Books I read in January...

So here we are again, another month gone, another reading list to post.....

Okay, so this year I am trying to read the book of the month books for both the M/M group and the YA GLBT groups...... (Though I've read all 4 of the Feb books chosen in the M/M group already)... I am also going to try and do the Pick it for Me challenge and have signed up to the best of 2012 challenge (though out of the 67 books I have already read 31 of them....)

So to January - complete list below - but two stand out favourites this month.

Rentboy by Fyn Alexander... which just clicked with me. Aside from the MC's,  I particularly loved the twins and their Aspergers characterisations (such as food on a plate not touching, the not being able to make choices etc) were just so well done..... on and the brief cameo from Kael and Angel made me smile.

The other standout book was Skybound by Aleksandr Voinov.  I am not usually a fan of short stories, but this was an excellently written historical whose characters really gripped you from the start and the whole thing left me rather choked up.

as always (r) = re-read.

1. Bound to Please – Kimberly Gardner (r)
2. A  Strong Hand – Catt Ford (r)
3. Calling the Show – J.A. Rock (r)
4. Kamikaze Boys – Jay Bell (YA GLBT book of the month)
5. Moonstruck – M.J. O’Shea & Piper Vaughn - Sadly this was really an unnecessary third book with characters who did not have enough about them to make their own story.

6. Love, Hypothetically – Anne Tenio
7. Snow Angel – Sharon Bidwell (Jan pick it for me book)
8. Beggars & Choosers – Mia Kendrick (YA GLBT book of the month) - edgy content makes this one really suitable for older teens only.

9. Heart in Hand – Salifiable (M/M group book of the month) - Yes Chris, I finally read a hockey fic :)

10. The Student Prince – Fayjay (M/M group book of the month) - This Merlin fan fic came at the right time as I was gutted by them ending the TV series but it made me laugh a lot.... and wish to introduce the word "twatwaffle" into everyday conversation.

11. Secrets, Skin & Leather – Sean Michael - I'd wanted to read this for ages, but it was only recently made available on Kindle - much better than some of his more recent books

12. Falling into Place – Tia Fielding - High up on my list of favourites this month

13. The Rise of Alex Caldwell (volume one) – Casey Cox
14. The Rise of Alex Caldwell (volume two) – Casey Cox
15. When I say when – Tia Fielding
16. Rentboy – Fyn Alexander (see above)
17. Too stupid to live – Anne Tenino
18. My roommate’s a Jock, well crap! – Wade Kelly
19. Offside – Ryan Loveless
20. Not his kiss to take – Finn Marlowe
21. Change of Heart – Mary Calmes - gah, the words are "have to", not "hafta" really, this winds me up completely for some reason...

22. Know Not Why: A Novel – Hannah Johnson
23. Shane and Trey – Anyta Sunday
24. Rare than Rubies – E.M. Lynley
25. His Own Worst Enemy – Stephani Hecht (YA) - Way to short and highly predictable 3rd book in the Haven Coffee House series...

26. Conquest – S.J. Frost
27. Skybound – Aleksandr Voinov (see above)
28. Chase of a Lifetime – Ryan Field
29. Chase of a Dream – Ryan Field
30. How to Repair a Mechanical Heart – J. C. Lillis - geeky fun read but with a very abrupt ending

31. Where Nerves End – L.A. Witt

Typing one handed......

A few weeks a go a friend who is extremely important to me muttered rather plaintively that she really wished I would try to be a bit more careful as it worried her the number of self inflicted injuries I seemed to get.

Now, I really don't like worrying people so since then I have tried really, really hard to think before acting...... and I am doing really well..... apart from the odd paper cut I haven't managed to trip/fall/cut my fingers, stub my toes, walk into anything, set any part of me alight or in fact blow anything up.

Now I maintain that the reason I am typing this one handed, and with my left hand in fact - which by the way, when you touch type at 80 words a minute usually is extremely frustrating -  is not in fact because I have done something stupid..... I think perhaps the weather Gods and Goddesses needed appeasement.

I went round to visit mother earlier - and stare glacially at her soon to be ex lodger - as I was leaving I was sitting in the car with the door open talking to mum who was at the end of the garden path, my right hand was kind of waving about as I talked (habit, my hands talk as much as my mouth usually - particularly when I am explaining something).  As I was doing this there was a large gust of wind and my car door suddenly slammed shut........... on my ring and middle finger..... I screamed loud enough for the neighbours to come out to see what was wrong.

10 minutes under the cold tap, whilst I broke out my best Anglo Saxon vocabulary, I had a completely numb hand, save for two very throbbing fingers.  Nothing was broken so I very carefully drove home where I have partaken of pain killers, arnica tablets, and spent another hour or so with my hand in ice......

Now I would like to maintain the story that a gust of wind cannot possibly be my fault and it was purely an accident and doesn't count for the whole injuring myself by doing stupid things lecture.

I'm going to bed now...... without cats as I don't really want them clawing at my hand demanding to be stroked....... I am not convinced there will be much sleeping going on mind.......

Sheesh.... this has taken forever to type.......

Feeling completely "meh" ...

I'm bored

Completely, utterly, totally and terminally bored

Bored with work, bored with my home life (if you can call it a life), bored of winter, even at some points bored with reading.

And I haven't got a clue what to do about it.

I feel like I want to make some major changes with just about everything in my life, but then I just kind of falter because I haven't got a clue how to start making them.  There are things I want to change that are just totally out of the question, there are things I would love to change but I haven't got a clue how to and there are things I could probably change but am just too damn scared to actually do anything about it.

So instead, I stay stuck in this stupid rut of get up, sort critters, go to work, come home, sort critters, read/knit/write and then go to bed only to start it all over again... with the exception at the weekends when I miss out the work bit and get to do laundry and housework instead.

Looking at friends at work who are all in their early 30's I see them all with friends, families, lives.... Then I look back thinking what the hell have I actually done in the ten years since I was about there age..... and realise I have absolutely fuck all to show for it.... in fact, I could go back further and say 20 years without stretching the point.

It's not even as though I feel like I've failed at life...... more that just I haven't got a life........I can't even remember when I did last have one (or at least one of my own that wasn't manipulatively controlled by someone else)

It's not like I can't be organised and dynamic and go do things for myself..... I am just failing right now to see the point.

Oh well, I'd best not break the cycle of boredom, time to go to bed so I can be up for work in the morning.......

I hope the arrival of spring comes early and these feelings turn out just to be seasonal.......

Further adventures in hair dying......

So this morning, I was bored, I looked in the bathroom mirror and thought 'blergh' my hair had grown so much as I didn't exactly have roots showing I had a nice band of normal hair colour and then about 3 inches further down it was faded aubergine.... and by normal hair colour I'd be generous these days in saying that there was an equal fight between the boring mid brown colour and the silver it seems to be going as I get older.

So, having got a box of hair dye sitting in the airing cupboard I decided nothing ventured nothing gained and proceeded to dye it....... allegedly "deep red"

On an positive note to this story - I did not dye the cat..... nor did I dye the bathroom (which believe me is a huge improvement on last time - there are still a couple of aubergine patches on the ceiling.....)

However, by the time I had gone through developing, rinsing, conditioning and drying I was catching sight of bits of my hair out the corner of my eye and thinking... erm... not so deep red.... more sort of well....

So, where there were silver bits at the front it's kind of bright ginger, on the brown bit's it is a nice deep red, but on some of the aubergine bits it's gone almost black..... it's patchy and there are some stripes in the front...


I went to my sister's for lunch and she decreed it did in fact look like I had dyed my hair to look like a tortoiseshell cat.......

I'd strip it out and start again.... but I fear seeing the level of silver it is would frighten me!!

Weekends....

This is going to sound strange to most I guess, but I am actually really not enjoying weekends very much at the moment.

I had thought, without my coursework to do I would be able to use the weekend to relax and unwind, even perhaps have some fun.... but it isn't happening.  Sure there are lots of things I could probably do but it just isn't happening.  Friday night I am usually completely worn out after work so end up crashing on the sofa with the Kindle, or on the phone for ages to friends or family. Then on Saturday after the housework has been beaten into submission I am finding I am either completely bored out of my head and want to do "something" but have no idea what (not helped by the fact that there is no one local I really have a burning desire to spend my time with - yep I am an antisocial cowbag).  It's either that or wish to just curl up in the dark and hide till Monday morning.

Okay, so I should really make an effort and go out and do things - I don't even need to have someone to go do things with, I could do them on my own but that isn't really very appealing.  On top of that the weather recently hasn't really been very accommodating. This weekend we had about 30 cm of snow falling on packed ice on Friday night which meant Saturday wasn't a day for going anywhere... though thankfully the cold snap appears to be over and it's a tropical 7 degrees C today.... it also rained in buckets over night and all the snow is now gone.

Whichever way I am feeling during the weekend is not helping me to relax..... even if I sleep for a decent length of time at night it's frequently broken sleep with periods of lying awake looking at the ceiling..... and it's a very boring plain white ceiling....

I am hoping this is just seasonal and as it warms up and the days get longer I will snap out of this and find some positivity..... for now though I will hang onto the fact that come Monday morning I can go to work and not be stuck in this house feeling horribly trapped.

Midweek mumbling of the disconnected kind....

Yesterday, after my optimistic post on Monday, didn't get off to a brilliant start when it took me 45 minutes, the help of 4 neighbours with 2 shovels and a lot of spinning about and sliding to get the car out the drive and off the road.... though I didn't burn the clutch out.... the trouble with having a car with naff all power in it (tis a 1.1 litre petrol engine) means that when you it three inches of packed solid ice on a frozen brick surface you aren't going anywhere.

I committed car abandonment last night half way down the road where was easy to get out this morning.  The car is there again tonight as the bit in front of my drive is still packed ice.... and I don't want a repeat performance.... I am sure the neighbours don't either.

The down side to this is 45 minutes of standing about in the freezing cold, shovelling snow etc is really not good for someone whose joints don't work at the best of times..... by tea time last night the arthritis flare up in my knees, hips and lower back resulted in an evening of lying flat and keeping as warm as possible.  It's been a bit better today.  All of this is not helped by the fact that it turns out I am allergic to one of my pain meds, so had to stop taking it, and trying to come off the other..... last night I would have killed for something stronger than paracetamol.

Today a friend of mine posted a picture of her new naked kitten...... wearing a fetching green stripey sweater...... now I have always insisted that mine did not need or in fact want sweaters....... which is something another of my friends argue about as she's had to be banned from knitting something for them..... alas she saw the kitten pictures and low and behold I can expect leg warmers at least for Gina and Hugo at some point in the future..... As if my poor cats weren't laughed at enough for the extreme ugliness :)

Work was hectic but boring.... the run up to the end of the financial year (which happens on 30th April) is upon us again, which means everyone wants everything doing, like last week.... I have shed loads of drafting to do to get money in...... so of course Rupert has early spring fever and is spawning plot bunnies at speed...... I've threatened him with castration if he doesn't stop .... I've now got four sets of voices screaming at me from inside my head....... but still feeling far too negative about my writing to do anything but listen to them.

Tonight I have had a nice long chat with a friend after which I've come upstairs to discover that the cats have eaten my mouse mat........ I mean seriously, I know that you are poor deprived indoor house cats who aren't allowed to roam free and hunt..... and it has the word mouse in it..... but it's not a real one!  I shall go lay out some cat treats around the upstairs of the house for them to hunt later whilst I curse them and try use my ancient roller ball mouse on a bobbly desk surface.....

Snow Day.....

very fuzzy photo of my back garden this morning

I didn't get to work today.... we had 19 cm of snow overnight and it was impossible to get out onto our road.....(and yes, I know, this is nothing snow wise compared to some people but for us it's serious!).... so I had a snow day

Well I didn't, because I took work home on Friday just in case this happened... so I have instead sat at my kitchen table and drafted really horribly tedious documents all day *snore*

(I did have a small break in the afternoon when I felt my head would explode, in order to finish the book I was reading, but then got frustrated as the author will use the
word "hafta" instead of "have to" which drives me nuts!)

The dogs weren't impressed and kept looking at me in disgust wondering when I was going to go away.

The snow isn't showing any signs of melting, in fact we are down to -5 degrees this evening..... but tomorrow I intend to be bravely optimistic and scare the neighbours by trying to get the car out to go to work.

In the meantime, to cheer myself up this evening I've booked my place at the UK GLBTQ meet.... go me!!  Now I have something fun to look forward to as I wish spring would arrive faster