We went for sushi on Sunday with a few of our favorite people, and lingered over it for a while, talking and watching some spectacular lightning out the window.

When we left, I ended up in front of our little train of people, and upon opening the door, I was hit full on by a wall of water driven by a 90-mile-an-hour wind, and … I kind of lost my head. I screeched in panic, and then pelted at a full run for the car, followed by everyone else. There may have been laughing and screaming.

Once safely in the truck, I couldn’t stop laughing, because it was so absurd, but my sweetie, also laughing, asked why I hadn’t just stepped back into the restaurant to exchange hugs and say our goodbyes and maybe send someone out to the car to get an umbrella. And, well. I don’t know. I have certainly been known to panic, or make illogical decisions, or pick the wrong thing, or get the math wrong, but here’s the important bit:

No one ever stops me.

No one ever says “Wait! Let’s do it this way.” Because, presented with a sane choice, I will nearly always go “Oh. Right. That makes much more sense.” I totally know how to say “I stand corrected,” and have done when the occasion presents itself.

So why don’t people do that more often? Am I really so formidable? So fragile? So commanding? So fast? (OK, I was pretty fast last Sunday in the rainstorm, but really, it was a wall of water and a 90-mile-an-hour wind, and I defy you to simply stroll, umbrella-less, through an unexpected monsoon.)

In this case it end without tragedy: we’re all pretty waterproof, we exchanged text-hugs later and no one died, but seriously, someone say something in future. I promise I won’t yell or cry or get all offended. I promise!

Last week sucked.

On Thursday, we got a nastygram from our HOA, telling us, basically, “Paint your house or we’ll cut you”. It wasn’t entirely unexpected, since the last monsoon powerwashed a couple chunks of stucco off the front of the house, but I’d not budgeted for probably-two-or-three-grand-worth of paint job, and it’s going to hurt.

(I’m in favor of our HOA in general; our dues are pretty low, our common areas are nicely kept, and our neighborhood is generally pretty cool^[1]. But still … bleh.)

Then we got our taxes done on Friday, and holy crap, did we not need that just now. How can we claim married and zero exemptions, and still be on the hook? We didn’t have a lot of Reliquary expenses, but since we also didn’t make any profit, it’s only a matter of time before the IRS gets all “this is a hobby!” on our asses.

Then we tried to have Reliquary practice, but Cubase was all “Yeah, I have no idea what you’re talking about” every time we tried to get it to, y’know, play the music. (We’d gotten a new studio computer a few months ago to replace the dying, 7-year-old one we’d been using, and had just gotten it up and running. Except that the 6-year-old copy of Cubase wasn’t playing nice with the new OS.) So we’ll have to upgrade. And there go several hundred more dollars.

(I mean, I know we’ll be able to claim the expense next year on our taxes, but see above re: hobby. Unless Reliquary starts making money [on which we will have to pay taxes, argh vicious circle argh], it’s going to look more and more like a hobby to the IRS and it could get ugly. We could just eat the cost, but if Reliquary does make any money, we’ll have to claim it, so it makes sense to claim expenses as well. Gah, this sucks.)

And in the face of Loki’s demotion and ridiculous pay cut, it’s all just too hard. We’ve slashed our budget and I though we were economizing fairly well, but we’ve not been able to build our emergency fund back up, and I’m just terrified of the future. My spreadsheet is predicting, if not doom, then certainly stress and worry.

We’re going to have to make some unpleasant choices fairly soon. I’m just hoping nothing else falls out of the sky to smash our fragile little financial ecosystem.

[1] Notwithstanding the delinquent fuck who smashed into Loki’s truck last week & stole my black bass, the one he’s been playing with The Low Men. Yeah, there went another $500.

Two very long, early-starting, long-running days on a construction site, shooting videos of the construction, equals a broken me. You wouldn’t think that’d be so bad, would you? I certainly didn’t.

And yet, everything hurts, I can barely move and I’ve got a headache that’s off the charts.

It wasn’t so much the standing around for hours, or the trying-to-hold-very-very-still while videoing without a tripod, or the high-stepping through the debris, or the long (high-stepping) walks required to get to anywhere, or the unaccustomed weight of a hard hat on my head, but all of that, combined, two days in a row. Oh, and I wasn’t exactly fit to begin with, bleh.

On the plus side, it was interesting to watch, if somewhat dangerous at times. But I didn’t die, so well done me!

The plan now is plenty of stretching and hot soaks, and hopefully I will be human again soon.

I’ve been fighting with my body for a week, and it sucks.

I woke up Christmas Day feeling like I’d been steamrollered. I’ve never had body aches that bad ever in my life. Add in a nose and head clogged with epic amounts of snot and you’ve got a very non-Merry Christmas indeed.

Still managed to crank out two lasagnas (one meat with red sauce, one mushroom with white sauce) (washing my hands so much to avoid contamination that every single finger sprouted hangnails) before collapsing back on the couch. I forgot to roast the asparagus & green beans, making for an all-carbs, all the time sort of meal. Happily, my lack of sense of smell led to really garlicky garlic bread, which was much appreciated.

I managed to stay awake until all our friends had arrived, then passed the hell out. And every day since has been much the same: Get up, stumble about, fight to breath through my 0.024 functioning nostrils, do nothing much constructive, pass out, sleep really badly.

Here’s hoping I recover enough to enjoy New Year’s Eve.