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Dear Diary

A 3617-post collection

Anti-entropy

The house is starting to look firkin fantastic. The kitchen countertops only need a little bit done, the bathroom's gorgeous. We start our day with the beds being made.

Today, I'm talking with the school dental van about braces for Miss Chaos. Something that's happening in TWENTY MINUTES.

Yikes.

I'm also doing some minor and major futzing to get Chaos' costume done. This is going to include some shopping at Jaycar later on. The dollar shop light I got only does red. Boo. I need green. So now we're making that shiznit from scratch. Fume.

By the time you read this, I'll probably be on my way to rattling around. The goal is cheap and easy, despite having to print and fabricate the entire accessory.

And when I get home, I'll probably be sprainting other accessories, in between working on today's Instant, the book I'm supposed to be writing, aaaaand the book I'm not supposed to be writing, but I'm having immense fun writing anyway.

There's a murder in chapter two and body disposal for pure profit in the next one. That's what kind of book it is.

So I have two minutes left before I take off. Just assume I'm busy as hell and work from there.

Ridding the house of time vampires

Anyone who does housework knows what time vampires are. You want to work on the hobby, but you have to do this bit or that bit of housework that just sucks your time away.

Well, Mt Laundry now has its last load in the machine and I am waving farewell to that set of time vampires. Now I should have more time to deal with mental health and Halloween costumes and assorted whatnot that has been biding its time until I finally

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Living in the procrasti-nation

The scary thing about my levels of procrastination is that Beloved is worse. I've procrastinated doing my daily duties by writing the starting paragraphs of a book that I'm not due to start until 2018. I love the concept and it's so shiny. I had the perfect starter sentence and I could not resist setting a scene.

Of course, since the Mou editor is slower than frozen molasses, I started editing in my old friend, TextWrangler.

Everything old is new again.

I've

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Ow ow ow ow ow...

Beloved has a day off Mondays, because working on Saturdays is a thing during the Melbourne Cup wind-up. This, I thought, would be a prime opportunity to get them to adhere to the rest of the house's rules.

No.

Such.

Luck.

Beloved had a great case of persistent inertia and gave me the Irrits. Which culminated in a crescendo of me yelling about all the things that Beloved does to piss me the fuck off.

Good news - cleaning the gritty bits

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How I eat cake and lose weight too

It's not easy and it's not fun, but oh, how the cake is worth it.

I'm currently using a diet app called Easy Diet Diary to keep track of how much I eat, and how many kilojoules I consume. My goal for safe dieting, according to the app, is eight thousand kilojoules.

On an average day, I make it up to around eighty percent of that noise. One slice of cake is roughly a third of my allotted kilojoules.

Therefore, the rest

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So close...

You would be surprised how few avenues there are for making one's own costume, out there. Generic, cheaply-made dress-ups are all you can find.

I purchased an allegedly 'adult' costume for Mayhem that barely fits him. And it has massive static cling issues. Which just re-enforces the idea that I need to learn how to sew. Costuming from pret-a-porter is not what it used to be.

I have to solve Chaos' Gem issue, fix my hat, repair my heart, and find some

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Sideways!

It doesn't matter which order things are done in, only that they are done. Therefore, it's no surprise that my little darlings have adapted to the 'get up and do it' routine whilst my Beloved still drags their heels.

Mayhem has taken to sorting the laundry as part of his morning routine. Chaos still needs a lot of reminding, but she is getting used to the way things are meant to go.

Beloved... is working late because Melbourne Cup. Their work gets

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S-L-O-W-L-Y

If there's anything more irritating to live with than a case of the Slo-Mo's, I can't think of it right now.

I couldn't get to sleep until Beloved came home. Well, not properly. I managed to cat-nap until that time. And then I woke at four in the morning. Too tired to sleep.

Which is a bitch if there ever was one.

Since Beloved was home late, I gave up on the morning walk and dived straight into getting the kids organised.

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Yoiks and Awaaaaaay...

Once again, I got rejected. Once again, I do this nonse:

[Shown: Daffy Duck repeatedly swinging into a tree]

I figured this was going to take some time. When I run out of likely candidates in one agency, I will try another. Until I run down to the bottom of my 30-person list.

Only then will I put up Kung Fu Zombies on Amazon and Smashwords.

But in the meantime, there's a new short story for free. It's currently only available in

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I'm 44

...and everything's gone to shit. I got rejected by yet another agent, the birthday card from MeMum hasn't arrived yet (three raspberries for the Aussie postal service), and the careful timing of this morning did not account for Beloved dragging their feet until such time that I have to do my blogging on the road. Huzzah.

Thank providence for laptops, mobile hotspots, and USB car charger ports. Otherwise, I would be supremely miffed at my Beloved.

All going well, I will achieve

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Swag Day!

Celebrations are done and I have yet to scoop up the wrapping paper. But this year was a decent haul.

Beloved gift-wrapped the meds I sent them to get and the pegs I asked for. Sneaky sod. But I also got some sweet tech out of the deal.

  • A shower speaker that I can blue-tooth link to my phone and blast Steam Powered Giraffe whilst I lather up.
  • A bluetooth radio deelie that I can also link with my phone and have
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...party?

My birthday is this Tuesday, so we're having a little mini-party today. Cake, family, and presents. Nothing huge, hugely expensive, or extravagant.

I still count that trip to Tucson in March as a late-Christmas/early-birthday present combo. That was a budgetary blowout of epic proportions. Therefore anything extra today is a blessing.

Beloved has promised me something I will enjoy but they will probably regret. I have to confess to being interested in seeing what the heck it is. And then try

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Merry October

It's the first of October and I've yet to isolate anything for Chaos' costume, this year. She wants to be her gemsona, sweet child.

That means a wee bit of running around for things. Including the figuring out of how to do the gem on the cheap. Green leggings and arm things. The more skin I cover with fabric, the less I have to cover with makeup. Even when I know where to get some good stuff on the cheap? It's just

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Achievement Unlocked

The plastics cupboard has had all its non-essential and extra-cluttering items removed! Hooray. Now, if we should ever need more than three large or medium Systema sealing articles, we can toddle up to the shed and fetch them. I mean, we have HUGE amounts of plastic containers.

Now, we need no more.

Still on the agenda is the pots cupboard and the gizmos cupboard. The least-use doohickeys will head shed-wards, but the other stuff for pots and pans might be an issue

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Slow starts, low batteries, and recreated inconvenience

Yes, I've stopped using Steam Powered Giraffe lyrics. Well spotted, you.

SPG has helped me cope with a lot of things, and now 'grief' can join that number. I'll try to tone it down from now on. I can be... kind of annoying on the topic of my favourite band.

As you might expect, grief comes with a seemingly endless patch of personal recharge issues. Low batteries, in this case, are mine. Few spoons to drag myself through the day.

And since

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