I had a breakthrough with "Prince Within" last night. Seismic level. I've been trying to find a way to up the action and tension in the first section, and I think I may have hit upon a way to fix it without wandering too far outside of my story's confines.
There will be shipwrecks and kidnapping! I've always wanted to write a shipwreck :)
What else is up with me?
Going to see Hobbit next Wednesday. That'll be fun.
Got the weekend off and I get to spend it with the fur kids while Mum and Dad go visit my sister and then see the other sister graduate.
It's cold here and really quiet.
Benedict Cumberbatch is playing Hamlet on stage in the fall next year (I couldn't stop squealing like a little girl for TWENTY minutes after I read the news.) I really hope they film it for posterity and for the poor saps who can't get a ticket in to see this one, never mind afford a plane ticket. Tennant's interpretation was astounding, to say the least, but it's always neat to have a different actor with a different temperament entirely handle the material.
Arrow is on tonight. I am DYING to see what comes next.
Not much else to say. I have a long weekend to prepare for, so I'd better hop to it. Lots of writing and thinking to do.
Ta,
Bec
11.12.13
10.12.13
Two Years
Two years ago today, I graduated with a Master's degree in Library Science.
Yay.
Here I sit, depressed, angry, and rejected, because it appears no one will give me the time of day and PAY me to shelve a book.
Sigh.
I have tried not to be bitter, but it is so hard.
Really. 300 applications and not one bit of success.
Maybe I shouldn't have bothered in the first place.
On a happier note, the new Sherlock trailer came out and Mycroft was TOTALLY in on the plot, so there, so there, so there, I was right about one thing.
I guarantee you I'll be wrong about all the rest of it. 22 days to go, people.
Ta,
Bec
Yay.
Here I sit, depressed, angry, and rejected, because it appears no one will give me the time of day and PAY me to shelve a book.
Sigh.
I have tried not to be bitter, but it is so hard.
Really. 300 applications and not one bit of success.
Maybe I shouldn't have bothered in the first place.
On a happier note, the new Sherlock trailer came out and Mycroft was TOTALLY in on the plot, so there, so there, so there, I was right about one thing.
I guarantee you I'll be wrong about all the rest of it. 22 days to go, people.
Ta,
Bec
19.11.13
Moving On
Well, there's a draft, anyway. Progress of a sort. I'm going to start typing it tomorrow and seeing if I can make something out of what fell out of my head onto paper tonight (the initial three pages look good for a meager beginning, and since I don't often praise my work right off, that's something right there.)
Unfortunately, I had to toss out all of the plot of the first portion in order to completely revamp this part, and it's going to alter the beginning of Part 2 drastically. However, if Part 1 is well-established and strong, there is no reason at all why Part 2 won't be helped by Part 1's major renovations.
I went with the island idea, and took away Darren's adoptive mum in a hurricane, gave him some friends and a mentor, AND gave him an adversary to go up against, all in three pages. No one on this island actually knows who he is, so I'm going to have to get creative (oh, ha dee ha) in order to tell him who he really is.
Let's hope the good work keeps up for long enough so I can finish this.
Ta,
Bec
Unfortunately, I had to toss out all of the plot of the first portion in order to completely revamp this part, and it's going to alter the beginning of Part 2 drastically. However, if Part 1 is well-established and strong, there is no reason at all why Part 2 won't be helped by Part 1's major renovations.
I went with the island idea, and took away Darren's adoptive mum in a hurricane, gave him some friends and a mentor, AND gave him an adversary to go up against, all in three pages. No one on this island actually knows who he is, so I'm going to have to get creative (oh, ha dee ha) in order to tell him who he really is.
Let's hope the good work keeps up for long enough so I can finish this.
Ta,
Bec
18.11.13
Hitches, Glitches, and a Whole Lot of Tired
So, I was writing again last week. Everything was flying along when
CLUNK
The engine fell out of the plane and landed on my plot.
So to speak.
The plan I had figured out blew up spectacularly in my face, and now I may have to rewrite rewrite (yes, I meant to put two there) the entire damn plot of the first section.
I was already rewriting and now I'll just have to start over. For the fourth time.
Yay?
I am working 40 hours a week right now and am a walking ball of exhausted. This kind of stuff just annoys the everlasting hell out of me. I hate it when things go pear-shaped.
I'm going to have to go drastic on this next rewrite, though, because I think I've exhausted my options as far as what I could have done with it in our world. I think I'm going to start the next one on an island or something (gee, have I been watching Arrow much or anything?)
What happened with this rewrite was that I had too many crises happening on top of one another and it was just crisis, pause, another crisis, pause, CRISIS. It began to feel rushed and messy and that's the last thing I wanted, especially seeing as I don't want to be the one going back and fixing what I broke (again.) The next part has gaps of stuff between the crises, at least.
It's like I have no room to write in that house anymore. I've run out of ideas for keeping Darren in that house, and I'm thinking maybe it's time to let the house go.
Meanwhile, not much else going on with me. Trying to write this thing and make it work for the story is going to be difficult.
Ta,
Bec
CLUNK
The engine fell out of the plane and landed on my plot.
So to speak.
The plan I had figured out blew up spectacularly in my face, and now I may have to rewrite rewrite (yes, I meant to put two there) the entire damn plot of the first section.
I was already rewriting and now I'll just have to start over. For the fourth time.
Yay?
I am working 40 hours a week right now and am a walking ball of exhausted. This kind of stuff just annoys the everlasting hell out of me. I hate it when things go pear-shaped.
I'm going to have to go drastic on this next rewrite, though, because I think I've exhausted my options as far as what I could have done with it in our world. I think I'm going to start the next one on an island or something (gee, have I been watching Arrow much or anything?)
What happened with this rewrite was that I had too many crises happening on top of one another and it was just crisis, pause, another crisis, pause, CRISIS. It began to feel rushed and messy and that's the last thing I wanted, especially seeing as I don't want to be the one going back and fixing what I broke (again.) The next part has gaps of stuff between the crises, at least.
It's like I have no room to write in that house anymore. I've run out of ideas for keeping Darren in that house, and I'm thinking maybe it's time to let the house go.
Meanwhile, not much else going on with me. Trying to write this thing and make it work for the story is going to be difficult.
Ta,
Bec
5.11.13
Predictions AGAIN? Premiere Date Thoughts
First, a disclaimer: I am American. I hate it. I can't watch the shows I want for three extra weeks because of first-showing rights in the U.K.
Bah. Humbug. I am not going to avoid the Internet (because I'd have to avoid the WHOLE THING ENTIRELY) for three weeks because people can't keep their spoilers down and their mouths (and fingers) shut. I have waited two years for this damn premiere and I am not waiting one second longer than is necessary, because every minute I haven't seen it, I take the risk some snot-nosed brat from the UK is going to scream the answer for the whole world to hear and ruin it for me. Last time, no one here waited anyhow-the interview in New York for PBS told me that (one person in the room hadn't seen it, and I wanted their level of patience.)
There's also the issue of PBS cutting minutes from the episodes. OK, so it's only about ten minutes. Don't care. I want the whole thing at once, in one piece, the way it was meant to be seen.
So, I will not wait. I can't. I won't. Someone will stream it online day after and I'm going to be watching it with my fist in my mouth, tears running down my face, and the Earl Grey near at hand.
SO, disclaimer over. On with prediction!
I am calling this now so I can be showered with praise later (or scorned because I'm a damned idiot.)
Sunday, December 29th, 2013 is my unofficial date for Empty Hearse's premiere on BBC1.
Not because anyone has said it yet, BUT we can make an educated ASSUMPTION based on this:
1. Premiere of BFI screening of the first episode is December 15th. Any date after that is fair game. Sunday is the most likely day of all, seeing as the last one premiered on a Sunday. Makes sense.
2. Doctor #11 dies at Christmas (SNIFFLE) and 12 is born (HOORAY!) Sherlock will not interfere with this because of the simple fact that the creators work for both damn shows. No premiere before Christmas, then, which axes the 22nd. It's too close to the screening date, anyhow-last time there was almost a month between the date of the BFI screening (December 7th) and the actual episode coming out on January 1st.
3. The next Sunday of the year that comes along (and last) is December 29th. It works out very neatly-Empty Hearse on the 29th, Sign of Three on January 5th, and Last Vow on the 12th. If it were to premiere the 5th of January, the last episode will be running the same night as the 1st one here...not something they probably want to happen. BBC gets first-window rights-I would assume that means all the episodes have to air before the Americans get them...hence, December 29th is the last Sunday for the episode to premiere.
5. I would hate for it to be later anyway. I already made a countdown chart, and if they change the date, it would screw me all up!
Thoughts, theories, comments welcome(keep the nasty comments on my character to a minimum.) If Sue Vertue wants to come confirm or deny my little theory, FEEL FREE, SUE! AND YOU'RE WELCOME!
Ta,
Bec
PS: Wales Online agrees with me...http://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/film-tv/sherlock-back-season-3-info-6282266
Bah. Humbug. I am not going to avoid the Internet (because I'd have to avoid the WHOLE THING ENTIRELY) for three weeks because people can't keep their spoilers down and their mouths (and fingers) shut. I have waited two years for this damn premiere and I am not waiting one second longer than is necessary, because every minute I haven't seen it, I take the risk some snot-nosed brat from the UK is going to scream the answer for the whole world to hear and ruin it for me. Last time, no one here waited anyhow-the interview in New York for PBS told me that (one person in the room hadn't seen it, and I wanted their level of patience.)
There's also the issue of PBS cutting minutes from the episodes. OK, so it's only about ten minutes. Don't care. I want the whole thing at once, in one piece, the way it was meant to be seen.
So, I will not wait. I can't. I won't. Someone will stream it online day after and I'm going to be watching it with my fist in my mouth, tears running down my face, and the Earl Grey near at hand.
SO, disclaimer over. On with prediction!
I am calling this now so I can be showered with praise later (or scorned because I'm a damned idiot.)
Sunday, December 29th, 2013 is my unofficial date for Empty Hearse's premiere on BBC1.
Not because anyone has said it yet, BUT we can make an educated ASSUMPTION based on this:
1. Premiere of BFI screening of the first episode is December 15th. Any date after that is fair game. Sunday is the most likely day of all, seeing as the last one premiered on a Sunday. Makes sense.
2. Doctor #11 dies at Christmas (SNIFFLE) and 12 is born (HOORAY!) Sherlock will not interfere with this because of the simple fact that the creators work for both damn shows. No premiere before Christmas, then, which axes the 22nd. It's too close to the screening date, anyhow-last time there was almost a month between the date of the BFI screening (December 7th) and the actual episode coming out on January 1st.
3. The next Sunday of the year that comes along (and last) is December 29th. It works out very neatly-Empty Hearse on the 29th, Sign of Three on January 5th, and Last Vow on the 12th. If it were to premiere the 5th of January, the last episode will be running the same night as the 1st one here...not something they probably want to happen. BBC gets first-window rights-I would assume that means all the episodes have to air before the Americans get them...hence, December 29th is the last Sunday for the episode to premiere.
5. I would hate for it to be later anyway. I already made a countdown chart, and if they change the date, it would screw me all up!
Thoughts, theories, comments welcome(keep the nasty comments on my character to a minimum.) If Sue Vertue wants to come confirm or deny my little theory, FEEL FREE, SUE! AND YOU'RE WELCOME!
Ta,
Bec
PS: Wales Online agrees with me...http://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/film-tv/sherlock-back-season-3-info-6282266
Headache
And it's a persistent little sucker, this one. It started last night at work, hung on despite two Tylenol, and decided to come back for another round this morning. It's not a bad headache; just enough to make my right temple pound every once in a while and make me irritable.
I tried putting my head down below the rest of me (supposed to send the blood north.) Didn't work. Tried sit-ups for the endorphins (a bit.) Didn't work. Now I just drank a cup of mild coffee with caffeine in it in the hopes of knocking this sucker out (they put caffeine in migraine meds to open up blood vessels.) So far, so good-ish. Head's still throbbing a little.
Maybe I'll have to get a soda today from Culver's down the road and drink that (ooh, my caffeine buzz is going to be hellish later if I do that.) I don't drink caffeine on a regular basis-it's a terrible trap for someone with little to no energy to start with to drink something that gives an energy boost. My mother used to have this-she got stuck on caffeine to keep functioning. She's already warned me that it's a bad way to go, and I listened for once. You won't see me touching energy drinks ever. Too tempting and can really mess up my sleeping and consciousness patterns if I indulge in coffee too often. I'd rather be tired than be awake half the night because I drank an expresso at the wrong time.
But if I do get the shakes from it and get a headache, I'll know why I have it.
Mum and I think it's the pressure of the oncoming storm system that's supposed to load us down with snow tonight. She's got one, but hers is in a different spot entirely and it's been running two weeks straight (we have managed to get identical headaches, in the same place in our heads, at the exact same time before when the weather was about to do something. I kid not. Should have seen the look on Dad's face when we were comparing headaches and found out we were sporting a matching set. Like salt and pepper shakers, except with barometers falling sharply and imaginary axes stabbing gleefully into your skull. Cue Psycho theme: REE REE REE REE...)
Maybe I'm registering the pressure change and she's not this time (who knows with fibro?) She thinks hers is blood pressure issues-meaning if she does have the one I have at all, she wouldn't be able to tell anyhow because they're probably blending together in there like a chocolate milkshake of pain.
Mum gets the added bonus of "headache guilt" from hers because her sister has horrible, awful migraines that go on for months. Mum also gets to take really nice painkillers like prescription Vicodin to get rid of hers if she wants to. I have to manage with Tylenol and situps and caffeinated coffee. Not that I'm complaining-Vicodin's not one of my favorite medications to take (usually I'm really bad off when I do take it.)
Caffeine seems to have eased the one I have off a smidge, at least I can think around it now. Let's hope to God it stays that way. I hate taking pills, especially when they do nothing to help the problem.
On happier notes, my bear paw plant is thriving happily on the windowsill. Here's a photo of him...
I have not decided if his name is Pooh or Paddington (that would be to annoy my mother, who hates Paddington Bear. Something about him and the somehow related topic of Nazi Santa. Don't get her started on that one-oi.) I could also go with
Fuzzy Wuzzy (But mine HAS fuzz and he didn't.)
Beorn (I like this. This might work.)
Fozzie (Like Fozzie. He's an alright guy.)
Teddy Ruxpin (had one of these as a kid.)
Yogi (I don't see my plant stealing pic-a-nic baskets anytime soon...)
Baloo (Loved him as a kid and was obsessed with the movie when I was three.)
Snuggle (scares the crud out of me and my sister. Really.)
Choices, choices...
I think Beorn. So noble and it's Tolkien. Perfect.
I have things to be doing and my headache is gone, so I'll talk at you soon,
Ta,
Bec
I tried putting my head down below the rest of me (supposed to send the blood north.) Didn't work. Tried sit-ups for the endorphins (a bit.) Didn't work. Now I just drank a cup of mild coffee with caffeine in it in the hopes of knocking this sucker out (they put caffeine in migraine meds to open up blood vessels.) So far, so good-ish. Head's still throbbing a little.
Maybe I'll have to get a soda today from Culver's down the road and drink that (ooh, my caffeine buzz is going to be hellish later if I do that.) I don't drink caffeine on a regular basis-it's a terrible trap for someone with little to no energy to start with to drink something that gives an energy boost. My mother used to have this-she got stuck on caffeine to keep functioning. She's already warned me that it's a bad way to go, and I listened for once. You won't see me touching energy drinks ever. Too tempting and can really mess up my sleeping and consciousness patterns if I indulge in coffee too often. I'd rather be tired than be awake half the night because I drank an expresso at the wrong time.
But if I do get the shakes from it and get a headache, I'll know why I have it.
Mum and I think it's the pressure of the oncoming storm system that's supposed to load us down with snow tonight. She's got one, but hers is in a different spot entirely and it's been running two weeks straight (we have managed to get identical headaches, in the same place in our heads, at the exact same time before when the weather was about to do something. I kid not. Should have seen the look on Dad's face when we were comparing headaches and found out we were sporting a matching set. Like salt and pepper shakers, except with barometers falling sharply and imaginary axes stabbing gleefully into your skull. Cue Psycho theme: REE REE REE REE...)
Maybe I'm registering the pressure change and she's not this time (who knows with fibro?) She thinks hers is blood pressure issues-meaning if she does have the one I have at all, she wouldn't be able to tell anyhow because they're probably blending together in there like a chocolate milkshake of pain.
Mum gets the added bonus of "headache guilt" from hers because her sister has horrible, awful migraines that go on for months. Mum also gets to take really nice painkillers like prescription Vicodin to get rid of hers if she wants to. I have to manage with Tylenol and situps and caffeinated coffee. Not that I'm complaining-Vicodin's not one of my favorite medications to take (usually I'm really bad off when I do take it.)
Caffeine seems to have eased the one I have off a smidge, at least I can think around it now. Let's hope to God it stays that way. I hate taking pills, especially when they do nothing to help the problem.
On happier notes, my bear paw plant is thriving happily on the windowsill. Here's a photo of him...
I have not decided if his name is Pooh or Paddington (that would be to annoy my mother, who hates Paddington Bear. Something about him and the somehow related topic of Nazi Santa. Don't get her started on that one-oi.) I could also go with
Fuzzy Wuzzy (But mine HAS fuzz and he didn't.)
Beorn (I like this. This might work.)
Fozzie (Like Fozzie. He's an alright guy.)
Teddy Ruxpin (had one of these as a kid.)
Yogi (I don't see my plant stealing pic-a-nic baskets anytime soon...)
Baloo (Loved him as a kid and was obsessed with the movie when I was three.)
Snuggle (scares the crud out of me and my sister. Really.)
Choices, choices...
I think Beorn. So noble and it's Tolkien. Perfect.
I have things to be doing and my headache is gone, so I'll talk at you soon,
Ta,
Bec
4.11.13
This Is Going To Be A Long Week
What a week coming up.
I work four days of it, and whether I get Wednesday or Friday off has yet to be determined. Wednesday is the day I scheduled my appointment for hopefully starting to fix my consistently upset and miserable digestive system. I am sick of being miserable and I am going to hopefully have this part of my misery remedied.
Friday is an old friend's funeral. He was the person who got me into the choir when I was 14. He and his wife were wonderfully kind to me when I really needed it most. He and his wife were in the church choir for nearly 60 years. He was a good friend and I will miss him.
Anyhow, because he was in the choir for so long, it stood to reason that the choir would repay his years of service in singing by singing for him. Hence, I have to have Friday off so that I can go to his funeral and not have to rush home so that I can go to work (or carry everything for work with me and go straight to work.)
Anyhow, long week, like I said.
Busy day for me today. Made curry and naan, read some "Coriolanus," gotta go to work in an hour and a half or so.
Dum dee dum dee dee dee.
Boring old life, this.
Hm.
Ta,
Bec
I work four days of it, and whether I get Wednesday or Friday off has yet to be determined. Wednesday is the day I scheduled my appointment for hopefully starting to fix my consistently upset and miserable digestive system. I am sick of being miserable and I am going to hopefully have this part of my misery remedied.
Friday is an old friend's funeral. He was the person who got me into the choir when I was 14. He and his wife were wonderfully kind to me when I really needed it most. He and his wife were in the church choir for nearly 60 years. He was a good friend and I will miss him.
Anyhow, because he was in the choir for so long, it stood to reason that the choir would repay his years of service in singing by singing for him. Hence, I have to have Friday off so that I can go to his funeral and not have to rush home so that I can go to work (or carry everything for work with me and go straight to work.)
Anyhow, long week, like I said.
Busy day for me today. Made curry and naan, read some "Coriolanus," gotta go to work in an hour and a half or so.
Dum dee dum dee dee dee.
Boring old life, this.
Hm.
Ta,
Bec
24.10.13
Einin Decides To Work With Me For Once.
Einin Andraste Shrathshire.
While she mostly exists on the papers sitting behind me and in the windmills of my mind, I can say with certainty she is a fighter. Oh, Andraste, yes.
For example, not three years ago now, I was on a bus in Durham, North Carolina, trying to tone down Einin's image so that she didn't look like Xena: Warrior Princess while kicking her boyfriend's wimpy arse around the training field (hilarious scene, really.)
And Einin, being herself entirely, stood there in my mind and shook her head at me. I could see her crossing her arms. No. I won't. Forget it.
Three lines crossed out later, I said FINE. You win for the moment.
In the last three years, there have been a half dozen thinking out pages written to try and get me out of the pit I and Einin seem to have dug for ourselves, hoping I could break through and fix what I apparently broke.
And so here we are, three years later, with fifty scenarios for getting rid of her/finding something to do with her/throwing her into a vortex and having her come out on the secret island that time goes faster on (Yep, that was one of my options that I gave myself.)
This little snag has actually held up progress on the story, seeing as I'm trying to rewrite the beginning of part 2 and if she sucks, it sucks.
I've been attacking the problem for the last three days, attempting to give Einin some personality and substance so that I could sort of see her for what she really was. After an hour of toil tonight and another paragraph of complaint, I hit paydirt. Finally.
All of a sudden, there's this person emerging, a person who is more of an extension of me than anything (aren't they all?) She bites her nails to the quick. She plays harp and sings for her father when he's upset. She's left-handed.
These things may seem insignificant, but when you're building a person out of thin air (and after three years of trying to "see" her and make her believable), it is more than a step forward. It's a damn big leap.
I'm going to start writing her and Tiernan's scenes tomorrow and see if these two can get their act together (because at the moment, I'M not even convinced they should hook up; they are that unconnected to each other.) God knows Tiernan has tried (kudos to my little character for giving a damn about Ms. Fighting Irish Paper Doll over there when she was crossing her arms and glaring at me) and hopefully now Einin has something to work with and she can try, too. Maybe with them both trying, we can make a relationship that's believable and real.
Otherwise I'm throwing the book at her (mentally, anyway) and getting someone else for Tiernan to hook up with later.
I have to get to bed so I can think tomorrow so that I can write Einin so that she doesn't cross her damn arms again and shake her head no at me.
Ta,
Bec
While she mostly exists on the papers sitting behind me and in the windmills of my mind, I can say with certainty she is a fighter. Oh, Andraste, yes.
For example, not three years ago now, I was on a bus in Durham, North Carolina, trying to tone down Einin's image so that she didn't look like Xena: Warrior Princess while kicking her boyfriend's wimpy arse around the training field (hilarious scene, really.)
And Einin, being herself entirely, stood there in my mind and shook her head at me. I could see her crossing her arms. No. I won't. Forget it.
Three lines crossed out later, I said FINE. You win for the moment.
In the last three years, there have been a half dozen thinking out pages written to try and get me out of the pit I and Einin seem to have dug for ourselves, hoping I could break through and fix what I apparently broke.
And so here we are, three years later, with fifty scenarios for getting rid of her/finding something to do with her/throwing her into a vortex and having her come out on the secret island that time goes faster on (Yep, that was one of my options that I gave myself.)
This little snag has actually held up progress on the story, seeing as I'm trying to rewrite the beginning of part 2 and if she sucks, it sucks.
I've been attacking the problem for the last three days, attempting to give Einin some personality and substance so that I could sort of see her for what she really was. After an hour of toil tonight and another paragraph of complaint, I hit paydirt. Finally.
All of a sudden, there's this person emerging, a person who is more of an extension of me than anything (aren't they all?) She bites her nails to the quick. She plays harp and sings for her father when he's upset. She's left-handed.
These things may seem insignificant, but when you're building a person out of thin air (and after three years of trying to "see" her and make her believable), it is more than a step forward. It's a damn big leap.
I'm going to start writing her and Tiernan's scenes tomorrow and see if these two can get their act together (because at the moment, I'M not even convinced they should hook up; they are that unconnected to each other.) God knows Tiernan has tried (kudos to my little character for giving a damn about Ms. Fighting Irish Paper Doll over there when she was crossing her arms and glaring at me) and hopefully now Einin has something to work with and she can try, too. Maybe with them both trying, we can make a relationship that's believable and real.
Otherwise I'm throwing the book at her (mentally, anyway) and getting someone else for Tiernan to hook up with later.
I have to get to bed so I can think tomorrow so that I can write Einin so that she doesn't cross her damn arms again and shake her head no at me.
Ta,
Bec
14.10.13
Gag Order A.K.A. Screaming Behind the Duct Tape Over My Mouth
It is very hard to be frustrated and not be able to tell you why. I want to vent at you all, but any attempt to let my little sauna air out may wind up burning me.
I am in the middle of a very delicate and nasty situation (not of my doing at all) that is currently unfolding and I have to keep my mouth shut for the time being.
I hate keeping my mouth shut. You are all aware of this.
I am very angry at someone (not family, strangely enough.) He has done something wrong and I am going to call him on it to his superiors. I have the letter mostly written (needs typing- that'll be tomorrow when I need to get mad again.) I'm going to see where this goes before I say anything, if I can say anything at all.
I've spent a whole lot of the last year boiling in frustration. The incident that has occurred has now taken not just the icing on top of the cake, but the whole bakery (cronuts and duffins, too.) I don't know whether to fight, give up, or throw a massive fit of temper that risks me forfeiting my security deposit.
I just want to NOT be frustrated anymore, because I have no healthy outlet for my frustration and either I'm going to go "poonk" and turn into a cloud of ashes to be swept up by a dustpan and put into a jar, or my pillows are going to die ignominious deaths.
I just can't gain any traction. I just can't win.
(What am I saying? This is one of my mother's children I'm talking about here. If I ever win anything, it's by accident. Or no one else showed up.)
I just worked too damned hard to to get through school, to become trained for the very job I wanted, and now 22 months later, I work at a call center and I'm stuck in place.
I am NOT lying down in the mud in front of the bulldozer and I am not going to let this guy (whom I can't describe) knock my (figurative) house down.
The thing is, I have to fight this. If I don't, it'll prove I never really wanted "it" at all, certainly not enough to fight tooth, nail, and claw for it. I have to show my spine (and not bend an inch while throwing a professional, well-worded hissy fit.) I have to show this guy that I am serious as a funeral for clowns and I am damn well going to make him pay for the offense he's done me.
SO THERE.
Ta,
Bec
I am in the middle of a very delicate and nasty situation (not of my doing at all) that is currently unfolding and I have to keep my mouth shut for the time being.
I hate keeping my mouth shut. You are all aware of this.
I am very angry at someone (not family, strangely enough.) He has done something wrong and I am going to call him on it to his superiors. I have the letter mostly written (needs typing- that'll be tomorrow when I need to get mad again.) I'm going to see where this goes before I say anything, if I can say anything at all.
I've spent a whole lot of the last year boiling in frustration. The incident that has occurred has now taken not just the icing on top of the cake, but the whole bakery (cronuts and duffins, too.) I don't know whether to fight, give up, or throw a massive fit of temper that risks me forfeiting my security deposit.
I just want to NOT be frustrated anymore, because I have no healthy outlet for my frustration and either I'm going to go "poonk" and turn into a cloud of ashes to be swept up by a dustpan and put into a jar, or my pillows are going to die ignominious deaths.
I just can't gain any traction. I just can't win.
(What am I saying? This is one of my mother's children I'm talking about here. If I ever win anything, it's by accident. Or no one else showed up.)
I just worked too damned hard to to get through school, to become trained for the very job I wanted, and now 22 months later, I work at a call center and I'm stuck in place.
I am NOT lying down in the mud in front of the bulldozer and I am not going to let this guy (whom I can't describe) knock my (figurative) house down.
The thing is, I have to fight this. If I don't, it'll prove I never really wanted "it" at all, certainly not enough to fight tooth, nail, and claw for it. I have to show my spine (and not bend an inch while throwing a professional, well-worded hissy fit.) I have to show this guy that I am serious as a funeral for clowns and I am damn well going to make him pay for the offense he's done me.
SO THERE.
Ta,
Bec
8.10.13
Watching Stuff
Spent most of the early part of today watching the first three episodes of Downton Abbey's new season streaming online (as Dean would say about Dr. Sexy, "It's a guilty pleasure!") because the third episode has some shocking bits and I wanted to know what those shocking bits were without spoilers online anywhere (some dummy wrote it in big caps underneath one of the videos, so that plan was foiled anyhow.) Why would anyone write such a thing unless it had happened in the storyline? There you go. Ruined the episode because I could see it coming from the beginning.
And no, I will not put what happened here, namely because it is shocking, and namely because that episode won't air on PBS probably until next year in the States. Go spoil yourself on BBC.com because they were discussing it quite heavily today, or go watch the episode streaming online and find out.)
Then I switched to the miniseries of Count of Monte Cristo. It's apparently the only miniseries of this book that exists (there's another one in French with no translation,) so I will have to watch Gerard Depardieu for 6 hours. The whole thing is completely in French, with subtitles.
Mon Dieu.
I am 1/4 into this nightmare and Gerard is not impressing me one jot with his acting here, particularly when Dantes heaves his watery soup for the day at the wall and screams in a fit of childish rage on his knees, despite the fact that by then, he's been in the damn cell 14 years or so. Dantes by that point in the book was an educated man (which we hardly see at all-six hours of film and we spend five minutes or less on his education, which is extremely important to the plot) and had no need of such displays.
In fact, I was liking Dantes in the book's quiet reserve under trial...which is why I find Depardieu's outrageous anger and obvious plotting of revenge (instead of keeping it to himself like the book version did-there's the mark of intelligence missing right there. A guy who can keep his anger to himself and rip apart his enemies patiently, quietly, and steathily (book Dantes) is clearly a lot smarter than the guy throwing daggers at them and stabbing them in the heart (hints of this in the movie Dantes.) The whole anger thing is a bit off-putting.
Also, Albert is blue-eyed and blonde. Not to be racist (not at ALL), but he's born to a Catalan woman (Spanish) and a Spanish guy named Fernand Mondego. Spanish people do not usually produce blue-eyed blondes. Not saying it couldn't happen; it's just that I pictured Albert with dark hair and dark eyes thanks to the fact that he's completely dyed in the wool Spanish (a Spanish accent would be hard to fake, however, when the guy is speaking French.) Same with Edmund. The book lists him as dark. He's blonde. They could at least have dyed his hair.
And his Abbe Busoni looks like Patrick Troughton (2nd Doctor), and I laughed like an idiot when I saw him. I half-expected him to pull out a flute...
4 1/2 hours to go-we'll see if things improve or if I just quit the whole thing and go watch the movie with Jim Caviezel and Guy Pearce instead (much more tempting fare and I just might forget the miniseries with those two handling things.)
I will attempt to watch this thing and see how it goes.
Ta,
Bec
And no, I will not put what happened here, namely because it is shocking, and namely because that episode won't air on PBS probably until next year in the States. Go spoil yourself on BBC.com because they were discussing it quite heavily today, or go watch the episode streaming online and find out.)
Then I switched to the miniseries of Count of Monte Cristo. It's apparently the only miniseries of this book that exists (there's another one in French with no translation,) so I will have to watch Gerard Depardieu for 6 hours. The whole thing is completely in French, with subtitles.
Mon Dieu.
I am 1/4 into this nightmare and Gerard is not impressing me one jot with his acting here, particularly when Dantes heaves his watery soup for the day at the wall and screams in a fit of childish rage on his knees, despite the fact that by then, he's been in the damn cell 14 years or so. Dantes by that point in the book was an educated man (which we hardly see at all-six hours of film and we spend five minutes or less on his education, which is extremely important to the plot) and had no need of such displays.
In fact, I was liking Dantes in the book's quiet reserve under trial...which is why I find Depardieu's outrageous anger and obvious plotting of revenge (instead of keeping it to himself like the book version did-there's the mark of intelligence missing right there. A guy who can keep his anger to himself and rip apart his enemies patiently, quietly, and steathily (book Dantes) is clearly a lot smarter than the guy throwing daggers at them and stabbing them in the heart (hints of this in the movie Dantes.) The whole anger thing is a bit off-putting.
Also, Albert is blue-eyed and blonde. Not to be racist (not at ALL), but he's born to a Catalan woman (Spanish) and a Spanish guy named Fernand Mondego. Spanish people do not usually produce blue-eyed blondes. Not saying it couldn't happen; it's just that I pictured Albert with dark hair and dark eyes thanks to the fact that he's completely dyed in the wool Spanish (a Spanish accent would be hard to fake, however, when the guy is speaking French.) Same with Edmund. The book lists him as dark. He's blonde. They could at least have dyed his hair.
And his Abbe Busoni looks like Patrick Troughton (2nd Doctor), and I laughed like an idiot when I saw him. I half-expected him to pull out a flute...
4 1/2 hours to go-we'll see if things improve or if I just quit the whole thing and go watch the movie with Jim Caviezel and Guy Pearce instead (much more tempting fare and I just might forget the miniseries with those two handling things.)
I will attempt to watch this thing and see how it goes.
Ta,
Bec
4.10.13
Waffles!
Yesterday was a busy day. I went shopping for some things I really needed-hair bands, a new watch, and new tennis shoes (thank you, Grandma, for the birthday and Christmas money that allowed that purchase.)
I also bought a used waffle maker from the thrift store (3 bucks.) While it was filthy when it arrived here, in this house, it didn't remain so. Spent 15 or 20 minutes wiping it down last night and used it this morning to make waffles...
They are gluten-free, of course, and since I have no syrup here I ate them with peanut butter and butter. This might be something I have often around here now simply because I CAN.
I'm planning on lying around the house today and not moving. Yesterday was exhausting.
Ta,
Bec
PS: I think we're all aware that I have a weakness for Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch. Not only because he has a cool name, a gorgeous face, a beautiful voice, and a couple semi-loads of talent, but because he isn't afraid to do something a little different once in a while.
Take this year, for example. He's been/will be on our screens playing a WWI soldier, Khan Noonien Singh, a plantation owner, Julian Assange, somebody's brother in a Meryl Streep movie, Sherlock, and Smaug.
(I would have put down the Turing movie, but he's still working on that one, and I'm not sure what happened to the Brian Epstein movie, so I'm not listing that either. Not that I've been paying attention or anything.)
So, Smaug. One of the smartest, slimiest, and most vicious dragons written in the last century or so. It was one of the last roles announced because it was such a coveted piece of the action (I honestly thought Tom Baker was going to get it, but turns out it involved writhing on the floor with computer-tracking dots on your face and body. Better for a younger actor who can get off the floor to be doing that, even though I love Tom Baker (who doesn't?))
Anyhow, they didn't even let us hear his voice in the first movie, with good reason (the hype was enough to cut with a chainsaw.) Everyone's been waiting to hear his voice.
So here we are. They finally let us hear it. Worth the wait...start at 1:52 or 1:53 and be prepared to freak out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxvEHrVHEKE
As someone on the video page so deftly put it, "If it sounds like this on my computer speakers, how is it going to sound in the cinema theater?"
I concur. I am so going to see this puppy now, no question about it. Not just for Ben, though. The whole cast is a bunch of astounding actors and they're all worth watching (Martin Freeman! Dear old Watson :)
Ian McKellan was right. He is definitely awesome as Smaug.
I'm going to shut up now and let you watch THAT half a dozen times like I did this morning.
Ta,
Bec
I also bought a used waffle maker from the thrift store (3 bucks.) While it was filthy when it arrived here, in this house, it didn't remain so. Spent 15 or 20 minutes wiping it down last night and used it this morning to make waffles...
They are gluten-free, of course, and since I have no syrup here I ate them with peanut butter and butter. This might be something I have often around here now simply because I CAN.
I'm planning on lying around the house today and not moving. Yesterday was exhausting.
Ta,
Bec
PS: I think we're all aware that I have a weakness for Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch. Not only because he has a cool name, a gorgeous face, a beautiful voice, and a couple semi-loads of talent, but because he isn't afraid to do something a little different once in a while.
Take this year, for example. He's been/will be on our screens playing a WWI soldier, Khan Noonien Singh, a plantation owner, Julian Assange, somebody's brother in a Meryl Streep movie, Sherlock, and Smaug.
(I would have put down the Turing movie, but he's still working on that one, and I'm not sure what happened to the Brian Epstein movie, so I'm not listing that either. Not that I've been paying attention or anything.)
So, Smaug. One of the smartest, slimiest, and most vicious dragons written in the last century or so. It was one of the last roles announced because it was such a coveted piece of the action (I honestly thought Tom Baker was going to get it, but turns out it involved writhing on the floor with computer-tracking dots on your face and body. Better for a younger actor who can get off the floor to be doing that, even though I love Tom Baker (who doesn't?))
Anyhow, they didn't even let us hear his voice in the first movie, with good reason (the hype was enough to cut with a chainsaw.) Everyone's been waiting to hear his voice.
So here we are. They finally let us hear it. Worth the wait...start at 1:52 or 1:53 and be prepared to freak out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxvEHrVHEKE
As someone on the video page so deftly put it, "If it sounds like this on my computer speakers, how is it going to sound in the cinema theater?"
I concur. I am so going to see this puppy now, no question about it. Not just for Ben, though. The whole cast is a bunch of astounding actors and they're all worth watching (Martin Freeman! Dear old Watson :)
Ian McKellan was right. He is definitely awesome as Smaug.
I'm going to shut up now and let you watch THAT half a dozen times like I did this morning.
Ta,
Bec
1.10.13
Foiled Again.
Library said no again today. Apparently they never had a position open, despite what the director said in the paper last month.
It's this kind of hocus-pocus that had me pinching the bridge of my nose and screaming a short and ineffective scream of anger as I walked out of the doors of the library this morning.
Foiled again.
It is so FRUSTRATING to see what you want, know what you want, go for what you want, and have it snatched away every time you take a step towards achieving that goal. I feel like Tantalus (Greek guy in Hades who consistently had water up to his neck and then when he went to take a drink it was no longer there-hence the word "tantalize.")
I think every librarian in the library KNOWS I want a job there by now. If they don't, then they're not paying attention. How much insult do I have to endure? I have an advanced library degree, I'm willing to take a cut in pay, willing to work the hours, willing to volunteer, willing to shelve, willing to do ANYTHING to just be THERE, and apparently my skills and intelligence are not needed at this time. Try again next year.
I've tried to keep my mouth shut and stay quiet, but three ignored e-mails and a written message with my name and phone number on it (also ignored) have pushed me to the point where I am just about ready to split with the whole idea of working there. I can only be refused so many times before I give up and find a job someplace else where my skills are going to be USED and APPRECIATED.
I have applied repeatedly at this library since I was a teenager, and after 12 or 13 or 14 applications thrown away over TEN YEARS, I thought maybe this time they'd give me a chance (or an e-mail back saying there wasn't one. That would have been NICE.)
It's nice to know that my 7 1/2 years of hard work in college and 50 grand in debt trying to become the best librarian I can be ends with the person(s) who could hire me ignoring my messages to them. Glad to know I'm so valued.
I just thought my hometown library, the library I've been going to my entire LIFE, would have more respect for me than this. I guess not.
And if they read this, fine. I have been nice all this time and never said a word against you. But constantly ignoring my messages does not shut me up or make me go away. It just shows me how utterly unprofessional you are being in this situation, and I wish you'd just hire me and see how valuable an asset I could be to your library if you'd just give me half a chance.
It's this kind of hocus-pocus that had me pinching the bridge of my nose and screaming a short and ineffective scream of anger as I walked out of the doors of the library this morning.
Foiled again.
It is so FRUSTRATING to see what you want, know what you want, go for what you want, and have it snatched away every time you take a step towards achieving that goal. I feel like Tantalus (Greek guy in Hades who consistently had water up to his neck and then when he went to take a drink it was no longer there-hence the word "tantalize.")
I think every librarian in the library KNOWS I want a job there by now. If they don't, then they're not paying attention. How much insult do I have to endure? I have an advanced library degree, I'm willing to take a cut in pay, willing to work the hours, willing to volunteer, willing to shelve, willing to do ANYTHING to just be THERE, and apparently my skills and intelligence are not needed at this time. Try again next year.
I've tried to keep my mouth shut and stay quiet, but three ignored e-mails and a written message with my name and phone number on it (also ignored) have pushed me to the point where I am just about ready to split with the whole idea of working there. I can only be refused so many times before I give up and find a job someplace else where my skills are going to be USED and APPRECIATED.
I have applied repeatedly at this library since I was a teenager, and after 12 or 13 or 14 applications thrown away over TEN YEARS, I thought maybe this time they'd give me a chance (or an e-mail back saying there wasn't one. That would have been NICE.)
It's nice to know that my 7 1/2 years of hard work in college and 50 grand in debt trying to become the best librarian I can be ends with the person(s) who could hire me ignoring my messages to them. Glad to know I'm so valued.
I just thought my hometown library, the library I've been going to my entire LIFE, would have more respect for me than this. I guess not.
And if they read this, fine. I have been nice all this time and never said a word against you. But constantly ignoring my messages does not shut me up or make me go away. It just shows me how utterly unprofessional you are being in this situation, and I wish you'd just hire me and see how valuable an asset I could be to your library if you'd just give me half a chance.
27.9.13
Annnnd I Did Too Much
A full apartment cleaning and four miles total of walking apparently is too much for my body to take.
Hence me sitting on my butt all day doing Christmas shopping stuff because I really don't have the energy to cook or move.
That's OK. Canned soup is awesome.
(Hours and hours later)
Well, here's hoping I feel better in the morning. Time for me to crash.
Ta,
Bec
Hence me sitting on my butt all day doing Christmas shopping stuff because I really don't have the energy to cook or move.
That's OK. Canned soup is awesome.
(Hours and hours later)
Well, here's hoping I feel better in the morning. Time for me to crash.
Ta,
Bec
26.9.13
Clean!
It is just about 10 in the morning.
So far, I have washed down the counters, cleaned the bathtub/loo, polished the furniture, swept the floors, mopped them, and then vacuumed the carpet. The only thing I have left to do is vacuuming the stairs (that gets done with a handheld vac because I'm not going to haul my twenty-pound Hoover down the stairs) and the laundry, and that will get left till tomorrow because I'm going to town for stuff I need today.
While exhausting, the satisfaction of knowing I have just given myself the weekend off of housework (cept dishes, but those always get done around here) is worth the tiredness I'm going to feel later.
If I do have company this week, the place is clean. If I don't have company this week, it's still clean and I don't have to spend my time off trying to get it that way anymore.
Sigh.
Meanwhile, not much else going on. Except this cool little thing.
It's basically a crystal tree that comes in a kit. You have the plastic base, the cardboard tree, and the liquid crystal material. You get the tree set up in the base how you want to, pour the crystal stuff into the bottom, and the cardboard soaks up the liquid and it forms the crystals on the cardboard.
It is extremely fragile once the crystals have formed, so it's going to stay on my bedroom windowsill until the day I move out. You can get one for yourself (Tedco Snow Bonsai: the Imagination Tree-costs between 4 and 7 dollars for one kit. There's the company that makes them, a bunch of hobby shops, Ebay, and Amazon that sell these guys, so they're easy to get ahold of.)
I certainly didn't expect the little suishou to be pink, that's for sure. No matter. It's cute. I'm going to have to buy a dozen of these things for Christmas this year so that everyone I know can have one on their windowsills.
Ta,
Bec
So far, I have washed down the counters, cleaned the bathtub/loo, polished the furniture, swept the floors, mopped them, and then vacuumed the carpet. The only thing I have left to do is vacuuming the stairs (that gets done with a handheld vac because I'm not going to haul my twenty-pound Hoover down the stairs) and the laundry, and that will get left till tomorrow because I'm going to town for stuff I need today.
While exhausting, the satisfaction of knowing I have just given myself the weekend off of housework (cept dishes, but those always get done around here) is worth the tiredness I'm going to feel later.
If I do have company this week, the place is clean. If I don't have company this week, it's still clean and I don't have to spend my time off trying to get it that way anymore.
Sigh.
Meanwhile, not much else going on. Except this cool little thing.
It's basically a crystal tree that comes in a kit. You have the plastic base, the cardboard tree, and the liquid crystal material. You get the tree set up in the base how you want to, pour the crystal stuff into the bottom, and the cardboard soaks up the liquid and it forms the crystals on the cardboard.
It is extremely fragile once the crystals have formed, so it's going to stay on my bedroom windowsill until the day I move out. You can get one for yourself (Tedco Snow Bonsai: the Imagination Tree-costs between 4 and 7 dollars for one kit. There's the company that makes them, a bunch of hobby shops, Ebay, and Amazon that sell these guys, so they're easy to get ahold of.)
I certainly didn't expect the little suishou to be pink, that's for sure. No matter. It's cute. I'm going to have to buy a dozen of these things for Christmas this year so that everyone I know can have one on their windowsills.
Ta,
Bec
21.9.13
New Apartment Revealed To Zee World!
The new video from my apartment will be uploaded shortly. I'm posting the link now even though it's not active yet. Should be in a hour or two.
dwhttp://youtu.be/TiKH3SDV7dw
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to post here, Facebook, or on the Youtube video itself. I'll answer as I am able :)
Ta,
Bec
dwhttp://youtu.be/TiKH3SDV7dw
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to post here, Facebook, or on the Youtube video itself. I'll answer as I am able :)
Ta,
Bec
16.9.13
Moved In
Lots been happening with me lately. Still working at F&S, and I moved into my place early (Wednesday last.) I've been set up completely for awhile but didn't have Internet till two hours ago because the modem hadn't arrived yet. I am currently listening to Punch Brothers while eating tater tots with ranch dip/sour cream and typing this up (and drinking a pineapple tea that isn't at all pineappley.)I love living here. I will post a video as soon as I get batteries in the camera, which may be tomorrow unless the Welcome lady wants to come by, and then it's going to be Thursday before I can get out and do stuff again. The video will be posted on Youtube and then linked here and at my Facebook account, so anyone who's looking for it can easily find it.
I am much less stressed and depressed because I'm running things a little bit again-not feeling so out of control has its benefits. I opened a checking account on Friday (checks with a little cartoon Shakespeare on them. Yeah. Ponder upon that one for awhile...) and the checks should be here this week. I was sick of paying everything with money orders.
These tater tots are divinely wrought. Sigh.
This pineapple tea isn't, though. Who labeled this crap pineapple? This isn't even remotely pineapple.
I still have to sweep the kitchen floor, make some dinner for tonight, wash up the dishes, and get myself washed and dressed for work in the next three hours, so I have to go and do stuff.
Ta,
Bec
I am much less stressed and depressed because I'm running things a little bit again-not feeling so out of control has its benefits. I opened a checking account on Friday (checks with a little cartoon Shakespeare on them. Yeah. Ponder upon that one for awhile...) and the checks should be here this week. I was sick of paying everything with money orders.
These tater tots are divinely wrought. Sigh.
This pineapple tea isn't, though. Who labeled this crap pineapple? This isn't even remotely pineapple.
I still have to sweep the kitchen floor, make some dinner for tonight, wash up the dishes, and get myself washed and dressed for work in the next three hours, so I have to go and do stuff.
Ta,
Bec
21.8.13
Missing Libraries
I just want to shelve books.
I want to help patrons find the book they're looking for.
I want to talk with people about the books they're checking out and how the second one is so much better than the third.
I want to encourage reading and make people see the library as a friendly, loving, inviting place where they can come and spend their time and be happy.
I want to check out DVD's and CD's and anything.
I want to hear the beep when the book goes across the little red light.
I long to hear little kids running through the library with a big, flat book in their hands, ready to check it out and take it home and read it till their parents are sick of it.
Please.
Please.
All I want is to be in a library, breathing pages and smelling words and doing the job I was born to do; what I was made for.
I was created and put on this earth to work in a library. I don't want to do anything else. I don't fit anywhere else.
That is my calling on this planet and no one seems willing to give me the job my heart and soul and mind are crafted for.
I just want to shelve a book and be paid for it again.
Please.
Sincerely,
me
I want to help patrons find the book they're looking for.
I want to talk with people about the books they're checking out and how the second one is so much better than the third.
I want to encourage reading and make people see the library as a friendly, loving, inviting place where they can come and spend their time and be happy.
I want to check out DVD's and CD's and anything.
I want to hear the beep when the book goes across the little red light.
I long to hear little kids running through the library with a big, flat book in their hands, ready to check it out and take it home and read it till their parents are sick of it.
Please.
Please.
All I want is to be in a library, breathing pages and smelling words and doing the job I was born to do; what I was made for.
I was created and put on this earth to work in a library. I don't want to do anything else. I don't fit anywhere else.
That is my calling on this planet and no one seems willing to give me the job my heart and soul and mind are crafted for.
I just want to shelve a book and be paid for it again.
Please.
Sincerely,
me
14.8.13
I'm Getting Out of Here!
Well, if I pass the credit check and the background check, the apartment close to work is a lock for October. That gives me a month and a half to get some of the things I still need, like a futon mattress. I have the one I want bookmarked online, but I'm still holding out hope for one at a rummage sale. I need a few bits of furniture, too, but those will come with time. Mum's giving me a dresser and a couch. One of the ladies at church offered me a table. I need two bookshelves and maybe a TV table and I'll be covered.
However, most of the basic things are covered, sans food and things like paper plates and plastic wrap, which is stuff I'm going to get when I actually get into the apartment because I made the point that dragging all that food out here to the house and then back in again to the apartment seems a whole lot of stupid.
So I have a month and a half till I get out of here. When Anna goes back to school, I'm going to start getting clothes organized into some sort of order (ha dee ha ha.) Things have been flung all over and my CD's and DVD's need to move back into their cases. The dishes all migrated downstairs last month, so that's done. I need a needle for my record player. My kitchen is nearly finished being set up (minus unimportant things like plates to eat off of and spoons and butter knives. I have forks, though.)
So it's coming together. Give me a month and a half and I'll be chomping at the bit to get out of here (like I'm not already. The amount of times I've said, "I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE YESTERDAY," lately gets higher every time I have to clean up/run after/deal with problems that could be handled by someone else. No more being up at 6 in the morning, washing dishes, throwing the ball to the dog, trying to eat breakfast and put on a pair of shoes and get lunch ready for today all at once and...you get the picture. I will no longer have to mow the lawn at half past 6 in the morning! Rejoice!)
48 DAYS TILL INDEPENDENCE!
Ta,
Bec Koshak
However, most of the basic things are covered, sans food and things like paper plates and plastic wrap, which is stuff I'm going to get when I actually get into the apartment because I made the point that dragging all that food out here to the house and then back in again to the apartment seems a whole lot of stupid.
So I have a month and a half till I get out of here. When Anna goes back to school, I'm going to start getting clothes organized into some sort of order (ha dee ha ha.) Things have been flung all over and my CD's and DVD's need to move back into their cases. The dishes all migrated downstairs last month, so that's done. I need a needle for my record player. My kitchen is nearly finished being set up (minus unimportant things like plates to eat off of and spoons and butter knives. I have forks, though.)
So it's coming together. Give me a month and a half and I'll be chomping at the bit to get out of here (like I'm not already. The amount of times I've said, "I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE YESTERDAY," lately gets higher every time I have to clean up/run after/deal with problems that could be handled by someone else. No more being up at 6 in the morning, washing dishes, throwing the ball to the dog, trying to eat breakfast and put on a pair of shoes and get lunch ready for today all at once and...you get the picture. I will no longer have to mow the lawn at half past 6 in the morning! Rejoice!)
48 DAYS TILL INDEPENDENCE!
Ta,
Bec Koshak
6.8.13
Temps
Yup, I have my temps. Now I can learn to drive. Get out of the way!
I can't move into the apartment I want till October, so I guess I'll wait and be patient for that.
Orientation's going well; I'm learning a lot all at once and I'm going from terrified "I'm never going to learn all of this," to "Hell, this is EASY," all in the span of a couple of minutes. I just keep thinking that I need to do something and this is that something. I have to learn to work a phone and all, and I have to learn to deal with customers over a phone, so this is the best way to learn-being thrown headfirst into the fire.
I think I'll get it and hope it's all sinking into my head to be used at a later date.
Unfortunately, the driving bit's going to have to wait until I'm not in training from 8-4 every day of the week...that'll be after next week.
Busy, busy!
Ta,
Bec
I can't move into the apartment I want till October, so I guess I'll wait and be patient for that.
Orientation's going well; I'm learning a lot all at once and I'm going from terrified "I'm never going to learn all of this," to "Hell, this is EASY," all in the span of a couple of minutes. I just keep thinking that I need to do something and this is that something. I have to learn to work a phone and all, and I have to learn to deal with customers over a phone, so this is the best way to learn-being thrown headfirst into the fire.
I think I'll get it and hope it's all sinking into my head to be used at a later date.
Unfortunately, the driving bit's going to have to wait until I'm not in training from 8-4 every day of the week...that'll be after next week.
Busy, busy!
Ta,
Bec
4.8.13
Reposting the Recipe Book Again!
I start my new job tomorrow. Yeah. Lots of nerves going into this.
We have a new pastor coming-Pastor Krahn - and we also have a new Doctor-Peter Capaldi. Good luck to them both.
Meanwhile, we discovered yesterday that the recipe for the Hamburger Chow Mein in the book is completely, utterly wrong. Not sure how it happened but it's so far off that I went and retyped the whole thing.
Unlike many versions of this recipe (it took me four seconds to find one online) we do not use celery in ours because we hate celery around here. We use water chestnuts instead. Also because my mother believes in stretching food as far as it will go, she tosses a bag of frozen stirfry veggies into the dish. It doesn't matter what kind-we've used any old mix-but it gives a bit of color and health to a dish that's very sodium-laced and brownish-grey without veggies in it.
So, I have reposted the recipe book AGAIN, and reposted the link for all of you.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4NSjOV9R_4sWTJPZU1VeGxnek0/edit?usp=sharing
There! Any other major changes, I will post here until the post is so far down that no one can find it anymore. Hopefully, I've caught most of the mistakes already.
Ta,
Bec
We have a new pastor coming-Pastor Krahn - and we also have a new Doctor-Peter Capaldi. Good luck to them both.
Meanwhile, we discovered yesterday that the recipe for the Hamburger Chow Mein in the book is completely, utterly wrong. Not sure how it happened but it's so far off that I went and retyped the whole thing.
Unlike many versions of this recipe (it took me four seconds to find one online) we do not use celery in ours because we hate celery around here. We use water chestnuts instead. Also because my mother believes in stretching food as far as it will go, she tosses a bag of frozen stirfry veggies into the dish. It doesn't matter what kind-we've used any old mix-but it gives a bit of color and health to a dish that's very sodium-laced and brownish-grey without veggies in it.
So, I have reposted the recipe book AGAIN, and reposted the link for all of you.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4NSjOV9R_4sWTJPZU1VeGxnek0/edit?usp=sharing
There! Any other major changes, I will post here until the post is so far down that no one can find it anymore. Hopefully, I've caught most of the mistakes already.
Ta,
Bec
27.7.13
I Have A Job
Yes, I got officially hired on Friday morning at around 9:35, just before I was supposed to go in for a third interview with Walmart. I couldn't believe my ears.
It's part-time at Foster and Smith in the call center (they make and sell pet supplies and are the biggest employer in this area.) They are known for their fairness and kindness to their employees (and there are heaps of people I know working there) so even the night before, Mum had said that if she had to decide between one of the three, it would have been these guys. The Walmart employees didn't look very happy when I was there-they looked grey, to be honest. Why would I want to wind up like that?
Of course, WITH that bit of joy happening, now comes the moving out of my parents house and getting an apartment of my very own, hopefully just across the highway and up the road a bit. I'm already getting organized since I know this is going to be an everloving nightmare (moving always is.)
I think the first and best idea is to pull everything not being currently used somewhere else downstairs to the rest of the stuff (i.e. the blender, the popcorn maker, the broom, and so on) so that I can have it all in ONE room instead of five. Then I can go down the inventory list (there has been one for ages, just in case life ever decided fair was fair and let me work again) and make sure I didn't miss anything. I have some random crap on my Amazon list that might get picked up, but maybe not. Probably not-Mum needs something to buy for Christmas!
And as far as a library job goes, yeah, I'm still working on it, but it's not the desperate throwing every hat I've got into the ring anymore that it was. When it comes, it comes. I have a job, and that's all that matters.
Lots to do!
Ta,
Bec
It's part-time at Foster and Smith in the call center (they make and sell pet supplies and are the biggest employer in this area.) They are known for their fairness and kindness to their employees (and there are heaps of people I know working there) so even the night before, Mum had said that if she had to decide between one of the three, it would have been these guys. The Walmart employees didn't look very happy when I was there-they looked grey, to be honest. Why would I want to wind up like that?
Of course, WITH that bit of joy happening, now comes the moving out of my parents house and getting an apartment of my very own, hopefully just across the highway and up the road a bit. I'm already getting organized since I know this is going to be an everloving nightmare (moving always is.)
I think the first and best idea is to pull everything not being currently used somewhere else downstairs to the rest of the stuff (i.e. the blender, the popcorn maker, the broom, and so on) so that I can have it all in ONE room instead of five. Then I can go down the inventory list (there has been one for ages, just in case life ever decided fair was fair and let me work again) and make sure I didn't miss anything. I have some random crap on my Amazon list that might get picked up, but maybe not. Probably not-Mum needs something to buy for Christmas!
And as far as a library job goes, yeah, I'm still working on it, but it's not the desperate throwing every hat I've got into the ring anymore that it was. When it comes, it comes. I have a job, and that's all that matters.
Lots to do!
Ta,
Bec
16.7.13
Boiling July
It is bloody hot and miserable here. I WAS going to mow the lawn today but it feels like 91, so let the damn grass grow.
The rejections keep coming-no end in sight.
The dog and cat have gone to find cooler places to be.
I had an interview today. We'll see how it goes.
I don't want to move. Moving makes me hotter.
Even typing is exhausting.
Phf.
I might watch a movie, but no popcorn. Popcorn's too hot to eat right now (although I could just leave the butter out for a few minutes and it would melt.)
So far, I have applied on ONE website for 182 positions. That's not counting the 50 or so elsewhere for other jobs. I'm certainly up over 200, maybe even 225 at this point (in 16 months, I have lost track.)
https://drive.google.com/?tab=wo&authuser=0#my-drive
This is the Governnment Jobs list, running since last May. Some of these repeat, but I keep applying for the same places because they keep putting up jobs. Timberland is Washington-anyone who can figure out how many times I've applied there gets an ice cream cone.
Ugh. I'm going to go take a cold bath.
Ta,
Bec
The rejections keep coming-no end in sight.
The dog and cat have gone to find cooler places to be.
I had an interview today. We'll see how it goes.
I don't want to move. Moving makes me hotter.
Even typing is exhausting.
Phf.
I might watch a movie, but no popcorn. Popcorn's too hot to eat right now (although I could just leave the butter out for a few minutes and it would melt.)
So far, I have applied on ONE website for 182 positions. That's not counting the 50 or so elsewhere for other jobs. I'm certainly up over 200, maybe even 225 at this point (in 16 months, I have lost track.)
https://drive.google.com/?tab=wo&authuser=0#my-drive
This is the Governnment Jobs list, running since last May. Some of these repeat, but I keep applying for the same places because they keep putting up jobs. Timberland is Washington-anyone who can figure out how many times I've applied there gets an ice cream cone.
Ugh. I'm going to go take a cold bath.
Ta,
Bec
25.6.13
There's Never Been A Worse Time To Be On Fire!
The quote above was modified from a Brandon Boyd picture known as, "There's Never Been A Better Time To Be On Fire!"
But as you will see, I would have preferred a fire extinguisher (and yes, I know Brandon was talking about INTELLECTUAL fire because he's just that awesome. I'm just always quoting this phrase for some reason.)
So I went back to painting (mostly out of boredom.)
I got rejected for two jobs last week and have to wait a month on the third one (NOTE: Later this same day I got rejected on the third one, too. So much for a month.) I had really hoped the Minnesota one would come through and I'm down in the dumps again. I've been tireder and grumpier and miserable-r since last week and then the graduate school I reapplied to yesterday told me they don't think I need the degree I applied to to get a job. I spent two weeks at the end of last year begging for advice from anyone I could talk to and NONE of them were willing to help me. Then when I go off on my OWN and try to fix the problem MYSELF, they tell me I'm doing it wrong. I'm ticked off and tired and angry and I just want someone to want me somewhere so I can leave this house and pay my own bills again.
And then there's the LS! Again!
Warning: I'm going to complain about my unmentionables again. I am sorry. If they weren't complaining so much, I wouldn't complain to YOU, and we'd all go out and have an ice cream sundae with sprinkles.
But alas, I am going to bitch. Again.
The weather's been rainy and humid and apparently THIS kind of weather sets off my LS, big time (remind me never to go to the tropics, then.) Or the stresses of the last week. Or my sugar habit. Or two of these or all of these. Who knows?
Spent most of last evening on fire (metaphorically, anyway. Well, somewhat physically. OK, so it wasn't ACTUAL fire but it might as well have been.)
I couldn't even wear my jeans last night any longer because they were like sandpaper to it, or a scrub brush, or steel wool. I quit wearing jeans regularly months ago because it hurts so much to wear them. Most of the time I stick with dress pants (those were supposed to be for work (ha ha)) or jogging pants because they don't aggravate my skin there. But these jeans are my painting jeans and I just happened to have them on when I got home.
So I did the logical thing when one's hm hm is on fire-I was slapping creams on it, trying to get some relief last night. At that point, you will do anything to get some relief (like a never-ending yeast infection turned up to 11...fun, fun, fun.) I finally gave in and put the steroid cream on it.
I feel better this morning but I'm sore and hurting and wish I didn't have this (for the forty billionth time.)
I wrote this on Facebook ten minutes ago...
OK, so, I'm going to be positive today...
I'm flaring! (But no infection yet, so yay!)
I'm jobless (but I get to go paint walls! Oh, Yay!)
I just had to ask for a deferment again (but that means I don't have to pay student loans again! Yay double yay!)
See, everyone? I can be positive. Here I am, dancing sugarplums and fairies and ALL.
Ugh. All this yaying makes me need a latte...
I need coffee but I should be avoiding sugar right now (as one of my friends put it, "You want some coffee with that sugar?"), as that's probably half my problem right there. And I have to watch this thing closely now because there are raw spots and I could have infection if I'm not careful (again, sugar is bad right now because it helps yeast to grow. Last thing I need. The last time was like hell on a toothpick and I do NOT want to go through that again, ever.)
I guess I'll have to suck it up today and carry on and be brave and all that jazz.
Ta,
Bec
But as you will see, I would have preferred a fire extinguisher (and yes, I know Brandon was talking about INTELLECTUAL fire because he's just that awesome. I'm just always quoting this phrase for some reason.)
So I went back to painting (mostly out of boredom.)
I got rejected for two jobs last week and have to wait a month on the third one (NOTE: Later this same day I got rejected on the third one, too. So much for a month.) I had really hoped the Minnesota one would come through and I'm down in the dumps again. I've been tireder and grumpier and miserable-r since last week and then the graduate school I reapplied to yesterday told me they don't think I need the degree I applied to to get a job. I spent two weeks at the end of last year begging for advice from anyone I could talk to and NONE of them were willing to help me. Then when I go off on my OWN and try to fix the problem MYSELF, they tell me I'm doing it wrong. I'm ticked off and tired and angry and I just want someone to want me somewhere so I can leave this house and pay my own bills again.
And then there's the LS! Again!
Warning: I'm going to complain about my unmentionables again. I am sorry. If they weren't complaining so much, I wouldn't complain to YOU, and we'd all go out and have an ice cream sundae with sprinkles.
But alas, I am going to bitch. Again.
The weather's been rainy and humid and apparently THIS kind of weather sets off my LS, big time (remind me never to go to the tropics, then.) Or the stresses of the last week. Or my sugar habit. Or two of these or all of these. Who knows?
Spent most of last evening on fire (metaphorically, anyway. Well, somewhat physically. OK, so it wasn't ACTUAL fire but it might as well have been.)
I couldn't even wear my jeans last night any longer because they were like sandpaper to it, or a scrub brush, or steel wool. I quit wearing jeans regularly months ago because it hurts so much to wear them. Most of the time I stick with dress pants (those were supposed to be for work (ha ha)) or jogging pants because they don't aggravate my skin there. But these jeans are my painting jeans and I just happened to have them on when I got home.
So I did the logical thing when one's hm hm is on fire-I was slapping creams on it, trying to get some relief last night. At that point, you will do anything to get some relief (like a never-ending yeast infection turned up to 11...fun, fun, fun.) I finally gave in and put the steroid cream on it.
I feel better this morning but I'm sore and hurting and wish I didn't have this (for the forty billionth time.)
I wrote this on Facebook ten minutes ago...
OK, so, I'm going to be positive today...
I'm flaring! (But no infection yet, so yay!)
I'm jobless (but I get to go paint walls! Oh, Yay!)
I just had to ask for a deferment again (but that means I don't have to pay student loans again! Yay double yay!)
See, everyone? I can be positive. Here I am, dancing sugarplums and fairies and ALL.
Ugh. All this yaying makes me need a latte...
I need coffee but I should be avoiding sugar right now (as one of my friends put it, "You want some coffee with that sugar?"), as that's probably half my problem right there. And I have to watch this thing closely now because there are raw spots and I could have infection if I'm not careful (again, sugar is bad right now because it helps yeast to grow. Last thing I need. The last time was like hell on a toothpick and I do NOT want to go through that again, ever.)
I guess I'll have to suck it up today and carry on and be brave and all that jazz.
Ta,
Bec
18.6.13
I Am Done
Got rejected for three jobs in the last two days, including two that I actually had a snowball's chance in hell with.
I am upset and under stress and was trying desperately to keep myself together this morning. I had the roller to the wall and was ready to start painting, when my sister screamed at me that she wasn't finished painting the first coat of paint on and there I was putting on the second.
I wasn't there yesterday and didn't know this. She didn't have any right to treat me like that (and this isn't the first time she's treated me like her slave/underling while we're on this project.)
Normally, I would have swallowed my pride and done the painting, but today was apparently a bad day to set me off, and for some reason about two minutes later, I started crying and couldn't stop. There I was, throwing paint on a brick wall, and the tears were rolling down my face.
It took me twenty minutes to calm down. I do not cry like this, not more than a couple times a year at most. I don't get to the point where I am crying and can't stop. Obviously I'm in a pretty upset state and Anna's abominable behavior towards me was the last straw.
By the time I'd gotten my tears under control, Kate had arrived and she wanted to reorganize the library-much more to my liking and not by my mean, nasty, tear-inducing sister. So that's what I did the rest of the day, and what I'll do tomorrow...and then I won't do anymore.
I want to volunteer, I do, but Anna's attitude is difficult if nigh impossible to be in the same room with. I can't even ask a question without feeling like a ball of slime under her shoe. I shouldn't have to feel like this and I won't. She can paint the whole building by herself. I'm done. I have enough to do at home anyway.
I am upset and under stress and was trying desperately to keep myself together this morning. I had the roller to the wall and was ready to start painting, when my sister screamed at me that she wasn't finished painting the first coat of paint on and there I was putting on the second.
I wasn't there yesterday and didn't know this. She didn't have any right to treat me like that (and this isn't the first time she's treated me like her slave/underling while we're on this project.)
Normally, I would have swallowed my pride and done the painting, but today was apparently a bad day to set me off, and for some reason about two minutes later, I started crying and couldn't stop. There I was, throwing paint on a brick wall, and the tears were rolling down my face.
It took me twenty minutes to calm down. I do not cry like this, not more than a couple times a year at most. I don't get to the point where I am crying and can't stop. Obviously I'm in a pretty upset state and Anna's abominable behavior towards me was the last straw.
By the time I'd gotten my tears under control, Kate had arrived and she wanted to reorganize the library-much more to my liking and not by my mean, nasty, tear-inducing sister. So that's what I did the rest of the day, and what I'll do tomorrow...and then I won't do anymore.
I want to volunteer, I do, but Anna's attitude is difficult if nigh impossible to be in the same room with. I can't even ask a question without feeling like a ball of slime under her shoe. I shouldn't have to feel like this and I won't. She can paint the whole building by herself. I'm done. I have enough to do at home anyway.
9.6.13
Fully Watered Camel On My Shoulders
Hi all,
Long day today. Started at 5:30 A.M. (cat started complaining and woke me up) and I think I've stopped now. There's one thing I need to do yet tonight. Two things. I am very tired, more than usual. I wonder if this is leftovers from the painting and I wasn't noticing it till now.
So, yes. Interview on Tuesday. Been wondering if I should explain my stupid word displacement problem to them at the beginning of the interview (damn fibro.) The tireder I get, the more the words get mangled on the way to my mouth. I feel like such an idiot when I do it, and I've been doing it all weekend. Frustrating as all hell. Mum thinks I should get more sleep tomorrow, but that's hard to do when she takes her medication and is technically lying in my bed (couch, living room. I wasn't planning on staying here more than six months.)
We also have to paint again tomorrow. Hopefully some more people show up besides the ones I've been seeing every day.
I feel like I have a camel full of water sitting on my shoulders (I just checked-not sure if it's bactrian or dromedary) but I could just about land in a heap like Echo here has and be fine with it.
I might watch some Farscape. Maybe not. Dunno. I could really go to sleep right now if the...crap. Pets need feeding.
Gotta go!
Bec
Long day today. Started at 5:30 A.M. (cat started complaining and woke me up) and I think I've stopped now. There's one thing I need to do yet tonight. Two things. I am very tired, more than usual. I wonder if this is leftovers from the painting and I wasn't noticing it till now.
So, yes. Interview on Tuesday. Been wondering if I should explain my stupid word displacement problem to them at the beginning of the interview (damn fibro.) The tireder I get, the more the words get mangled on the way to my mouth. I feel like such an idiot when I do it, and I've been doing it all weekend. Frustrating as all hell. Mum thinks I should get more sleep tomorrow, but that's hard to do when she takes her medication and is technically lying in my bed (couch, living room. I wasn't planning on staying here more than six months.)
We also have to paint again tomorrow. Hopefully some more people show up besides the ones I've been seeing every day.
I feel like I have a camel full of water sitting on my shoulders (I just checked-not sure if it's bactrian or dromedary) but I could just about land in a heap like Echo here has and be fine with it.
I might watch some Farscape. Maybe not. Dunno. I could really go to sleep right now if the...crap. Pets need feeding.
Gotta go!
Bec
7.6.13
Irons In The Fire
I have a couple of options going on right now that could see me out of here either by July or September, depending on which one pans out. We shall wait and see.
Meanwhile, I and Anna have been volunteering to work at our old elementary school (the church we go to runs it.) Mostly painting, but some moving furniture and cleaning. I'm pretty tired. The work wouldn't be done without us there, though, and it's pretty satisfying to see the walls become white under our toiling. I really hope it looks alright when it's all done.
I have to work at my friend's house cleaning tomorrow and I need to SLEEP, so good night. Let's hope this next week works in my favor.
Ta,
Bec
Meanwhile, I and Anna have been volunteering to work at our old elementary school (the church we go to runs it.) Mostly painting, but some moving furniture and cleaning. I'm pretty tired. The work wouldn't be done without us there, though, and it's pretty satisfying to see the walls become white under our toiling. I really hope it looks alright when it's all done.
I have to work at my friend's house cleaning tomorrow and I need to SLEEP, so good night. Let's hope this next week works in my favor.
Ta,
Bec
20.5.13
Reichenbach Fall Theories Version Numero THREE
Reichenbach Fall Notes-Version 3
I am going to assume you've seen it, people. If you haven't, you HAVE had a year to rent/buy/borrow/steal the episode from someone. No spoiler line here.
This repeats some of the stuff from before, but I added some things, too. I thought after a year we needed a decent update. 9 pages worth. Yup.
Off we go!!!
Setting Things Up:
Moriarty spent most of season 2 in Mycroft's dungeon, being tortured. Geneva Convention be damned-we know he was kept in the dark alone and beaten up for months. Lord knows what else was done to him.
We know good old evil Jimmy was insane enough already to withstand all of Mycroft's best work and not spill his beans.
However, something bothers me here: Moriarty somehow gets his hands on something sharp and hard-something that could scratch Sherlock's name on a mirror in his cell over and over again. He's a criminally insane genius mastermind. Who on Earth is going to give him anything he can damage himself or someone else with?
The honest answer is, no one did.
Early on in the third episode, when he goes to break into the Tower of London, Moriarty has possession of a diamond. A small one, to be sure, but a diamond. We should be asking how he got his hands on it in a dark cell alone. He scratches Sherlock's name on the mirror of his cell with the diamond, then uses the same one to bust the glass in the Tower.
There are two ways he got the rock-either he had it on him: in his stomach, buried under his skin, or glued to one of his teeth. They strip-searched him on the way into imprisonment and I'm sure they were thorough about it. In his stomach would work (though he'd have to dig the diamond out of...well, you GET it...) The skin thing would work only if he could conceal it somewhere no one could see it and where he could reach it (middle of the back is going to be a horrible thing to reach, and they have cameras trained on him all the time, day and night.) The other problem with this is he'd need a knife to get it out, and good luck getting one of those. Teeth might work if they didn't check for a cyanide/poison capsule (they'd check. What if he tries to gas you with his last breath?)
The other option left is that someone gave him the diamond, and that someone has to be Mycroft.
I'm going with the idea that Mycroft could have fed Moriarty's cronies a bullshit code in the first place, making it only work a couple of times, or that it exposes whoever uses it to getting caught in the act. Moriarty would have put the thing up for auction to those assassins, then found out it was crap, but he's already got the damn thing up for sale. He's cornered if those guys find out that the code is fake. What can he do now but turn around and attack Sherlock, his "final problem?"
The only problem with this is that Moriarty already had gotten this information along with the code while in jail. Possibly the time in hoosecow meant that his rage and anger at Sherlock turned into the ultimate plan: to tear his mortal enemy to pieces in front of the entire world.
I know the idea is a little out there, but I can't believe that Mycroft would sell his baby brother's life story for a computer code he knows is crap from the beginning. We're dealing with a bunch of super geniuses here-a code that opens any door in the world? Blowing up all the nukes in the world in alphabetical order? Um, unlikely. Moriarty seemed far too confident in a code that he already had to know was nonsense. Sherlock was bluffing on the roof when he pretended to believe the code was real. Mycroft only told John about the code (but John needs to believe Sherlock's really dead later on and that he's also a complete faker at the science of deduction, so anything said to John is generally a pack of lies.)
Sherlock already knows that his life has been spread out before Moriarty like an "all you can destroy" buffet. Mycroft told him. This was the plan all along, beginning with letting him out of jail.
Moriarty's whole plan against Sherlock is to "tear his heart out." Beginning with his reputation, continuing with his closest friends, and ending with Sherlock's eventual ignomious death, Moriarty doesn't want to just kill Sherlock. He wants him torn apart into little pieces and spat out of a woodchipper. He wants nothing left of him. Killing him is boring. Destroying him is much more interesting.
It's a double-bluff sent directly from the Holmes brothers-make Moriarty think he's obliterating Sherlock, when it's actually Moriarty being destroyed. I'm sure if those assassins find out that the code is bogus, Moriarty will be exposed (and therefore dead.) The court case looked like a farcical game with Jim holding all the pieces and waving them in front of the government's nose. Mycroft could have ended it any old time and chose not to. He was letting things play out.
So, the scene is set: Jim Moriarty is enacting his brilliant plan to turn Sherlock Holmes, the Reichenbach hero, into a hated, disgraced public figure. Meanwhile, Sherlock and Mycroft, while appearing to hate each other's guts as per usual, have their own plan to thwart Moriarty.
Jim is what Sherlock would be without a heart; cold, calculating, lonely. Jim has no friends, no confidants. He understands violence, hatred, and rage, but love, feelings, and caring for someone besides himself is foreign to him. Sherlock may not always understand his emotions, but at least he bothers to have them at all.
Moriarty also doesn't understand loyalty without money/power involved. His minions are paid or cowed to be loyal to him, they grovel at his feet because he's smarter than them and can have them killed in interesting and excessively painful ways. They're loyal because they fear him, and probably loathe him just a little for having the strength that he does.
Sherlock engenders loyalty because John, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson see a great man trying to be a good man. Molly is on that list, too. They want to help him, to be at his side and support him because they care about him. Mycroft cares in a different way because his ties are familial, but he's watching out for his little brother all the time in various and unsubtle ways.
Moriarty doesn't understand this caring lark. He doesn't get why these people give a damn. He sees them as potential targets to get through Sherlock's armor and weaken him. In short, he sees them as (forgive the metaphor, Benedict, I really couldn't help it!) open unprotected spots on the underside of the dragon.
Recall Sherlock saying alone protects him. That's what Moriarty thinks. Funny enough, it's Sherlock's connections, his friends and family that get him out from under Jim's plan. In the end, Mycroft and Molly will save Sherlock from the death that Moriarty dies-a lonely suicide on a rooftop.
Who Knows Sherlock Lived?
Not the three who were targeted, at least not at the end of the last episode. That leaves out John, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson. Include Donovan (grr) and Anderson (GRR) in that list, along with all of Moriarty's henchmen.
Mycroft knew in the original story, so we can assume since he gave Moriarty the diamond and Sherlock's life story, he's in on the plan in this version, too. He's extremely needed, anyway-how on Earth is Sherlock going to get out of the U.K except on a private plane/boat/car? Everyone knows what he looks like thanks to Internet and all, unless he disguises himself, and then he still needs supplies in order to flee. He's also aware of information that Sherlock might require to kill Moriarty's people one by one, and help cover up Sherlock's presence anywhere, and get him passports, and...
OK, so Sherlock can't play dead without Mycroft.
Molly knows for certain. She's a coroner-like John, she has a medical license. Molly doesn't probably work with living bodies all that often due to her current position, but it stands to reason she knows how to use a needle, if necessary, and can fake records.
She's not on Sherlock's buddy list-meaning that Moriarty would always, always overlook her because he doesn't see her as anyone significant to Sherlock. He only dated her in the first place because it got him into Bart's and closer to his prey.
She can get rhododendron ponticum if Sherlock can't do it himself (more on this later on.) With only 8 hours of planning time, it might be hard to get a poison like this unless you had a contact willing to get it for you. It's possible Mycroft could get some, but Molly would ensure that the poisoning was done right so as not to really kill Sherlock.
The less people know about it, the better. The homeless network won't give the game away-Sherlock has been kind to them (in his own way) and they'll keep his secret for him. Those people on the ground might be Mycroft's people, too, and they're all government MI5 types. You can't pry the truth out of those guys with a crowbar.
Now For the Stupid Question: Is Sherlock Holmes Really Dead?
Is that a ghost, a duplicate, a clone, or an alternate timeline version of our favorite detective standing at the grave, watching his best friend bawl his eyes out?
Obviously, that's a no.
My first point is that Sherlock would never die this way if given a choice; there is the possibility of survival and being left permanently crippled and disabled. There is just no way a man as vain, smart, and quick as Sherlock Holmes would want to risk LIVING (because of something intentionally done) with stuff that would forever stop him in his tracks. Sherlock knows how to commit suicide properly thanks to his consulting detective job-he deals with the dead all the time, AND we know from the stories that he has an extensive knowledge of poisons and chemistry. There are far better ways of doing oneself in than falling off a building.
Sherlock knows how to kill himself and make it look an accident. We can reasonably assume he's come somewhat close to death in the past due to cocaine/heroin addiction in his younger years. He knows what many suicidal people don't seem to (or don't want to): How to kill himself and make it stick. The man's a chemist and an expert on how people die and why, so it wouldn't be that hard to apply it to himself.
As I said before, Sherlock's vain (have you seen how he dresses?) so he would probably avoid anything that smashed him into little pieces on the ground...and made a massive, bloody mess in public. The man has a SOCK INDEX. He's an organized, neat person (even the papers are in order, you just can't see it.) The last thing he'd want to do is go out making a mess all over a sidewalk. He barely believes he's human; would he really want to prove it by blashing into the pavement? Not likely.
No, a suicidal Sherlock Holmes would want to go quietly into that good night; with a needle and an overdose and John away somewhere on purpose so that he wouldn't be disturbed until there was no hope of rescue. Possibly Mrs. Hudson gone away, too.
This death was too abrupt and bloody, without a whole hell of a lot of planning, to be the real end of Sherlock.
So, logically, Sherlock Holmes wouldn't go out this way simply because it's out of character for him. But chemical death isn't as graphic, so he has to settle for this kind of fake demise.
Sherlock knows his "death", however false, has to be dramatic and visible to ALL of London, to the snipers with their guns aimed at his friends.
The Theories on How He Faked It
Theory 1: Rhododendron Ponticum
Of course he has to know what's coming. He's preparing from the moment that he leaves Rich Brook's flat, the night before he "dies." He goes to Molly for help. John is away at the time, berating Mycroft at the Diogenes Club. Sherlock spends the ENTIRE night in the lab at Bart's, since he's actually running away from the law. He has nowhere to go-can't go home, won't go to Mycroft, Scotland Yard is full of people wanting to arrest him.
And so Sherlock uses his and Molly's extensive knowledge of chemicals and poisons to come up with a plan involving rhododendron ponticum, a poison that slows the pulse and gives the appearance of death. This plan could go forward without Mycroft, but it's still going to be bloody hard to get ahold of the ponticum without his help, since that doesn't seem like something they'd keep in the lab of a teaching hospital. Even with Sherlock's near-encyclopedic knowhow of poisons, how likely is he to have the one at Baker Street that he needs? There are a lot of poisons; unless he's got a collection of them, he won't have it at home so that someone could go get it out of his things. It's late at night, and they can't order it on overnight delivery because that's unreliable and it might not get there in time. Best bet's probably Mycroft, Mr. British Government, who could probably procure any damn poison his little brother wants. Thank the Lord for MI-6 connections...
Of course, Sherlock could have grabbed some rhododendrons off the boarding house lawn, but that's planning too far ahead. Different species of the plant can poison, and more than likely Sherlock would want to stick with the honey made from rhododendrons, not the plants themselves, because eating the honey doesn't usually kill you. Here's a line from hbg.org, describing the poison and its effects...
The intoxication is rarely fatal and generally lasts for no more than 24 hours. Generally the disease induces dizziness, weakness, excessive perspiration, nausea, and vomiting shortly after the toxic honey is ingested. Other symptoms that can occur are low blood pressure or shock, bradyarrhythima (slowness of the heart beat associated with an irregularity in the heart rhythm), sinus bradycardia (a slow sinus rhythm, with a heart rate less than 60), nodal rhythm (pertaining to a node, particularly the atrioventricular node), Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome (anomalous atrioventricular excitation) and complete atrioventricular block.
Also...
In humans, symptoms of poisoning occur after a dose-dependent latent period of a few minutes to two or more hours and include salivation, vomiting, and both circumoral (around or near the mouth) and extremity paresthesia (abnormal sensations). Pronounced low blood pressure and sinus bradycardia develop. In severe intoxication, loss of coordination and progressive muscular weakness result. Extrasystoles (a premature contraction of the heart that is independent of the normal rhythm and arises in response to an impulse in some part of the heart other than the sinoatrial node; called also premature beat) and ventricular tachycardia (an abnormally rapid ventricular rhythm with aberrant ventricular excitation, usually in excess of 150 per minute) with both atrioventricular and intraventricular conduction disturbances also may occur. Convulsions are reported occasionally. (Thanks to http://hbd.org/brewery/library/HonD.html)
You can only get this honey, made from bees taking nectar from rhododendrons stuff, around the area surrounding the Black Sea. It is RARE. You can't make the active ingredient in a lab (grayanotoxin), although you can buy it online (again, not nearly enough time.) Clearly this is not something Sherlock could just go and buy at a moment's notice, especially since his credit cards, if he has them, are all being monitored because he's on the run. He would need Mycroft's extensive reach to get some of this stuff to poison himself with.
NOTE, 10/12/13. I am an Idiot.
Bees. Honey. Poison made by bees taking nectar from a flower and making into honey.
And what is Sherlock's hobby when he retires from chasing after bad guys?
BEES. He moves out of London and becomes a BEEKEEPER in the COUNTRY.
Why didn't I see this before? Of course Sherlock loves bees, and of course he'd know about different honey types, and so OF COURSE he would know about THIS particular kind of honey. It adds weight to this theory in spades, it really does. The bee thing is canon from ACD's stories themselves.
I am going to go kick myself a few more times now. Back to the theory-making with you...
Sherlock has hours and hours, then, to set up a plan, to work something out with the homeless network, Mycroft, and Molly. By the time John is finished shouting at Mycroft and is headed back, a plan is probably mostly done, because Molly has left by the time John arrives at the morgue.
John comes back at some point and falls asleep on the desk across from where Sherlock is sitting. Remember John is supposed to have been arrested too, so he also has nowhere to go.
It is at THIS likely point that Sherlock takes the rhododendron poison, since it takes around two hours to take effect. That would have him taking it somewhere in the early hours of the morning, while John sleeps at the desk.
John is woken by a phone call (who calls him is a mystery I would like solved but my guess would be Mycroft) because Mrs. Hudson has been shot and is dying. Sherlock refuses to leave. John accuses him of being a machine and not caring (a paradox if there ever was one-Sherlock isn't leaving Bart's because he cares too much for John, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson.)
Of course the whole bloody thing is a ruse to get John out of the way for a few moments while Sherlock goes and deals with Jim on the roof.
The Rooftop
So we assume Sherlock's had the rhododendron stuff in his system for a few hours already. When Moriarty takes a good look at him on the rooftop, he peers up at Sherlock, and sees something wrong with his eyes (pupils are way contracted, and it's awfully hard to see Jim's to compare them because Andrew Scott's irises are so damn dark).
And here, Moriarty takes Sherlock's pulse by shaking his hand. Sherlock doesn't often shake hands-touching isn't one of his things. He does it with Irene Adler to take her pulse, though, so this could be a callback to that.
What does Moriarty find when he shakes Sherlock's hand and subtly takes his pulse? Nothing. No pulse. Sherlock's heart rate is so slowed by the rhododendron poison that he already would fool someone into thinking he was dead.
Moriarty GETS it, of course. He sees the eyes and feels no pulse and it registers that Sherlock's got him good. He gets that Sherlock's loyalty to his friends means that he would die for them, blow his reputation for them, lose it all for them. But Sherlock doesn't walk into death blindly-he's already got an OUT set up somewhere.
Sherlock may fake-die today and his reputation may be in tatters, but the snipers will be called off of John, Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade. And that matters more to him than anything else.
Moriarty thanks him for a game well played and blows his own head off, forcing Sherlock into going forward with the "suicide."
I have been puzzling over this for the last couple of months, mostly because I thought something was seriously wrong with Sherlock's eyes when he was lying on the sidewalk. But someone else thinks that that was happening minutes before he jumped.
As we all recall, Moriarty and Sherlock have been going about on the rooftop, dancing, singing, trying to throw each other off balance...
...and then, for some reason, Moriarty and Sherlock get REAL cuddly up there, and Moriarty starts calling Sherlock ordinary, and THEN he looks at him really hard...and starts thanking him for something and complimenting the hell out of him.
WHAT?
Someone else noted this already on their own page, and I will link it here...warning on a bit of swearing.
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
but I will summarize the whole thing here: Sherlock's pupils are really, really small on that rooftop, and it's the first time Moriarty gets a really good look at him...and a chance to take his pulse. IF we stick with the rhododendron theory, then Sherlock has already taken the stuff, and his body is already shutting down in response. As Melissa in the link above explains, Sherlock already appears dead, his pulse slowed to an almost nonexistent crawl.
The thing that has struck me EVERY time I've watched this episode are how small Sherlock's pupils look when he's lying on the sidewalk. They are fixed and dilated. Usually this would indicate brain damage of the worst kind, and contacts can create that effect, but it'd be bloody hard to fake without assistance because no one, not even Sherlock Holmes, can make his pupils contract by sheer will when he's pretending to be dead on the sidewalk. Either he's taken poison, or he had enough time on the way up to the roof to insert contacts that make his pupils look small.
To combat the effects AFTER he gets carted around the corner, he'd probably have had to have someone with needle experience standing by with atrophine to get his system back up to speed (Molly?)
Theory Two: The Ball
Sherlock is seen in the lab at Bart's bouncing this ball off of a cabinet the night before. He slides it into his pocket just before he heads up to the roof to dance with Jim.
Where does it go from there?
The idea is to plant the ball in one's armpit, thereby temporarily creating a sort of block on the brachial artery and cutting off the pulse. It works (did it myself. Haven't figured out I'm cracked yet?)
However, there is one problem with this that I cannot get around. When he's picked up, Sherlock's arm flops out to the side. That ball should fall out and land on the ground. It doesn't. His arm doesn't even look weird like there's a bouncy ball lodged in the sleeve.
He couldn't have had time to tape the thing up inside his arm, and most people would have a flexibility problem if their arm is taped up on the underside. He's a guy, more than likely not vain enough to have shaved his pits, and it's going to pull on his skin/hair and potentially fall off if he moves wrong. Sherlock has nothing wrong with his arm movement on that rooftop, although he IS wearing his coat...
Another thing that shoots this theory in the foot is that Sherlock would have had the pulse cut off in his arm for quite a while-nearly a half-hour at the very least. To cut off the blood flow that long would be dangerous as all hell and Sherlock damn well knows it. The limit that doctors allow having blood flow cut off is 45 minutes, tops. After that, damage to the muscle would start to occur.
Besides, he's going to have terrible pins and needles unless he takes a break between Moriarty blowing his head off and when he plunges off the roof. Difficult to do, and he'd have to put it back into place, AND it might fall out while he's falling down to the ground, and if he loses it, then there goes his master plan. Too risky.
Moving on, now, to proving why the scene at Bart's is full of flaws. There were 5. Did you catch them all?
Here, I'll list them for you. I discuss these in no particular order down below:
1. Position of Sherlock's body
2. The speed of the appearance of the stretcher
3. Too much blood, too little time
4. Not enough injuries
5. Way he's moved
1. Position of Sherlock's body falling versus where he lands. He falls perpendicular to the building, but lands parallel to it. Not enough airspace to flip around in midair, so he changes position when he's out of sight behind the small building in front of the hospital. It's possible he lands on the rubbish truck, jumps to the ground, and rolls in a puddle of freshly-placed fake or real blood (doesn't make a difference whether it's corn syrup or the real stuff.)
2. Too much blood, too little time-There are mere seconds between Sherlock's landing and Watson reaching him, even with the well-placed cyclist. There's no more than a minute or two between the fall and Watson seeing him again. Unless there were terrible, terrible injuries, there is too much blood on the ground for someone whose bones are not broken and whose body appears fairly whole.
There is also the minor issue of Sherlock's left ear-he appears to be bleeding from it, but that's impossible, given the fact that IF he fell the way he was supposed to, he should have landed on his FACE. Even if he did land on his side, it still doesn't work, given that when we see him again, he's lying on his RIGHT side, not his LEFT. His injuries should be primarily on the side he lands on.
3. Given that, there are not enough injuries. A person who has fallen 70 feet off a building will have broken bones, open wounds, head injuries, a more than likely injured spine. Sherlock looks perfect save for his bleeding head, a near impossibility unless the man landed on a mattress.
4. That said, IF someone is injured in that way, the first thing you do NOT do is roll him over the way these people in scrubs do. You support the neck and head because he could be paralyzed if you shift him improperly. I took a CPR class in middle school, and I remember this much: you check his airway secondary to that, breathing, and THEN circulation. They jump right over the first two and on to the third. Someone else also noted that guy holds his hand to Sherlock's neck for a damn long time-too long even for someone who doesn't know where to look for the carotid on a thin man. I have trouble finding it most times on MYSELF, and I'm little. Either he's waiting for Sherlock's heart to beat, or the guy has no clue what the hell he's doing and is faking his search for a pulse.
You would THEN get a neck brace on him and roll him onto the stretcher, keeping him lying straight as you put him on a backboard to keep his spine even. You do not DROP him like a sack of flour onto the stretcher. Any shift of the spine might make things worse and leave him without important functions like breathing or walking.
In fact, the way these people in scrubs behave, you would THINK they didn't know how to treat someone who's fallen off a building, or that that someone wasn't injured very much at all.
5. The amount of people in scrubs and how quickly they show up is too fast. Given that Bart's is under a refit, there shouldn't be a lot of doctors around. Ditto on that stretcher. Even in a good, busy, occupied hospital, it should take a minute or even two for someone to shout around for a stretcher, find one unoccupied, navigate it through the hospital corridors, and out the door to where Sherlock's fallen. This gurney comes whizzing out mere seconds after he lands.
6. The fact that even when Watson comes up claiming to be a doctor, the people around him pull him away. Even in a crisis like this, even an injured doctor offering to help would be allowed to aid his friend, and would be allowed to walk into the hospital with him. Remember: Watson was TRAINED at St. Bart's. He's WORKED there. He knows people who WORK there at the present MOMENT (Stanford for one, Molly for another.) If there were real doctors and nurses in that crowd, they would KNOW him and they would KNOW he was an army medic and they would LET him take care of Sherlock. The reason Watson is pulled away is that if he gets too close, he might feel Sherlock's heart trying to beat and his pulse, however faint, and he might believe that his friend could make it. He has to feel nothing and believe what he feels-that Sherlock's body is truly dead and that his friend has really gone.
So, around the corner Sherlock goes on a stretcher, with all the appearances of death.
They take him down to the morgue, and Molly receives his poor, bloodied form.
If it is rhododendron in his system, Molly injects atropine to get his circulation back to normal. It might take him time to recover, no more than a day or two. He's in good shape-might only take a few hours.
Meanwhile, Watson is in hospital overnight to make sure his head's OK, Mycroft "identifies" his brother's body since he's family (making Watson unnecessary), Molly fakes the records.
Then there's the staging of the funeral. Sherlock's probably been cremated because it would mean less risk of John pointing into an open casket and remarking that the body in the box looks NOTHING like the guy's he's lived with for a year and a half. Besides, it's a suicide and Sherlock would be, as Molly likes to put it, "a bit smashed up." It's the equivalent of a car accident-you would probably have a closed casket to reduce shock to the few people who show up at the funeral.
Also note in "Belgravia" when Sherlock mentions to the two little girls that their grandfather has not gone to heaven but that he's been taken to a special room and burned. This blatant description of cremation implies to me that Sherlock probably would have wanted to be handled this way after his demise. Sherlock's probably not religious (it might be hard to find a church that would bury a suicide with ceremony ANYWAY. Some churches won't. CoE won't do it in some circumstances, but the Catholic church usually does for the family's peace of mind. ) Sherlock would also want to be cremated, again because he doesn't want to leave a mess. He knows how decomposition works. It's a nasty, slimy business he'd rather avoid. Better to be ashes.
However it goes, it ends with a tombstone in a graveyard. Sherlock is dead to the world, and only Mycroft and Molly know the truth.
I will admit to this-I have absolutely no clue what Moffat was talking about when he said there was something we all missed. Feel free to throw theories at that one.
So there we are again, all the way through another pile of theories. Hopefully I led you to some interesting ideas, and hopefully we can all work together to figure out what the hell happened. I probably won't post an update of this one unless someone in the know spills their lentils and gives us a decent clue.
If I missed anything, let me know.
Ta,
Bec
I am going to assume you've seen it, people. If you haven't, you HAVE had a year to rent/buy/borrow/steal the episode from someone. No spoiler line here.
This repeats some of the stuff from before, but I added some things, too. I thought after a year we needed a decent update. 9 pages worth. Yup.
Off we go!!!
Setting Things Up:
Moriarty spent most of season 2 in Mycroft's dungeon, being tortured. Geneva Convention be damned-we know he was kept in the dark alone and beaten up for months. Lord knows what else was done to him.
We know good old evil Jimmy was insane enough already to withstand all of Mycroft's best work and not spill his beans.
However, something bothers me here: Moriarty somehow gets his hands on something sharp and hard-something that could scratch Sherlock's name on a mirror in his cell over and over again. He's a criminally insane genius mastermind. Who on Earth is going to give him anything he can damage himself or someone else with?
The honest answer is, no one did.
Early on in the third episode, when he goes to break into the Tower of London, Moriarty has possession of a diamond. A small one, to be sure, but a diamond. We should be asking how he got his hands on it in a dark cell alone. He scratches Sherlock's name on the mirror of his cell with the diamond, then uses the same one to bust the glass in the Tower.
There are two ways he got the rock-either he had it on him: in his stomach, buried under his skin, or glued to one of his teeth. They strip-searched him on the way into imprisonment and I'm sure they were thorough about it. In his stomach would work (though he'd have to dig the diamond out of...well, you GET it...) The skin thing would work only if he could conceal it somewhere no one could see it and where he could reach it (middle of the back is going to be a horrible thing to reach, and they have cameras trained on him all the time, day and night.) The other problem with this is he'd need a knife to get it out, and good luck getting one of those. Teeth might work if they didn't check for a cyanide/poison capsule (they'd check. What if he tries to gas you with his last breath?)
The other option left is that someone gave him the diamond, and that someone has to be Mycroft.
I'm going with the idea that Mycroft could have fed Moriarty's cronies a bullshit code in the first place, making it only work a couple of times, or that it exposes whoever uses it to getting caught in the act. Moriarty would have put the thing up for auction to those assassins, then found out it was crap, but he's already got the damn thing up for sale. He's cornered if those guys find out that the code is fake. What can he do now but turn around and attack Sherlock, his "final problem?"
The only problem with this is that Moriarty already had gotten this information along with the code while in jail. Possibly the time in hoosecow meant that his rage and anger at Sherlock turned into the ultimate plan: to tear his mortal enemy to pieces in front of the entire world.
I know the idea is a little out there, but I can't believe that Mycroft would sell his baby brother's life story for a computer code he knows is crap from the beginning. We're dealing with a bunch of super geniuses here-a code that opens any door in the world? Blowing up all the nukes in the world in alphabetical order? Um, unlikely. Moriarty seemed far too confident in a code that he already had to know was nonsense. Sherlock was bluffing on the roof when he pretended to believe the code was real. Mycroft only told John about the code (but John needs to believe Sherlock's really dead later on and that he's also a complete faker at the science of deduction, so anything said to John is generally a pack of lies.)
Sherlock already knows that his life has been spread out before Moriarty like an "all you can destroy" buffet. Mycroft told him. This was the plan all along, beginning with letting him out of jail.
Moriarty's whole plan against Sherlock is to "tear his heart out." Beginning with his reputation, continuing with his closest friends, and ending with Sherlock's eventual ignomious death, Moriarty doesn't want to just kill Sherlock. He wants him torn apart into little pieces and spat out of a woodchipper. He wants nothing left of him. Killing him is boring. Destroying him is much more interesting.
It's a double-bluff sent directly from the Holmes brothers-make Moriarty think he's obliterating Sherlock, when it's actually Moriarty being destroyed. I'm sure if those assassins find out that the code is bogus, Moriarty will be exposed (and therefore dead.) The court case looked like a farcical game with Jim holding all the pieces and waving them in front of the government's nose. Mycroft could have ended it any old time and chose not to. He was letting things play out.
So, the scene is set: Jim Moriarty is enacting his brilliant plan to turn Sherlock Holmes, the Reichenbach hero, into a hated, disgraced public figure. Meanwhile, Sherlock and Mycroft, while appearing to hate each other's guts as per usual, have their own plan to thwart Moriarty.
Jim is what Sherlock would be without a heart; cold, calculating, lonely. Jim has no friends, no confidants. He understands violence, hatred, and rage, but love, feelings, and caring for someone besides himself is foreign to him. Sherlock may not always understand his emotions, but at least he bothers to have them at all.
Moriarty also doesn't understand loyalty without money/power involved. His minions are paid or cowed to be loyal to him, they grovel at his feet because he's smarter than them and can have them killed in interesting and excessively painful ways. They're loyal because they fear him, and probably loathe him just a little for having the strength that he does.
Sherlock engenders loyalty because John, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson see a great man trying to be a good man. Molly is on that list, too. They want to help him, to be at his side and support him because they care about him. Mycroft cares in a different way because his ties are familial, but he's watching out for his little brother all the time in various and unsubtle ways.
Moriarty doesn't understand this caring lark. He doesn't get why these people give a damn. He sees them as potential targets to get through Sherlock's armor and weaken him. In short, he sees them as (forgive the metaphor, Benedict, I really couldn't help it!) open unprotected spots on the underside of the dragon.
Recall Sherlock saying alone protects him. That's what Moriarty thinks. Funny enough, it's Sherlock's connections, his friends and family that get him out from under Jim's plan. In the end, Mycroft and Molly will save Sherlock from the death that Moriarty dies-a lonely suicide on a rooftop.
Who Knows Sherlock Lived?
Not the three who were targeted, at least not at the end of the last episode. That leaves out John, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson. Include Donovan (grr) and Anderson (GRR) in that list, along with all of Moriarty's henchmen.
Mycroft knew in the original story, so we can assume since he gave Moriarty the diamond and Sherlock's life story, he's in on the plan in this version, too. He's extremely needed, anyway-how on Earth is Sherlock going to get out of the U.K except on a private plane/boat/car? Everyone knows what he looks like thanks to Internet and all, unless he disguises himself, and then he still needs supplies in order to flee. He's also aware of information that Sherlock might require to kill Moriarty's people one by one, and help cover up Sherlock's presence anywhere, and get him passports, and...
OK, so Sherlock can't play dead without Mycroft.
Molly knows for certain. She's a coroner-like John, she has a medical license. Molly doesn't probably work with living bodies all that often due to her current position, but it stands to reason she knows how to use a needle, if necessary, and can fake records.
She's not on Sherlock's buddy list-meaning that Moriarty would always, always overlook her because he doesn't see her as anyone significant to Sherlock. He only dated her in the first place because it got him into Bart's and closer to his prey.
She can get rhododendron ponticum if Sherlock can't do it himself (more on this later on.) With only 8 hours of planning time, it might be hard to get a poison like this unless you had a contact willing to get it for you. It's possible Mycroft could get some, but Molly would ensure that the poisoning was done right so as not to really kill Sherlock.
The less people know about it, the better. The homeless network won't give the game away-Sherlock has been kind to them (in his own way) and they'll keep his secret for him. Those people on the ground might be Mycroft's people, too, and they're all government MI5 types. You can't pry the truth out of those guys with a crowbar.
Now For the Stupid Question: Is Sherlock Holmes Really Dead?
Is that a ghost, a duplicate, a clone, or an alternate timeline version of our favorite detective standing at the grave, watching his best friend bawl his eyes out?
Obviously, that's a no.
My first point is that Sherlock would never die this way if given a choice; there is the possibility of survival and being left permanently crippled and disabled. There is just no way a man as vain, smart, and quick as Sherlock Holmes would want to risk LIVING (because of something intentionally done) with stuff that would forever stop him in his tracks. Sherlock knows how to commit suicide properly thanks to his consulting detective job-he deals with the dead all the time, AND we know from the stories that he has an extensive knowledge of poisons and chemistry. There are far better ways of doing oneself in than falling off a building.
Sherlock knows how to kill himself and make it look an accident. We can reasonably assume he's come somewhat close to death in the past due to cocaine/heroin addiction in his younger years. He knows what many suicidal people don't seem to (or don't want to): How to kill himself and make it stick. The man's a chemist and an expert on how people die and why, so it wouldn't be that hard to apply it to himself.
As I said before, Sherlock's vain (have you seen how he dresses?) so he would probably avoid anything that smashed him into little pieces on the ground...and made a massive, bloody mess in public. The man has a SOCK INDEX. He's an organized, neat person (even the papers are in order, you just can't see it.) The last thing he'd want to do is go out making a mess all over a sidewalk. He barely believes he's human; would he really want to prove it by blashing into the pavement? Not likely.
No, a suicidal Sherlock Holmes would want to go quietly into that good night; with a needle and an overdose and John away somewhere on purpose so that he wouldn't be disturbed until there was no hope of rescue. Possibly Mrs. Hudson gone away, too.
This death was too abrupt and bloody, without a whole hell of a lot of planning, to be the real end of Sherlock.
So, logically, Sherlock Holmes wouldn't go out this way simply because it's out of character for him. But chemical death isn't as graphic, so he has to settle for this kind of fake demise.
Sherlock knows his "death", however false, has to be dramatic and visible to ALL of London, to the snipers with their guns aimed at his friends.
The Theories on How He Faked It
Theory 1: Rhododendron Ponticum
Of course he has to know what's coming. He's preparing from the moment that he leaves Rich Brook's flat, the night before he "dies." He goes to Molly for help. John is away at the time, berating Mycroft at the Diogenes Club. Sherlock spends the ENTIRE night in the lab at Bart's, since he's actually running away from the law. He has nowhere to go-can't go home, won't go to Mycroft, Scotland Yard is full of people wanting to arrest him.
And so Sherlock uses his and Molly's extensive knowledge of chemicals and poisons to come up with a plan involving rhododendron ponticum, a poison that slows the pulse and gives the appearance of death. This plan could go forward without Mycroft, but it's still going to be bloody hard to get ahold of the ponticum without his help, since that doesn't seem like something they'd keep in the lab of a teaching hospital. Even with Sherlock's near-encyclopedic knowhow of poisons, how likely is he to have the one at Baker Street that he needs? There are a lot of poisons; unless he's got a collection of them, he won't have it at home so that someone could go get it out of his things. It's late at night, and they can't order it on overnight delivery because that's unreliable and it might not get there in time. Best bet's probably Mycroft, Mr. British Government, who could probably procure any damn poison his little brother wants. Thank the Lord for MI-6 connections...
Of course, Sherlock could have grabbed some rhododendrons off the boarding house lawn, but that's planning too far ahead. Different species of the plant can poison, and more than likely Sherlock would want to stick with the honey made from rhododendrons, not the plants themselves, because eating the honey doesn't usually kill you. Here's a line from hbg.org, describing the poison and its effects...
The intoxication is rarely fatal and generally lasts for no more than 24 hours. Generally the disease induces dizziness, weakness, excessive perspiration, nausea, and vomiting shortly after the toxic honey is ingested. Other symptoms that can occur are low blood pressure or shock, bradyarrhythima (slowness of the heart beat associated with an irregularity in the heart rhythm), sinus bradycardia (a slow sinus rhythm, with a heart rate less than 60), nodal rhythm (pertaining to a node, particularly the atrioventricular node), Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome (anomalous atrioventricular excitation) and complete atrioventricular block.
Also...
In humans, symptoms of poisoning occur after a dose-dependent latent period of a few minutes to two or more hours and include salivation, vomiting, and both circumoral (around or near the mouth) and extremity paresthesia (abnormal sensations). Pronounced low blood pressure and sinus bradycardia develop. In severe intoxication, loss of coordination and progressive muscular weakness result. Extrasystoles (a premature contraction of the heart that is independent of the normal rhythm and arises in response to an impulse in some part of the heart other than the sinoatrial node; called also premature beat) and ventricular tachycardia (an abnormally rapid ventricular rhythm with aberrant ventricular excitation, usually in excess of 150 per minute) with both atrioventricular and intraventricular conduction disturbances also may occur. Convulsions are reported occasionally. (Thanks to http://hbd.org/brewery/library/HonD.html)
You can only get this honey, made from bees taking nectar from rhododendrons stuff, around the area surrounding the Black Sea. It is RARE. You can't make the active ingredient in a lab (grayanotoxin), although you can buy it online (again, not nearly enough time.) Clearly this is not something Sherlock could just go and buy at a moment's notice, especially since his credit cards, if he has them, are all being monitored because he's on the run. He would need Mycroft's extensive reach to get some of this stuff to poison himself with.
NOTE, 10/12/13. I am an Idiot.
Bees. Honey. Poison made by bees taking nectar from a flower and making into honey.
And what is Sherlock's hobby when he retires from chasing after bad guys?
BEES. He moves out of London and becomes a BEEKEEPER in the COUNTRY.
Why didn't I see this before? Of course Sherlock loves bees, and of course he'd know about different honey types, and so OF COURSE he would know about THIS particular kind of honey. It adds weight to this theory in spades, it really does. The bee thing is canon from ACD's stories themselves.
I am going to go kick myself a few more times now. Back to the theory-making with you...
Sherlock has hours and hours, then, to set up a plan, to work something out with the homeless network, Mycroft, and Molly. By the time John is finished shouting at Mycroft and is headed back, a plan is probably mostly done, because Molly has left by the time John arrives at the morgue.
John comes back at some point and falls asleep on the desk across from where Sherlock is sitting. Remember John is supposed to have been arrested too, so he also has nowhere to go.
It is at THIS likely point that Sherlock takes the rhododendron poison, since it takes around two hours to take effect. That would have him taking it somewhere in the early hours of the morning, while John sleeps at the desk.
John is woken by a phone call (who calls him is a mystery I would like solved but my guess would be Mycroft) because Mrs. Hudson has been shot and is dying. Sherlock refuses to leave. John accuses him of being a machine and not caring (a paradox if there ever was one-Sherlock isn't leaving Bart's because he cares too much for John, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson.)
Of course the whole bloody thing is a ruse to get John out of the way for a few moments while Sherlock goes and deals with Jim on the roof.
The Rooftop
So we assume Sherlock's had the rhododendron stuff in his system for a few hours already. When Moriarty takes a good look at him on the rooftop, he peers up at Sherlock, and sees something wrong with his eyes (pupils are way contracted, and it's awfully hard to see Jim's to compare them because Andrew Scott's irises are so damn dark).
And here, Moriarty takes Sherlock's pulse by shaking his hand. Sherlock doesn't often shake hands-touching isn't one of his things. He does it with Irene Adler to take her pulse, though, so this could be a callback to that.
What does Moriarty find when he shakes Sherlock's hand and subtly takes his pulse? Nothing. No pulse. Sherlock's heart rate is so slowed by the rhododendron poison that he already would fool someone into thinking he was dead.
Moriarty GETS it, of course. He sees the eyes and feels no pulse and it registers that Sherlock's got him good. He gets that Sherlock's loyalty to his friends means that he would die for them, blow his reputation for them, lose it all for them. But Sherlock doesn't walk into death blindly-he's already got an OUT set up somewhere.
Sherlock may fake-die today and his reputation may be in tatters, but the snipers will be called off of John, Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade. And that matters more to him than anything else.
Moriarty thanks him for a game well played and blows his own head off, forcing Sherlock into going forward with the "suicide."
I have been puzzling over this for the last couple of months, mostly because I thought something was seriously wrong with Sherlock's eyes when he was lying on the sidewalk. But someone else thinks that that was happening minutes before he jumped.
As we all recall, Moriarty and Sherlock have been going about on the rooftop, dancing, singing, trying to throw each other off balance...
...and then, for some reason, Moriarty and Sherlock get REAL cuddly up there, and Moriarty starts calling Sherlock ordinary, and THEN he looks at him really hard...and starts thanking him for something and complimenting the hell out of him.
WHAT?
Someone else noted this already on their own page, and I will link it here...warning on a bit of swearing.
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
but I will summarize the whole thing here: Sherlock's pupils are really, really small on that rooftop, and it's the first time Moriarty gets a really good look at him...and a chance to take his pulse. IF we stick with the rhododendron theory, then Sherlock has already taken the stuff, and his body is already shutting down in response. As Melissa in the link above explains, Sherlock already appears dead, his pulse slowed to an almost nonexistent crawl.
The thing that has struck me EVERY time I've watched this episode are how small Sherlock's pupils look when he's lying on the sidewalk. They are fixed and dilated. Usually this would indicate brain damage of the worst kind, and contacts can create that effect, but it'd be bloody hard to fake without assistance because no one, not even Sherlock Holmes, can make his pupils contract by sheer will when he's pretending to be dead on the sidewalk. Either he's taken poison, or he had enough time on the way up to the roof to insert contacts that make his pupils look small.
To combat the effects AFTER he gets carted around the corner, he'd probably have had to have someone with needle experience standing by with atrophine to get his system back up to speed (Molly?)
Theory Two: The Ball
Sherlock is seen in the lab at Bart's bouncing this ball off of a cabinet the night before. He slides it into his pocket just before he heads up to the roof to dance with Jim.
Where does it go from there?
The idea is to plant the ball in one's armpit, thereby temporarily creating a sort of block on the brachial artery and cutting off the pulse. It works (did it myself. Haven't figured out I'm cracked yet?)
However, there is one problem with this that I cannot get around. When he's picked up, Sherlock's arm flops out to the side. That ball should fall out and land on the ground. It doesn't. His arm doesn't even look weird like there's a bouncy ball lodged in the sleeve.
He couldn't have had time to tape the thing up inside his arm, and most people would have a flexibility problem if their arm is taped up on the underside. He's a guy, more than likely not vain enough to have shaved his pits, and it's going to pull on his skin/hair and potentially fall off if he moves wrong. Sherlock has nothing wrong with his arm movement on that rooftop, although he IS wearing his coat...
Another thing that shoots this theory in the foot is that Sherlock would have had the pulse cut off in his arm for quite a while-nearly a half-hour at the very least. To cut off the blood flow that long would be dangerous as all hell and Sherlock damn well knows it. The limit that doctors allow having blood flow cut off is 45 minutes, tops. After that, damage to the muscle would start to occur.
Besides, he's going to have terrible pins and needles unless he takes a break between Moriarty blowing his head off and when he plunges off the roof. Difficult to do, and he'd have to put it back into place, AND it might fall out while he's falling down to the ground, and if he loses it, then there goes his master plan. Too risky.
Moving on, now, to proving why the scene at Bart's is full of flaws. There were 5. Did you catch them all?
Here, I'll list them for you. I discuss these in no particular order down below:
1. Position of Sherlock's body
2. The speed of the appearance of the stretcher
3. Too much blood, too little time
4. Not enough injuries
5. Way he's moved
1. Position of Sherlock's body falling versus where he lands. He falls perpendicular to the building, but lands parallel to it. Not enough airspace to flip around in midair, so he changes position when he's out of sight behind the small building in front of the hospital. It's possible he lands on the rubbish truck, jumps to the ground, and rolls in a puddle of freshly-placed fake or real blood (doesn't make a difference whether it's corn syrup or the real stuff.)
2. Too much blood, too little time-There are mere seconds between Sherlock's landing and Watson reaching him, even with the well-placed cyclist. There's no more than a minute or two between the fall and Watson seeing him again. Unless there were terrible, terrible injuries, there is too much blood on the ground for someone whose bones are not broken and whose body appears fairly whole.
There is also the minor issue of Sherlock's left ear-he appears to be bleeding from it, but that's impossible, given the fact that IF he fell the way he was supposed to, he should have landed on his FACE. Even if he did land on his side, it still doesn't work, given that when we see him again, he's lying on his RIGHT side, not his LEFT. His injuries should be primarily on the side he lands on.
3. Given that, there are not enough injuries. A person who has fallen 70 feet off a building will have broken bones, open wounds, head injuries, a more than likely injured spine. Sherlock looks perfect save for his bleeding head, a near impossibility unless the man landed on a mattress.
4. That said, IF someone is injured in that way, the first thing you do NOT do is roll him over the way these people in scrubs do. You support the neck and head because he could be paralyzed if you shift him improperly. I took a CPR class in middle school, and I remember this much: you check his airway secondary to that, breathing, and THEN circulation. They jump right over the first two and on to the third. Someone else also noted that guy holds his hand to Sherlock's neck for a damn long time-too long even for someone who doesn't know where to look for the carotid on a thin man. I have trouble finding it most times on MYSELF, and I'm little. Either he's waiting for Sherlock's heart to beat, or the guy has no clue what the hell he's doing and is faking his search for a pulse.
You would THEN get a neck brace on him and roll him onto the stretcher, keeping him lying straight as you put him on a backboard to keep his spine even. You do not DROP him like a sack of flour onto the stretcher. Any shift of the spine might make things worse and leave him without important functions like breathing or walking.
In fact, the way these people in scrubs behave, you would THINK they didn't know how to treat someone who's fallen off a building, or that that someone wasn't injured very much at all.
5. The amount of people in scrubs and how quickly they show up is too fast. Given that Bart's is under a refit, there shouldn't be a lot of doctors around. Ditto on that stretcher. Even in a good, busy, occupied hospital, it should take a minute or even two for someone to shout around for a stretcher, find one unoccupied, navigate it through the hospital corridors, and out the door to where Sherlock's fallen. This gurney comes whizzing out mere seconds after he lands.
6. The fact that even when Watson comes up claiming to be a doctor, the people around him pull him away. Even in a crisis like this, even an injured doctor offering to help would be allowed to aid his friend, and would be allowed to walk into the hospital with him. Remember: Watson was TRAINED at St. Bart's. He's WORKED there. He knows people who WORK there at the present MOMENT (Stanford for one, Molly for another.) If there were real doctors and nurses in that crowd, they would KNOW him and they would KNOW he was an army medic and they would LET him take care of Sherlock. The reason Watson is pulled away is that if he gets too close, he might feel Sherlock's heart trying to beat and his pulse, however faint, and he might believe that his friend could make it. He has to feel nothing and believe what he feels-that Sherlock's body is truly dead and that his friend has really gone.
So, around the corner Sherlock goes on a stretcher, with all the appearances of death.
They take him down to the morgue, and Molly receives his poor, bloodied form.
If it is rhododendron in his system, Molly injects atropine to get his circulation back to normal. It might take him time to recover, no more than a day or two. He's in good shape-might only take a few hours.
Meanwhile, Watson is in hospital overnight to make sure his head's OK, Mycroft "identifies" his brother's body since he's family (making Watson unnecessary), Molly fakes the records.
Then there's the staging of the funeral. Sherlock's probably been cremated because it would mean less risk of John pointing into an open casket and remarking that the body in the box looks NOTHING like the guy's he's lived with for a year and a half. Besides, it's a suicide and Sherlock would be, as Molly likes to put it, "a bit smashed up." It's the equivalent of a car accident-you would probably have a closed casket to reduce shock to the few people who show up at the funeral.
Also note in "Belgravia" when Sherlock mentions to the two little girls that their grandfather has not gone to heaven but that he's been taken to a special room and burned. This blatant description of cremation implies to me that Sherlock probably would have wanted to be handled this way after his demise. Sherlock's probably not religious (it might be hard to find a church that would bury a suicide with ceremony ANYWAY. Some churches won't. CoE won't do it in some circumstances, but the Catholic church usually does for the family's peace of mind. ) Sherlock would also want to be cremated, again because he doesn't want to leave a mess. He knows how decomposition works. It's a nasty, slimy business he'd rather avoid. Better to be ashes.
However it goes, it ends with a tombstone in a graveyard. Sherlock is dead to the world, and only Mycroft and Molly know the truth.
I will admit to this-I have absolutely no clue what Moffat was talking about when he said there was something we all missed. Feel free to throw theories at that one.
So there we are again, all the way through another pile of theories. Hopefully I led you to some interesting ideas, and hopefully we can all work together to figure out what the hell happened. I probably won't post an update of this one unless someone in the know spills their lentils and gives us a decent clue.
If I missed anything, let me know.
Ta,
Bec
17.5.13
Everyone's Home
Yep. Anna came on Tuesday (bearing a carton of eggs). Sara arrived today with her cat and bearing a carton of eggs. Add that to the four we already had, and we need to get rid of eggs around here.
We now have one puppy, two cats, two sisters, Dad, Mom, and me all crammed in a small house. We are already ready to kill each other. Too bad it's not Christmas-we usually try harder.
Of course, I'm irritable because I'm uncomfortable because of my cramp problem (ongoing with no end in sight) and I'm hungry (I didn't eat with the rest of them because I couldn't, so now Dad decided to plonk down in the area I cleaned up so I could eat.)
Gritting my teeth and bearing it!
Ta,
Bec
We now have one puppy, two cats, two sisters, Dad, Mom, and me all crammed in a small house. We are already ready to kill each other. Too bad it's not Christmas-we usually try harder.
Of course, I'm irritable because I'm uncomfortable because of my cramp problem (ongoing with no end in sight) and I'm hungry (I didn't eat with the rest of them because I couldn't, so now Dad decided to plonk down in the area I cleaned up so I could eat.)
Gritting my teeth and bearing it!
Ta,
Bec
13.5.13
ANOTHER Frustrating Day
Rant about my lady bits malfunctioning AGAIN coming-get out of the way.
Went to the gyn today. My skin looks good, however, I now have vaginismus (tight pelvic muscles, which I thought I had already) and muscle knots inside someplace that my damn dilator can't get past (thank YOU fibro and virginity and small pelvis and ALL.) Rats. Now I need a physical therapist. I am tired, annoyed, and worn out and I needed a place to bitch (and a pillow to scream into), so here it is.
I suspected something was up when I kept trying to get that second dilator past the halfway point and bumping into something in the way. It was 5-alarm painful to try to get past, and something in the back of my head told me that pushing past the painful point wasn't going to happen. I know it wasn't me that caused this. It was probably caused by the stupid gyn from four years ago who shoved that damn speculum up there so hard he had me screaming in pain and trying to curl in a ball while the nurse held me down. I will never see a male doctor for that area of my body again. What a jerk. He told me I couldn't produce enough fluid either for lubrication (OK, YOU try producing enough lubrication when he's causing you intense and unbearable pain) AND THEN the jerk told me (in the coldest voice possible) I had PCOS and I was generally infertile for the rest of my life, which wasn't true.
So NOW, probably because of that, I can't get ANYTHING past an index finger in myself. Thanks, gyn doctor. You really screwed me up and now I'm going to have to fix it before I even have another pelvic exam.
(You know what? I'm not protecting him. If you live in Rhinelander, don't go to Dr. Pollnow. I'm going to have to live with what he did to me and I'm still mad. I should have reported him at the time and now it's too late to do so.)
Also, one of my high school friends walked past me (clearly heavily pregnant) as I left the office today with her guy. I do not need to be reminded that I might never be able to have a boyfriend, much less sleep with him or produce offspring without screaming (in pain) through the whole process.
All in all, I'm in the "I've had it up to here" mode and I need chocolate before I kill someone.
I have to end this entry because Dad keeps kicking me in the back for some reason while I try to type.
Ta,
Bec
Went to the gyn today. My skin looks good, however, I now have vaginismus (tight pelvic muscles, which I thought I had already) and muscle knots inside someplace that my damn dilator can't get past (thank YOU fibro and virginity and small pelvis and ALL.) Rats. Now I need a physical therapist. I am tired, annoyed, and worn out and I needed a place to bitch (and a pillow to scream into), so here it is.
I suspected something was up when I kept trying to get that second dilator past the halfway point and bumping into something in the way. It was 5-alarm painful to try to get past, and something in the back of my head told me that pushing past the painful point wasn't going to happen. I know it wasn't me that caused this. It was probably caused by the stupid gyn from four years ago who shoved that damn speculum up there so hard he had me screaming in pain and trying to curl in a ball while the nurse held me down. I will never see a male doctor for that area of my body again. What a jerk. He told me I couldn't produce enough fluid either for lubrication (OK, YOU try producing enough lubrication when he's causing you intense and unbearable pain) AND THEN the jerk told me (in the coldest voice possible) I had PCOS and I was generally infertile for the rest of my life, which wasn't true.
So NOW, probably because of that, I can't get ANYTHING past an index finger in myself. Thanks, gyn doctor. You really screwed me up and now I'm going to have to fix it before I even have another pelvic exam.
(You know what? I'm not protecting him. If you live in Rhinelander, don't go to Dr. Pollnow. I'm going to have to live with what he did to me and I'm still mad. I should have reported him at the time and now it's too late to do so.)
Also, one of my high school friends walked past me (clearly heavily pregnant) as I left the office today with her guy. I do not need to be reminded that I might never be able to have a boyfriend, much less sleep with him or produce offspring without screaming (in pain) through the whole process.
All in all, I'm in the "I've had it up to here" mode and I need chocolate before I kill someone.
I have to end this entry because Dad keeps kicking me in the back for some reason while I try to type.
Ta,
Bec
22.4.13
27
Hi,
So, an OK birthday by the usual standards. Had a fairly nice meal out (despite Dad's ketchup not making an appearance, Mum's potato being hard as a rock on top, there being a serious lack of breadsticks, children screaming in the background, and NO BIRTHDAY CAKE! I didn't get CAKE! I WAS SCREWED!)
Otherwise, lovely presents all around. Got the bookends that have been in my mother's room for a month. My sister sent some lovely presents, and Mum bought me a set of measuring cups/spoons like the ones I got her for Christmas two or three years ago (her set is awesome and I wanted one.)
Not much else going on. I have an interview with Anchorage, AK on Wednesday. Crossing fingers.
Gotta go turn on the dryer.
PS: I will post the Reichenbach notes as soon as Echo stops biting everything that comes to paw.
Ta,
Bec
So, an OK birthday by the usual standards. Had a fairly nice meal out (despite Dad's ketchup not making an appearance, Mum's potato being hard as a rock on top, there being a serious lack of breadsticks, children screaming in the background, and NO BIRTHDAY CAKE! I didn't get CAKE! I WAS SCREWED!)
Otherwise, lovely presents all around. Got the bookends that have been in my mother's room for a month. My sister sent some lovely presents, and Mum bought me a set of measuring cups/spoons like the ones I got her for Christmas two or three years ago (her set is awesome and I wanted one.)
Not much else going on. I have an interview with Anchorage, AK on Wednesday. Crossing fingers.
Gotta go turn on the dryer.
PS: I will post the Reichenbach notes as soon as Echo stops biting everything that comes to paw.
Ta,
Bec
17.4.13
Having A Frustrating Day
(Warning-I talk about lady bits here. Look away if you don't want to know.)
Having a frustrating day today. The puppy won't go down for a nap, I feel awful, and today was the day that I had to (look away now if you're squeamish) use my vaginal dilators to try and push my muscles to admit anything more than a finger (I try to do it every other day.) It's actually medically necessary because I can't have a pelvic exam until I make some room for the speculum. Now I tore just inside my front door thanks to the steroid cream for the lichensclerosis thinning the skin and that means I have to refrain from using the dilators until my skin heals...meaning I lose days that I could be attempting to get the stupid, stupid, stupid second-smallest dilator more than halfway up inside myself.
I am very tired and frustrated and I have an appointment on the 29th, and she's expecting progress. She's not going to get it. I have tried everything, but since I was lying on the bedroom floor crying my eyes out from frustration and pain today, I don't think we're going to make much progress without outside help.
AUGH!
I have to go meet Mum down at the bottom of the driveway, so talk to you later.
Ta,
Bec
Having a frustrating day today. The puppy won't go down for a nap, I feel awful, and today was the day that I had to (look away now if you're squeamish) use my vaginal dilators to try and push my muscles to admit anything more than a finger (I try to do it every other day.) It's actually medically necessary because I can't have a pelvic exam until I make some room for the speculum. Now I tore just inside my front door thanks to the steroid cream for the lichensclerosis thinning the skin and that means I have to refrain from using the dilators until my skin heals...meaning I lose days that I could be attempting to get the stupid, stupid, stupid second-smallest dilator more than halfway up inside myself.
I am very tired and frustrated and I have an appointment on the 29th, and she's expecting progress. She's not going to get it. I have tried everything, but since I was lying on the bedroom floor crying my eyes out from frustration and pain today, I don't think we're going to make much progress without outside help.
AUGH!
I have to go meet Mum down at the bottom of the driveway, so talk to you later.
Ta,
Bec
7.4.13
April
Not much going on. Echo's a biter-clothes, arms, hair, me, me, Mom, me. I have little holes in one of my shirts and little marks from her teeth in my arm. She's a baby; she'll get over it. We're going to try to get her in obedience training to teach her to go outside (still working on that one) and not to bite (lots of work needed there.) We've got sit and shake, she's finally getting kennel training, she loves people and she's affectionate, so no worries. Mum's brushing her (she screamed all the way through it as if she was being murdered) and nail-clipping (ditto.) Getting her used to these things in her babyhood means we won't have an angry dog who doesn't want to be touched like Whisper was.
We've finally started melting this week after a really ridiculously cold winter that still doesn't seem to have let go. Everyone wants spring. Now.
Lots of work to do. Gotta go.
Ta,
Bec
We've finally started melting this week after a really ridiculously cold winter that still doesn't seem to have let go. Everyone wants spring. Now.
Lots of work to do. Gotta go.
Ta,
Bec
1.4.13
Echo Arrives
Didn't get the job; so back to the drawing board.
Puppy's here. She's all of two pounds but has a bit of a stubborn streak and a temper to match (I'm nicknaming her Tempest in a Teacup; we really named her Echo.) She gets tired and gets demanding and will thrash and scream to get what she wants (should have named her Carlotta.) Mum told her she's not going to play primadonna around here (cue snort of laughter.) We finally got her to go to sleep; she wants someone in sight when she closes her eyes but Mum and I were kind of busy at the time, so she kept toddling out to the kitchen to find me or Mum.
Here's a photo of our girl-she's either running through the house at top speed or she's sound asleep, so she's particularly hard to catch with a camera.
How could anything that cute be a primadonna, you ask me. It seems to me the cute ones we get all are insanely smart to boot (she is. She knew going on the floor this morning was wrong and went scurrying out of the room to hide under a bed, and she hasn't even been here three days.) They're so challenging and yet so much damn fun.) And because they're smart and because they're cute, they promptly take over and we let them and pretty soon they're sleeping on the couch in a little black ball like a little angel.
I have to go take a shower. Hopefully she sleeps through it so her screaming for attention doesn't wake up the entire house.
Ta,
Bec
Puppy's here. She's all of two pounds but has a bit of a stubborn streak and a temper to match (I'm nicknaming her Tempest in a Teacup; we really named her Echo.) She gets tired and gets demanding and will thrash and scream to get what she wants (should have named her Carlotta.) Mum told her she's not going to play primadonna around here (cue snort of laughter.) We finally got her to go to sleep; she wants someone in sight when she closes her eyes but Mum and I were kind of busy at the time, so she kept toddling out to the kitchen to find me or Mum.
Here's a photo of our girl-she's either running through the house at top speed or she's sound asleep, so she's particularly hard to catch with a camera.
How could anything that cute be a primadonna, you ask me. It seems to me the cute ones we get all are insanely smart to boot (she is. She knew going on the floor this morning was wrong and went scurrying out of the room to hide under a bed, and she hasn't even been here three days.) They're so challenging and yet so much damn fun.) And because they're smart and because they're cute, they promptly take over and we let them and pretty soon they're sleeping on the couch in a little black ball like a little angel.
I have to go take a shower. Hopefully she sleeps through it so her screaming for attention doesn't wake up the entire house.
Ta,
Bec
18.3.13
Koshaking Out
If you don't want to hear about my weird blood, stop here.
Got a look at my medical records today. I was looking for something specific. I didn't find the specific tests I was looking for, but I did see that my ANA factor goes on and off like a broken lighthouse (currently off.) So I'm more like Mum than I thought, except I actually bothered to test positive in the last 20 years. Once. In about a thousand tests.
The only thing that said anything on the matter of my blood being weird was a notation that it was a little thick and I should take a baby aspirin (I vaguely remember this.) I have been told fifteen billion times at least that blood does NOT thicken in cold weather and thin out in warmer, but I dare any doctor who reads this to figure me out. A month after I arrive in warm weather or the weather gets warm around me, almost to the day, and if it coincides with my menses, down I go. I get sick. It happened twice in high school, and in England in 2008. If it doesn't land smack on my menses, I usually feel mildly sick. The spring one (going cold to warm) is always worse than the fall one (going warm to cold.) The spring one at its mildest can nauseate me for a couple of days, but I've always pushed through the fall one without slowing down.
Then there's the blood sugar. Warm or cold weather (more in warm) I constantly worry about my blood sugar. Had an incident with it today where I started shaking because I hadn't eaten when my transport said I should. I don't usually let it go beyond the hands shaking and cold hands-the one time I accidentally let it get bad, I was seeing lights on the edges of my vision and I felt like crap for hours even after I got fuel in my system. Not worth it, not ever. I always carry granola bars in my purse for emergency situations where I'm not going to get to eat for at least two hours. Mum has blood sugar issues, too, but hers are far better than mine. We think (no proof to this theory) that since my blood is weird in the first place, it doesn't transport the blood sugar as well. I watch it like a hawk.
I wish the answers had been there, but I know better than most that you're unlikely to figure out what the hell is going on from a bunch of tests, especially since my mother has had issues for decades and still really doesn't have anything but treatment for symptoms. I always hope that there's a doctor out there who'll look at me one day and say, Why, dear, you have this, but that's about as likely to happen as me winning a huge pile of cash, so I guess I just chug on.
Interview tomorrow!
Ta,
Bec
Got a look at my medical records today. I was looking for something specific. I didn't find the specific tests I was looking for, but I did see that my ANA factor goes on and off like a broken lighthouse (currently off.) So I'm more like Mum than I thought, except I actually bothered to test positive in the last 20 years. Once. In about a thousand tests.
The only thing that said anything on the matter of my blood being weird was a notation that it was a little thick and I should take a baby aspirin (I vaguely remember this.) I have been told fifteen billion times at least that blood does NOT thicken in cold weather and thin out in warmer, but I dare any doctor who reads this to figure me out. A month after I arrive in warm weather or the weather gets warm around me, almost to the day, and if it coincides with my menses, down I go. I get sick. It happened twice in high school, and in England in 2008. If it doesn't land smack on my menses, I usually feel mildly sick. The spring one (going cold to warm) is always worse than the fall one (going warm to cold.) The spring one at its mildest can nauseate me for a couple of days, but I've always pushed through the fall one without slowing down.
Then there's the blood sugar. Warm or cold weather (more in warm) I constantly worry about my blood sugar. Had an incident with it today where I started shaking because I hadn't eaten when my transport said I should. I don't usually let it go beyond the hands shaking and cold hands-the one time I accidentally let it get bad, I was seeing lights on the edges of my vision and I felt like crap for hours even after I got fuel in my system. Not worth it, not ever. I always carry granola bars in my purse for emergency situations where I'm not going to get to eat for at least two hours. Mum has blood sugar issues, too, but hers are far better than mine. We think (no proof to this theory) that since my blood is weird in the first place, it doesn't transport the blood sugar as well. I watch it like a hawk.
I wish the answers had been there, but I know better than most that you're unlikely to figure out what the hell is going on from a bunch of tests, especially since my mother has had issues for decades and still really doesn't have anything but treatment for symptoms. I always hope that there's a doctor out there who'll look at me one day and say, Why, dear, you have this, but that's about as likely to happen as me winning a huge pile of cash, so I guess I just chug on.
Interview tomorrow!
Ta,
Bec
16.3.13
800th Post!
Streamers, Streamers, Confetti and Streamers!
Ahem...
It's been a rough week here at the Koshak household. Spirit left us on Monday, as you all saw, and I got rejected for a couple of jobs, one of them being Leicester, and I scored an interview somewhere in Wisconsin for a Library Director job. Interview is on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, we may be getting a baby around here. By April. Honestly. It is possible that by the day our dear Sprite would have turned 14, we may have her successor (not replacement. Never replacement.) It's still being set up but she looks like a sweet baby. I'll post pics when things are finalized.
It may seem rather quick, but as I said to Mum last night, Sprite was going downhill for months before she went. I didn't realize how much of her personality had gone until it was gone, and we've been talking about getting a new baby for two years almost (since Whisper left.) Sprite's departure left the house so empty. We need a baby around here.
Mum, of course, is telling me not to spoil her. I remind her every time that it was her who spoiled Sprite and Whisper both, so she's one to talk.
And yes, this is my 800th post. 5 1/2 years of posting. Oi. Where does the time go?
Kitty is sleeping sitting up on the couch. Mum went to town to do stuff. Dad's at work. Not much going on around here today. I have to go boil potatoes.
I am preparing to redo my Reichenbach notes from the ground up, mostly because one posting apparently has everything the other does not and vice versa. They're starting to shoot series 3 this week (squeals of joy from millions go here) and so I felt it was a good time to review and clean up my notes. They'll be posted sometime next week.
Gotta go boil them taters.
Ta,
Bec
Ahem...
It's been a rough week here at the Koshak household. Spirit left us on Monday, as you all saw, and I got rejected for a couple of jobs, one of them being Leicester, and I scored an interview somewhere in Wisconsin for a Library Director job. Interview is on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, we may be getting a baby around here. By April. Honestly. It is possible that by the day our dear Sprite would have turned 14, we may have her successor (not replacement. Never replacement.) It's still being set up but she looks like a sweet baby. I'll post pics when things are finalized.
It may seem rather quick, but as I said to Mum last night, Sprite was going downhill for months before she went. I didn't realize how much of her personality had gone until it was gone, and we've been talking about getting a new baby for two years almost (since Whisper left.) Sprite's departure left the house so empty. We need a baby around here.
Mum, of course, is telling me not to spoil her. I remind her every time that it was her who spoiled Sprite and Whisper both, so she's one to talk.
And yes, this is my 800th post. 5 1/2 years of posting. Oi. Where does the time go?
Kitty is sleeping sitting up on the couch. Mum went to town to do stuff. Dad's at work. Not much going on around here today. I have to go boil potatoes.
I am preparing to redo my Reichenbach notes from the ground up, mostly because one posting apparently has everything the other does not and vice versa. They're starting to shoot series 3 this week (squeals of joy from millions go here) and so I felt it was a good time to review and clean up my notes. They'll be posted sometime next week.
Gotta go boil them taters.
Ta,
Bec
12.3.13
Spirit
Spritey,
You were the smallest, most annoying pain in the butt this family had ever seen.
While your sheltie predecessor Ginger was textbook of the breed, you were absolutely not. You were small, for one thing. Ginger had ten pounds on you. You were also mouthy, pushy, rude, standoffish, vain, and completely greedy. Your antics made me laugh more in a week than most dogs would manage in a month.
I'll miss your drivebys, where you ran yourself along the edge of the couch hoping for a head scratch/butt rub. You always got tangled in the blankets. I'll miss you banging into our legs when we didn't move fast enough, or your pulling the water bowl across the floor with your foot in anger when we ignored your need for a drink.
You loved to eat. You ate everything in sight-egg shells, lettuce, popcorn, Listerine Pocket Packs (the look on your face when you realized this wasn't food sent your three human sisters into peals of laughter.)
You had no idea how to hunt. Hunting required stealth. You'd see movement and go ballistic. You'd see bronze bulls and go into maximum defense mode. We had to cover your eyes at the 4th of July parade or risk you trying to take on a horse 100 times your size.
You didn't know the meaning of fear. You took on bunnies, deer, cows, horses...didn't matter. You'd take 'em all on and beat them up. I called you the Cowardly Lion because you were all shout and puff but no real backup. If you'd ever faced a real bull head-on you'd have gone running for help.
Quiet? You didn't know the meaning of the word. If you weren't snoring in your sleep like a grizzly bear, you were blowing doors open at 7 in the morning with your head and demanding attention. You were trilling. You were clicking your little feet through the house and coming to find me. You were landing like your body weighed a ton of bricks in the kennel when you didn't get your way. You were throwing a temper tantrum when you got locked in the kennel during meal time.
You demanded attention. You required it. You hated hugs, hated affection or being held or cuddled, but attention was something else. You loved people, and people loved you. They'd smile at you, perched on someone's lap in the car. They'd go out of their way to pet your little head. They'd comment on how beautiful you were, how pretty that little dog was. You never lived with little kids and yet you were a magnet for them, and they always exclaimed how soft the cute puppy was.
You loved scootching up against my feet at Christmas, pushing me back and back and back, until you had 3/4 of the couch claimed and I was smushed in the corner. Remember when you kicked me in the back all the way from Milwaukee to Rhinelander because you thought you needed more space to sleep in?
You hated us being more than ten feet away from you. If I went around the side of the car, you'd cry. If we were doing laundry outside, you'd howl till we noticed you. You would stand under the porch and banshee away until we asked you to shut up.
You were beautiful, my girl, and you knew it. From long silky fur to your golden-tufted ears (first thing I noticed about you,) to your little raccoon face and your golden eyebrows, you were the most gorgeous dog I've ever seen. Not that you liked having that beauty maintained. Your appearance as a floaty, lovely thing took work, and Mum made sure you always looked your best.
It didn't help you when you lost to that ferret, but still. You never got gray. You were practically 14 and still looked half that age. You were bouncy until your very last week, outrunning me when I tried to escape you being in the lead and biting my ankles to control your "sheeple."
You were hilarious. From the two ceramic bowls you backfooted off the porch within a month, to the metal ones you threw across the room every night, to the time you got stuck in the grate in front of the door by your collar, to getting stuck on the chair rung in the kitchen, you needed constant help in getting out of scrapes. Feet stuck through chain links. Stuck around the porch with your outside rope five times a day, and on your leash, wound around my legs so tight I almost fell on my butt.
You covered pancake batter that fell on the ground with dirt pushed by your nose. You shoved bowls until they tipped their contents everywhere. You landed on Whisper's stomach and caused everyone in the house to chastise you for it. Then there was the time you went pushing under Whisper's feet in your desperation to get to a biscuit and suddenly popped up next to me.
You trampled Grandpa Koshak's paper in your need for attention-ran through it, ran under it, ran over it. He finally gave in and cuddled you (you always did have him suckered, right from the very beginning.)
You loved car rides and walks. You went crazy if you saw me put on my socks. You adored snow. How many times did I have to wipe your face off when you came inside the house?
You were our little star. We told people you were a menace, but I realized as I typed this that I missed all your little ways and habits, your tiny fairy feet clicking through the house, your familiar ebony body in one of the bedrooms.
You had about fifty nicknames, most of them due to me. No one seems to be able to remember how you got the name of Poo (possibly Pooh?) but I called you some of these (forgive me if I can't remember them all...)
Strawberry Shortcake
Napoleonic Powermonger
Opportunistic Bitch
Lion Puppy
Tiny Dancer (the name of one of your siblings, but it fit you, too)
Un Peu (French for "a little.")
Poozie
Poozietron
Pain in the mikta (basically pain in the ass in Jaffa)
Sprite
Spritey
Spritey-Poo
Sprit
Spoo (Sprite and Poo together)
Spirit Marie (mostly in exasperation when you got tangled)
Snowbup
Big Girl (mostly had to do with your ego)
The Birthday Present that Really Bites (you were Mum's 40th birthday present, but most of the time, I was the one you bit. Remember when you ripped the leg of my jeans because you were hanging onto the back?)
It is too quiet here without you. It really is. I had no idea how much noise you actually made until you weren't here making it.
I know your obit isn't as good as Whisper's, but I couldn't leave out the important things you had done in your life; the little things. You were so much and it's hard to contain you down to words.
You drove us crazy and scared us half to death. The night you disappeared as a baby and turned up down the road, the time Whisper unintentionally caught her leash around you and nearly choked you to death, the two major times you were ill, the time you chased that damn deer, the Pit game last summer when you were terrified of our shouting...you reminded me that life is for the seizing, no matter how long it is.
When I kissed your nose for the last time yesterday, I swore I'd remember you for the rest of my life. How could I forget such a force of nature, a person (or shuman, if you want to get technical about it) who lived up to her name so distinctly that no other could ever carry it?
I hope you and Whisper are up there someplace, shooting the breeze and sharing a bowl of never-ending biscuits, which you take more than your share of and Whisper lets you. I hope Pookie is there, too, cuddled up next to you and undestroyed by Whisper's teeth.
Rest in peace, my sweet girl, our Spirit (Marie) (Hurricane) of the Great Northwoods.
We will love and miss you always.
Spirit of the Great Northwoods
4.2.99-3.11.13
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