So predictably, I've been really into Yuri!!! on Ice.

( Yuri!!! on Ice Ramblings )

I think I need help. But it's so good, and I just can't stop...

And god help me if there's ever a second season... I have no idea what I'll do then.

Probably self-combust and die.

Seriously, aren't I too old for stuff like this??? But if anything, it's made me feel incredibly young lately... Still, I'm not sure that's a good or bad thing.

I called 911 for real a few weeks ago. For the first time.

I was at work and someone had collapsed. She had passed out and was lying on the ground like she was dead. I thought she was dead. Her husband was right next to her. They were an older Native American couple that I see around maybe once a month, or maybe once every couple of months.

The way he sounded when he called out her name, begging her not to do this to him and to wake up... I don't think I will ever forget how it sounded for the rest of my life. I've never heard such blind panic before.

So I grabbed my cell and I called 911, hoping to get help in time. Thankfully, she came back to during the phone call, but it was while I was relaying things back and forth with the operator and her husband that I found out she was in her early 60s (slightly older than my own father!!), and that they both had diabetes. The husband was afraid it was stroke or a heart attack, but when the paramedics came, they determined her blood pressure was good and that her heart rate was in the 30s and was what had made her pass out when she bent down to pick something up.

They thought there might be a blockage or something else that was causing the low heart rate and because it was bouncing back up to normal, they determined it was best if they took her to the hospital for further tests.

I have no idea if she's okay now. I hope she is. It would be a shame if something more happened to her.

What made me think of this now is that someone I knew moderately well just passed way along similar circumstances early this week. He was with his wife, shopping at a mall and had just had Mexican for lunch when he felt like he had some horrible heartburn. And then he collapsed right there. It was a heart attack. They tried shocking him, but it was too late. He didn't even make it to the hospital. And he was only 41.

It's crazy. I just saw him last week too. He seemed perfectly fine. I mean, he was morbidly obese so we all knew it probably wouldn't end well with him but none of us ever thought he would go this soon. I always assumed that once he retired, he would take better care of himself now that he had all this free time. And he retired less than half a year ago! He didn't even really get to enjoy his freedom! It's such a damn shame.

He left behind three daughters, two of which are still in high school... His own mother only passed away two years ago... *shakes head* Everything about this is depressing.

His funeral is on Sunday, which by some extreme coincidence, none of us can go to because Sunday is my niece's 100 Day party. It's been planned for weeks now and there's a ton of family and friends invited so it's not like we can get out of it.

And through all this, I can't but be selfish and think of myself, my own mortality, and of that of the people around me. It's sad and scary and I just don't know anything anymore... It just makes me want to hide away in my house and never come out again.

NaNoWriMo is over! Not too bad, I think!

I didn't finish my story. T_T

But I got really close! And much further than I have with any other story I've ever done with NaNoWriMo!

I have no idea if I will ever finish my story. Or post it should I ever finish... I'm half tempted to edit it in parts, post them up as I finish edit them and then that will force me to finish writing the story because then it'll be out there and people might actually want to finish reading it. But then again, I get scared that it's absolute crap (which is a distinct possibility) and it makes no sense and I'm going to get ripped apart by the reviews and then I reconsider ever even thinking about posting it out there...

Geez, things were a lot easier when you're a fearless kid... Now I'm old and I worry about everything...

You know what? I can't stand it. Knowing what I know, knowing what I lack, I find myself at a standstill...

Even though I committed to the next part of my story, this overwhelming feeling of unease is paralyzingly me. I know I can move on. I know what I wanted to do -- scenes that I planned to use are in still there, I just wanted to weave them through the established canon. Unfortunately, I'm just not able to do that now.

I want to write but I don't at the same time. I can't get over the fact that this feels very wrong to me. I write linearly -- one thing leads to another to another and it all builds on what went before. I don't skip to the good parts, I sludge through to get there. That's just the type of person I am.

So, I've decided to take today. I'll read up to volume 25. It'll take a while but I don't read that slow. And if I have time, maybe I can do some writing today... I don't type that slow but working with canon is always so going for me so who know how it'll go.

I feel slightly better about this but I'm still not totally okay with it. Usually, I'd like to ruminate on the canon , think of how I can work around it but I feel like this is really rushed. I don't think I can bring out the best as I am now. Or even after devouring several volumes at once. I probably should skip this section of my story anyway. At least I'll have it in my mind to work from instead of having this blank.

Oh man, I just don't know what to do. I've decided on something but is it the right thing to do? Am I overthinking this too much? This NaNo seriously is the most troublesome I've ever been in.

edit x1: You know what, I'll sleep when I'm dead. I'm going to make this work somehow...

NaNo went super smooth for me today.

Or so I thought.

And then I realized the anime sorta contradicts what I wrote since I was basing everything on the manga. I mean, I've seen half of the first season of Kuroko no Basket but I've read 20 volumes so all I really know is the manga. Unfortunately, the Tip Off special is in the latter half of the first season that I haven't watched yet. And it messes with my story.

So what should I do? Rewrite that part of the story? If I do, I'll have to reorder it as well. Timeline wise, the anime jumped around what was written in the manga so while I could make it work, it'll take a little finesse. And they added stuff too, and I kinda do what to put that in my story, but since that part of the anime is in Kise's PoV and my story is in Kuroko's, it'll take a little work there too. Plus, I'm not really sure it's all worth it to be truthful. I liked what I wrote. It fits with the manga. It's not bad. I'm almost loathed to lose it because for once, I'm actually somewhat satisfied with what I wrote. It's not all crap! Do you know how rare it is for me to feel that way about my own writing? I suppose I feel like if I change it, what I write now will inevitably be worse than it was before. But what if it's better?
I don't know what to do.

Trying to write a story that based on canon is hard when you have two sources of canon... And when they're slightly different from each other.

I know I should have finished the manga at the very least. And it would have been better if I had finished the anime too before November. But I didn't. And I'm still working on it. I need to get to volume 25 at the very least. That seems like a very important volume since it's basically all Teikou and how they all fell apart and it's essential for my story because that's where it all comes together for Kise and Kuroko... I have to get them together at that point. If I don't, then this story is meaningless and I've failed to tell my story. OTL

I'm feeling kinda lost here. Rewrite? Add extra content? Should I push myself to match up with the anime canon? Does it even matter? Maybe I should think about this after November... They do tell you not to edit, right? Ignore the inner editor... But ugh, if it wasn't a canon issue, I would feel much better about this. I don't like stories that take place in canon to take a lot of liberties. And based on that special episode I just watched, I took a lot of liberties. o.O

So how can I ignore this?

And seriously, I felt so good about the 3K I wrote today too... I made it to 20K words total, I didn't hate what I wrote, I got to a good place in my story... And then this had to happen. It's so sad, it's funny.

OTL

NaNoWriMo, you continue to frustrate the hell out of me. Even when things are good, they're still bad.

Ever have one of those dreams that stick with you, even days after you had it? I never did. My best dreams and my worst dreams never linger more than the day I had them. I vaguely remember some of them now...dreams about teeth falling out are very freaky and driving when I was too young to drive tend to stick with me. And actually, I think both of them have the same sort of dream meaning -- things out of my control / me feeling out of control in my life...

Anyway, a few days ago, I had this awful dream. It started off innocently. I was using Find My iPhone to track my mother's cell phone. She was out with my siblings and we (me and my dad) were wondering where they were and when they would come home... Apparently in my dream, Find My iPhone has a function where you can turn on the camera and see and hear everything around the phone. My brother was driving on one of those elevated freeways and they were apparently in a traffic jam. And for some reason, there were no borders and all of a sudden, the cars around my brother's car started surging and they pushed one of the other cars off the freeway, sending it crashing down. The horror and fear in my brother's voice when he realized what happened is something that is still freaking me out. I've never even heard that voice before so I have no idea where my subconscious got it from... He kept yelling for someone to call 911 but before anyone could do so, everyone stuck in that traffic jam started to freak out and all started to move, trying to get away from that horrible fate happening to them. Of course, this causes more cars to be jolted off the freeway, one of them being my brother's car. All the while, with me and my dad watching it on the iPad. And the broken sound that came from my father as he realized his wife and two of his kids were probably dead was another sound I will never get out of my mind.

It was so horrifying... And of course, I woke immediately up from that dream, completely shaken. I was wide awake, and I felt like I never wanted to fall asleep again because that dream would be waiting for me... *shudders* And now I can't shake it. My mind keeps slipping towards it and because I'm actively trying to forget it, that just sends me back to thinking about it.

I really wish I could just have my good dreams. Why a nightmare? :( It's just not cool. And I don't even have nightmares generally. I think I've had a handful in the past decade. It's been several years since I even had a nightmare so maybe I was due? I just wish it wasn't so awful...

So, it's football season again. Week three just started with a rather dismal showing from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (I stopped watching in the 3rd, which considering it was 42-0 at that point, was probably too long to have kept watching) and my Seahawks have lost their first game of the season.

And I've started watching Friday Night Lights on Netflix. It's not really my thing, the football thing aside. It's set in Texas, probably my most hated state, it's about Middle America, which isn't my favorite demographic, it's South with a capital S... But it does have Kyle Chandler whom I adored in Early Edition and it has Jason Katims on production who does Parenthood. And I've always heard good things about and everybody knows how it survived multiple cancellations... It's practically legendary. And it is about football. So I decided to give it a try.

And then today, I get to the episode where it becomes clear Matt's grandmother is suffering from dementia. She wanders out, got lost, went into someone else's home and started taking a bath. She then gets discovered by the family who lives in the house in question and gets escorted home in a police car in tears, all the while her grandson is frantically combing the neighborhood trying to find his grandmother.

The whole thing was enough to make me stop watching. I started tearing up and then they became actual tears and I was struck by a wave of emotion.

It's been over a year since my grandmother died. Actually, it's been a year and one month. And I still seem to be affected by it. Is that normal? Shouldn't I be less emotional about it now? Having lived through a grandparent having dementia, being responsible for them, making sure they ate and took their meds, I'm not really sure I want to continue watching. Because if it's anything I know about dementia, it's that it always gets worse. And just when you think it's gotten bad enough, it'll get even worse. Seeing Matt deal with all of that, alone, doesn't sound all too fun to me.

Maybe I should just stick to watching real football games... But there's only football four days in a week... Five if you count high school, but really, I don't care all that much about high school football. At least there's a narrative when it's fictionalized... :\

I think it's been months since I last wrote anything in my LJ. I keep meaning to, but then I get lazy, or tired, and I decide to do something else instead. And ever since my fanfic reading has moved away from LJ to AO3, I've been hanging out more and more there than I do here which doesn't help things.

Anyway, a quick update. Right now I'm constantly tired. I always feel like I'm in need of a nap. Most of it is due to the fact that there are way too many things to watch right now -- the World Cup, Wimbledon, summer cable TV has started up and it seems like the big network channels have followed suit (somewhat) in the last few years giving us short summer series too... And add on to it, I've started watching Pokemon from the very first episode, in order. They have all of the episodes online to stream so it makes it easy. I think I got through almost 200 of the episodes before the World Cup started. I'll be going back once it's over but damn, there are a lot of Pokemon episodes out there! I remember watching up through the Orange League back when I was a teenager, which apparently is just a drop in the ocean...

What it has done is make me really into Pokemon. God, they're so freaking cute. I want plushies of all of them, but especially some of my favorite ones (Charmander, Pikachu, Slowpoke, Psyduck) and they can get so tiny and adorable that I want to spend all my money on importing them from Japan...

And it makes me want to play the games again... I stopped playing after the Black/White 2 series simply because XY was on the 3DS and I still only have a DS Lite... But now I want to buy myself a 3DS and Pokemon X (although I kinda want Y too...), and that's sorta insane, right? I didn't even get that far in White 2, mostly because most of my gaming now is done on either my phone (Android) or on the iPad, which seems easier? My DS Lite certainly has gotten much less love the last year or two than it has in any other time since I got it... :\ But still, I'm tempted.

Another thing that's been happening lately is that for the first time in a few years, my allergies went into overdrive. It was insane. I was sneezing all the time, and despite being stuffed up, I was blowing my nose constantly because of how much mucus was in my nose. It was super gross. At times, it felt like I couldn't breath, or rather, it was hard to draw a deep breath. I had that happen before but it usually didn't last as long or was as bad as it was this year. And it was affecting my sleep, so that also made me super tired. I kept waking up from it, which was not fun. And once awake, it was hard to fall back asleep with the brightness of the morning sun on me. The sun comes up so freaking early this time of year (before 5 AM even!) and while I never used to have a problem falling asleep with light, now I'm not so great with it. Or maybe I just dealt with bad sleep better when I was younger. I don't know, I just know that I sleep a bit better when it's completely dark.

Anyway, I turned to a nasal rinse to ease my suffering, which was something I never thought I would do. It's like the neti pot, except instead of using that, I use a squeeze bottle full of saline that uses a bit of pressure to get up into my sinuses and out the other nostril... It's a bit like trying to drown yourself. At first, I wasn't really leaning forward enough and it kept coming out of my mouth so that wasn't fun. It's salty and when it goes out your mouth, it also is going down your throat and I have a sensitive stomach and a super strong gag reflex. Suffice to say, it made me throw up a bit in the beginning. But I kept up with it and eventually, I got to a point where I could do it pretty easy. The trick really is to lean forward as much as you can, while tilting your head as much as you can. That keeps the saline from flowing anywhere but where it's supposed to go. For some reason though, it's a lot easier when I do my right nostril and harder from my left. I have no idea why that is though... It did seem to work. I wasn't able to stop taking my antihistamines, but I was less drippy, which is really nice.

Fast forward to this week and I finally feel like I'm to a normal allergy season. My symptoms are still there but it's not as bad as it was and is about as bad as it normally is in the past few years.

And to deal with the sleep issue, I bought myself a sleeping mask. I've become one of those people who sleep with a mask on. I never thought I could and that first couple of nights was a bit rough (I don't think I ever went into REM sleep because I felt half awake the entire time I was "sleeping") but I started to get used to it around the beginning of the second week. Now, it doesn't bother me. I can fall asleep with it and I can mostly stay asleep with it on the entire time. Sometimes I wake up in the morning before I'm supposed to be awake and I tug it off, but that happens far less frequently than it did in the beginning. I was a bit surprised at how it generally stays on my head all night unless I pull it off myself. I suppose I always thought it would fall off while I move in the middle of the night but then again, I've never been much of a mover while I slept... When it comes to sleep, I'm an extremely light sleeper (unless I'm absolutely exhausted), a rather still one, and I tend to wake up in the middle of the night regardless of allergies (although allergies makes it much worse). I suppose my light sleeping has something to do with that too... But at least the mask seems to help with that... The only problem thus far seems to be the fact that it's harder to wake up with it on. I don't know how much that is to do with the fact that I haven't been getting enough sleep lately, but on the odd days that I do, I still end up having that problem... And it takes me a bit longer to fully wake up in the mornings. I feel like a zombie much longer than I generally do...

Right now I'm watching Nishikori Kei play Bolelli. It's a replay since I didn't get to see it live. Play had still been suspended due to rain when I went to sleep and I really didn't want to stay up watching Nadal play whomever he played (he had been down but then started to steamroll over his opponent when I finally went to sleep) until play resumed on the outer courts again. If it had resumed because at that point, I had no idea if they would get any more play on the courts. Plus, the soccer match between Brazil and Chile had been in a few hours and I wanted to at least get some sleep before that match. In the end, I watched Brazil luckily win with penalty kicks against a pretty good Chile team and I'm once again, sleep deprived.

This Nishikori match though, it's a bit worrying. I'm at the point where Bolelli is leading 5-4 in the fourth set, two sets to one, and after losing Li Na a few days ago, I really want the last Asian player I'm rooting for to make it but damn Bolelli's service games are so freaking good. For a lucky loser, he's playing really well! And to make matters worse for me, I find out that Serena has been upset to. :\ That freaking sucks. It's like everyone I'm supporting are dropping like flies in the 3rd round. Or even earlier like with Sloane Stephens... I can only hope I have better luck with the US Men's National Team but I'm not sure how far they can make it... I think they can beat Belgium but really, who knows with these things? I mean Brazil almost lost today, and there are people biting other people. Soccer is super unpredictable...

Okay, I'm going to try and toughen out the rest of this match and then I'm gonna take that nap that I've been putting off. I can only hope I don't fall asleep while watching it...

So...generally, I am about 125 lbs. I would prefer to be around 120, but I don't mind being 120. A few years ago, I was around 115, which was when I was at my most emaciated (due to various reasons I don't really want to go into, mostly because it's embarrassing and slightly too personal). I realize, for my height, it's still on the normal BMI side of things even if it was extremely close to underweight. But in the last six months, I've gone up to 130 lbs.

I'm not a girl who generally worries about her weight. Or takes special care in diets or minds what they eat. I eat what I want, when I want. But around the time my grandmother passed away, I started to comfort eat, and it's slowly spiraled out of control. I need to preface that with "for me," since I realize for lots of other people, Americans especially, spiraling out of control with food means people gaining a lot of weight very fast, and five pounds is probably nothing to worry about since I'm still firmly in the normal weight category, but for me, it feels like I'm ten pounds from my target weight. Also, I discovered bacon, which in the past, was something I just didn't eat -- too fatty, too salty, kinda gross. But apparently my tastebuds have changed and I've joined the world in the belief that bacon make everything better. Because it can.

The problem is that now that I've gotten into the habit of eating more (snacks in the middle of the night, right before bed, in between meals...) and eating bad stuff like bacon, I can't seem to restrain myself. I just get hungry. And then I want to eat. And how can you not eat when you're hungry because you're hungry! You make plans when you're not hungry to not reach for the crackers or chips, but then you become hungry and all those plans fly out of the window. I can see why people fail at diets. :\

My pants have gotten too tight. If that's not a warning sign, I don't know what is. I feel kinda shallow for even worrying about the whole thing because I should be happy with my weight. I'm not obese. I'm not even overweight. I'm sure there are tons of girls out there who wish they had my body size. People still call me tiny but that's only because I'm Asian and when you compare me to an average American, yeah, okay, I'm smaller than them. But I'm larger than what seems like is the typical Asian girl so it still feels like I weight too much.

Sometimes I wonder if I haven't just been brainwashed by the media to believe weigh too much. But I counter that with the knowledge that I know my own body and I know what I weight I should be. Is this just a symptom of getting older? Do we just get fatter and bigger? I haven't had children so I feel like there shouldn't be major changes in my weight. My metabolism is slowing down, majorly, that I cannot deny. How do people deal with that? Do they just change their eating habits? Do they eat less? Don't change and gain weight? Is that what normally happens? If so, I'm not sure I like that...

Right now I just figure the only thing I can do is eat healthier snacks. If I'm going to eat, and who am I kidding, I'm going to eat, I might as well be eating fruit rather than junk food... *shrugs* I figure that at least, will manage things for now. I'm not sure it'll make a dent in my weight; I suspect I'll have to go back to my old eating habits for that to happen... That'll be my next project. That and probably the dreaded "E" word... *shudders*