So much news, sick, flashing lights on my street.

Our house is situated near a fire station to west and police station to the east. We also live on a relatively busy street. There's almost constant traffic and we often see and hear emergency vehicles speeding passed daily, but we don't really mind. But this morning six emergency vehicles zoomed passed and I looked up a news source to find out what the hell was going on. Turns out someone was getting evicted from their home about 4 blocks away and there were shots fired. I don't know if they fired at someone or if the police fired at them, but not long after an ambulance sped passed our house heading the other direction. 

We also had a homeless man walk up to Amanda, startling her, asking for food. She was so frazzled that she couldn't figure out exactly what to give him. She gave him hard boiled eggs. But that was Saturday.

Today, after a night of coughing, crap sleep, and bizarre cat stuff along with some other tidbits, my shit-tolerance level is at zero. I'm also going to try to keep this as short as possible.

Post a lot of frustration, some tears, and internal struggle, I decided that it was in my best interest to quit the Wiccan Seminary I'd been going to. I'd with a couple of lessons, struggled with some structural and organizational elements, and the time I was spending on all of it. Worse, when I tried to not go to as much so I could spend more time with Amanda and do other things, I only felt guilty for not doing school stuff and couldn't enjoy anything else. I even felt guilty for not doing school related stuff on my birthday. That's unacceptable. Granted the guilt part is on me and that's something I fight with all the time, but I don't need one more thing to feel near crippling guilt over. 

Then one morning, at devotional, I was listening to the Charge of the Goddess and had a moment where I was swept up by a surge of "what the fuck am I doing? I'm wasting my time doing this instead of what I set out for myself to do this year". That's when everything exploded in my head. It took me several days of wrestling with my feelings, consideration, and a lot of discussion with Amanda before I emailed enrollment to withdraw. I thought, I can always go back. I can always hop on the sim for events put on by the school, even if I feel like an awkward outsider about it (again, that last part's most likely on me).  

Today, I'm not sure I want to return. I got online to check my school e-mail to see if I had any response or messages and I also wanted to check to see if I the work in my classes had been graded so I at least knew what I got. Only I couldn't and I'm a little pissed about it. It took my instructors sometimes several days to get back to me on homework questions, the dean a almost two weeks to answer a question, my supervisor for the scholarship work two weeks to get back to me about a concern and I didn't really fuss. As in, I only fussed to Amanda and a friend and not even that much, because I understand that people are busy and have lives. However, I send in an intention to withdraw on Friday and by Monday I am shut out cold. WOW, that's rude. I can still access my e-mail from SNHU and I graduated in 2016. Again, this is frustrating because there were things that I was enjoying. 

So, now that I have the majority of my days back, what am I going to do with them? Well, what I should have been doing. Unpacking and cleaning my house, writing, and exercising. I recently changed doctors again but I will talk about the outcome of that in my next post. I'll talk about my birthday weekend as well.

Other than that, I've been sick with something. I tried a nasal sinus rinse and a different cold medicine, both picked up from the health food store down the road. Those combined with tea have helped a lot. I'm still a little icky, but not nearly as bad I was. So yay there! 

Oh and my Mom and her older sister seem to still be doing well. 

Gnats! Noooooo! My paws. Foot traffic.

No particular reason for this pic, other than it is lovely, and I like it

Back when I lived in Kansas, it seemed that fall was "Attack of the Grasshopper" season. I remember one particular fall when I was attending Southwestern College, that I was trying to go to class, and grasshoppers were leaping and crisscrossing in front of me, behind me... well just all around me and everyone else. Kind of felt almost plague like. Here in Washington- and it might be a little early still- we don't seem to have as many grasshoppers, but we do have big gnats and lots of them. Yesterday afternoon the vicious landscapers were at it again, mowing, trimming, and weed waking. Not only did they stir up all sorts of allergens, they awakened the big gnats. I bet I looked really stupid on my short trek to my friend Tsuki's yesterday, waving my arms to keep them off me and out of my face. They seem to be out in force again today and all I can say is that I am not looking forward to them when I take a walk tonight. 

I've been cleaning in the kitchen today. I let it go during and after Amanda's birthday and just couldn't seem to motivate myself enough to get back to it. Period issues didn't help with that either as I spent two days basically sleeping. In fact, I dozed off a couple of times at Tsuki's yesterday. Anyway, because I have been scrubbing, washing dishes, and wiping down cabinets and counters, my paws have the prune look and kind of ache. I've been having some trouble with my hands lately in that they hurt when I do certain things, I can't seem to keep a hold of things sometimes, or they want to lock up. I think it is time to see about looking up some exercises. 

Tomorrow, Amanda and I are going to Finch's Arboretum to collects fallen leaves, but also to do some engagement photos. Our friend Chris offered to take them and thankfully she won't try to rush us. To my utter dismay, when I put the photo card into the computer this morning, I found that it won't work. Which really pisses me off because I was finally going to get the pumpkin pictures a friend asked me for off of the card and ugh! I am not happy. 

Lastly, Amanda and I had a long conversation before we went to bed last night. We decided that we need to be better about not only setting aside and guarding time together, but also some writing time. It's of course going to be a work in progress, but we need to establish some healthy and consistent writing habits. We love our friends, we love having some random hang out time and I'm sure some of that will still happen, but we may have to go to near compete scheduling. I hate the idea of having to do that, I really do and swore to myself that I would never be one of those people when I was younger, but here I am, never say never. 

That said, I was supposed to do craft time with Tsuki today, only I had to cancel because Amanda took a surprise day off from work. So we are spending the day together, doing a little bit of house cleaning, planning out a quilt, and later some story planning/ work shopping in a sense.