The Dark Side of the Moon

Well, not really.  But, yeah, kind of.

This is the time of year that what's left of my emotional stability takes a good, long look into the abyss and decides whether or not to take a flying leap for the rest of the year.

Some Decembers are really, really difficult.

Ramblings and stuff

Since the death last month of one of my daughter's classmates, and his memorial service, I've been in a heightened (deepened?) state of nostalgic melancholy.  I saw the classmate she'd been closest to at her freshman year, and that was almost as hard as being at Trey's memorial service, in some strange way.  G was a wonderful boy and he loved my daughter practically from the moment they met.  They became dance partners and oh, my kid was happy when she was dancing!

Then we moved, had to, leaving all her friends, including G, behind, and she really disliked me for a while.  I didn't have the money to drive back to C-Town very often, even if it was only twenty minutes away.  What?  I was unemployed.  I managed to keep the stupid cell phones turned on most of the time, and we had a place to live, so I kinda figured we were ahead of the game.  Driving back and forth so she could see her friends in person didn't seem like a necessity.

Anyway, I guess seeing G and remembering that one happy year of high school settled in and made some part of me wish that she could have stayed as happy as she was her freshman year, and that we could have continued to function as well together as we always had (with a few exceptions - no parent/child relationship is without tension).

Maybe it  mixed in with some belated empty-nest syndrome.  It's been a little over a year since she moved out completely, and all but stopped talking to me for a while.  Those first couple of months, while I was still packing and moving, weren't too bad, but I missed my grandson and talking to my girl every day something awful.  Then I couch-surfed for a few months, and being on my best behavior sort of meant not moping around about my kid or my dysfunctional family.

November was harder, because I was unable to make my annual trip to San Antonio to see my friend from high school and do Thanksgiving with her and host our Airmen and just in general be "home" with antiquing and breakfast tacos and Sonic drinks every day and all the Mexican food I could manage to eat.  I look forward to that recharge all year long, and though I understand her situation, I selfishly hated that it got in the way of my needs and wants.  I did my damnedest to sleep through Thanksgiving, since I had nowhere to go.

Having nowhere else to go was stupid, considering that my parents live half an hour away.  Last January, after my stepmother bought me a car (one cannot really effectively job search or work without a car in DFW), she came out and said that she wanted me out of her life and except for sending her birthday cards I've completely respected that.  Last Thanksgiving, it wasn't a big deal, because of my annual trip to SA.  But I was not invited to their house at Christmas, not even for dinner.  Unfortunately, her need to see me gone means that I don't see or speak to my dad, either, and it hurts that he's made no effort to contact me.  This year was the first time in my entire life that I didn't get even an email or text message from my dad on my birthday.  I cried about that, you can believe it.  Yes, I'm 47, but I don't think a girl ever grows out of needing her dad to call her on her birthday.

I wished pointlessly that I had my own place, so that I could put a Thanksgiving dinner together and make it an open house or something, so that I could see other people and not be stuck in my own dark and dreary head/heartspace.  Don't get me wrong, I am grateful to have a place to live that is not a box under a bridge, but it is just a roof over my head, and though he says I'm welcome to invite people over, I rarely do because this place has never felt like home to me.  I also hate the kitchen.  I mean, I don't like to cook anyway, but this kitchen in particular is definitely a relic from a bygone era.

I think I had a point to make, but if I did, I don't recall what it was, and I think I've rambled depressingly for quite long enough.  Gah!

On a more positive note, I am still madly in love with Battlestar Galactica 2003 and Katee Sackhoff's Starbuck.  I managed to get my hands on the first two seasons of DVDs and am really looking forward to seeing all those deleted scenes and other extras.  I'm trying to ration myself, though.  The distraction's gotta last through Christmas, because I just don't wanna think about another one without my family.

And on another bright note, my grandson, he is adorable!

My grandson

Ryan is not afraid to rock those stilletos and "help."  lol

I love that he's starting to say actual words now.  The other day, I got a video where he was yelling, "Honey!" at the computer.  Guess we know the favored term of endearment in my daughter's household.  :)

Book Review: Sold (The Auction) by Cheyenne McCray

Though I enjoyed reading it enough, it wasn't really anything special. There were about half a dozen grammar errors, mostly relating to tense, and in such a short work, those errors stood out more than they otherwise would have.

The auction to which the title refers was over fairly quickly, and the weekend at a resort which couples won was never referred to again. Too bad. It could have made for some intriguing situations.

Once the couple hooked up, there was too much time spent describing the toys and paraphernalia and his dungeon, and a lot of time on the female lead's intellectual responses, but hardly any time spent on how he was reacting, and very little time spent on actual sex. If I recall correctly, there are in reality only two sex scenes in the entire book, and most of both of them is spent talking about the toys and how gladly she is submitting to his will. I like to read about kink as much as anyone else, but this wasn't really very well done. I like to know that both people are enjoying the foreplay and the sex.

There's not really much buildup to the relationship, and the end of the story feels kind of tacked on, as if she'd run out of toys to describe and needed to end the book gracefully.

Someone else mentioned that this story was only good for eliciting a physical reaction. I didn't even get that much out of it. It really was an interesting concept/premise, one I wish the author had taken more time to explore.

This one was an Amazon freebie at the time I got it.

Book Review: Love Unscripted

I received a free copy of this book through NetGalley, for the purposes of reviewing.

Wow.  I haven't read a book in a long time that had so much extraneous information included.  I kept getting bogged down and outright bored with the play-by-play of where people were sitting or what they were wearing or the relationship state of someone unimportant to the overall plot.  The formatting sucked.  Quotation marks were used in place of apostrophes throughout, and that made this slow read even more torturous.  There were lines missing, or inserted two pages later, and lines breaks between chapters were frequently missing.  I'm hopeful that these issues are fixed in the actual published copies.

This book is written in first-person.  It's unusual, and not every author can make it work.  Though Taryn is theoretically 27 or 28, the book, particularly the beginning, reads as though she's just out of high school.  She's fixated on stuff that an older adult just wouldn't think too much about anymore, with totally juvenile thought processes about men and their relative hotness factors.

I really liked Ryan and Taryn at first.  They seemed to genuinely like each other and watching an actor fall in love with a "nobody" and vice versa was interesting.  Then, when Ryan left Taryn's city once filming was done, their relationship wasn't so easy and they each had issues with the other.  Ryan turned into an overbearing uber-jealous prick with anger control issues, and Taryn became a super-gullible untrusting brat, and it just went downhill from there.

The denouement was way over the top, though well-written, and then the end was just too treacly for words.  "I'm sorry."  "No, I'm sorry."  "I love you."  "I love you more."  "Let's live happily ever after."  Gag me with a spoon.  Yeah, I know.  The eighties called and they want their colloquialism back.

For me, this book was just too long, stuffed with too much unnecessary information, and the way the relationship played out was unbelievable.  Taryn's physical attraction to Kyle was given far too much emphasis, considering she's in love with Ryan, and whether or not she was attracted to Kyle had no meaning to the plot.

On the plus side, there were parts of the book that were extremely nicely done and touching.  The early days of the relationship had many adorable and funny moments, and though packed with a lot of tell rather than show, were enjoyable to read.

Hot and Cold

Sorry.  I suck at subject lines, and I was listening to Katy Perry. 

Good - Voted.
Bad - no bad there, except for the 40-minute line.

Good - smoothie from Smoothie King
Better - next one's free

Good - dinner at Cheesecake Factory
Better - half of it was free thanks to a gift card I earned through MyPoints
Extra Super Good Bonus - even though my favorite item is no longer on the menu, my fantastic waiter asked the kitchen if they could make it anyway, and they did.  Also, I got a survey on my receipt, and by filling it out, I got a $10 gift card for next time.

Good - saw Taken 2
Better - free thanks to a movie ticket voucher from MyCokeRewards
Bad - though it was still good, I didn't enjoy it as much as I did the first one
Good again - saw another trailer for Die Hard 5 and for Skyfall.  I am an unabashed John McClane and Daniel Craig 007 fangirl, and I cannot wait to see these two.

Best - CF and the movie house are in the same "mall," so I only had to park once

Good - Movie Trading Company is having a Buy Two, Get One Free sale through Sunday, and it applies to almost everything.
Better - Season 1, 2 and 2.5 of Battlestar Galactica were available at MTC, so I scored big!  Obviously, this means I'll have to start again at the beginning, so I can watch all those deleted scenes and whatever extras tickle my fancy.  Damn the bad luck.  lol

So, I pretty much got to show myself a good time tonight for practically nothing.  The only way it would have been better is if I had company.  On the other hand, when I'm alone, I can read my book without having to make conversation.  lol