I'm glad Emmett had a good birthday. Dave's birthday gathering was also successful. Our friends just left, dinner went well, and fun was had.

Happy birthdays, Emmett and Dave!

Also, continued ~ma to GC's GF and family. Also hoping the Trudy familt and tommyrot family are doing OK.

Cereal:

I know I bitch a lot about my family, but I just love my sister so much and think her kids are so amazing. I love them all so much I feel heart bursty.

This sentimentality brought to you by Spaten Oktoberfest and "DAMN, I'm still tired from last night."

Hac--how are things with EM's psycho-ex situation? Things calmed down with that?

(ps- skybus still sux, can't check in for my flight.)

I'm working hard on doing what it takes to feel better about how I spend my time...both using it more efficiently and being okay when I don't.

My problem is I tend to badly overestimate how much I can do with any given stretch of time. This weekend, for example, I didn't have anything special planned. DH wanted to try a new restaurant for brunch this a.m. and we have church on Sunday a.m., but other than that it is/was a great big beautiful chunk of unassigned time. And if I used it well, I could get a lot done in 2 days plus Friday evening. But my problem is I think of EVERYTHING that I could/should do with the time. Driving home from work Friday, I'm thinking, "I'm going to totally clean the living room and kitchen, and do all the laundry, and buy groceries, and cook extra food so I'll have lots of leftovers to take to work next week so I'll stay on WW and not spend so much $$ at the caf. And I'm going to do that beta read I promised that woman from Historical Novel Society, and write 15 pages or so on the WIP, and finish reading that 500-page research book on the Congress of Vienna, the one I'm currently 75 pages into. And I'm going to spend at least an hour hanging out with DH every night after AB is in bed, and in deep conversation, not just watching football or catching up on Stewart and Colbert."

All that in two days. Yeah, right. So what happens all too often is that I'm intimidated by that big, amorphous to-do list in my head, so I think, "I'll get started as soon as I check b.org/LJ/my favorite blogs," and it just spins out from there. I procrastinate because everything I feel like I have to do puts me in a panic, so I hide from it and don't do it.

What I've actually accomplished so far this weekend? Hung out with DH, loaded and ran the dishwasher, merged a rewritten scene into my WIP (but no actual new writing yet), did about half the laundry, went to brunch, got groceries, cooked dinner, and read about 150 pages of the Congress of Vienna book. Which looks pretty impressive now that I type it all out, but it's been pretty haphazard and interspersed with a lot of procrastination. And I haven't done a thing on the two items I consider most important--the beta read and producing new pages on the WIP.

In middle of the night non sequiter news, EW used the portmanteau "Gizzie" in reference to Grey's Anatomy.

Super ick.

Yay for party success!

I slept for almost 12 hours last night. Craziness!

Hac--how are things with EM's psycho-ex situation? Things calmed down with that?

He's not stalking her anymore, but she's basically had a functional breakdown. She's still out on leave and I'm afraid she's going to lose her job. She's having a hard time keeping her shit together.

She had a very traumatic experience when she was fourteen and this whole episode seems to have triggered a post-traumatic stress reaction. She had a blackout about a month ago, which is one reason her therapist and boss are holding her out from work still.

She's taking anti-anxiety drugs and anti-depressants. She's seeing a therapist twice a week, and also going to group therapy. She's doing yoga. She's still kind of a wreck.

Still, able to keep it together enough to host a birthday party of 11 year old boys, so not like she's rocking and mumbling in a corner. But when she's stressed she just loses it, breaks down.

So not only do I look like an asshole for ignoring it and sending out a big "come have fun with me!" but half my friends can't come because they're doing that.

I don't think you look like an asshole, you can just send an email saying that you confused the dates. No big, ,people understand.