On the good side of things the wasp nest in our backyard is almost taken care of, the car did start (and a neighbor showed up out of the blue at the store to help me with it, and changing the starter will be less expensive than what we thought it was–the timing belt, also less dangerous seeing as apparently if the timing on a Rio goes out while driving the pistons will punch through the intake valves and the whole engine is a bust. Nice to know that now, but again, no fear that the car will explode on me.) we have a new front door and the walls are all insulated (they’re working on the pipes under the house now, so hopefully we’ll have no more $300-400 energy bills in the winter and we might even get to turn on the central air for a change). and I did get three chapters of edits done, the kids’ rooms cleaned and got hang out time with them.

Honestly I’m having a hard time not focusing, to the point of clenching headaches and sour stomach, all the bad things; the lack of money, car problems, problems dealing with other people, the not having a bathroom for three weeks, the list of things that still need to be done to the house (and the lack of money to do them), feelings of personal shame/guilt/stress (you know, not exercising every day and not eating better, because I don’t have the money to buy my favorite good-for-me snacks, but it doesn’t matter because I did exercise and watch my portions and didn’t lose any weight, then I stopped and I lost five pounds. Yea gods the only way I’m going to get down to a standard deamed “healthy” weight is if I cut a limb off….you know.)

I swear it’s a coat I can’t take off right now. So why am I hear complaining? Because I’ve been planning a big analytical post on The Witching Hour by Ann Rice a real critique kind of piece, but I’m not sure I can pull it off right now without coming off as complainy. So I’m complaining because I can’t blog because I’d be complaining too much.

Yeah, it’s something like that. So I’m going to have a bath and hopefully a good rest and hopefully I’ll have a more entertaining blog for you tomorrow.

So I took drastic action, saved all my important stuff (pictures, reviews, manuscripts) and rolled the Beautiful Beast back to factory settings. I’ve not had a single problem since.

But the bad news is I lost all my saved mail, my saved links, and my favorite programs. I’m recovering them, one slow download at a time. So please bear with me. And if I owe you an email, please, please resend it.