There's a Mirror On the Wall

The resupply is unstaffed, unlike the first one, and the security is familiar and readily bypassed. He finds less money than he likes, but it will be sufficient for a few weeks. The supply of weapons and ammunition is more acceptable, and there is another stash of the meal bars he's been eating. It all fits easily into the borrowed vehicle, and there are no issues in returning to mission control, and securing the weapons in the garden shed with the new lock installed since his arrival.

After returning the vehicle to its original location, he returns to mission control on foot, and finds Aunt awake when he comes up the stairs. She is at the door to Tiny Mission's room, and a hand raised to kock on it. He takes three long steps, and grabs her wrist with his metal hand, holding it securely.

"No. You will not disturb my mission."

Aunt glares at him, though he can see pain behind the anger and hate in her eyes. He must be holding her wrist too tightly. Oops.

"You're both using resources, and selfishly doing nothing to repay us for the roof over your heads or anything else we have provided." Aunt keeps her voice down to a hissing whisper, though he doesn't think it's for Tiny Mission's sake. More likely for the child in the room on the other side of the hall, as not to wake him. "I won't have it any longer."

---

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Ok, so we're getting into the most miserable part of winter for headspace, because while the days may be getting longer, there's more cloud cover, so less actual sunlight, and it's often miserably cold, and every bit of lacking light from the darkest days is catching up.

At least, that's how winter is going here.

So I have less spoons for being sociable, I'm more irritable, I'm struggling more to get anything done, and just. Ugh.

Also, this morning's oatmeal did not cook properly because the fucking pot did not do the pressure thing, and now there's a layer of burnt oatmeal on the bottom of the pot, and the rest of it is not cooked quite right, and *throws up hands in frustration*

Fuck this. Loud music and organizational projects is the order of the day.

Not as sunny today, but the sun is not absent, so that's good enough.

I got the kitchen floor swept yesterday! And all the organizing that goes with sweeping, and got my laundry done, and I ate breakfast, dinner, and dessert. I finally put away the utensils from the previous load of dishes, and pulled some of the clean dishes out of the dishwasher from this load.

No story words, but also brain will not settle on a fandom, so who knows. I'll see what I get done today, if anything.

I did get more map work done, though, so that's good. Eventually I'll get this all the way down to the very fine-grained map I want. That will also be very massive, and probably split up by continent, just to reduce the size of individual files.

Breakfast this morning is dessert leftovers, because I haven't tested how well these freeze, so the sooner eaten, the better. (I am, though, now entirely out of canned fruit.)

And five things makes a post.

I know today is important, and I am so very glad that we're getting a president - and Congress! - that actually want to do their jobs, and not just run the country into the ground for their own profit.

Personally, however, today is a clothes are too much, most sounds are too much, and the light is the only thing that isn't too much, and I suspect that's only sheer fucking luck. And considering that this happens both when under a lot of emotional stress, or when that stress gets released, well. That it hits today is really not a surprise.

I'm going to go hide under a blanket and bask in the sunlight, and then possibly terrify the cats by cleaning the kitchen. (The human is moving ALL THE THINGS! AAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHH!)

I didn't get words written yesterday, but HLH reveals were yesterday, and I got words POSTED yesterday as well.

So, for HLH, I wrote Walking a Different Road, which is ultimately a Joe/Methos story, and I don't think I've written one where they're anything other than platonic. It's entirely from Joe's POV, in close third person, and is functionally a five times Joe met Methos story in an alternate universe.

I posted the first bit of Echoes In Transit, which is Methos's side of the same story, so we get to see what Methos is up to when he vanishes from Joe's life. It's going to take longer, but it'll get to the same end point eventually.

Both of them involve Joe's loss of his legs, because being disabled is part of Joe's character, and erasing that makes me twitchy. And while it is definitely a running theme of the story, it's not the focus of Joe's character.

Caspian and Silas will both show up in the story, but Kronos only will show up if I do flashbacks, because that's technically the precipitating event of the AU, that Methos killed Kronos rather than shoving him down a dry well.

Not all things are tagged in the second story, but the tags will change as the story is posted, and the new tags will also be posted in the chapter notes so new chapters come with their tags readily visible.

It's a sunny morning, and that's a good thing after yesterday. It means I'm in a better mood today. Along with the hormones starting to settle out, because it's a red day finally.

Last night, there was a fire across the local highway in the well-fenced development there. By the time we noticed the smoke, there were already fire trucks lighting the place up in red and using water (we're pretty sure it was water) to get things under control. I haven't followed up looking for other information this morning, and I hope that anyone who was in there, and any pets if there were any, all got out safe. (Mom had alerted me after she saw the smoke and the lights, and we think it was a house that was on fire, because most of the area right here, on both sides of the local highway, is residential, and the non-residential stuff is all on the local highway itself.)

And, reporting on the efficacy of the latest experimental underwear! So far, so good. I'm going to wear this pair until this evening or until they're soaked through, whichever comes first. I need to know how long it takes until they're soaked through, so I know how many more pairs to make to get through a period. I have a towel down where I sit in case of leakage, but so far, they're fitting well (as expected), and they're not bunching badly (... which, the shorts sometimes do, this pair is rather shorter in the leg. And while I kinda want to alter the pattern further to remove the excess fabric, the problem with that is one of the problems with commercial underwear, which is digging in along the crease there, and leaving red welts even without latex. These are only just avoiding that as is.)

I did write a second post yesterday, but that one didn't get posted publically because, well. The gist of it is that I'm hitting a wall on emotional shit, particularly in being angry about things and being too exhausted to BE angry, especially when there is nothing I can do that is within my capabilities more than I already HAVE done. And that does include being visibly and publically angry about anything, when I am a very small person in the scheme of things, and being that kind of angry is exhausting and stressful and I'd like not to develop another spontaneous allergy just because things are a fucking mess. (It's going to be bad enough when the trees start throwing pollen in the air, and I can't even go out the door to the trash and recycle bins without a mask.)

I added more pretty colors to an organizational chart yesterday, because the pretty colors help me track things. As well as being pretty.

And that makes five things, and that makes a post.

It's a lovely sunny day this morning, and I keep forgetting that I am a solar driven critter, and how big a role having the actual sun out plays in my mood. In that yesterday was so many levels of nope on an overcast day after I think more than one overcast day. And this morning, while there's still hormones fucking with my mood and making it pretty difficult to cope with Sigdis yelling at me for food, I'm a lot more able to deal with other niggles.

Hopefully my period shows up a little early, still, because this month is not a good month, and I would like the hormones to please be done with me like now.

I hope everyone else is having a good day, and that you have good sleeps when you get there as well! :D

So I signed up for AP News Morning Wire on Thursday, and it delivered on Friday morning and this morning into my inbox, but not over the weekend. I need more than two datapoints, but if it is a thing that does not deliver on weekends, that's not a bad thing, because it means I have a clear "keep those days free of news for sanity" sign.

And this morning signed myself up for one of the newsletters from the Baltimore Sun, which gives me a relatively local news source that's generally reliable and unbiased, for state-level stuff. (For truly local, I've got no sources that are sufficiently both reliable and unbiased fact reporting over analysis or opinion.)

This morning's breakfast is oatmeal cooked up with garlic and butter and with piece of shrimp dropped in after (as the shrimp I get are thaw-and-eat, because least amount of effort for tasty shrimp). Other than cats in my face attempting to get some of it, it's a successful choice of breakfast.

Yesterday was spending a large chunk of the day cooking, and then not having the spoons for anything else. On the other hand, I have three weeks worth of lunches in the form of chicken something-like-curry that has enough to technically be two meals if I add rice.

Today was oatmeal for breakfast, and a bit much of it, so I'll have oatmeal for lunch too. (Steel-cut oats, honey, peaches, and butter with enough water to cook it all in the instant pot, then a good glug of heavy cream on top of it after. A bit of salt to enhance the flavors, and omnomnom.)

It's also very much a headphones/earbuds day because between yesterday's borrowing of spoons from today, and that it's hormone hell week, I'm very quickly driven to screaming frustration by... even tiny things. Like the pillows not staying where I put them while trying to make my bed. Or Sigdis being vocal. And. Yeah, I need to keep the outside sounds out, and whatever I can in the way of music to soothe, because I do not want to be that person. That's a scary person to be, and I don't like it.

Hopefully today will get better, and tomorrow won't be so fraught.

So I’ve just heard about today’s fuckery and excitement, and I. Am going to go back to sewing my proof-of-concept shorts for my period, which I had been until I called dad for unrelated reasons and heard about the excitement.

I am going to avoid tumblr, and probably news sites for the rest of today, because see above.