I just fin­ished read­ing the all three books that are cur­rent­ly avail­able in the Mor­ris & Chas­tain Super­nat­ur­al Inves­ti­ga­tions series by Justin Gus­tai­nis. I have no com­plaints about Black Mag­ic Woman or Evil Ways, which hang togeth­er pret­ty close­ly.

Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il, though, end­ed with a cliffhang­er! How dare he! The read­er is left com­plete­ly unsure of the fate of one of the main two char­ac­ters, as well as sev­er­al oth­ers who were piv­otal to the plot. Hon­est­ly, any­body who is read­ing vol­ume three of a series has proven enough com­mit­ment that there’s sim­ply no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for such a cheap tac­tic. Bah!

Tonight I’m grate­ful that my Dad­dy does NOT have the blood clot we thought he might have ear­li­er today. He did have to go to the emer­gency room, but the swelling in his leg is due to some­thing else.

Oh, thank good­ness. Dad­dy fixed the A/C! I’m glad to know it was­n’t just me not tol­er­at­ing the heat well despite A/C (I’m get­ting to that age now). Thank you, Dad­dy! Look­ing for­ward to a good night’s sleep tonight!

It is just too bloody hot. I could­n’t sleep last night and it’s too dan­ged hot to sleep again tonight. I do not enjoy sum­mer weath­er.

Today’s NaBloPo­Mo prompt:
How do you feel about sky div­ing?
I feel that it is a pur­suit best left to adren­a­line junkies, and peo­ple who have to do it for their careers. I’m glad para­chutes exist, but I sin­cere­ly hope that I won’t ever find myself in need of one! If I board a plane, I intend to stay on it until it makes a nice, safe land­ing.

Today’s NaBloPo­Mo prompt:
Would you ever go bungee jump­ing?

No way! For one thing, I am def­i­nite­ly NOT an adren­a­line junky. For anoth­er, I can­not imag­ine that the JERK when one reach­es the end of the cord and gets pulled back up is a very good feel­ing. I already have chron­ic pain prob­lems, so I don’t think it wise to aggra­vate them by seek­ing out oppor­tu­ni­ty for injury in a gra­tu­itous fash­ion!

But as you can see by the grow­ing list of pages on the right-hand side of the site, I’m mak­ing progress. The read­ing, stitch­ing, geek­ery and health parts of the site have been migrat­ed to Word­Press, although not always rewrit­ten and updat­ed. My pro­fes­sion­al site has been migrat­ed com­plete­ly now, too. There are still some pages to be migrat­ed here, but they’re com­ing, then I’ll work on get­ting the pat­terns site migrat­ed and maybe even add more pat­terns. Fibrant Liv­ing needs some love, as does Cyberstalked.org, but that last one is my low­est pri­or­i­ty.

I don’t sup­pose any­one would like to test stitch one of the pat­terns at Heart­song Hand­i­crafts? It would be nice to have stitched mod­el pho­tographs for that site. I haven’t fin­ished the biggest pat­tern that I was test-stitch­ing for the site yet.

There are new con­tact forms up on this site and at CynthiaArmistead.com to offer an alter­na­tive way to reach me for those who might be shy about com­ment­ing.

Today I cel­e­brat­ed the Sol­stice with the ADF Grove of the Red Earth, the first of their rit­u­als I’ve been able to attend. It was a love­ly thing, with a deli­cious feast after­wards. Thanks for the invi­ta­tion and hos­pi­tal­i­ty, folks!

Anoth­er NaBloPo­Mo prompt: Do you like scary movies that make you jump?

I’m not old enough to watch scary movies! I find them far too fright­en­ing, indeed, night­mare-induc­ing. Sam required that I watch The Crow with him when we’d just start­ed dat­ing him (I can’t remem­ber why any more) and, like a fool, I did­n’t refuse absolute­ly. Today I would, even in the ear­ly days of a rela­tion­ship. I too eas­i­ly sus­pend my dis­be­lief.

But then, i can’t watch many very vio­lent things, either. They’re too upset­ting for me. The more real­is­tic vio­lence is, the more fright­en­ing it is. I can’t under­stand why any­one else would want to watch such things, either, but I accept that they don’t touch some peo­ple as deeply as they do me. I can watch foren­sics shows, but the vio­lence is usu­al­ly over by the time those shows start. The main char­ac­ters recon­struct the crimes, but the view­er isn’t usu­al­ly sub­ject­ed to the actu­al crime occur­ring, hap­pi­ly. That lets me look at them as puz­zles.

Back to the NaBloPo­Mo prompts:
What do you do to cope when you’re ner­vous?

I have a whole mess of diag­noses, includ­ing post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der and social anx­i­ety dis­or­der, so I feel jumpy and ner­vous fair­ly often. I’m on med­ica­tion that helps, and I have Ati­van that I can take if I must for pan­ic attacks. But I try real­ly hard to use the Ati­van, because 1) it can be addic­tive; and 2) it makes me sleepy. It makes far more sense to take advan­tage of the biofeed­back tech­niques I learned years ago to try to get my heart rate and breath­ing under con­trol. Cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py has also giv­en me some valu­able ways to exam­ine the thought pat­terns that lead to pan­ic attacks, so that I can try to short-cir­cuit them before I get too wound up.

For less crit­i­cal nerves, I find it impor­tant to keep my hands busy. I usu­al­l­ly take a small stitch­ing project with me wher­ev­er I go. Hav­ing my hands busy and keep­ing my mind par­tial­ly occu­pied takes up enough of my ener­gy to keep me from get­ting too wound up in nerves, most of the time. My stitch­ing is the equiv­a­lent of oth­er peo­ples’ doo­dling or fid­get toys.