Ghost-of-a-Chance

No. No. HAY-ell to the no!  We have had enough fucking tornadoes  here for several lifetimes, and I’m fed the fuck up with them. 🤬
Yes. Tornado in 2011. Tornado several years ago. Tornado last month, and another last freaking night. Yes. Last night. My family, husband, and I are all safe, and I believe all our friends are safe. We didn’t live within the danger zone this time, but my PTSD was already kicking up over the season and impending trauma-versary. This? This is going to give me night terrors. Again. Can’t have Ghost go more than a month without dreaming about Cold dying a bloody, gruesome, tragic death in her arms, now can we? 😭 It’s a good thing I put everything on hiatus because I’m barely able to function right now, and it’s just gonna get worse.
If you see this post and you live in the United States, take this as your cue to go buy a weather radio and keep it on and stocked with batteries. The sirens in my hometown didn’t go off, and they weren’t sounded in another nearby town last month. Weather alerts on your phone won’t go off if the cellular network fails, and you can’t count on hearing the sirens, and a tornado can happen anytime of the year, on any continent, given the right conditions. If you’re looking for volunteer opportunities, there are several communities in southwest Missouri that are going to need help over the next week or so.
 
Seriously. Fuck tornadoes 

No. No. HAY-ell to the no!  We have had enough fucking tornadoes  here for several lifetimes, and I’m fed the fuck up with them. 🤬
Yes. Tornado in 2011. Tornado several years ago. Tornado last month, and another last freaking night. Yes. Last night. My family, husband, and I are all safe, and I believe all our friends are safe. We didn’t live within the danger zone this time, but my PTSD was already kicking up over the season and impending trauma-versary. This? This is going to give me night terrors. Again. Can’t have Ghost go more than a month without dreaming about Cold dying a bloody, gruesome, tragic death in her arms, now can we? 😭 It’s a good thing I put everything on hiatus because I’m barely able to function right now, and it’s just gonna get worse.
If you see this post and you live in the United States, take this as your cue to go buy a weather radio and keep it on and stocked with batteries. The sirens in my hometown didn’t go off, and they weren’t sounded in another nearby town last month. Weather alerts on your phone won’t go off if the cellular network fails, and you can’t count on hearing the sirens, and a tornado can happen anytime of the year, on any continent, given the right conditions. If you’re looking for volunteer opportunities, there are several communities in southwest Missouri that are going to need help over the next week or so.
 
Seriously. Fuck tornadoes 

It’s never an easy decision to make, but I’ve had to make it: all my active stories are now officially on hiatus. 
Nothing (very) bad’s happened – at least, this time around, nobody is dead, dying, or terminally ill. Life’s just thrown us a curveball and Cold and I are even busier than usual. Most days, I barely have the energy to handle day-to-day work, let alone time and energy to write. Heck, I haven’t even gotten anything written on my most recent chapter of my novel in a few months now; that’s how crazy it’s been lately. Since my fanfiction may not be updated anytime soon, I decided to head it off at the pass before readers start deciding I’m dead.
...yes. That’s always a possibility, considering how infrequently I can update.
It sucks, but better to give myself permission to not write than continue to bludgeon the desktop with my head when my brain is too stress-fried to write. On FFN and AO3, I put notes in my current stories, and updated the summaries of the stories that have fallen by the wayside. AFF frowns on author’s notes as chapters, so I’m not sure where to go beyond adding something to the summaries.
I hope the fanfiction writer’s curse has missed more of y’all than it’s hit, that spring is treating you well, and that this doesn’t last too many months. Now if any of y’all need me, I’ll be in my burrito-blanket muttering there’s no place like home and fuck-this-shit-I’m-out.

“Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.”  (from a former coworker of mine)

It’s never an easy decision to make, but I’ve had to make it: all my active stories are now officially on hiatus. 
Nothing (very) bad’s happened – at least, this time around, nobody is dead, dying, or terminally ill. Life’s just thrown us a curveball and Cold and I are even busier than usual. Most days, I barely have the energy to handle day-to-day work, let alone time and energy to write. Heck, I haven’t even gotten anything written on my most recent chapter of my novel in a few months now; that’s how crazy it’s been lately. Since my fanfiction may not be updated anytime soon, I decided to head it off at the pass before readers start deciding I’m dead.
...yes. That’s always a possibility, considering how infrequently I can update.
It sucks, but better to give myself permission to not write than continue to bludgeon the desktop with my head when my brain is too stress-fried to write. On FFN and AO3, I put notes in my current stories, and updated the summaries of the stories that have fallen by the wayside. AFF frowns on author’s notes as chapters, so I’m not sure where to go beyond adding something to the summaries.
I hope the fanfiction writer’s curse has missed more of y’all than it’s hit, that spring is treating you well, and that this doesn’t last too many months. Now if any of y’all need me, I’ll be in my burrito-blanket muttering there’s no place like home and fuck-this-shit-I’m-out.

It’s never an easy decision to make, but I’ve had to make it: all my active stories are now officially on hiatus. 
Nothing (very) bad’s happened – at least, this time around, nobody is dead, dying, or terminally ill. Life’s just thrown us a curveball and Cold and I are even busier than usual. Most days, I barely have the energy to handle day-to-day work, let alone time and energy to write. Heck, I haven’t even gotten anything written on my most recent chapter of my novel in a few months now; that’s how crazy it’s been lately. Since my fanfiction may not be updated anytime soon, I decided to head it off at the pass before readers start deciding I’m dead.
...yes. That’s always a possibility, considering how infrequently I can update.
It sucks, but better to give myself permission to not write than continue to bludgeon the desktop with my head when my brain is too stress-fried to write. On FFN and AO3, I put notes in my current stories, and updated the summaries of the stories that have fallen by the wayside. AFF frowns on author’s notes as chapters, so I’m not sure where to go beyond adding something to the summaries.
I hope the fanfiction writer’s curse has missed more of y’all than it’s hit, that spring is treating you well, and that this doesn’t last too many months. Now if any of y’all need me, I’ll be in my burrito-blanket muttering there’s no place like home and fuck-this-shit-I’m-out.

So. Is it colder than a witch’s cunt where y’all are, too? No? Just us? Muh-zurr-uh’s done froze over, folks. 

That moment when you keep hearing a soprano velociraptor playing one-sided Marco Polo out in the hallway and realize, oh, no, it’s just the Velcro cat wailing pitifully because you locked him out of the office. 
Woozle. Because of course, it’s Woozle. Never mind that I locked him out because I have cramps, a headache, and writer’s block, and I don’t feel up to fending off his usual shenanigans. By Shenanigans, I mean shaking slobber everywhere, whining, trying to insinuate his fat butt between the desk and my rack, and trying to scale Mount Mom’s-Desk and causing a landslide.
Kid, Mama needs to work! Stay in your box!

That moment when you keep hearing a soprano velociraptor playing one-sided Marco Polo out in the hallway and realize, oh, no, it’s just the Velcro cat wailing pitifully because you locked him out of the office. 
Woozle. Because of course, it’s Woozle. Never mind that I locked him out because I have cramps, a headache, and writer’s block, and I don’t feel up to fending off his usual shenanigans. By Shenanigans, I mean shaking slobber everywhere, whining, trying to insinuate his fat butt between the desk and my rack, and trying to scale Mount Mom’s-Desk and causing a landslide.
Kid, Mama needs to work! Stay in your box!

That moment when you keep hearing a soprano velociraptor playing one-sided Marco Polo out in the hallway and realize, oh, no, it’s just the Velcro cat wailing pitifully because you locked him out of the office. 
Woozle. Because of course, it’s Woozle. Never mind that I locked him out because I have cramps, a headache, and writer’s block, and I don’t feel up to fending off his usual shenanigans. By Shenanigans, I mean shaking slobber everywhere, whining, trying to insinuate his fat butt between the desk and my rack, and trying to scale Mount Mom’s-Desk and causing a landslide.
Kid, Mama needs to work! Stay in your box!

There’s a lot of bad news out there these days. So I’ve decided that every day for the next week, I’ll post one piece of good news.
To decrease summer heat and improve air quality, New York City’s city council has decided to up NYC’s tree canopy coverage from 22% to 30%. A lidar-based mapping system will be used to identify places where the new trees would do the most good.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/30/new-york-city-tree-planting-lidar-mapping

Y’all, I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried. I’m editing a new chapter of A New Lease on Life <500 words at a time with ProWritingAid, and the Readability checker gave me such a double take I heard my neck crack. I posted a screenshot on Tumblr because pics or it didn’t happen.
An (admittedly wordy) paragraph got a hard to read flag. Everything is spelled correctly, but it has several big words regarding language and its various parts and traits. You know. Words like consonants, syllables, dialects, and pronunciation. Hard, however, seems excessive.
Right above this paragraph is one marked easy to read. The entire thing is written in (intentionally) misspelled Scots and Scots-Gaelic that gave the spelling and grammar checker a stroke…and it’s easy to read…
…what…the actual…fuck… 

Y’all, I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried. I’m editing a new chapter of A New Lease on Life <500 words at a time with ProWritingAid, and the Readability checker gave me such a double take I heard my neck crack. I posted a screenshot on Tumblr because pics or it didn’t happen.
An (admittedly wordy) paragraph got a hard to read flag. Everything is spelled correctly, but it has several big words regarding language and its various parts and traits. You know. Words like consonants, syllables, dialects, and pronunciation. Hard, however, seems excessive.
Right above this paragraph is one marked easy to read. The entire thing is written in (intentionally) misspelled Scots and Scots-Gaelic that gave the spelling and grammar checker a stroke…and it’s easy to read…
…what…the actual…fuck… 

While my husband fed the cats a moment ago, I squirted the younger one’s liquid medicine down his throat. Woozle, the little shit, let half the dose drip out of his mouth and roll down my shirt and shorts. I grumbled about it—because that medicine stains, turns into tar, and smells like rotten fish a roadkill—and what did Cold say?
”Well. Pussy likes to dribble.”
 I married this clown. I married him. (He’s not wrong, though.)

While my husband fed the cats a moment ago, I squirted the younger one’s liquid medicine down his throat. Woozle, the little shit, let half the dose drip out of his mouth and roll down my shirt and shorts. I grumbled about it—because that medicine stains, turns into tar, and smells like rotten fish a roadkill—and what did Cold say?
”Well. Pussy likes to dribble.”
 I married this clown. I married him. (He’s not wrong, though.)

While my husband fed the cats a moment ago, I squirted the younger one’s liquid medicine down his throat. Woozle, the little shit, let half the dose drip out of his mouth and roll down my shirt and shorts. I grumbled about it—because that medicine stains, turns into tar, and smells like rotten fish a roadkill—and what did Cold say?
”Well. Pussy likes to dribble.”
 I married this clown. I married him. (He’s not wrong, though.)

While my husband fed the cats a moment ago, I squirted the younger one’s liquid medicine down his throat. Woozle, the little shit, let half the dose drip out of his mouth and roll down my shirt and shorts. I grumbled about it—because that medicine stains, turns into tar, and smells like rotten fish a roadkill—and what did Cold say?
”Well. Pussy likes to dribble.”
 I married this clown. I married him. (He’s not wrong, though.)

Using AI to edit your smut can be so wild. ProWritingAid decided that this sentence…
…needs this correction: 
I mean, sure, I’m as passionate about fucking as anyone, but that isn’t quite what I was going for there. I can only assume the algorithm assumed Kai’e’ie is a name rather than an emotion and that I was trying to make small talk instead of comparing two different emotional states—Kai’e’ie versus mi’lee’veez—related to intimacy. (Kai’e’ie’: combined from syllables from words meaning love, say, life, and bond; combined, the meaning is, literally love said, life-bound, or figuratively, without you, I die. The fictional people who created this word are apparently as dramatic as I can write them. Mi’lee’veez: the root words in their entirety and proper order mean my dream heart. Sappity-sap-sop, someone get a mop.)
 
This is what I get for creating a fictional language for my novel. 🙄 J.R.R., you’re a horrible influence.

Using AI to edit your smut can be so wild. ProWritingAid decided that this sentence…
…needs this correction: 
I mean, sure, I’m as passionate about fucking as anyone, but that isn’t quite what I was going for there. I can only assume the algorithm assumed Kai’e’ie is a name rather than an emotion and that I was trying to make small talk instead of comparing two different emotional states—Kai’e’ie versus mi’lee’veez—related to intimacy. (Kai’e’ie’: combined from syllables from words meaning love, say, life, and bond; combined, the meaning is, literally love said, life-bound, or figuratively, without you, I die. The fictional people who created this word are apparently as dramatic as I can write them. Mi’lee’veez: the root words in their entirety and proper order mean my dream heart. Sappity-sap-sop, someone get a mop.)
 
This is what I get for creating a fictional language for my novel. 🙄 J.R.R., you’re a horrible influence.

Using AI to edit your smut can be so wild. ProWritingAid decided that this sentence…
…needs this correction: 
I mean, sure, I’m as passionate about fucking as anyone, but that isn’t quite what I was going for there. I can only assume the algorithm assumed Kai’e’ie is a name rather than an emotion and that I was trying to make small talk instead of comparing two different emotional states—Kai’e’ie versus mi’lee’veez—related to intimacy. (Kai’e’ie’: combined from syllables from words meaning love, say, life, and bond; combined, the meaning is, literally love said, life-bound, or figuratively, without you, I die. The fictional people who created this word are apparently as dramatic as I can write them. Mi’lee’veez: the root words in their entirety and proper order mean my dream heart. Sappity-sap-sop, someone get a mop.)
 
This is what I get for creating a fictional language for my novel. 🙄 J.R.R., you’re a horrible influence.

Using AI to edit your smut can be so wild. ProWritingAid decided that this sentence…
…needs this correction: 
I mean, sure, I’m as passionate about fucking as anyone, but that isn’t quite what I was going for there. I can only assume the algorithm assumed Kai’e’ie is a name rather than an emotion and that I was trying to make small talk instead of comparing two different emotional states—Kai’e’ie versus mi’lee’veez—related to intimacy. (Kai’e’ie’: combined from syllables from words meaning love, say, life, and bond; combined, the meaning is, literally love said, life-bound, or figuratively, without you, I die. The fictional people who created this word are apparently as dramatic as I can write them. Mi’lee’veez: the root words in their entirety and proper order mean my dream heart. Sappity-sap-sop, someone get a mop.)
 
This is what I get for creating a fictional language for my novel. 🙄 J.R.R., you’re a horrible influence.

Using AI to edit your smut can be so wild. ProWritingAid decided that this sentence…
…needs this correction: 
I mean, sure, I’m as passionate about fucking as anyone, but that isn’t quite what I was going for there. I can only assume the algorithm assumed Kai’e’ie is a name rather than an emotion and that I was trying to make small talk instead of comparing two different emotional states—Kai’e’ie versus mi’lee’veez—related to intimacy. (Kai’e’ie’: combined from syllables from words meaning love, say, life, and bond; combined, the meaning is, literally love said, life-bound, or figuratively, without you, I die. The fictional people who created this word are apparently as dramatic as I can write them. Mi’lee’veez: the root words in their entirety and proper order mean my dream heart. Sappity-sap-sop, someone get a mop.)
 
This is what I get for creating a fictional language for my novel. 🙄 J.R.R., you’re a horrible influence.

Our cats have access to two cat beds, several chairs, a couch, a couple boxes, a footrest, a beanbag, countless pillows and blankets, a sunny windowsill with a blanket in it, our bed, and a cat tree. The cats are permitted to have a cuddle, nap, or lazy moment in all of these places. If we don’t catch them first, there’s even a couple baskets of clean laundry that might be comfy.
…and Woozle wants to sleep on top of a flat of toilet paper jammed into a storage shelf.

Cats, man. You just can’t make sense of them.

Our cats have access to two cat beds, several chairs, a couch, a couple boxes, a footrest, a beanbag, countless pillows and blankets, a sunny windowsill with a blanket in it, our bed, and a cat tree. The cats are permitted to have a cuddle, nap, or lazy moment in all of these places. If we don’t catch them first, there’s even a couple baskets of clean laundry that might be comfy.
…and Woozle wants to sleep on top of a flat of toilet paper jammed into a storage shelf.

Cats, man. You just can’t make sense of them.

Our cats have access to two cat beds, several chairs, a couch, a couple boxes, a footrest, a beanbag, countless pillows and blankets, a sunny windowsill with a blanket in it, our bed, and a cat tree. The cats are permitted to have a cuddle, nap, or lazy moment in all of these places. If we don’t catch them first, there’s even a couple baskets of clean laundry that might be comfy.
…and Woozle wants to sleep on top of a flat of toilet paper jammed into a storage shelf.

Cats, man. You just can’t make sense of them.