Well, it's done. I finished writing it at 2:15 am today.

I started writing it in July of 1996. In the time since, I went through four jobs, several boyfriends, one failed engagement, one almost engagement, one successful engagement and marriage, and gained three wonderful step-children as well as having two of my own. I also made lots of friends along the way.

The fact that I finally managed to complete it after a years-long haitus is due completely to the steady stream of encouragement I received through emails, LJ comments and fanart. To all of you, thanks so much. I hope the end of the story brings you as much satisfaction as it did to me.

http://www.akane.org/heartsofice

For the past 3+ years, I, a Movie Lover(tm), have made the supreme sacrifice of not going to see any of the movies I want to see in the theater because I have a baby -- now a baby and a toddler -- and no babysitter.

Then, when I finally manage to ditch the kids with the hubby (we've basically given up on being able to see a movie together until the kids are grown) and take off to see Star Trek with my step-daughter, a family of six parks themselves on the same row we're sitting on, and lo and behold! They have brought along their three year old, their 2 year old, and their infant. All very noisy. At one point during the movie, the 2 year old tries to escape my direction. I put up my leg so he can't slip by me, but it is still a seeming-eternity before the parents notice that he's missing from their little party and remove him from trying to climb over my leg. Granted, at least he was quietly trying to escape, and was only succeeding because his parents were preoccupied with the noisy ones.

Seriously. I can't be the only parent of little ones who is polite enough to not inflict them on fellow movie-goers. It is Not Cool.

Check out my handsome boy. He's getting so big!



( More under the cut )

In other news, after 8 years of nothing, I wrote 15 pages of Hearts of Ice in the past 2 days. Still going.

If it seems like I've fallen off the edge of the earth, it's because I never get to use my computer these days. It is the best computer in the house and it's been taken over by the rest of the family, especially my husband. The only reason I'm using it now is because everyone else is gone to a family function that I am unable to attend because baby Kurt is sick, poor little guy. He's taking a nap now, so I'm using this spare moment of time to let y'all know I'm still alive and kicking, and everything is pretty much okay all around.

And now, a video of Morganne and her Uncle Kurt dancing. Apologies to Matt (http://www.wherethehellismatt.com).




Morganne improvs a song and dance. I don't know whether to be amused or worried about this kid's love of the stage.

The past few weeks I keep having a recurring dream that, out of the blue, I realize I own a kitten that I've completely fogotten about for at least a month or so. I also realize that this whole time the kitten has been trapped in a room that nobody ever enters, without food and water, and has undoubtedly starved to death. And I'm too afraid to finally enter the room for fear of finding the remains of the kitten that died because of my neglect.

I always wake up crying.

I have no doubt that these dreams are the result of my immense feelings of guilt over Mr. Cake's death that have yet to lessen even after eight months. He died alone in the night, shut in a small bathroom because he was sick and peeing all over everything, and because I trusted that the medicine the vet prescribed would help him get better, and because I didn't know how sick he really was.

I should have taken him to the vet sooner. I should have cared more about his comfort than the state of my stupid furniture. I should have stayed with him that night. I should have been there for him. He was the sweetest cat ever and he deserved better than to die alone.

I thought he was asleep when I opened the bathroom door that morning. I knelt down to pet him and he was cold and stiff and I thought I would die right there. That moment haunts me. I've tried to block it out just so I can move on and stop grieving, and the result is that it's now haunting my dreams.

So this is my confession. I don't expect absolution and I don't think my feelings of guilt will ever go away. But maybe after finally confronting my feelings for what they are after all this time... maybe at least the dreams will stop.

I just watched The Metropolitain Opera's production of Doctor Atomic on PBS. I love opera, and I was thrilled to learn that the Met is producing several HD opera specials that will be shown on PBS. It's probably the closest I'll ever get to actually going to the Met.

Having said that... Doctor Atomic sucked.

The music... ugh. Take a note, and then imagine the next note as the most awkward sound that could possibly come after, and that was the entire score. The lyrics? A mishmash of poetry and Native American folk songs (often hilariously inappropriate or just completely off the wall). The only decent lyrics were taken from recordings and letters of actual Manhattan Project scientists, and even those were unintentionally humorous at times.

The only scene I actually enjoyed on its own merit was when one of the scientists intentionally terrorizes reporters on the eve of the first atomic test, speculating that the bomb might ignite the atmosphere and destroy the world. He was altogether too gleeful about the prospect.

The poor guy who played the General had an aria dedicated to how he needed to go on a diet, but couldn't lose weight because he liked chocolate too much. That was his big moment. Let's just say it's not the kind of aria I would expect to hear at a Three Tenors concert (were all Three Tenors still alive to have a concert again).

But the very worst was the guy who played Oppenheimer. Don't get me wrong, the man has talent. He's got a great voice.

But he looks almost exactly like Dan Aykroyd in Ghostbusters. In fact, he spends most of the opera with a look on his face that makes you think he just accidentally summoned the Stay-Puff Marshmallow man. When he sings about playing with the power over life and death, I kept expecting Bill Murray to walk on stage and say, "Oppenheimer, when someone asks if you're a god, you say YES!"

Overall, it was pretty much watching the proverbial train wreck.

Here's hoping that at least one of the Met's PBS specials is better than that. I'd kill to see Mozart, Puccini, Wagner... heck, anybody but that John Adams schmuck.

Happy Birthday, Michelle! ^_^

Currently coming down off a double shot of morphine after a nice trip to the emergency room and a CT scan revealed two big ol' kidney stones trying to pass my right kidney, and a bunch of little ones having a party in my left. The doctor told me to be sure to take the Percoset he prescribed me before the morphine wears off, and to make an appointment with the urologist he recommended first thing Monday morning.

Wheee.

Incidentally, having recently gone through a vaginal birth, I can say in all honesty that kidney stones hurt more. The pain is excruciating and relentless. At least in labor the contractions ease up a bit now and then to let you catch your breath.

Three of them have been caught. Two more are holding out.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=4482461

This is what gets me.

The home invasion happened around 2 a.m. in a home in northeast Orem, not near the site of the standoff. Police say the suspects entered the home through an unlocked door. Five people in the home were assaulted with a baseball bat as they lay in their beds.

A handgun was also pointed at the back of the victims' heads as they were forced to kneel in a circle in the front room and threatened with death while the other two suspects gathered electronic equipment from the home and demanded drugs and money.


Police don't believe this is a random act, although the suspects may have gotten the wrong home.

Police have found the car the suspects were driving and all the stolen property, including the bloody bat and handgun.

I didn't know about the gun. I'm glad I didn't know about it until now.

Can't tell you how freaking relieved I am that they are on the verge of being apprehended.

So last night at around 4:30 am, my cell phone rang. It was the police. My cell phone was, at that moment, in the possession of my oldest step daugher who had lost her cell phone that evening while at dinner with her boyfriend. She had called the police to report it possibly stolen, and they had been calling back and forth to get more information at a ridiculously late hour. I told Audrey to take my phone with her when she went to bed so that it wouldn't wake me up if she got a call about it in the middle of the night.

She got a call from the police, but it wasn't about the lost cell phone.

When she answered, some lady was saying, "Krista, don't panic. Are you alone in the house?" Audrey, ever unflappable, got irritated trying to explain that she wasn't me, and that no, she wasn't alone in the house, while eventually learning that there were about six cop cars outside and the police wanted permission to enter. She went downstairs and let them in.

So after sleeping through all of this, I awake to Audrey in my bedroom informing Mike and me that there are a bunch of cops downstairs who need to talk to us. What a way to wake up.

We go downstairs and the cops inform us that they have reason to believe that there might be fugitives hiding in our house. Apparently they broke into a house several blocks north of where we live, beat the occupants up with a baseball bat, robbed them, and escaped in a van. The cops chased them, lost them in our neighboorhood, but their abandoned car was parked behind our row of townhomes, and a trail of dropped stolen goods and alcohol led directly to our back glass sliding door. Which, incidentally, has a broken lock, and nobody bothered to put the stick in the runner.

So Mike grabbed Morganne, and I grabbed the baby. Fortunately, Michael and Cc are at their mom's house at the moment. So the rest of us got to stand out in the street in pajamas and bare feet with several police officers in the middle of the night while several other police officers searched our home with guns drawn.

Mike asked if they were sure the vehicle in back belonged to the criminals. The cops said yes, because the bloody bat and the stolen merchandise were still inside.

For a while after that, the words "bloody bat" kept echoing in my head.

Eventually the cops came out of the house, declaring it safe. They concluded that the criminals didn't actually enter the house, but hid in our back patio area until they saw a chance to escape. Which they did. Escape, that is.

So the cops told us to go back inside and go to bed and get some sleep.

Yeah right.

Eventually I did fall asleep. I dreamed about bloody baseball bats. Mike reached out to touch me at one point and I nearly jumped out of my skin waking up.

This morning once the sun was up, Mike went outside and found a boot print in the mud by our fence, and called the police to let them know about it.

I'm going to go have lunch with my mom and try to chill the hell out now.

Dr. Horrible -> http://www.drhorrible.com/

Evil League of Evil -> http://evilleagueofevil.com/

My application to the Evil League of Evil -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ9HJomyiqQ

Enjoy, and wish me luck. :)

Not putting this baby picture behind the cut, sorry. :)

Happy Monday, everyone.

Kurt Karl Fisk was born Friday, August 8, 2008 (Yes, 8/8/08 - how awesome is that?) at 1:58 pm. He weighed 8 lbs 12 oz, and is 21" long. He's strong and healthy, there were no complications, and I'm recovering. So sleep deprived that I fell asleep four times in mid-sentence while trying to read "Hop on Pop" to Morganne this morning. But other than that, pretty dang ecstatic. :)

1. Pick 15 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie. Or from your own memory.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search functions.
5. Strike it out or italicize when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
6. Those who guess correctly have to do the Meme next.

( Quotes under the cut )

Had my 20 week ultrasound today (though I'm more like 22 weeks now).

Morganne's getting a little brother. ^_^

All day I've been paying attention to an Amber Alert about a 7 1/2 year old girl who went missing last night while playing outside her apartment in Salt Lake City.

Her body was found in a neighbor's bathroom around 7 pm tonight. Five people were arrested. Five people.

All this a little over 3 blocks away from where my sister and 7 1/2 year old niece live.

And then there's this little gem from an earlier story: "Police are doing searches of the complex, as well as searches of cars. They are also interviewing registered sex offenders in the area. So far, they've interviewed 40 of them, and today 45 officers are doing another immediate search of the area."

What the hell. 40 freaking sex offenders in the area? So far? What the hell?!

Really, really wishing my sister could move away from that area.

Now I'm going to hug my little girl and try not to worry about all the real monsters hiding under human facades out there.

Just because I'm having a really hard day missing Mr. Cake and this picture cheered me up.