What Was I Saying...?

The other day inkblitz posted a little thing about seasonal depression, which prompted a thought in my mind that I wanted to observe.

I've known Blitzy for something like five years now. We were thrown together by our online RP group but pretty much immediately clicked. And while the RP group is not the focus of either of our lives any more, the friendship has endured. By the standards of, say, high school or college friendships, we're practically blood brothers. But the thing is, we met as adults– in my case, as a middle-aged adult in particular. So for me, a period of five years, while nothing to sneeze at, still counts as being "recent developments."

When we met, I was still in the darkest parts of grief, and quite often depressed; during one of my conversations with Blitzy at the time, I said that having met me after my friends and family started dying left and right, so constantly mired in grief, in many ways he hadn't met "the real me."

But when did I stop being "the real me"? How long can an extended period of grief last before that is "normal"? My father died in 2011 after a long and stressful decline; Kerry died in 2013. I met Inkblitzer somewhere between those two events, and they've cast a long shadow ever since– as have the deaths of Sandy, FrostDemn, Buddha, my aunt Iris, and my mom, and the loss of our house and jobs of 15+ years, all in the same cluster. It's not like my grief was unwarranted. ¬.¬

But recently, something has shifted in me. I'm not sure exactly how, why, or when, although I did comment on it a little while back. I have started being myself again. I still miss everyone that I've lost, and it's not like I'm feeling peachy-keen about all the crap currently going on in the world, but there's an important internal difference.

I'm fine in the moment. I'm thinking about where I am and what I'm doing, instead of thinking about how much pain I'm in or what I've lost. The emotional wounds, as it were, seem to have scarred over. This manifests mostly in a better mood, a sunnier outlook, and a lighter, more playful approach to just about everything. I'm back to treating life like a party or an adventure, rather a slog that I have to just keep pushing through. When I think of "the real me," that's what I think of, the guy who wants to make everything more awesome, not the guy who is stubbornly refusing to give in and just sink to the bottom.

I mentioned to Blitzy that I was finally the real me again; he said, "I think I met the real you enough. At least at conventions. But yeah, I'm seeing more of convention you in general."

So I wonder. Maybe "the real me" isn't a fixed point, so much as an aggregation, and the me that was fighting through all that crap was "really" me too, me bearing the weight of what I was going through. But it still feels like being a different person.

-The Gneech

Well. It's been a thing, hasn't it? Yeeks.

As I suspect has not gone unnoticed, I have not been my characteristically chirpy, genial self for some time now. This is because the world seems to be actively saying "Up yours!" over and over, and it has me not-unnaturally feeling peeved.

To recount, in the past double-handful of years I have lost...

• a beloved aunt



• both parents



• my former business partner and best non-spouse friend



• another friend who was the group "den mother" for us in high school and who I was actually much closer to as an adult



• Frostdemn, a fan and friend who was a joy to everyone who knew him and was way, way too young



• my job



• my house



• Game Parlor



• Laughing Ogre Comics



• ...and of course Buddha the kitty, whom I loved dearly

Some of these things are worse than others of course, but it's the sheer number and overwhelming breadth of it that gets me. Like there's no good thing so minor that the Universe doesn't feel like going "YOINK!"

Then last year, lythandra's job, which was at least paying the bills, also disintegrated, and she's been searching ever since with frustrating results.

Just in 2016, circumstances conspired to kick us out of the place we didn't especially like but had landed in when the house sold, into sirfox's condo in Maryland. And, wishing no reflection on Sirfie, Maryland just ain't working for us for reasons I don't particularly want to get into here.

Despite my best efforts, and even when it returns praise for the writing, I have not been able to sell my book.

And oh yeah, now the neo-nazis are on the march, and the ice caps are melting at an unprecedented rate despite it being winter, much to the consternation and bafflement of the scientists who study such things. Those who used to be alarmists on the topic are throwing up their hands and saying, "welp, we're fucked," while those who used to be only concerned are becoming alarmed.

So yeah, things kinda suck right now, on levels cosmic, social, personal, and downright petty. What the hell. And it's made me grouchy.

However, as Nick Fury put it, "Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on." And while some people use anger and spite to fuel their fire, I am not among their number. Anger and spite make me cruel and mean, and I don't like me when I'm mean. I renounced it long ago, before anyone who knows me now even met me, but it's kinda like being a werewolf or something– it's always there, trying to sneak back out. I suspect many people would be shocked at sheer volume of vicious thoughts or cutting comments that jump unbidden into my mind, and at the effort I'm constantly expending to stop it before it reaches my tongue or the page. If you ever feel I'm snarky or negative now? My public face is Mr. Flippin' Rogers compared to the crap that goes on inside my head.

Lately, just by having been worn down by the world, this effort has been a real fight. I'm spending as much energy on keeping myself "up" as I am on actually accomplishing the things I want to get done with my day. I had a counseling appointment about this last week, and that helped, but it's still something I am dealing with.

The point I'm meandering my way to here, is that I think I've finally reached a certain equilibrium over the past few days, and hopefully I am now at the "Take a deep breath, stand up, and keep walking" stage of things. The reason I punted on NaNoWriMo was so I could concentrate on more immediately-lucrative pursuits so that when our current lease is up we would have options. I have a specific goal that I am working towards, something that Laurie and I have decided as a result of the recent social events, and that goal has finally given me something positive to work towards, instead of simply trudging on because that was all there was to do.

Hopefully, as I start to make progress, and perhaps even start building more positive things back into my life, the Universe will get the message and start moving in the right direction itself, as well.

-The Gneech

Went through the Brian Weiss video this morning; the recurring motif was definitely that of the sea.

This started with the "healing color" visualization, which was the bright cerulean blue of a sunny sky. In particular the visualization that came to me was of a beach, phasing back and forth between being a realistic beach and being the more-vivid-than-life colors of an anime beach. The bright blue color was suffused with the warmth of sunlight, simultaneously giving it a "yellow" feel [1].

Appropriately enough, the first childhood memory that came up when prompted was of the National Museum of the U.S. Navy where I went many times as a kid, which had chunks of WWII-era battleships and submarines set up for kids to climb on and play around, including the deck guns and periscopes. This memory led to a string of other childhood museum-ish trip memories, including going to the National Zoo with my family when my mother's parents came up to D.C. when I was around three-ish (I was in a stroller, that's all I can point to for my age), as well as any number of field trips or trips with my Uncle Kenny to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum back when the U.S.S. Enterprise model was still hanging from the ceiling in the stairwell, and the Natural History Museum. Brian Weiss prompted me to consider why this memory came up and why it was important right now, and I got a very clear response of, "Remember, the world is bigger. You've been stuck in a very small focus of home-work-home lately. There's more to life."

The video moved on to in utero memories, which I always seem to get spotty results from. In this particular case I got the impression of amber light and a distant muffled heartbeat. (And yes, I know amber light makes no sense in utero. But that's what came to me.) I also had a vague sensation of my body, and particularly my head and face, being very small, smaller than my consciousness properly fit into.

When prompted to visualize a garden, the oceanic motif returned as I found my consciousness swimming around a coral reef in bright blue water, something I've never actually experienced but have been wanting to add to my "bucket list" as of late. Brian Weiss said to visualize a door that would lead to a past life memory and my brain supplied the door to Engineering from the original Enterprise [2]. When I passed through this door, I caught a fleeting glimpse of a mental image of a submarine, but this was a model or schematic diagram of some kind, not an actual submarine.

As the images came more into focus I saw the railing of a steamer, which was close enough to the shore that I could tell it was a forested headland, and I think there was a bridge ahead of us. Whether we were putting out to sea or coming in from a voyage, I'm not sure, but I was a member of the crew, one of the officers I think. Ahead of me I saw a friend/colleague of mine, although he was turned away so I couldn't clearly see his face. I know he had sandy brown hair and a nautical-style beard, and my mind connected him with InkBlitzer, although whether this was actually one of Blitzy's incarnations or just a realization of an analogue relationship ("In the previous life you were friends with this guy the way you're friends with InkBlitzer now" kind of thing), I'm not sure.

The video then prompted me to go to the end of that lifetime; I saw the bedroom of a coastal cottage as you might expect from a seaman. It was mid-morning and there was light coming in through the windows, but they were obscured by gauzy white curtains. There was a bed and "I" was in it, the first time I've ever seen another version of myself in one of these exercises. I looked a bit like James Mason in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, dark hair and cropped beard with streaks of white. I was somewhere in my '60s, bedridden and clearly not going to recover. I was aware of some family members were around me, but only as vague shapes. Brian Weiss asked "What lessons are there to learn from this life?" and although I contemplated the question, I didn't get a direct answer.

I suspect the next portion of the meditation provided an indirect answer, however. When prompted to find a spiritual guide or a relative, my mom was instantly there, which surprised me. I told her that I wasn't happy with the way her own passing had gone, her in bed with her mind shut down by morphine and only the hospice care nurse to be with her, but that I hadn't been able to figure out a better solution. She wasn't bothered by this particularly, and when I asked her why she had chosen to go that way, she replied, "That wasn't a lesson you needed to go through, so I wanted to spare you from it."

My studies in reincarnation, life-as-school, and spirit groups prompted me to think about my relationship with her, and so I said, "Are we done with all the stuff we had to go through?"

"Mostly," she said, presumably meaning that there'd be a little more to deal with in a future lifetime, but that hopefully it wouldn't be too much more to cope with.

"Good," I said. "I'm tired of fighting. I just want us to love each other now." We hugged, and I said, "Thanks, Mom."

"I'm not really your mom, you know. I just played your mother this time around."

Such a friggin' her thing to say! XD I just replied with "You know what I mean."

"Yes," she said. "I know what you mean." As the video prompted me to head back to normal consciousness, I could see that she was leaving, so I simply kept repeating "I love you" until she was gone, because really that's all there was left to say.

Then Professor Weiss counted up to ten, and I opened my eyes.

-The Gneech

[1] Blue + yellow = green. Green is the traditional color of the heart chakra. Just sayin'.
[2] Hearkening back to the model in the Smithsonian, which is a connection I didn't make until I was writing this. I have long connected spaceships and submarines in my mind– I have often said that the best Star Trek movie ever made was The Hunt for Red October.

Yesterday and today I read Brian Weiss's book, Many Lives, Many Masters, which is basically a history of how he got involved in the field of past life/reincarnation study. It was interesting, but didn't really give me a lot of insights I hadn't already come to.

This afternoon I tried to do a regression meditation, only to be thwarted by needy cats and a severe attack of grumpiness, the kind of "zero to enraged" anger that afflicted my dad every time he cooked dinner and that comes to me when I really, really need a nap.

So I punted on that session until nap and dinner had been acquired. When we came home from dinner, I tried again to go through the meditation session. This time was more successful, but it was still a fairly rough one.

Visualizing a healing color barely worked at all, although I did manage to get a tactile sensation like being under warm running water, such as in a shower. Calling up a childhood memory brought up a girl I'd had a sort of proto-relationship with around the ages of 9-10, and a specific memory of being with her on the Metro riding downtown for a visit to the Smithsonian. In many ways, this girl was much like lythandra, almost suspiciously so– right down to being a Star Wars and roleplaying geek named Laurie.

When Dr. Weiss asked what the significance of the memory was, I had an easy answer: the specific memory was one of the first times I realized we had a strong connection and very close friendship. As for why it was important, well, I eventually destroyed that relationship with an act of extreme pettiness that I never really understood the reason for myself (unless it's some bit of karmic residue from previous incarnations), and I have always felt very guilty about it. I imagine Laurie W. is still out there, somewhere, and I have occasionally thought about trying to look her up and apologize for being such an ass, but I can't think of any way to go about it that wouldn't just be a giant awkward mess.

From there we went on to the in utero memory, and when prompted to explore for feelings, I was overcome with a wave of profound but unfocused sadness, which I identified as actually being "psychic residue" so to speak from my mother. According to my sister, my mom used to suffer from acute depression, and if she was in the midst of that while carrying me, it would make a lot of sense that I simply inherited it. When the time came to re-experience birth, I did get a physical sensation compatible with being upside down and/or on my back, followed by a feeling as if I was being suspended in mid-air by my shoulders and chest.

I had a difficult time coming up with any imagery for a garden or door to a past life, other than getting a very brief glimpse of a teenage girl with long, very straight hair. But once "through" the door I got a fairly strong image of some kind of a sauna or hot spring, with a wooden slat floor that had a hole in the middle for some kind of heated rock and a lot of moisture underneath. There was a middle-aged man in 1950s style glasses, with a towel wrapped around his waist in the sauna, and I eventually identified him as being Japanese.

The images shifted into a very cartoony mode at this point, and I think my mind was starting to mix images from Avatar: The Last Airbender in, specifically the guy pictured here, for reasons that make sense only to my subconscious. My conscious mind broke in here to argue that Avatar's Earth Kingdom was more like Han Dynasty China than 1950s Japan, and the whole thread of my thoughts began to unravel.

When Dr. Weiss prompted me to move forward to the end of that life, I remember that there was a definite scene with some kind of significance, but it was very fleeting and I have lost it in between the time it came to me, and the time I got to my keyboard to write about it.

At that point, the meditation came to an end, and I was "back," feeling vaguely frustrated, vaguely ashamed of 10-year-old me's behavior, and vaguely sad. I am now simply trying to process, learn from it, and let go. I may do a bit of gratitude meditation before going to bed, to try to bring my mood up a bit before I sleep.

Three Good Things For Today

1. Payday! Finally. :)


2. Red Lobster, to celebrate lythandra and my anniversary (which is actually Saturday)


3. Chatted a bit (via DMs) with fantasy author J.M. Frey, who seems like a very nice person


4. BONUS COOL THING: sirfox texted me pics of his halloween costume, which is cool :)

Three Goals for Tomorrow

1. Write up my recent realization on why I haven't been doing any art lately


2. Get to the end of my book's second draft


3. Have some downtime

-The Gneech

Went through the Brian Weiss video again, this time with headphones on and Buddha in my lap. I didn't drift into sleep this time, and actually got some images, which was good. Of course the phone rang near the end and poked a hole in my concentration, because phones are a plague on mankind. But I was able to mostly ignore it and keep going.

Healing Light In my mind, the healing light is a blue-green color, something like the ambient light of scuba diving.

Garden The image I got here was actually a pretty specific setting of a real-world restaurant with planters and trees in it. The restaurant in question also inspired the "Midas and Maenad" hotel that appears in my most recent novel, which is probably why it was fresh in my mind. I have a lot of thoughts about that restaurant, which I'll probably delve into at some point soon.

Childhood Experience Two came up this time. The main one was of a cedar shrub that was just outside the back door at Odgenland when I was growing up. I was a toddler, maybe three or four, and I would climb into the shrub and hide in there. I would occasionally sit on one of the branches, and bounce up and down like it was a seesaw. Of course it wouldn't be my life without the attached memory of my mom telling me not to do that because it was going to kill her plant. When Brian asks why this memory came up and what lessons it imparted, my mind quickly answered with, "Obviously, there is no action so innocent that I can't be made to feel guilty about it."

Unfortunately, the second memory has slipped away now. I remember that it was at Shrevewood School, which would make it between the ages of 5 and 8. Something about a sink in the classroom.

In Utero The only solid image I got here was the sensation of some gurgling noises, but that certainly makes sense. I also got a vaguer impression of my surroundings being brighter when he said to remember being born. Post-birth I didn't have any direct memories, but I did recall being told about the way I used to say "Ungie! Ungie!" even in the hospital and how my parents assumed this meant that I was hungry all the time. (And grew up overweight. Again with the toxic parenting, much?)

Garden and Door to Past Lives I got the image of a green craftsman-style door with ivy hanging around it, probably straight off of one of my Pinterest boards.

Previous Life Imagery I actually got something here. I didn't encounter a very defined sort of "self," but I did imagine a place. Specifically it was some sort of a town surrounded by forested hills, particularly "behind" me which was almost a sheer rock face. There was a two-story building on a street corner, the bottom floor of which was almost entirely open. The imagery shifted once or twice: at first I assumed the building was some sort of stable, but on second look it appeared to be possibly a bakery or pastry shop. Then I thought perhaps there were actually two buildings, one next to the other, with the pastry shop being actually on the corner, and the stables being next to it. When asked to "look down at my shoes," I did see some narrow black riding boots, which would fit with the stable idea. The only other person I saw was a woman, who was walking away from me. She was dressed in 1700s working class garb and carrying a bundle away from where I was, towards the main town, which was up a hill. I got the impression that this was revolutionary-era Virginia or Boston, although it was not a proper city so much as a busy town.

There might have been more, but I think it was sometime around here that the phone rang, knocking me out of it for a moment. By the time I recovered, this segment of the exercise was ending.

Spirit Guide Aunt Iris, of course, it's her every time. I've never met anyone else who actually gave unconditional love (although I know several people who do their best). mammalammadevil was there too. There wasn't much really to say on either end: I just told them both that I missed the hell out of them, and they responded with hugs. Some tears came of that.

And that was it. Not exactly a tale for the ages perhaps, but at least I got something. :)

-The Gneech

2014, the Year That Can Die in a Fire.

This follows Fuck 2012 and 2013 Was a Butt. Pretty much everything after 2010 has sucked, actually, and I don't know about anyone else, but I'm pretty sick of it.

Every year I look back at where I was the previous year and try to assess how I've done and what I'd like to do. Usually I do this around New Year's Eve or sometime in January, but I'm so eager for 2014 to be history that I'm doing it a little early this year.

This time last year, I was still enjoying the "afterglow" of finishing NaNoWriMo for the first time, as lythandra and I were cleaning all the junk out of my mom's house in preparation for selling it, reflecting on the loss of Sandy and Mammallamadevil, and looking forward to a year in which I didn't have friends or family die all over the place.

And then my mom and FrostDemn died. :P

In my mom's case, I wasn't entirely surprised; I actually did not expect her to survive 2014, but I had hoped she'd have a little more time in the assisted living place she seemed to like so much. FrostDemn's death was completely out of the blue and just so goddamn unnecessary. It was God kicking a puppy. And after five years of death, death, death, his was the one that finally made me break down and just weep.

The year followed up that auspicious start by being an unrelenting series of outrages, society unraveling, and general crap that has not affected me on as personal level, but still sucks. It's like March of the Assholes out there.

So yeah. 2014 can die in a fire. And 2015? I'm watching you, man. Don't screw it up.

Anyway. On to specifics! How did I fare on my goals last year?

• Exercise: I've done very well on this one, actually. Joining DailyBurn has made it relatively easy to get in an average of three or more workouts per week, and it's been very effective.



• Publish a Novel: This did not happen. No stories at all, even for an anthology to which I was specifically invited, which really hurts. Publishing a comic did happen, but it's taken a lot more of my mental bandwidth than I expected and this is something I need to examine in the upcoming year.



• Launch the New Comic, Get Out at Least Three Issues: The comic is launched! Two issues are out, the third is under construction. As mentioned above, the comic has taken way more time and energy than I expected it to, and that's even after having run the original SJ for ten years. I'm looking for ways to mitigate this, but it's definitely slow going. Granted, the death of my mom and the long, slow grind of actually selling the house have been a drag on my productivity, but life is life, man. There will always be something happening. Always. And my plans need to account for that.



• Make at Least $5,000 w/ My Writing and Art: I came close, actually. ~$4700, thanks mostly to Patreon and a solid AnthroCon. I need to beef this up the in coming year, tho. Selling some stories and working more cons would have done this.



• Work at Least Five Conventions: This didn't happen. I worked FurTheMore (but didn't make much), AC, and Intervention (at which I didn't make a red cent). I was sick and couldn't go to MFF, and didn't have the time to do any others. Not a good year on that front.



• Bring Our Income/Expense Ratio Back Into Black, Begin Contributing to Savings Again: Nope. :(



• Floss My Damn Teeth: Did that completely. Unqualified success. I only missed three nights all year: one when I was in the hospital, one at the in-laws' house where I couldn't find any floss, and one when I was so tired I was lucky to hit the bed when I collapsed, much less do any personal hygiene. Every other night, flossed like a boss.

What are my goals for 2015?

• Sell the House and Move Already: Two years we've been floating in limbo. Our second attempt to put it on the market started in July, man. Compared to my mom's house, which sold in two weeks? This is crazy. We need to be done with this.



• Bring in $13k Income: Technically, that's what we'd need to live in the current house and still do things like "eat". And while the idea is that we're going to move somewhere cheaper anyway, it seems like a good target number. If we move somewhere we can afford without my income, then anything I make is a bonus. Besides the writing and art, I'm also going to work on filling out The Etsy Shop, which needs more stock as well as advertising and promotion.



• Four Issues of Rough Housing: I've got to either get faster at this comic, or discontinue it to make room for other projects. And I really don't want to discontinue it.



• Get Dungeons & Denizens Rolling: I did promise my Patreon supporters that I'd be doing this, after all, and they came through, so now so must I. As of this writing, I've finished two pages... time to pick up the slack, Gneech.



• Continue to Lose Weight: I've lost about 20 lbs since starting Weight Watchers and DailyBurn, and while I'm currently kind of stuck in the 295-300 spot, I'm working on some strategies to punch through that plateau and start making progress again. I would like to get below 290 for Further Confusion, with a stretch goal of 260 for AnthroCon.



• Keep Flossing Them Teeth: I'm not actually worried about this habit, I think I've finally got it on lock. But there's no reason not to go for an easy win here.

Any suggestions? You people probably know me better than I know myself, what do you think my goals for the new year should be?

-The Gneech

She passed away at roughly 4 a.m. this morning.

-The Gneech

I haven't been posting much about all the stuff going on at the moment, largely because I've been too busy dealing with it to have time to write about it. But yesterday we reached a big, big milestone and I really feel like I should carve out a few minutes to document it.

So yesterday, courtesy of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, who did a great job, almost aaaaalllll of the tons and tons of STUFF in my mom's house is outa there. We had a cleaning service come in and scrub the place down, and it now looks nicer than it has in seven years. Furthermore, all the runaround the settlement company was giving me ("It has two mortgages!" "The mortgage company says it's only one." "They need to send us a document about that!" "They say you've got all the documents." "They need to send us a document showing we have all the documents!" *slap, slap, slap, slap*) was resolved by virtue of the idiot I've been dealing with being on vacation this week and a competent person being put on the case!

Mom has signed the transitional deed; on Wednesday the last of the junk will go; on Thursday I will sign a few pieces of paper and hand over the keys, and a huge albatross will finally be gone from my neck.

There are still plenty of other albatrosses there, including getting mom home from the rehab place and selling our own house before we go bankrupt, but this is still a huge relief. The sale should cover the cost of mom's housing for the foreseeable future, and what's actually even more of a relief, lythandra and I don't have to keep going over there to check the mail and make sure the place hasn't been broken into or burned down when we weren't looking.

It was something of a psychological wrench for me on Friday, seeing the collected detritus of Mom's and Dad's lives being tossed into bins, and fighting back against the hoarding instinct they instilled in me as a child to go "No! That must be saved! THAT must be saved! IT ALL MUST BE SAVED!" I'd been having unhappy dreams and stressful days about it for a while, and Friday was like finally tearing off the bandage. But yesterday, when the truck finally drove off and I saw the empty, clean house, was like stepping out into the bright light of the first day of spring.

Now, to start moving forward. :)

-The Gneech

I'm going to be mostly-offline for the next few days visiting family and such, so I hope everyone will refrain from burning down the internet while I'm gone. ;) Have a happy and a merry whatever-it-is-you-have, and give your friends and loved ones lots of hugs for me! :) I'll see you in a few days.

-The Gneech

It's been very much a week.

Sunday, we moved Mom into her assisted living apartment, which was a huge step for both her well-being and ours. We've spent a lot of time in the days since then ferrying things that didn't get transferred in the move or grabbing things she needs (like a shower curtain), but that will gradually settle down and we can start working on the whole "clean out her house and get it sold" thing. She's been remarkably willing to discard stuff she used to hoard, I can only guess that's a side effect of the stroke. Much of her short- and medium-term memory has been scrambled, including her attachment to many objects. In the time she's been in the assisted living place, she's been chatting with folks, seeing the in-house movies and the like, and she seems to be doing all right; we'll be keeping an eye on her, tho.

While we had the U-Haul, we also brought home the stuff we'd put into storage, since the house is off the market and that's $180/mo we didn't need to be spending. We still need to bring home our stuff from hantamouse's place, so he can have his third bedroom back, but that'll probably be done a carload at a time as weekend visits permit.

Finally, yesterday, Sweetums and Inkyboy were handed off to their new adoptive mum, who took them off to their forever home. I won't lie, it was a wrench. Over the six weeks they'd been with us, we came to love those kittens fiercely, even with their wrestling matches on our bed at 4 a.m. and the way they behaved like piranhas at feeding time. Unfortunately, they would not stay kittens forever, and we knew from the beginning there was no way we could sustain keeping five adult cats in the house. My allergies are in a constant state of Red Alert as it is, and kittens grow really, really fast. Compare:



The kittens when we rescued them, ~8 weeks old.



The kittens yesterday, the last "family video," ~13 weeks old. The bed that all three of them are rolling around in the first video, and the cat tree that only two fit into in the second video, are roughly the same diameter. By February, when it's time for them to get fixed, they will be as large as Buddha.

So now, with three of the four adopted into loving homes, our kitten adventure is done. Inkygirl is staying with us as part of the family at Casa de Lion; she spent the night curled up in the crook of my elbow, eager for somewhere to snuggle without her brothers to keep her warm. Like her uncles Buddha and Dasher, we will take very good care of her. <3

In other news, it hasn't been easy, but I'm still just under par with NaNoWriMo. And I was right: there was no way I'd have been able to do this while working a day job. Between family and kittens and all the other stuff life throws at you, no way. My respect and admiration for people who manage to write and hold down a job is boundless. Even my own previous work, running a webcomic (and occasionally two) while holding down a job, seems impossible to me now. How the hell did I pull that off, and for so long? My mind reels at the prospect.

Anyway. :)

Today, if all goes well, I will reach par and pass it; that's my goal, anyhow. I also need to take care of some stuff around the house and make some calls to cancel utility accounts my mom no longer needs, and of course keep the cats fed and cared for.

This is the new normal. And so far, I like it. :)

-The Gneech