a Clockwork Rabbit

We’re moving across the country.

Go figure that line of reasoning out,  I dare you.

I was going to write this blog about my fears, you know? All the things that could go wrong, all the questions that people have been asking me and all of the judgement we’ve already stumbled across in making this decision.

We’re moving across the  whole of the country. I’ve never thought about the future and actually felt like it was so bright and so clear, before.

It took almost a year of casual talk, a few months of serious consideration, weeks of sitting down as a couple, days of research and hours of discussion of this as a family.

*Shrug* Good fucking luck to us, I guess.

We’ve moved…again!

Though I’m positive that this will be the last time in a while. This last move just wore me the fuck out. Work on Eternal California is kicking off again and while I’m scared that it’s going to flop (of course) my biggest fear is that failure will ruin my relationship with my sister-in-law who is co-writing and doing the art. (I’m co-writing and doing colors). The whole project is rather ambitious and you know how I am about projects…

GO GO GO GO and then I just fart off and do something else for a while.

The beauty of this, though, is that someone else can drive me with sticks when I fall behind.

AND RISK MY WRATH!

I joke… I kid!

But… seriously.

I want you all to check something out.

Above are my two Southdown Babydoll sheep Gmork and Falkor, pretty stinkin’ cute, huh? I know! I know!! I am going to pick them up from their home in Missouri in late June and bring them home to Georgia where they will bounce and bound and eat grass and make wool which I will spin and dye and crochet into scarves which I will in turn sell to put food on the table, raise money for charity, and keep warm… and use to buy more punctuation!

However, the initial costs of lambs is kind of expensive. Building a shelter, renting pasture, buying vaccines and wormers, the cost of grain, hay, halters, leads and a live stock guardian (which I’m still looking to adopt) really builds up after a while.

So I’m doing another scarf sale! Unlike the $3 Scarf Project these scarves will not be sold below cost because THESE SCARVES are made of more quality yarn. Most of it hand spun by myself. I will be listing these scarves on my Etsy account as well as a few of my basic pocket watches as they come available. HOWEVER, if you’d like to get first choice of these items before I list them on Etsy I will make a waiting list just for you.

Scarves will have a locked in waiting list price of $10 and pocket watches will have a locked in waiting list price of $30. Shipping is an additional cost.

However, since this is a first come/ first serve operation I will only have the items available up for grabs for 2 days before I send them to Etsy. I will send out a twitter blast with pictures of items as they come available (Watches take a lot longer so please be patient) .

So, even if you don’t need another scarf for this winter or if you’re not a fan of pocket watches please send this blog/tweet on. Every little bit helps!

Thanks!

So, taking a break from bitching endlessly about everything to promote a project that I just started.

Fleet: The Serial Novel it’s my first foray into science fiction and my first time letting people read a work of mine from start to finish.

With that in mind, I need a small crew of beta readers to write for. What I want are people who can/will critique and/or just say OMG, YOU’RE AWESOME! WHEN IS THE NEXT POST!*

*but only if I’m awesome.

For this small, elite cadre of readers I will send them each a free hard copy or digital copy of the full, edited and complete chapters as I publish them.

So, check out the first segment Fleet: 1.1.1 End Transmission and if you’d like to join as a beta reader, please sign up to be notified of new posts and I will send you the password so that you can read the other 2 current posts and all future posts.

Once you sign up please email me at filthyrottenangel[at]gmail[dot]com and let me know!

Thanks!

I need a hug.

In between my mom slipping further down whatever dark little spiral she’s caught up in, the rest of the people who call themselves my ‘family’…

oh, you know. ‘Family’. Those bastards who, when my aunt was in a coma and dying, didn’t say a peep along the lines of ‘hey let me help you with this epic burden, let one of us take over her estate, let one of us just come close enough to help you in any respect.’ Those bastards who when I was coming up never stepped in and were like ‘whoa, Van, you probably should stop hitting your daughter so much.’ You know… those bastards.

… my ‘family’ are now contacting me all across the board with very obvious advice along the lines of ‘your mom needs help.” Oh, thanks. It never fucking occurred to me. Help? You don’t say. Wow.

I have the sinking feeling that the only reason they’re contacting me now is because they don’t want her bringing the crazy to them … again.

Oh yeah, she’s popped off to Chicago before with the thoughts that her ‘family’ would help her.

She ended up living out of her car.

But once again she’s got that perennial bug of ‘my family is all i’ve got.’ Because… me, you know… me? The chick who has been with her through all of this shit? I’m not family…or rather, I’m just not enough of whatever it is she needs. Fine. Whatever. She can go back up there and get fucking …what, taken into the fold? Whatever.

It’s like she totally forgot what happened last time. In fact she makes excuses for it. But they want me to have her committed because ‘I shouldn’t be afraid of the word ‘committed’ if it means she gets help.’

Okay. Several things.

My mom need help but she’s a working, contributing member of society. Not a danger to herself or to those around her. In order for me to have her committed I’m going to have to lie and have her institutionalized. My freaking mom. And who is going to deal with her when she’s in the funny house? Her ‘family’? Uh, no. Me. the not family chick.

Then I become the enemy. I become the one who put her mom away. She needs help but I need a different way to have her treated and I just don’t know how. Basically the ‘family’ has offered to listen to me while I get stuff off my chest and to back me up if I want to have her committed.

Uh.

Thanks.

Times like this I wish I could just leave and let someone else deal with this shit. But there is no one else to deal with this and no one else to help me deal with it.

Other than just patting me on the shoulder and going “wow, I’ve never had to deal with stuff like that, I feel bad for you.”

Jesus Christ. That doesn’t make any part of this situation better, you know that? Honestly, if someone comes to you with their woes NEVER SAY SHIT LIKE THAT. If they’re coming to you because they’re overwhelmed with burdens, try to lighten them… even if it’s only something small like “Hey, let me take you somewhere quiet so you don’t have to think about it… if only for a little while.”

Something proactive. Not this ‘Sux 4 U’ bullshit that people lame out with these days.

I think what it boils down to is that right now… I am tired of people needing me, I’m tired of being the one people lean on, I’m sick of making the decisions, I fed up with bearing the weight of everything for everyone else.

In a few days, maybe I’ll be okay to be your distraction, your problem solver, your inspiration, your driving force, your solvent for all of life’s sticky little problems. I am fucking tapped out right now and need a breather.

I just want a hug. And a lie down. And to not have people expect so much from me.

From “… killing in the name of…”

NOTE: Currently I am using Fausille in a different storyline… sort of parallel to her own… sort of not. The plus side of this is that I get to write her again, the negative side is that I get to write her again. Fausille, she…she gets into some scary shit.

They called them the Butchers. The killers of the screen and of the dark. Simmering men with devious hearts, hewn cold from the very stones and craters of hell. That’s what they called them. Who knew what they called themselves.

Fausille rolled her tongue over the shining and bare skull. It had taken a lot of work to get the bone to shine like marble, the arches of the brows and the curve of the jaw. Her tongue rasped like a fine sand paper against the bone. In life this had belonged to a man with a face like a jolly lie. He had been beautiful in the way of all overly pampered men, steel overlapped with silk and softness. So conceited and so painfully pathetic.

She’s heard of the Butchers and is not afraid of their brief immortality, given more life than they deserve by the media and the talking heads of state. She rolled the skull in her hands, warming it against her skin. The jaw had been wired shut to cease that chattering sound that the teeth of the dead make. Chattering like castanets in an empty room.  Fausille lovingly placed the bare and pearly skull on a shelf by the window and watched as the sliding light of the sun prodded fingers of pale light into the caverns where dark eyes once resided.

The Butchers were known by their signature ‘moves’, a thing which went unheard of in Fausille’s day… to leave a marking, a talisman of your presence… so foolishly delightful. She’d been sure to pick up on each and every one of the reported kills, watching the news anchors with their false, bottled sincerity seek to find the proper facial expression to convey an emotion that they didn’t know how to feel any longer. Loss, horror, outrage.

They were coming for her, she knew. She felt it in all her bones. They’d been sent to scrape her clean, to chew at her bones, to roll like dogs in her scent and lap at her blood with wicked, curling tongues. She knew… she’d called for them, not in words but through her actions. Dancing too close to the fire, killing the wrong man, flaunting her devious acts. She thought of the lawyer and his tie tack made from the graceful bones of a dancer and smiled as she pulled herself away from the tall and ill lit windows. She walked backwards as the sun finally rolled under the hem of the earth entrusting it to the bitter, cold care of a blind moon.

She walked away from the view of winter skies and bare naked trees to bathe away the scum of blood and flesh that coated her from her lips to her narrow hips. Fausille knew the Butchers intimately, she’d known them from their first days. From that first kill at Cicero Canyon when the lights of Heaven had stared in mute horror at the two boys who had howled like maddened wolves as they reveled in the shiveringly sharp stink of their victims fear.

Fausille dragged the foaming sponge across her pale skin, watching as the soapy water turned pink and swirled away down the drain. The shower ran cold and water ran like ice down her cool skin, rinsing away clots of blood and whisking them away. Her long black hair clung like liquid ebony to her sleek body as she shut the water off. The Butchers were coming for her. She reveled in the knowledge. Like carrion crows coming home, they were coming for her and would build their nests between her bones. Fausille, in the dark privacy of her home tilted back her fine, dark head and laughed. A sound like weeping bells or tinkling graveyard chimes. Let them come. Let them come.

After (and during) the scarf project I found it hard to go back to blogging… sooo this is my attempt.
I have spent a lot of time saying sorry for not blogging enough… I am done with that.
Not saying I am going to blog more… just saying I am done with saying sorry. It wears me out.
So, my situation has changed… again. No longer am I working long merry hours for The Man. Thank God.
I have spent a lot of time awake in the night thinking about how the fuck I am going to make ends meet, being disgusted with myself, and making resolutions that I know I am never going to keep.
I will be 33 years old and I honestly don’t know what I want to do with my life. I don’t know who I want to be and I don’t even know if I am really happy with what I have done with my life so far.
So… what the fuck am I going to do?
Am I just going to sit here in my messy house with my bored kids and whine?
For a while longer, yeah.
Then I am gonna get off my ass and be the change. Change and effort is hard for me… I know this and because I know this I need to do something about it.
Or else I am going to wake up one day and realise that I loathe myself too much to even make an attempt to engage my own life.
Alright… out of the bed… gonna do the easy thing and clean the bathroom. Yeah.

EDIT: thanks you guys for the amazing support and comments. I just need to clarify that I am not unemployed… just had hours cut drastically.

First, I want to thank everyone who helped out with this years $3 SCARF PROJECT! I want to thank the wonderful folks at uniimi who offered support, a shop front and lots of help in getting the word out. I want to thank the people who donated scarves, yarn, time, hope and amazing awesomeness! I also want to thank all those amazing people on twitter who tweeted, retweeted and followed the entire event.I want to thank everyone who joined the 3SCARFPROJECT Kiva team. You guys are awesome!

I also also want to thank the people of KIVA… for everything, really.

So, I started this project this year with a total thought process of “Okay, $3 scarves… it’s worked the past 2 years, well, why not do it again… hope someone buys at least one.”

I set my original goal at $50 and really prayed that I would get someone… anyone to buy a scarf. OH MY GOD! YOU GUYS! I made over 2x more than I anticipated for Kiva and sold over 22 scarves that I made myself and 3 scarves that were donated! Here are some stats:

Days: 69

Scarves Created: 22

Scarves Donated: 3

Scarves Sold: 25

Amount Raised for Kiva via Scarf Sales: $75

Amount Raised for Kiva via Donations: $35

Total Amount Raised: $110

See that? You see that there? ONE HUNDRED AND TEN DOLLARS WERE RAISED FOR KIVA! one hundred and ten. One HUNDRED and TEN!

This is outstanding! ABSOLUTELY BONKERS CRAZY! Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

You are all such amazing people, each and every one of you!

So, to show that I am worthy of all the amazing people who showed such faith in my project I will be MATCHING your donations to Kiva (after the holidays, unfortunately)!

Again…thank you. My faith in humanity is slowly being restored… one good work at a time.

As always: DO GOOD! STAY WARM!

I now return you to your regularly scheduled FilthyRotten rants!

Since the http://www.uniimi.com site for the $3 SCARF PROJECT goes live today, I’m going to be hosting all the images of the newer scarves here for a day before I upload them to the store. I upload new scarves almost daily!

So, if you’ve already purchased your $3 SCARF and still need to pick on out, be sure to check back here often!

HOVER over the images of the scarves to see which ones are still available! This list is updated OFTEN!