A Witchy Diary

Not much is going on in life. Just the same real life stuff - consulting with Capgemini, doing things with my family, keeping up the house and the pets, and trying to make some passive income with Poshmark and Pangobooks.

I'm doing some reading too, and I'm almost finished with The Apothecary Diaries Light Novel volume 4. I have some library books that I'm reading, mostly cookbooks, and reading some manga here and there from Hoopla through the library.

I've been doing some outlining for the stories for the fic fests I joined for the summer. Hopefully I can get writing them soon!

Trying to save money as best I can and eliminating eating out as much. We just painted the spare room in the basement which will become Juliet's playroom, and this weekend we'll be moving her in, as well as cleaning and organizing the basement and the garage. It's going to be a hot one this weekend so we'll be staying indoors mostly.

During all of this, there is one thing that brings me absolute joy and that would be my garden. I reactivated my Flickr account so I could post my garden pictures there, and not just on Facebook.

( My garden pics )

I will have to make sure to water vigorously this weekend as we are going to reach the upper 90s here in the Chicagoland.

Stay cool, everyone.

This weekend sucked a goat's ass.

Not only did Rapey McPerjury get confirmed to the Supreme Court because why not, fuck us, but I also had shit just go wrong this weekend.

But last night before bed I noticed that my clothes were wet in the closet. WHY? Because our roof is leaking. Because we knew that we had roof damage, had a roofing contractor that dicked us around for two months, and now after firing them and trying to find someone new, we get this downpour rainstorm that soaked right through the roof into my bedroom closet. So last night I got no to little sleep because I was removing stuff from my closet, putting down towels over the carpet, and catching water in a bucket. Then I had to call State Farm and then make a claim. I also looked up another roofer, so fingers crossed this place isn't filled with unprofessional shitbag brodude assholes like the last one.

Not sure how much this is going to cost, but now there is interior damage as well, especially to the drywall. I claimed the carpet too but heaven knows I'm not going to get a chance to replace that! I'll just suck up the water with my carpet shampooer and hope that helps. I'd love new carpet in the whole upstairs but not necessary at this time. The water damaged roof and drywall will have to be replaced though. So fun!  I had to make a new claim with State Farm, so who knows when we'll get our claim check, and who knows how I'm going to pay for the roof. Haha! Ugh.

Then to make things more fun, the toilet we tried fixing this weekend is still running. It works okay and flushes but won't stop running! Joe woke me up in the middle of the early morning to help him shut it off because he couldn't sleep with the noise. So we have to figure that out too. Might have to call a plumber for this one. UGHHHHH.  If we could swing it, I'd opt for a brand new toilet but since we have a roof to fix, probably need a quick fix for now. Or we just don't use the toilet upstairs, which SUCKS, since it's the master bedroom.

I know disasters come in threes so I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It would be lovely if I got a bonus check or a salary increase as promised. Still heard nothing on that. We'll see. At least my boss is letting me work home if I have to this week to deal with the roofers.

To top it off, we're supposed to have Juliet's party this weekend and if we need to spend time on these issues, I won't have time to get my house in order for this party, AND it's supposed to rain heavily on Wednesday again so I'm really nervous about this leak now.  

I just wish it would stop raining. Please Goddess stop raining. At least for a week... Send the rain to California or Montana.

And we saw my mom Saturday and though it was good, she was for whatever reason, an ass to my husband, and he lost it and went off on her at lunch. It was awkward. But I don't really blame him. She hasn't said anything to me about his outburst, and I don't suspect she will since she doesn't confront people nor does she seem to get it when people have issues with her. It's usually always THEIR fault. I'm thinking about talking to her myself if they won't communicate with each other. But I've been so busy with the roof, toilet, child party and other stuff that I haven't had a chance knowing it WILL create drama and I just don't have the patience for that now.

I'm pretty sure the coils I bought for my vape are wrong again. I might just get a new mod because this one is just burning through coils and I might as well spend the money on a new one. Not sure what is going on with it and it's frustrating me because it helps me deal with all this stress, and now it's just becoming another stress.

Oh, and another top off, I got my monthly visitor! Thanks universe! *flips the bird*

We had some high points of the weekend despite all this mess. We did get some more coverage for our house that went into effect Saturday, so I'm kind of hoping the lower deductible and some of these new coverages will help us with our leaky roof. Fingers crossed! 

I got to see my BFF and sister Beth this weekend too. Joe and I got some good errands done around the house and finally donated everything left over from the garage sale to charity. So that stuff is out of the garage! I got my beta work done for another story and had a little time to finish some reading. I did a little editing to my own story for the anthology too. I'm not sure when I'll have time to work on it again but I'll try.

Unfortunately I may have to drop out of the Reylo Charity Anthology. I've had NO time to draw or work on it, and the deadline is coming up. So I'm going to mull it over and see how the week goes, but I might end up sending them an email that I am out and try for next year. I'll finish my comic when I have time and then put it up on deviantart. :/ I might be able to contribute writing but right now I have no ideas because my brain is so on edge. Ugh. Maybe I'll come up with something. *shrug*

BUT at least there was new Doctor Who! OMG! My thoughts:
( Spoilers! New season of Doctor Who )

So yeah, that's the gist of my misery. I haven't had any time to write or work on freelancing either. I suck. :(

Take care everyone! Here's hoping your week is better than mine. I have a feeling that this is only the beginning to my woes this week. *crawls back under a rock*

 Happy Ostara and Blessed Spring Equinox to all!


Artist: Helena Nelson-Reed
"Ostara"
(Totally not mine!)

Since I seem to be taking more commissions and doing more artwork - I decided to start another community here on Dreamwidth to keep all my icons and artwork in one spot. So I opened up paynesgrey_art, a companion for paynesgrey_fics.


Eventually I'll be closing my y!gallery, artist alley and Paper Demon accounts as I never go there anymore or do anything to keep it active. I do still keep up with DeviantART, but for mature artwork, past and present, I will be keeping it at Dreamwidth as they are not as strict as some places for mature works. I will keep them under f-lock once I bring them over. Feel free to watch it and join if you like.


I have also stopped updating my LJ community and imported all my old fics here, so eventually I will phase those sites out. I'm hoping that my personal journal and maybe even who-contest will be the only things I'll work on at Livejournal by the end of the year. I just need to keep organized. I don't have the attention span for all these different places, and after some thought, Dreamwidth has the best Terms of Services, and I'm starting to get the hang of their journal layouts.

This was an awesome convention!

I had never gone to Chicago Tardis but I can say I was pleased. It wasn't too busy, and I'm glad I went on Sunday because I heard Friday was a huge clusterfuck. Anyway, the lines weren't too bad, there wasn't that many people, and I got exactly what I wanted ... to meet Paul and Alex, get their autographs and get a picture with them.

I have been having Eight/River bunnies dancing in my head since I got back from the convention.

( Pictures )

Alex was hinting a bit on the Christmas special without giving away too many spoilers. But she did say that River was really REALLY naughty in the special, and she stressed it alot, so it made me even more excited for the Christmas special. I have video of her talking about working with Peter, but the sound quality sucks. Anyway, Alex was a treat! Though I will say Paul McGann was the best. He was personable, chatty, and just very lovely all around when interacting with him. Even Joe liked listening to his panel, so that's a plus.

Jenna Coleman was supposed to be here, but she canceled and they replaced her with Ingrid Oliver. I barely made it into one of the Ingrid panels but she was pretty cool too. You can tell Ingrid really loves the fans.

Sam Anderson was also there. I'm not really a Danny Pink fan, but now I'm a Sam Anderson fan. He was totally interactive with the fans and a huge goofball. You can tell he really loves Who people and he was very nice and engaging with everyone. He was signing autographs behind Paul so while I was in line I watched him interact with people and he is just a hoot. The Chicago Tardis staff was saying what a "problem child" he was, and one incident in particular he went out without his "handler" and was walking among the masses of fans, up and down and totally trolling the autograph lines so much the Chicago Tardis staff had to kick him out of the hallway. I even saw him dress up as a Cyberman and take photos with some of the fans. He's pretty awesome, so if he comes back next year, I'll definitely want to get his autograph. Maybe I'll rewatch Danny Pink episodes to increase my love for him.

Joe and I made it into the tail end of the writers panel too, which I wish I would have joined earlier but they were stressing the importance of writing fanfiction, which made me happy.

All and all, a good day. I'm also broke right now, and I spent some of my Christmas bonus without getting it yet. LOL. But totally worth it.

Oh and also, after all these years, Paul McGann still hates his movie wig.