I can't decide if I just don't like it or down right hate it.

I've always wondered what a live action Fullmetal Alchemist film would be like and was pretty beside myself with excitement when I heard there was going to be one. I mean aside from this world, there are only two other places I would rather be, Amestris (where Fullmetal Alchemist takes place) and Middle Earth. So, it was a pretty big deal. The trailers and ad posters looked good and so did the scant few blips I saw about the costumes. Still, this was a film that could encompass one or both of the anime series that were made, either of the animated films, or the games, the manga, and that's a lot of material. I didn't know what all was going to be in this live action rendition and I knew that whatever it was, there was going to have to be some room for error. I mean you can't really take 50+ episodes of an anime or volumes of manga and crunch it down into a 2 hour movie without having to cut some things. That's okay, it happens, and it is understandable. However...

I waited all day for Amanda to get home as soon as I knew it was on Netflix, which was hard because I was brimming with so much excitement I could hardly contain myself (this was internal, I had to play it cool on the outside). Then, I waited some more because we had some stuff to do that evening before we could finally sit down to watch it. We watched about an hour before having to turn it off, one because I was so tired that I had actually fallen asleep, and two because Amanda wasn't enjoying it and had to go to bed anyway because of work the next day.  

My first impressions were, "okay, they switched up some things in the timeline, it's fine I guess. Let's see what they do with it," and "wait, this is... this is... WTF?! This isn't right." And I went to bed a little disturbed and disappointed.

The next day I wrestled with whether or not I wanted to finish the film. But I finally broke down, watched the rest of it, and I just can't decide if I don't like or if I just hate it. Don't get me wrong, the costuming is beautiful and the graphics are amazing. Alphonse's design, Edward's Automail, Nina, and the details done on them and the alchemical processes are really stellar. However, the soundtrack falls short of that in the anime and other films. And I'm actually not happy with how they rearranged the timeline. I hate how they washed out Hawkeye's character, she's so much more bad ass and intimidating in the anime, manga, and animated films. They didn't play up her strengths at all. They created this weird, awkward tension between Roy and Hughes. The shit with Tucker and the drones was just that, shit. They tried to pull too much from different arcs that I didn't feel quite worked well enough, or perhaps they just didn't quite pull it off decently enough. It was a jumbled mess that if you haven't read the manga, or seen the anime, you wouldn't really get what the hell was going in, plus it was all rushed. And don't even get me started on the relationships. 

One of the things I loved most about Fullmetal Alchemist were the relationships between characters. You don't get that Colonel Roy Mustang actually truly loves the Elrics like sons or even little brothers and is in their corner, helping them, pushing them along toward their goal. All you see is an asshole being kind of hard on a couple of kids. You don't even get to see how bad ass Roy is or even how bad ass Edward is or the depth of his emotions and the pull of his relationships with others. You get the subtle moments of fondness between Roy and Hawkeye nor the deep loyalty she has toward him. You never see her dog, you never see other members of Roy's staff. Other important and pivitol characters are missing. You don't get to fall in love with Nina or even Hughes like you do in the anime and Manga and feel how utterly tragic their losses are, and even the Homunculi are shoddy. Worse, they pulled a theme from the first anime series about Lust into the film that seemed to be trying to follow stuff from the second series. Then, they left it open for second, which I seriously hope they don't make. 

In short, this movie dropped the ball on everything but graphics and costuming. The action wasn't even that great. I was left feeling that if I hadn't watched the anime, read some of the manga, and seen the animated movies, I wouldn't give a shit about seeking them out after watching this film, which is a true sadness and disservice to the creator of the FMA Universe, Hiromu Arakawa. 

The casual stroke, books, writing, and sobbing

Sometimes when I have trouble writing I turn to pinterest for inspiration. I happened upon this little gem which had me in a small giggle fit. No, that is not anything that Roy Mustang has said in Fullmetal Alchemist, someone over on Tumblr (that gross place I refuse to visit) made a ton of these little "texts" from Fullmetal alchemist. Some are meh, but some are really funny. 

I decided to reread books 1 & 2 of the Night Prince Series Jeaniene Frost wrote so everything would be fresh in my mind for books 3 & 4. Well, it took me a couple of days to read through book 1 simply because I was trying to write and was doing other things. Book 2 I plowed through in practically one day and I immediately started books 3, which I read half of yesterday afternoon. OH. MY. GODS! I literally could not stop reading until I felt the two main characters were in a good place. So much bad shit happened! It was so intense and heart breaking. I sobbed my eyes out in a couple of places. My skin crawled in others and now, I'm right along with the characters seeking revenge! 

But, I refuse to pick up the book despite it being mere inches from my fingertips, until I have written a good deal today. I got out a page or two last night but since we are having company fly in from Boston tonight, I want to get as much done as possible. As it stands my Oc's brother is being a total creeper and my Oc thinks she's losing it. 

Speaking of the brother- who is Zolf- that reminds me. Christine, since I am refusing to allow myself the distraction of facebook today, I saw your message about writing. Sometimes when I get stuck, I have to go write something else or write some bullshit nothing few pages just to get my brain working. If that doesn't work, then I force myself through it, no matter how frustrating or how long it takes me. I've basically been crawling through the last 15 pages all week.

I've cried for other reasons aside from book drama. The depression monster and I think that's about all I need to say about that for the moment. 

I spoke to my yesterday morning  and I think the next time I see her I am going to strangle her. Apparently she thinks she had a light stroke and that it was caused by the spikes in her blood pressure from all the uncontrollable limb jumping. Its possible, but what the fuck didn't they tell me sooner? And how the hell are are you just going to causally mention that in a conversation with your kid?! Then follow it up with, "I didn't want to panic and worry you, it's not like you can afford to come home every time something messes up with me."   No, I can't, but for fuck's sake, I at least deserve to know these things. Yes, Aunt Laura is literally dying. Yes, Grandpa is slowly wasting away from Alzhimers and because he won't eat. Yes, Grandma is in bad shape. Yes, Dad's not doing so great either. Yes, you (as in my mom) is a cluster-fuck of health issues and I have more than my share of shit going on too, but damn it, don't keep shit from me. I hate it and it's not fair! I don't keep anything from them. It's so frustrating!

Trying my hand at graphic design, panic outside, hospice care and family.

I decided to play around with paint.net again. It began out of my desire to make planner stickers more to my tastes. There aren't a ton of gothic themed stickers but there are a lot of Halloween- which is awesome- but I don't always want pumpkins. Besides, I'm not just a Goth Girl, I'm also a Nerd/Geek, and anime love, among other things. But I will get back to planner stickers in a moment. The picture above is something I put together to make a sign for above my desk. It's the 5-4-3-2-1 coping technique my therapist gave me to help me stave off or get out of panic attacks.  I simplified it, found a pretty mermaid picture, and a water texture/background, and threw it all together. Eventually, when we have more ink, I will print it out and frame it. 

Okay back to planner stickers. I made these today. They are far from perfect, totally rough, but they are practice for me. It was kind of fun and I had to ask Fiona how to a couple of things that I didn't know how to do before. Like making a duplicate of an image you've been working on. Or a duplicate of the clip art you just pasted. I've never had to do that before. Anyway, I would like to practice more and make a better version of this, one for Edward Elric, and some other anime I adore. Then I would like to make some Gothic themed planner sticker. 

Those are the good things. the not to good things are that I am having trouble making myself leave the house. I had to take half a nerve pill yesterday to stave off tears and panic despite me actually wanting to go to the store. It still didn't help too much. 

Today was a little better, but I still had trouble when we went to wal-mart for the things we didn't get at Winco. It is frustrating. 

In other news, my Mom asked me to call my Aunt tomorrow because as many times as she cried "I'm dying" now she actually is. She's officially got meals on wheels and hospice care. I don't really know how I feel about that. I don't think it has hit me yet and as much as she's hurt me, I don't actually want her to die. Plus she's my mom's identical twin and my Mom isn't doing well. On top of that all three of my cousins are kind of being douche bags to my aunt. I'm not sure what's going on with Shi-Chan, she's typically the sane one. I don't know, maybe she just got pushed too far.

Anyway, I didn't get much writing done last night and will be trying to pick it up again tonight. I am bringing my OC character's brother in to torture her some more. Surprise, he's not dead. Christine will be happy, it's Zolf. I probably won't write him as gritty as she does, but he pretty twisted. Yes, this is still the Fullmetal Alchemist fanfiction and yes it is almost 340 pages long and I still have quite a bit left to do. >.> I swear, as soon as this is all done and edited, I will be working on an actual novel. I actually came up with another idea and when I sent it to my Dad he quoted something I had said, which was "she also likes to impale people, because that's fun" to which he replied "wow. just, wow." When I read that, I actually hurt myself laughing because I could hear his voice and the tone he'd use in my head and it was just that funny. Don't judge me. LOL. 

Car-less, down one phone, reaching 300, strange dreams

Colonel Roy Mustang from 1st Fullmetal Alchemist Series. 

I'm sorry if I have missed something important in the blogosphere. I will eventually catch up on everyone's news, even if it takes me one blog at a time. I have been really busy lately, and yet not. 

We visited a friend on Monday and then Amanda took our friend Fiona home yesterday. Fiona had been here for quite awhile actually. While I appreciate all her help with cooking and cleaning and hanging out, I was ready for her to go home. Nothing against her, I just want time alone with Amanda. Anyway, in taking Fiona home, Amanda left the car for Fiona's Dad to work on for the rest of the week. We've been really concerned about a squeeky belt and also the car sounds like a fan that has paper stuck in it and since it is the only car we have at the moment and can't afford to replace it anytime soon, we need to keep it running. 

We are also down one cell phone. Amanda left hers at her parents house yesterday when they brought her home. We should get it back this weekend though. So she's been using the alarm on my phone to help her wake up in the morning. 

I have had some pretty interesting dreams as of late. Strange, intense, and vivid. I want to write them down but I'm only recalling tiny bits and pieces, feelings or notions, not enough that I feel I can string together properly. Oh well. This is what I get for not writing them down as soon as I wake up.

Yes, I am still pretty deep in the world of Fullmetal Alchemist in so much as I have watched a few episodes of anime here and there, looked at some pretty pictures, read some doujinshi, and am still working on the rewrite of my fanfic. I'm less than 30 pages from hitting the 300 page mark and I've still got a lot more to do. I figure if I have to, I can cut some stuff later. Amanda thinks I should post it, so people can see the difference between the story then and the story now and the progression of my writing... I may have already mentioned this- it's been awhile, sorry- if I haven't well, now you know. I don't know if I want to post it or not. Right now I just want to finish it and edit it. Then enjoy it for myself. I've got a couple of friends who want to read it. I know if I sent it to my Mom, she'd read it. It's kind of weird but I kind of wish Amanda was interested in reading it. I've told her a lot of it, asked her for her opinion on some things, brainstormed with her, so she pretty much already knows it. She'd not really the biggest fan of heterosexual romance stories and that is okay. She did say that she'd rather read and help me edit my novels when I get my ass in gear to work on them.

Speaking of novels. I've been getting images and feeling drawn or tugged predominately by three different characters. One is a mage, one is a witch, and one is a dragon. All three want my attention, all three want me to write their stories, and I've had to put my foot down because I am bound and determined to finish the story I am working on. I have such a hard time finishing stories, especially bigger ones, that I feel I simply must end this one before I can move onto another project.  

Oh and the other night, while attempting to lay down (I haven't been about to really lay down since surgery, kind of hurts and I am such a stomach sleeper), I came up with another Fullmetal Alchemist story. Mostly I was overheated, in pain, and trying to tell myself a story to help me go to sleep. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. That night it didn't. But I got to thinking, after telling Amanda and Fiona about it later, that why make it fanfiction when I can easily make changes and create my own world, my own magical system, and so on. So yeah, that's another character that's wanting my attention. 

While writing has encompassed a good deal of my life lately, at least I don't feel manic anymore. I'm actually a lot happier and feel better than I have in a long time. I'm watching anime, listening to music that calls and inspires me, I'm not worrying about what other people want all the time. Shit, I've been laughing a lot more and louder. I almost peed the other day from laughing. It's been ages since I've laughed that hard. It's kind of freaking me out. I didn't think I could get that loud. 

On the family front, my Grandparents are still in the rehabilitation center trying to get well enough to go home. I haven't spoken to my parents in a couple of days and need to. Everyone else seems to be okay, at least no one has called, messaged, or e-mailed me any different. 

Well, I have had enough of a break and it is time that I get a little bit more writing done before I get too tried to hold my eyes open.  

Furious, can't even, reading FMA djs and manga for sanity

My hope was to not post another blog entry until after my surgery, but alas, I need to vent again. A lot of my recent blog posts have been about my damned hysterectomy, how I need one, that I am finally getting one, and now apparently not getting one as quickly as we thought. *Screams internally and mentally breaks shit* 

I saw that I'd missed a call from the Cancer Care Northwest folks Thursday evening and listened to my voice mail. My surgeon's assistant didn't give me any details other than I needed to call her back, which alarmed me a little. So, I got logged into their website to check my test results- because they put those up for people review. What I found left me upset. In the blood work there's signs of potential early kidney failure. Well, as disturbing as that is, I was looking into it on multiple sites and making notes to go over with my primary doctor and thinking that surely the anemia has a little something to do with it, and that once the hysterectomy is done, I can address that problem properly. Then I checked my x-ray results. Either I have pneumonia and don't know it or there is a partial collapse at the bottom of my left lung. I am a shallow breather, always have been, was a smoker, and have recently- in the last couple of months- been sick, so that might play into that. But that wasn't the issue.

I got a hold of the Cancer Care Northwest folks yesterday to find out what the problem was. Apparently my EKG came back abnormal and they want to send me to a cardiologist for a stress test. That might push my surgery back which really sucks because I kept telling myself "Just hang in there until Wednesday and then you'll stop bleeding all over the place, just hang in there, almost done!"  Seriously, I just about had a knock down sobbing panic attack when I was told this news. 

Then around 5pm last night, just before offices close, I got a call from my primary care physcian's office. They wanted to know what the hell was going on and why they were getting a referral request from Cancer Care Northwest for me to get a stress test prior to surgery. My doctor was so confused and it's because my ONGYN's office, who not only has her information but has an office right across the hall, in the same building as my primary doctor's office, couldn't be bothered to send her any of my information like they were supposed to, no REQUIRED to do. So my doctor's assistant had to hurry over before the OBGYN's office closed, request all my records, and hurry back to talk with my doctor and then hurry up to schedule me in on Monday to see a different doctor so that they could get completely caught up and get the refferal sent out and hopefully get me in on tuesday- the day I am supposed to be doing a bowel cleanse and liquid diet- before my surgery and even then I might still not get scheduled for the cardiologist in time and because I am so stressed out by all of this crap, I may not get approved for surgery, and it might still get pushed off, which will only stress me out more. 

*RAGE FIT*

I can't do this shit. I just can't. People tell me it will be okay and just to hang in there, to calm down, to breathe and I just want to smack them and say "fuck you, you breathe, you calm down". Everyone always tells me to calm down because for some reason no one can handle me having emotions. No, I'm not going to be the calm one. I'm sick of this shit. I really am read to just tear my uterus, ovaries, and all of it out myself. I can order scalpels from amazon and we have prime so we get free 2 day shipping. I can't just do this and this back and forth, dangling hope of a real life in front of me is so fucking cruel I can't take it any more. 

So I have been reading Fullmetal Alchemist doujinshi's and looking at pictures of Roy Mustang (my favorite character) to try to distract myself and stay calm and sane. I am thinking about going to read some old fan fic that some online friends wrote. I kind of want to print it out for myself and put it in a binder. I even want to go read some of the fanfic that I wrote for the series. I am desperately clinging to everything that sparks my joy button because I'm going nuts. And I am so fucking sick of cry over this shit. 

My Dad thinks I should go shooting, that I should just go grab our rifle from Amanda's parents house and some ammo and head out to the rifle range and shoot targets for awhile. But, its cold, wet, and I'm not sure the road up there is clear much less safe right now and I am not going to pay ten bucks to shoot a gun indoors. (Yes, I have a rifle and know how to use it. Dad taught me when I was 9 and started me out on black powder rifles and pistols and truth be told I prefer them to more modern guns- although there is an anti tank gun that was used in a movie that I fell in love with... >.>) 

Monster in my dream and the puddle.

He's a real monster!

It's summer again which means that I don't sleep very well at night. When I do happen to doze off for a few minutes of an hour or two here and there, I tend to have some pretty strange dreams. I don't remember all of them but the few I have managed to remember have been unsettling.

In a perfect dream world my dreams would star me, thin but with curves in the Fullmetal Alchemist world. I would be a state alchemist and an officer in their military. Col. Roy Mustang would be in hot pursuit of me dating wise and I would be lightheartedly playing hard to get while still maintaining a supportive professional relationship at work. Yeah, I know roll your eyes, but damn it, it's my perfect dream world not yours.

In the real dream world, or in the case of my actual dream, I was in support of Roy Mustang and he was planning something. However, I was stuck on a train loaded to 70% capacity of military supports of Fuhrer King Bradley, and they knew Roy was up to something just like that knew he had many supporters, some of which weren't even in the military. By the way, at this point I should probably mention that I was not part of the military in this dream.

So, anyway, something happened to the train or train tracks and the train had to come to a stop. the Fuhrer ordered everyone to remain calm and everything would be taken care of. Seeing an opportunity to get away, I slipped off the train and looked for a place to hide. There was almost nothing but a couple of trees and a big boulder. Wtf? What did I do, I high tailed it behind the damned rock instead of trying to hide on the train.

I swear not five minutes later, the Fuhrer sent patrols out to make sure no one had escaped, and of course they made a bee line for me and my stupid rock. They pulled me out and drug me to the Fuhrer who then looked me up and down like I was dinner. I was actually kind of scared but what really terrified me was when he leaned in and smelled me and then announced that I was his new mistress. I had to pretend to be happy about it but I just wanted to run even more then, especially since I knew he was even human and would probably do a lot of terrible things to me.

My next unsettling dream happened early this morning as the sun was rising in the sky. At some point the sprinkler system went off, that much I know for certain because the windows were wet when I awoke to go to the bathroom. But in my dream prior to that, the windows were wet but so also was the windowsill. Now, my bed is right there, at eye level with the windowsill (we are also on the ground level), and because it's summer, I have had the window open at night with a little fan there to draw in the cooler air. We also have a string of purple xmas lights.

Well, I dreampt that I awoke to find a small puddle on the windowsill, right under the fan and that the end of the xmas lights were laying in the puddle. I was worried but too tried to do anything major about it, so I just sopped it up with the curtain and tucked the lights further away and went back to sleep. Only I'm not sure that really happened because when I really did wake up the curtain, the lights, and the windowsill were all dry. Really, this is kind of disturbing. I'm just going to trash the lights since it's better to be safe than sorry.

At the end of this, I wish I could sleep the whole night, and not have dreams that freak me out. Oh and I really don't like summer.

Retreating to the library Wabahhhha!

We are playing Edward and Alphonse Elric today!

We, my Girlfriend and I, are sitting at the City's public library because that atrocity called American Football is playing on TV today and my girlfriend's Father, of course, loves it. As you can probably tell, I hate it! Sorry Football fans, I just can't stand sitting there for 4+ hours watching people run into each other. It's too hot in our room to hide out in there and both of us doubted that we would really get any peace to do what we needed to do. Which for her was to work on her college essays for Grad school and for me, plan our anniversary, work on plans for Halloween, and work on my first post for my craft blog. Oh and I need to get my vocabulary word of the week for the Detangled Writers blog I am part of/ working on with some friends.

Yesterday I overdid it. Again! My back was bothering me but I was kind of on a roll. We went to the Wal-mart to pick up white thread and a seam ripper (I am making a quilt for my Grandparents), veggie dip and yogurt, and managed to get two free parring knives for listening to a Forever Knife demo. I'll tell you what, the man giving the demo looked so bored and tired of doing it. I think he's doing it all weekend and I know he was there doing it Friday as well. I felt bad for him but I didn't have $50.00 to buy a set of knives. Besides, I only listened to the demo because my Girlfriend was interested.

After we finished at the store we came home. My Girlfriend, ugh, I'm just going to refer to her from now on as Skoora because that's who she is on the net. Anyway, my girlfriend sliced up the bell peppers we bought at WinCo the other day. Then I was in the kitchen for most of the day. I did two loads of laundry, made three pies (apple, blackberry, and peach) all from scratch, dinner, and ran a load of dishes in the dishwasher.  I also picked up the living room since it was clear that no one else was going to do it anytime soon and the mess was driving me nuts. I was so tired, worn out, and hurting so much when I was finished that by the time I sat down for dinner, I kind of wanted to cry. But I managed to stay awake long enough to watch two movies!

This morning I harassed Skoora out of bed to work on the dining room. She ended up doing most of the work because my back is trying to tell me to 'fuck off ' today. I took a pain pill and now I'm here at the library.

Tomorrow morning I finally get my MRI. I'm kind of nervous about what it will show and also I am claustrophobic and fat and I don't like lots of loud noises. I am sure I will be fine though.