Today’s been crap.

Well, for the most part, it’s been sleep. You guessed it, folks… another one of my sleepy days. I slept all morning and all afternoon and when I finish this blog entry, I will likely sleep some more.

Paying off that sleep debt. Payback’s a bitch.

And the thing is, my problem isn’t insomnia… I sleep more or less normally. It’s hyposomnia… the sleep I get sucks. I am doing nothing for my sleep apnea and it shows.

I feel so overwhelmed lately. I got the whole hard copy edition of my book thing going (still not available… it’s kind of a process), I got the stress of dealing with all the various potential avenues of expression on the Cracked forums (rejoined the Writer’s Workshop there, trying to figure out how to pitch a skit), been having mood issues, and to top it all off, I haven’t done any Xmas shopping yet.

I just can’t seem to get started on that.

I was hoping to get at least some of that shit done today, but instead, I slept. Maybe on some level that was to escape the stress, I don’t know. But I do know that I feel very cold and alone and abandoned lately, and I know damned well that it isn’t due to anything being wrong in my exterior world.

But I feel like I’m in a never-ending boxing match with my inner demons and I am starting to feel very… bruised.

Luckily, the rage that is my pilot light remains. My anger against my depression and its restrictions is not and cannot be extinguished no matter how hard it rains.

It’s just the weather.

So my grim determination to keep fighting remains. Even if I lose a few rounds, I will keep fighting.

Because honestly… FUCK my depression. Fuck it to death in a million pieces. I want it to die screaming and bleeding to death as it drowns. When it comes to fighting my depression, I’m a suicide bomber.

Wait, that sounds wrong.

My point is, I am fully dedicated to the fight. Any time I feel tired or bruised, I can just remember the rage and hate that I kept locked away and ignored for so long, and remember that I have a perfectly valid and deserving target for it : my depression, and all the bullshit, weakness, and lost life that comes with it.

So I ride the rage. Sure, sometimes it makes me want to smash the monitor with my keyboard, but that’s just excess heat. As long as it keeps me attacking the depression, both on a purely psychological level and in action, doing things like baking and putting my book up for sale and pushing forward in my campaign to invade and dominate the Cracked forums. (Fora?)

Of course, the ultimate goal of said invasion would be to become a staff writer for Cracked. I would kick ass writing comedy for them. I would need some help, at least at first, with the research aspect of writing their more fact oriented articles, though. I am not exactly keen on or good at research. I don’t have a clue how they come up with their fact lists. I can only assume that for some people, it’s easy, because they have reams and reams of well organized information in their heads, so they can just get an idea in their heads for an article and then think up six examples of it and there you are.

But my mind doesn’t work that way. I have loads and loads of information in my head, but it’s not organized in a way that lets me think of examples. And it’s not things like history or strange trivia either, although there’s some of both in there too.

Like I have said before, I don’t have any single large, deep bodies of knowledge. I have tons of little puddles. That’s why I do so well in general knowledge trivia, but totally flare out and crash when things get more specific.

So what I really need is a research partner. They make the list, I make it funny. I’m great at that!

As for Xmas shopping, hopefully I will get started on that tonight or tomorrow. At the moment, I feel relatively well rested. I might nap a little more, but I have some energies at my disposal at least.

Plus, I have yet to bake today, and I am all out of dessert, and tomorrow is my day off from baking, so…. gotta refill the cookie jar or whatnot tonight,

Last night’s experiment went… strangely. I made this : and instead of a cake, I ended up with a tasty flatbread.

I knew something was up when I had done all the steps to make the batter, and there was barely anything there. I looked at the batter, looked at my new round cake pan, and said “OK, there is not nearly enough substance here. ”

And I was right. Even fully cooked, it didn’t even fill a quarter of the pan. And what topological complexity it had coming out of the oven disappeared as it cooled, so it was basically just a big flat pancake.

Granted, I did experiment a little. I used caramel extract instead of lemon. But that’s a flavouring question. I am pretty sure neither would be part of the chemistry of the baking process.

Oh well, it was a very tasty pancake. The caramel tasted quite nice in there. But I have deleted the bookmark for the recipe. I prefer my cake recipes to result in cake.

Tonight, I think I will try the caramel thing again, but this time, I will use a highly reliable white cake recipe. And if I am feeling ambitious, I will even make frosting for it.

Or at least a glaze. Let’s not go crazy here.

That’s all my words for today, folks. I will talk to you nice people tomorrow!

Caramel cake with a maple glaze? Hmmmm…..