Book blurb – Urban fantasy: Patricia Briggs

The “urban fantasy” genre (or “paranormal”, “supernatural” et al) is really big these days.  The vile Twilight series is getting all the credit for the rise in popularity of books about vamps, werewolves, fae or faerie, witches and various other ghosties and beasties.  This pisses me off enormously because hellooo?  Buffy?  Anne Rice novels?  And the hundreds of other books to be found in the SF&F shelves that were deemed too nerdy for the general adult / young adult populace?  Now it’s “cool”.  And hey it’s all down to a series that is misogynist, anti-feminist (or anti any-non-passive-female; the only strong female characters are Evil), abstinence-only and MORMON.  BLECCHHHH!

I’ve always loved the fantasy genre (oh I like SF too, except for the really heavy-duty military-space-opera stuff) starting with Lord Of The Rings at nine years old, and moving on from there.  It’s true a lot of fantasy is, well, bilge, and poorly-written bilge at that.  The same-old, same-old heroes and dragons and swords and beautiful useless heroines.

Some fantasy is pretty damn wonderful though.  Terry Pratchett is one of my absolute favourite authors, over all genres, not merely the SF&F category.  Personally I think his books should be on the same shelves as the posh Booker-Prize-winning Literature, he’s so good; besides he got an OBE for Services To Literature so the Queen (or some lackey) obviously agrees with me!  For an incorrigible bookophile (technically it’s “bibliophile” but I don’t want to bring the so-called Good Book into this), even one who is a compulsive list-maker, such a thing as “Absolute Favourite Authors” is difficult to quantify.

MAC birthday makeover

For my birthday this year Tuxedo was stuck for ideas – which has to be the first time ever! – and came to me for advice.  I decided I’d like a bit of girliness; some pretty shiny new skin care products and a MAC makeover, including a bunch of products.  Tuxedo was more than happy with  this idea; he figured I needed some pampering and pretty stuff after the previous few months of blah (which continued for a while afterward, but the birthday really cheered me up).

I’m pretty low maintenance in my skin care routine – oh I do all the cleansing and serums and moisturisers and sunscreen – but once I find a set of products I really like I tend to stick with them, and not try others that might be just as good.  This is mostly down to budgetary means; I don’t have the budget / finances to play around, so for my birthday I wanted to get a few “extras” to add into my bag o’ stuff.  Me being me, naturally I did lots of research, much making of lists, culling down of list, more research etc etc (“Hello, my name is Jules, and I’m anal retentive”).

Compliment of the year?

I think I had the best compliment on my looks, precisely one week before my fortieth birthday.

Please note:  I was wearing spectacles, barely any make up, just eye liner and mascara, a bit of powder and a slick of lip gloss.  Hair loose and half way down my back.  Pretty much screamed WYSIWYG basically.

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So there I was at the Chanel counter in David Jones, spraying on Chanel’s “Coco Mademoiselle” with growing certainty that this was the new scent for me.

Square one

Yes, yes I know.  I’m not even going to apologise for disappearing for so long.  It happens, that’s all there is to it.  The last couple of months have simply been really, really rough, even in comparison to the normal roughing and toughing it out that’s my life.

The biggest thing – that is, I guess, having a cumulative effect on everything else – is that Tux was made redundant at the beginning of April.  This came as a huge shock;  he went into work on a Monday morning as usual and half an hour into typing up his daily report received a tap on his shoulder from his boss.  Half an hour after that he was being escorted from the building, along with about fifteen others.  (Tux did notice when he came into the office that there were a lot of empty chairs … ) 

So major health emergencies;  financial woes,;  work search;  non-existent IT Job markets, blahness.  Tux took it all pretty hard at first, with me doing the Tower Of Strength thing, taking my turn in being the one being leant on and giving pep talks, keeping spirits up. 

Addicted to cantering

 

After a long break from riding (two months or so due to the school holidays) I was really excited to get back to the centre and “my ponies” in mid-February.  As you can imagine I’d missed riding and hanging around horses like crazy – and I’m not convinced the long break and lack of horsey-time didn’t exacerbate the seriously yueerk pain and unpleasantness I trudged through in November / December / January. 

My main “goals” for this year’s riding are just to continue improving my riding, my seat and position, core strength and general skill set, and also to master cantering.  I’d had a few canters in 2008 but didn’t feel I’d “got” the pace, the rhythm or what the heck my own body was doing.  During those half dozen or so canters I’d been mostly in a wheeeee state of mind; I wanted to get serious and (a) do a lot more cantering and (b) know what I was doing and develop a good seat and control in that pace, work on transitions etc.

Update March ‘09

Hmmm, yes, well, haven’t written anything here since January (o mea culpa) and while I’ve sat down to post many times the words just haven’t made the transition from brain to keypad.  Let’s face it, it’s been a tough few months and I am not a good conversationalist in these sorts of circumstances.

So … Lashings of pain / health crap / associated unpleasantness, nothing new there but it was really doing my head in, turning it to mush and sparking off other kinds of ickiness.  Item 1:  Early in February (I think) my specialist decided to try me on anti-seizure meds, which are supposed to help with extreme neuropathic pain.  Did they work?  Don’t make me laugh.  After three weeks there’d been no reduction in pain, they induced a really weird and horrible emotional  / mental state, and the worst bit, totally killed off my libido.  This last was the worst;  I wasn’t “only” uninterested in sex / love-making, I couldn’t bear any physical contact at all.  Very, very strange for what is usually a most tactile creature.

Needless to say I chucked the medication but the damage was done;  I was in a fine ol’ state of absolute existential despair and death of joy.   I can’t talk about it because it’s still going on (and on), although slightly reduced in the last couple of weeks, it’s just always there and it’s horrible.  I want to cry like, all the time, and occasionally I succumb but not around Tux because he hates it (because he’s a guy and guys want to fix things and he can’t fix this thing or me) and anyway it’s pointless and I don’t feel any better afterward.  You know how sometimes a good cry can be kind of cleansing?  This aint.

And on top of, or mixed in with all that, is my body, or hormones or biological clock or whatever, is SCREAMING babybabybaby, which is and has always been totally out of the question.  Yes, it’s very sad, and while I’ve always recognised that it wasn’t going to be a possibility for me, knowing I / we can’t have the option of even trying or thinking about options when we’d really like to (because [a] the whole pregnancy thing might kill me or leave me even more disabled; [b] how can I look after an infant when 90% of the time I’m so ill I can barely look after myself?; and [c] what if we had a baby and it had EDS et al which is highly likely, how would I feel?) is really, really hurting just now.  Horribly.  Gah, can’t explain it.

. . . . . . . . . .

And THEN, on top of all THAT, are my issues with weight.  I’ve gained so much weight in the last couple of years, due to all the stupid medical procedures (that didn’t work anyway) and medication (ditto) and I can’t fit into the jeans that three years ago I could wriggle out of without undoing the button.  It’s odd, I was always so full of the body-hatred thing, and avoided mirrors and all that, so I have no real idea what I actually looked like, but looking at and measuring my clothes from the 90s and early 00s I was obviously teeny and slender and buff and had a really cute bod.  Now?  Not so much. 

And knowing I look (and FEEL) like a baby hippo is feeding into the despair like so many tributaries into the Amazon . . . And you know, it’s really tricky to get ultra fit and buff and cute again when you spend 90% of your time in bed screaming and crying in pain and being zombied out on Class A drugs (that aren’t even FUN, for feck’s sake like).  So woe is me and all that.  Bleaugghhhhhh.

. . . . . . . . . .

So I’m sorry for the doom and gloom;  I’ll try and get up a few harmless fun posts about horses and cats and fitness routines soon to bury this one.  Hang in there.

Festivities – happy everything, everyone!

Yeah yeah yeah I’m a bit slow off the block, I admit:

Here’s wishing you and yours the very best for a fantastic, joyful, much-loved and loving, healthy, and dream-fulfilling 2009.

So did everyone have a good Christmas and New Year’s Eve – or however you celebrate this time of year?  Tux and I, being the dedicated atheists / pagans we are, had a pretty low-key festive period.

Riding wrap up 2008

2008 will be remembered as an exciting and happy year, regardless of poor health and pain issues and financial crises: we became home owners and I got back into horse-riding. 

I feel really pleased and proud of myself for what I’ve achieved this year in regard to horse-riding; for taking that chance and leaping into it, for working hard, loving it, and ultimately finding it so rewarding and fulfilling.

To summarise;  I got on a horse again for the first time in 22 years [give or take a year or so] back in March and was instantly as hooked as when I was 15, despite the physical challenges I faced this time around; both age- and health-related.

Christmas WHAT? When did it get to be December already?

What do you mean, it’s almost Christmas?  25 December indeed;  what the feck happened to November? *

So yeah, Christmas.  I am really not ready for it, it’s not my favourite time of year at any point in time, let alone sneaking up on me in such a sly fashion.  Okay so I am / was kinda out of the whole festive seasonal loop but still. Bastard.

So why am I so Scrooge / Grinch-like about Christmas?  Same reason everyone else is, I guess.  The crass in-your-face materialism, the gross conspicuous expenditure, the fake jollity and playing at Happy Families.  The expectations and pressures and lots of old emotional baggage associated with the holiday.

US election 2008

I believe it would be quite remiss of me NOT to make some kind of intimation that the US Presidential Election took place and had an absolutely bloody brilliant result, don’t you?

The US system of candidate nomination, primaries and the Grand Final, over what seems an inordinately long period of  time, seems exceedingly odd to those of us brought up with the Westminster System . . . which is really the basis of the US system of course, with the two Houses et al, but where did all that primaries stuff come from? 

It makes absolutely no sense and it’s main purpose seems to be to divide the parties [eg, Democrats into Hillary vs Barack supporters; aren’t they all on the same side?  FFSL] and bore the population to tears, with campaigning so far in advance of the Presidential Election that by the time that day in November rolls around no one no-one can be buggered to turn out to vote.

I am cringingly ashamed of my ignorance;  obviously someone needs to explain this to me.  Please be gentle.