God, this month. It's been one of those months. Have you ever had long periods of time - not just a day, or even a couple days, but seemingly endless successions of days - where everything just. I mean, I have felt like this pretty much every moment of every day of December.

It's like if there were a movie, called Murphy's Law, and you saw it, and looked it up at home later, and found out it was based on a book, and when you went to the bookstore, found out it wasn't just a book but an autobiography, and you read it, and even more things happened because obviously they can never fit in everything from the book into the movie, and then you get to the end and you're just glad that's not your life, and then you turn to the author picture and note at the end and then you realize IT'S ME. I WROTE THAT BOOK.

And it's not big things. The house hasn't burned down, the old blue van still drives (today I got it up to 35 mph!), I am healthy. It's the cumulative effect of a million tiny things: I have to take off my glove to open the door because the doorknob sticks, and that makes me drop my keys, and when I bend over to pick them up my purse falls off my shoulder, and my iPod drops out and hits the concrete, and I pick it up and stick it in my pocket, and as I walk inside, the headphone cord gets caught around the railing and the speaker part gets pulled out from the earbud and the whole apparatus will no longer work. (True story, btw.)

It's all of that, plus the animals. I think five animals is too many. I read somewhere that a dog is like a very bright three year old, in terms of its intelligence and behavior as well as how you should treat it; I think our dogs are more like really dim, perhaps developmentally challenged, two year olds. Spencer plays this game called WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO GO NEXT I WILL GET THERE FIRST, and if he's not tripping me, then he's herding me or making me stop and wait for him to sit still before I can try walking again. He barks at everything, and when he barks, Princess barks. The cats just roam around and attack each other and gallop up and down the hallway and knock Christmas tchotchkes on the floor and cry because they haven't eaten in one entire hour and they're going to staaaaaaaarve.

And then there's the picking up after my family, and arguments over who gets to watch the nice TV, and piles of clean clothes in the living room and I folded all the laundry I am sure as hell not going to put it away for you, and loud people during sleepy time, et cetera.

I need a holiday. A very long holiday.

So, I had things to do today, but instead I've spent the afternoon reading this creepy post, including most of the linked videos and articles. Why do I freak myself out? At any point, I could have just stepped away, but now I've got a cat in my lap and the heater on and I'm afraid to sit at my own computer now, since I'm alone in the house and it's in the basement. :(

:(:(:(

ETA: These are the two creepiest things that were linked; both manufactured, obviously, but still. The Dionaea House and Marble Hornets.

We're hosting the Christmas get-together this year, so the past few days have been biz-zay. We're doing the serious kind of cleaning, you know, washing curtains and dusting mini-blinds and polishing hardwood and vacuuming couches. Yesterday Mom and I made all the desserts: chocolate toffee cheesecake, carrot cake, fudge, and sugar cookies. Ugh, the sugar cookies; I used pretty holiday cookie cutters, except that I can never get the thickness of the dough, its temperature, and the oven's temperature right, so they either were crispy little burnt things, or they puffed out so much you couldn't tell what they were. I ended up taking, like, almost two hours decorating them so you could tell that the bows were bows and the presents were presents.

Today we're making the barbeque brisket and ham, and putting together everything else, besides cleaning up again because cleaning in advance never actually works. We're having my dad's brother and his wife, my Uncle Paul and Aunt Debbie, over, along with my cousins Duncan and Elliot and their wives (my other cousins, Angela and Kaitie, can't make it). And Gamps, of course. We're going to have...twelve people in the house? We don't have room for twelve people in the house.

Speaking of my cousin Duncan, I had forgotten to post some of the pictures they took with his baby daughter Ashlyn, who happens to be my grandpa's first great-grandchild. Kindly check out the happiest baby in the entire world.





You can kind of see Heather, Duncan's wife, there. Hee.





Four generations! I love how my grandpa is not actually looking at the camera. There was not a single picture where all three men were; if my grandpa did, then my Uncle Paul wasn't. I don't know.

Aaahhh I had the scariest dream last night. I sometimes find myself bemused at the fact that I still have nightmares at my age; not just nightmares, but that I wake up and continue to be genuinely freaked out for some time. I have to share this one, because brrr, but I know how difficult it can be to read someone else's dream, so I'll try to keep this as succinct as possible.

It started off as a CSI dream. (Does anyone else have TV episode dreams?) They were investigating a pile of dead cats in front of an abandoned store in a strip mall. No one wanted to go inside the building to collect evidence, and they found out that as they moved toward the bottom of the pile, some of the cats were still alive, and they started putting them down.

Then, I was in the passenger seat of a car, being driven by some kind of military officer past the same strip mall. A dozen or so cops were inside that abandoned store, shooting towards a hole in the ceiling tiles. They ran out of ammo, and before they could fall back, men in the ceiling killed all of them with absolute precision. Bang, bang, bang. Then, two men turned long rifles on my car and shot; I screamed for us to hurry up and drive away, but not before I saw that the men from the ceiling had their eyes sewn shut. The leader, who was looking right at me, started talking into a walkie-talkie and I heard his voice on the radio; the men were turning that abandoned building into a hotel and were charging $9 a night, and I realized that they would kill anyone who checked in.

Then I woke up, and had to roll over on my back and stare at my pitch-black room for about ten minutes because I was convinced a man with sewn-shut eyes was standing in my corner, just watching me.

This also reminds me that I haven't posted about my three sleep paralysis incidents this year, about which I had intended to keep a log here. The first two this summer were fairly benign. One, I just woke up and couldn't move, and very rationally knew it was sleep paralysis and just waited for it to wear off. Another, I woke up with a heavy weight on the small of my back; I assumed it was Phoenix sleeping on me, and didn't even realize I couldn't move.

The third, though, I had about two weeks ago, and it instantly entered my top ten. I woke up on my back, frozen, with someone pressing their knee into my throat and holding their hand over my mouth and nose. I couldn't breathe, couldn't move, couldn't even think beyond the cold certainty that I was about to die. I wasn't even distantly aware that this was just sleep paralysis and a hallucination; I was convinced that someone had broken into the house and was quietly and methodically going to kill us all.

Sometimes I wonder why I look forward to sleep so much. ;/

New November Media.

Books
46. House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski. 11-9.
47. Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome, Anthony Everitt. 11-13.

Movies
60. Battlestar Galactica: The Plan (2009). 11-1.
61. Defiance (2008). 11-22.
62. The Blind Side (2009). 11-25.

Television Episodes
439. How I Met Your Mother - 2x14 - “Monday Night Football.” 11-1.
440. 30 Rock - 4x03 - “Stone Mountain.” 11-1.
441. Father Ted - 3x02 - “Chirpy Burpy Cheap Sheep.” 11-2.
442. Father Ted - 3x03 - “Speed 3.” 11-2.
443. Modern Family 1x07 - “En Garde.” 11-4.
444. Father Ted - 3x04 - “The Mainland.” 1-4.
445. How I Met Your Mother - 2x15 - “Lucky Penny.” 11-5.
446. The Office - 6x08 - “Double Date.” 11-5.
447. 30 Rock - 4x04 - “Audition Day.” 11-5.
448. How I Met Your Mother - 2x16 - “Stuff.” 11-6.
449. I, Claudius - E13 - “Old King Log.” 11-8.
450. Fringe - 1x01 - “Pilot.” 11-9.
451. Fringe - 1x02 - “The Same Old Story.” 11-9.
452. Star Trek: The Next Generation - 5x19 - “The First Duty.” 11-10.
453. Star Trek: The Next Generation - 5x20 - “Cost of Living.” 11-10.
454. Glee - 1x09 - “Wheels.” 11-11.
456. The Office - 6x09 - “Murder.” 11-12.
457. 30 Rock - 4x05 - “The Problem Solvers.” 11-12.
458. Star Trek: The Next Generation - 5x21 - “The Perfect Mate.” 11-14.
459. How I Met Your Mother - 2x17 - “Arrivederci, Fiero.” 11-15.
460. How I Met Your Mother - 2x18 - “Moving Day.” 11-15.
461. How I Met Your Mother - 2x19 - “Bachelor Party.” 11-15.
462. How I Met Your Mother - 2x20 - “Showdown.” 11-16.
463. How I Met Your Mother - 2x21 - “Something Borrowed.” 11-17.
464. How I Met Your Mother - 2x22 - “Something Blue.” 11-17.
465. Becker - 3x23 - “Sue You.” 11-18.
466. Becker - 3x24 - “Trials and Defibrillations.” 11-18.
467. Glee - 1x10 - “Ballad.” 11-18.
468. Modern Family - 1x08 - “Great Expectations.” 11-18.
469. The Office - 6x10 - “Shareholders Meeting.” 11-19.
470. 30 Rock - 4x06 - “Sun Tea.” 11-19.
471. Star Trek - 1x25 - “The Devil in the Dark.” 11-22.
472. CSI - 8x09 - “You Kill Me.” 11-22.
473. Fringe - 1x03 - “The Ghost Network.” 11-22.
474. Fringe - 1x04 - “The Arrival.” 11-22.
475. Fringe - 1x05 - “Power Hungry.” 11-23.
476. Fringe - 1x06 - “The Cure.” 11-23.
477. Fringe - 1x07 - “In Which We Meet Mr. Jones.” 11-25.
478. Modern Family - 1x09 - “Fizbo.” 11-26.
479. Glee - 1x11 - “Hairography.” 11-29.