Out of Avalon

January 30th, 2009 by Ascelyn

4.5 weeks.  Last time, I found out exactly this far along.  Then, it was sort of a “huh, that makes sense” moment.

Now I know the reason behind each little thing, and it makes me happy.  Mostly.

I’m a little more tired than usual, though not as bad (yet?) as it became before.  I’m a little hungrier, running to the bathroom a little more often, being pestered by a little more heartburn right when I finally get comfortable on the couch or in bed.  Smells bother me a little more, mostly the new soap in the bathroom at work and my hand lotion.

Really, the main thing so far are the crazily vivid dreams, which are back in full force.  I don’t like those much.  I woke up yesterday morning desperate to apologize to Jason for the horrible things I’d done, and it took me a few moment to realize that they weren’t real.  This morning, I awoke despondant; I’d lost this baby, too, in my dreams.  My memories of these dreams are as realistic as my memories of things that have actually happened, and it’s not pleasant.  Unfortunately, after spending my nights so awake even while sleeping, I don’t feel like I’ve actually slept at all.

Regardless, I can’t wait to keep going.  I hope that if things are bound to go wrong, it happens soon, before I get so attached and so much pain has to come with it.  More, though, I hope the first three months will just get themselves over with so I can stop worrying quite so much and relax.

January 26th, 2009 by Ascelyn

Is bored and hungry.

Is also pregnant.

I can haz healthy baby in October?

January 22nd, 2009 by Ascelyn

Winter Gather, this past weekend, was productive.  I was fitted for a gown, guided in the acceptable colors and types of wool, and acquired and subsequently vetted a lovely comb from Spanish Peacock and an awesome bowl and mug from Eadric.  My cheesy $1 needle case, ordered alongside my tent from Panther, also passed.  I learned, among a million other things, that both the undergown and overgown tend to have wrist-length sleeves unless the wearer is generally indoors, so I’m not so worried now about color combinations.  I guess it was fairly vain of me anyway.

I’m hoping to go to Military Through the Ages at Jamestown in March, but I don’t know if I can possibly have all my sewing done by then.  I’d like very much to attend March Through Time at Marietta in April, but the Sunday of that weekend is Greek Easter, and the last thing I want to do at the moment is tick off the portion of J’s family that doesn’t yet wish me dead.  It’ll be grating to sit in Baltimore and know I could be a few counties away among friends, but his extended family is quite nice, and I have no desire to insult them by not coming.

Looks like I need to order some fabric, since the only thing from Surplus City that worked only had 2 1/2-ish yards.  Linen is easy, though I think I’m going to stick with 5 yards for now rather than trying for a full (20 yard, $131) bolt.  Wool I believe will be coming from B. Black & Sons in brown, but I’m wondering now if an exhaust-bath shade of indigo blue would have been available to someone of such low station.  Unfortunately, I don’t even know where to look to find out.  There’s always the second gown, though!

January 21st, 2009 by Ascelyn

The next person who tells me to smile is going to get…

Glared at.  Who am I kidding?  I’m all bark and no bite.  Actually, I scribble more than I bark.  Good thing I’m not a dog.

Honestly, though, who are you to tell me to smile?  What stake do you have in my feelings?  How effing selfish are you to demand that I put on some sort of performance just so you don’t have to face a world in which not everyone is some smiling, head-in-the-clouds clown?

If I’m smiling, I’m not smiling for you.  If I frowning, I’m not frowning for you–unless it’s an oh-so-subtle hint to leave my presence immediately.  I do not feel for you, and I don’t see how you ought to have any say in how I express those feelings as long as they’re not hurting anyone else.

If I’m not smiling while I type away at my paperwork, maybe it’s because I’m NOT HAPPY.  And you know what?  That had nothing to do with you until you stuck your fake-cheery face in where it didn’t belong.  Maybe I’d smile more if you’d just leave me alone.  Maybe I’d smile more if my life didn’t feel like it were crashing down around my head…not that you’d know about that.  I, you see, don’t bother assuming that you care in the least.  Just like you shouldn’t care whether or not I’m smiling.  Just like you don’t care how much my attempts to act “normal” (since when have I bothered being normal?) and “cheery” drain me so much that I barely tolerate the world once I escape it for the night.

If you feel like asking if I’m all right, or attempting to cheer me up, fine.  But please, for the love of all that is holy, don’t demand that I smile.  You’re just not worth it.

January 16th, 2009 by Ascelyn

I haven’t written anything in a week or so.  I’ve tried–or at least, I’ve tried to try–but it just isn’t working for me right now.  I have several things I need to write, if only to get them out of my brain in hopes that they’ll then cease tormenting me, but they’re harder to write than I thought they would be.

Once upon a time, I considered writing my art.  I was acknowledged as being fairly good at it, winning competitions and holding the respect of those around me, peers and otherwise.  I’ve given it up, or maybe it’s given me up.  Either way, this is no longer art.  It’s unpolished and harsh, life poured out onto paper like blood.  And like having some poisoned portion of your anatomy removed, the process itself can hurt.  Finally it’s all over, and the healing can begin.

As I confided a week ago, I get a kick out of checking the visitor stats for my domain.  A dozen fancy bar graphs concur that more and more people are coming here, and more and more are doing so repeatedly.  I’m not sure who you all are, but hi.  In some ways, I hope I can give you what you want, but in the end I can’t help but continue in my selfish ways.  I write for me, but you’re welcome to take a peep.

Because I don’t know who you are, though, I start to worry more about what I’m telling you.  I need to write, and I need to take the risk of being read.  I need the feeling that someone’s hearing me.  At the same time, I need privacy in some ways.  If not for me, then for others.  Plus, there are some people I just don’t want to read some things, but I have no real way of keeping them and only them out without more information than I have.

It’s hard to balance, and I’ve not really had to worry about it before.  I think it would be easily accomplished with Livejournal, but then I’d never get to write at all.  Finally, I’ve found a plug-in for WordPress that will allow me to make chosen posts available only to registered users or subscribers.

I’m still working on finding a way to moderate subscriptions, but if you’re someone I would probably talk to anyway, feel free to subscribe (in general, if you’re on my friends list on LJ, or if you’re from Offsprung, or in general if I know you and actually like you, BUT you’re not my little brother or Sheep Man or a random person from the online casinos that love to link to me).  If I get this set up right, I’m going to take all my currently password-protected posts and hide them behind the filter.  People who aren’t logged in won’t even know these and any future posts exist.  It should be more streamlined than my previous method, which sucks, and I won’t have to worry about who’s acquiring a password unbeknowst to me.

In the meantime, I’ve had to upgrade WordPress to make the plug-in work.  Then I got to play with the script, which I amazingly figured out in only two tries.  Doing so also deleted all my category names.  I’ve figured out how to fix it, but that, in turn, requires me learning how to open .gz files.  I’m getting there.  In the meantime, I’m categoriless.

I also want to get up a list of links, and a picture, and maybe someday even a real web page.  We’ll see.

January 6th, 2009 by Ascelyn

I do have other things to write about, but they’re depressing, and who really wants to listen to me whine anymore?  I know I sure don’t.

Occasionally, I’ve been known to amuse myself by looking at the visitor stats for my domain.  Mostly I just like to see where people are coming in from.  Search engines?  Links?  As with cleaning out my Askimet backlog, I get to laugh at the things people think my readers (okay, that would be me) would like to buy.  Apparently, they’re depressed, anovulatory men over the age of 65.  The vast majority of my visits stemming from links are from gambling and, to a lesser extent, credit counseling sites.  The only legit ones I’ve seen are mostly Livejournal, Offsprung, and Alianor de Ravenglas’s blog over at Wordpress, with a smattering of links from people’s Hotmail and Yahoo inboxes (you’re emailing about me?  weird…).  On an exceptionally bored day, I might even try to hammer down those IP addresses that account for the bulk of my traffic.

While links are fun, search engines are even better.  Below you’ll find a list of the search terms used to enter my site in ‘08, sorted by frequency and then alphabetically.  Yes, I put far more work into compiling this list than I should really ever admit to.

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