where she fits in or if she does at all. She's basically trying to reinvent herself and also not be re-discovered by him.

- a woman shows up at her childhood home to help her mom after her dad has passed away. I have one whole scene of them and know literally nothing else about the characters.

- a young woman petsits in Los Angeles, and finds herself dog walking for the stars. One day, she finds a dead body in the swimming pool of her very affluent client who tells her not to call 911, and pays her to keep quiet. In a daze, woman takes the money, and leaves, then wonders what to do - call the police? Tell someone? Tell no one? It's all a huge mess, and the woman has to unravel what to do, and how the guy died, and whether there was foul play. Who is she working for anyway?? Is she in danger?

- a story that takes place in a zoo. But with who? Teens? Late teens? Adults with flashbacks to teens? Basically it'd be loosely based on experiences I had in which there is a teen volunteer program that feeds into the adult volunteer program and a lot of the adults have been there since they were teenagers, and have dated each other, etc. Not as fully formed as some of the other ideas, but it's been hanging around the back of my head a long time.

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All right, well, there you have it.

I guess that is about it for now from me.

I'm looking forward to Halloween. I love Halloween. I love it for the cuteness and charm, and decor. I don't love super duper scary things, I am not into gore, but just... spiderwebs, jack-o-lanterns, candy, cupcakes, that kind of thing. It makes me happy! XD Cute + Scary is my kind of aesthetic, like I used to have an adorable headband for years that was decorated with the outline of cats, but they were cat skeletons, all cartoony. It was the cutest thing. I think they had bows around their little skeleton necks too. <3

I'm rambling at this point. Off to go get something done! Byyyeee for now!

Moving really tests your dedication to your things. As you slide a mattress atop a wheeled dolly, and shakily wobble it across a parking lot, and remember you needed to get the dresser in first, sometimes you just sigh, lean the mattress against the truck, and go get the dresser, half hoping someone just steals the goddamn thing so you never have to move it again. Bags and boxes and more bags of stuff gets tossed and donated.

But not the books.

“You’ve never even read that one,” he says accusingly.

“Exactly! I’m PLANNING to, though,” you say. Psssh. OBVIOUSLY, you don’t say.

“What about those?”

“Same!” you say, irked and appalled he could even insinuate your abandonment of these stories, these ideas.

“I don’t know if we have the room in the new place...” he trails off.

You contemplate ditching the arm chair. And the coffee table? That’d make space for new bookshelves, right? Maybe taller bookshelves is the answer...

Once settled, the still as yet unread books line the shelves, the familiar titles on their spines whispering homecoming welcomes as you slide them into place next to one another. Those that don’t quite fit go on top of the shelf in a stack.

The next week, your friend tells you about a book they just finished and how awesome it is. You put it on hold at the library. When you walk in to pick it up, another catches your eye. “Well, while I’m already here,” you say, and tuck it gently into your elbow, cradling it, like a small stray kitten that needs to come home with you for just a little while. It’s like it knows you’ll treat it with the utmost care and love, and of course you will. You take home a whole litter, in fact.

Will you read them? Not before the first time you press “renew all” on the library app. Maybe not before the second time, either, and possibly not before accruing thirty to eighty cents in late fees per volume. Maybe you won’t read some of them at all.

But they kept you company, these collections of thoughts, these amalgamations of dreams and ideas that someone else put forth. Someone out there in the world conceived a vision, sat in a chair and whittled away an entire story, an entire universe. The trees shed their skin in unity, and joined with the ideas to grow and birth whole new people, who exist simultaneously as wobbly black inky lines on a page, as well as corporeally breathing, living, speaking beings in the landscape of imagination. Just being near them feels like greatness.

Back into the library shelves and others’ hands they eventually go, for they have places to be, people to see. And love and care to spread. You’ll see them again, you’re sure, when the time is right, and whether or not you read one page, ten, four-hundred, or none at all, you know you’ll be happy to see them in stacks at your bedside, your couchside, and lining your shelves.

For what is a home with stacks upon stacks of books, but pure magic...



This has been an entry for LJ Idol, prompt: Tsundoku