Distracted By Something Shiny

Just got back from seeing The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part. Usually no way a sequel is as good as the original, but this one I would say is like 90% as good, that’s my official review number, 90%. And only loses those 10% bc the first had that reveal & going into the 2nd one you already know the reveal, so there’s nothing left to reveal. But it was awesome. Not awesome all of the time, that’s a completely unrealistic expectation. (See the movie, you’ll get that joke.). Also they give mad props to my girl, Wyldstyle (yes I wore my Wyldstyle tee to the movie, as you see in this selfie. Yes it’s actually a pajama shirt & yes it has holes in it, but no, I don’t care.). Also, Tiffany Haddish - girl, I’d marry you, you slay.



👍🏼👍🏼 do recommend for all ages of fun!

‪Closing out the year the same way I spent about 50% of it...yep, I’m in bed already at not quite 9pm. Got up for a dr appt at 8:30am, which most of you know is 4 hours too early for me. Then spent all morning being poked & prodded by drs & techs, so I just came home after, slept, canceled physical therapy, watched Sharknado 5 instead. Now I’m ready for bed. Gonna close out the year with Seth Cohen’s favorite Sylvester Stallone movie, Over The Top, and then go to sleep before midnight. I’m not lame, I’m 40, people.

Also, fyi, I saw someone say “They say what u do at midnight is how you'll spend the new yr”.
I’m legit gonna be asleep w Law & Order: SVU on in the background so, yep, this seems accurate.
Statement now verified by science!

Goodnight & Happy New Year, ya’ll!‬

Omg, it's been so long since I've posted. The summer has gotten away from me. It's been full of houseguests & niblings, non-stop. I have tabs open from like May to comment on all your posts & I've just never gotten around to it. I've lost track of my Flist. I'm behind on Tumblr shit too. There has just been too much irl socializing. In Michigan, we hibernate all winter & party all summer long! But I do *hope*, at least, to get back on a semi-reasonable track with my social media, as summer winds down here. I hope you've all been well. Please drop me a comment & tell me how your summers have been going - I want to know!

ION, we had a scare with Winston, my mom's old man dog, the other day. I thought I heard him miss his step off my bed, early in the morning. Sis found him a bit later on the living room floor, unable to stand up. I was sure he'd hurt his leg when he missed the step, but when he did finally get up, he was titling to one side. Sis was convinced he had a stroke. We got him into the vet a few hours later & by then he was able to stand and take a few shaky steps on his own. The vet said no broken leg, just a sprain, but yes, he was leaning to one side. She said it was vertigo - common in elderly pets. She put him on a super decongestant. When I heard the medication name, I was like, "Hey, that's what I take for my vertigo episodes!" Lol. Winston & I are now on 2 of the same medications. Within in 36 hours, he was almost completely back to normal. His only issue now - 2 days & some change out from it - is he seems to be a bit dizzy when he goes from laying to standing, which is normal with vertigo. He will be 15yrs old in October, so age is finally starting to weigh him down. I am just so glad it wasn't a stroke. I know we will be lucky to get another year with him, but so suddenly like that when he had been just fine the day before, I wasn't prepared. Thank goodness he seems to have bounced back.

Lastly, I thought I'd share with you the review for "Gifted" I put up on Twitter & FB last night. I highly, highly recommend you all watch it. If you don't have HBO, find it some other way. It will be worth your trouble. It's about an uncle raising his genius niece & fighting a custody battle with his mother over her. **Still sniffling. Just finished watching “Gifted” starring Chris Evans & it was beautiful. Tears of despair, then tears of happiness. Was a cleansing cry, think I needed that. Also, McKenna Grace was the lead little girl in it & she was absolutely amazingly brilliant. Available on HBO, go watch!** (Sidenote: Chris Evans should always have a beard. Always). ;)

It's my LJ anniversary! Number 7, to be exact! Can't believe it's been seven years. I was just telling a friend from these parts - who I met on here back in my freshman LJ year, lizibabes, whom I have stayed friends with all these years - (how many of you have been chatting with me for seven or six or even five years now?!) - that, as it happened, the day I made my first LJ post was The Nephew's 4th birthday. He turned 11 today!

I meant to get my Dreamwidth up today, so that my LJ and my DW anniversary would be the same. As events unfolded this week - besides Lucky's death, Mom has been in the hospital all week, came home today, is doing better - I just didn't have time. I've been baby-sitting all day, with help from The BFF, as Sis has bronchitis and my brother needed the kids watched so he could do funeral stuff.

As I type this, The Niece and I are side by side in my bed on our tablets. She is playing a puzzle game for kids and I am making this post. Once she settles a bit, I'll turn on Moana. She saw it in theaters, but I've never seen it! Anyways, I still wanted to get something put up for my LJ anniversary!

Maybe you all could leave me some comments? Anything you can think of that reminds you of me - something you see somewhere that makes you think 'Dodger', or maybe a fic of mine you remember fondly, or how long you've been following me. Anything at all to make me 'awww' over my wonderful friends and wonderful time here!

I love all you guys! I always say, "internet friends are real friends too!"

I can't believe this weather. Just over a week ago it was 30 degrees out with snow and winter weather advisories. Now it's 75 degrees out and beautiful as everything. My sister spent the weekend putting down mulch on the areas of our backyard that don't ever grow any grass anyways. And then my brother came by to assess to start building our new back deck. We can go from our dining room onto our sun porch, then onto our open back deck. But our back deck is not a deck so much as a landing and it gets moss slick and water damaged and the steps are rickety, so it's no good. Plus, I can't actually get out onto it by myself because the step down is too big. I can get onto the sun porch, but how nice would it be to actually go sit outside and write? We can't really afford it, but we've been here 8 years and dammit, we want it! If we wait until we can afford it, we'll never do it!

( Pics of our backyard under the cut. )

Anyways, we had Little Girl Cousin - she'll be twelve in June - over for a Girl's Night since she always bugs us when are we going to do that again. One time when she was about 5, we had her, me, Sis, BFF and Vet Tech Cousin over (and Zippo, the only girl cat we've had in this house, who LGC said was our special guest) for a sleepover and she declared it a Girl Party and now we have to do it at least twice a year for the last seven years apparently, lol! We played Clue, we did art (she's an unbelievable artist, seriously, she did a green & pink basket with two cats jumping into it, that were suppose to be my sister and me as cats with a rainbow behind it. I did a colored pencil drawing of a dragon, since I'm practicing my dragons so I can do a real serious painting of one for my collection). Then we played on the computer for a bit, ate hotdogs for dinner and watched The Journey of Natty Gann. I was about her age the first time I saw it and was already in love with John Cusack and I wanted to be a roughneck tomboy on the road all tough like, so Natty was my hero. There was this underlying thing about her I could never put my finger on until I rewatched it as an adult and was like, "Oh. Oh. I had a crush on Natty!" And I had a crush on Harry, so it was all very confusing, I am sure! LGC got very upset when the dad started taking the dangerous logging jobs, "Is the dad gonna die? Just tell me, okay? Is he?" lol

So that was my weekend. I am wiped out, but it was nice. How were all of your weekends?

Just a quick list of all my Halloween stories from years past. There will be a new one up tomorrow as well, a little Fic-For-Kids that I wrote for The Nephew last year, off his own prompt. I started a new one this year as well, a Monster Squad/SPN crossover. I made TN watch The Monster Squad with me this year - I watch it every Halloween now that I own the DVD - and he loved it and I thought it'd be cute to write a little fic for him. I only got 1k written on it and then the week kind of got away from me, but I definitely plan on finishing it and mailing it to him and then it'll probably go up here next year, lol. It seems I am a year behind on posting my Halloween fic. Anyways, here you go!

In reverse order:

Halloween, Interrupted - Peter/Mary Jane, G, Fic-For-Kids, Holiday, Humor

Avengers' Halloween 101: You’re Never Too Old - PG-13, Gen, Humor, Bruce+

The Door To Nowhere - R, Gen, Drama, Horror, Darcy, Pepper, Bruce & Tony

Where The Sidewalk Ends - Comedy Central RPF, PG-13, Angst, Drama, Gen, Jon & Stephen

Huh, apparently I didn't write a Halloween story the first year I was on LJ. Alrighty then, Happy Halloween, you guys!

Thing 1). Roo is sick. Retaining fluid. Vet says it is a parasite that has laid dormant for years and is attacking now that his immune system is weak and he is older. Dangerous though because of his heart murmur. Still waiting to see if the medicine is working.

Thing 2). Lost my debit card. Think I left it on the table at the restaurant. Didn't realize it for a week and a half, as I mostly use it for online shopping and all my info is already in all my accounts online. Thankfully no one used it and after almost two weeks of waiting, I have a replacement.

Thing 3). My fatigue is not getting better, but I am getting better at managing it and handling the stress of flare ups - though always disappointed when I have to bail on plans. It's a chronic illness, it will never go away. It's a degenerative illness, so no matter what I do, it will always slowly get worse. This has just been a bigger set back then I am used to, is all. My new normal, I will learn to work with it.

Thing 4). I got a Rent-A-Swag tee for my birthday - (Parks and Rec fans on here?) - since Tommy is my man! Yesterday my sis took me to the art store and we got all kinds of bling to decorate the shirt with, as it is kind of plain looking. So that'll be a fun project for Sis and I to do together.

Thing 5). This weekend we celebrate my sister's birthday - which is the 15th - by going to see Jurassic World in IMAX 3D. If you have been following this journal, for any time at all, you know how I feel about the JP movies, so I am excited. Taking The BFF and The Nephew too and then going to a Mexican restaurant after per Sis' request.

That is all. For now!

Just in case any of you wondered how I spend my days…Today, when my sister came home from work, I was wearing my Lego Movie pajamas, listening to the Glee soundtrack, working on a sketch of Shawn Spencer from ‘Psych’ and sucking on a Ring Pop. Cuz I am a grown-ass woman, yo!

So, over the weekend, hiyacynth and her boy, Munchy P, were here. They were set to come on Friday, but after looking at the weather report, we started to get concerned about what were being described as ‘potential white-out conditions’. She said she’d think on it Wednesday night and then on Thursday I awoke to a text from my sister saying Hiyacynth was on the way here, deciding to come a day early! She very cleverly brought a sled along, in case they did get stranded on the side of the road, that she could pull her son behind her instead of carrying him through the snow.

Sis and BFF were at work on Friday, so while Hiyacynth was baking delicious bread, I played with Munchy for a few hours. He got out the Bert & Ernie dolls and we played out what I later realized was very similar to an actual episode of Sesame Street. Bert kept bringing ants into the house via his garden. “Ants in your pants, Bert? Don’t sit on the chair - you’ll get ants on the chair!” - “I sit in your chair, now you have ants in your chair!” Lather, rinse, repeat that for a half an hour. We also played on the IPad and the kid suckered me into purchasing more puzzles in the puzzle app. He is so vocal now and it is adorable. It shouldn’t be so cute when a kid cries, but when my sister shut him out of the basement so the cats could eat dinner in peace, he cried, “If you shut me out of there again, I will be sad!” Also I noticed that if one of his aunties did a transgression, we were all to blame for it. “But my aunties won’t let me in the kitchen!” - “But my aunties turned off the light!” I’m sorry, but it’s just adorable. On Saturday, just after I woke up, while I was still in bed, Munchy came traipsing into my room with a new book, crawled up in my bed and handed it to me to read to him. After that he wanted my IPad, so we cuddled up in my bed and played on that while his Mom took a shower.

We had a lot of good food and watched some movies - got to see Winter Soldier again, which I really do love a lot - and all in all, I had a pretty excellent weekend. Now I have to spend the week working on K’s birthday present. It’s his 50th this year!

Important Notice 1: For those of you who plan on watching TNT's new series, "The Librarians", starring Noah Wyle, Rebecca Romijn and Christian Kane, they are replaying the original movies (also starring Noah Wyle) this weekend. Sunday, the 7th, starting at noon, all three movies will air in order. I don't think it will be necessary to have seen the movies to watch the TV series, but if you are interested, the first movie at least is loads of fun. I've only seen the first one, but this time around I am recording and watching all three. Anyways, I know some of you were interested in catching the movies first and even if you don't plan on watching the new series, you should give the original movies a try. Noah Wyle looks like he had a ton of fun making them!

Important Notice 2: It's rhymephile's birthday!! The big 40! (Am I not suppose to announce that to people? Oops, too late!) Rhyme and I met through LJ, where I commented on a fic she wrote, in such obsessive crazy squeeful delight, that she friended me and I friended her back and we have been clutching each other and screaming about fannish things ever since. I awesomely got the chance to meet her in person last year (yep, still excited that we ate in what used to be an old Chicago fire-house) and she's basically the coolest fucking person. But here's a funny thing, like seriously, there was a brief period when we were talking online that I thought, "Does my sister have a sockpuppet journal, where she writes HS AUs, because I think I just accidentally friended my sister's sockpuppet journal." She is obviously not my sister, but still...I was actually really suspicious for a minute there! Anyways, Rhyme, babe, for your birthday, I am still working on that art project I started for you last year. (Still as in, I fished out the already finished bits and set them on my dresser. But I'll get there!) In the meantime, I thought maybe tomorrow, the forces of my life willing, that I might dig out an old X-Files fic (Krycek-centric , of course) and post it up for you, in your honor. Whaddya think?

Important Notice 3: FYI, if you are writing a Firefly fic and then try to send your brother an email immediately after, be aware that it is really hard to get out of Firefly-speak once you've started and your brother may end up side-eyeing your entire email.

That is all.

I forgot it was Tuesday and I like to try and post every Tuesday, but I am currently pretty wiped from doing some organizing and cleaning in my room today. Which needed to be done - (the cleaning in particular as I spilled Sprite all over my bedside table last night and it got on my remotes and stuff). But on top of the cleaning, I also managed to get some writing in today - only 450 words, but still, some words. I also updated my monthly word count sheet. I know, I used to post an update every month with my weekly numbers, but since I fell off the writing so hard earlier this year from being sick with the bronchitis and the dizzy spells, I also kind of fell off keeping weekly counts. I do have monthly counts though and sadly I am not even reaching my goal of 4k a month, at least on average. I haven’t even broken 50k yet and I’ll be lucky to do so by the end of the year. After last year’s 100k, this is depressing to me.

I know we all have on-years and off-years in our writing and I have done some other great stuff this year - a few art pieces and a massive room organization that has been waiting on me since we moved into this house - plus the illness and the sick animals and losing my grandfather and all the other stresses of the year have really dried out my muse, but hopefully she’ll rehydrate soon.

Alright, off to finish the movie I am watching - the Matthew Broderick ‘Godzilla’ because The Nephew bought it for a dollar with his own money and then loaned it to me and he has been waiting on me to watch it so we can talk about it and about whether it is better than the one we took him to for his birthday this year. I am assessing that it is, in fact, better than the crappy new release, which was way boring and dragged on too long, imo. This one could be a smidge shorter, but it is action packed and they waste no time in getting it going. I can see why he likes this one better. Nothing will ever be the classic original though!