Category Archives: Boring

Desire and determination

29 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by in Boring, NaNo

≈ 4 Comments

From Judy in the comments: “Motivation is shit when you think about it. It’s fleeting, inconsistent, and unreliable. Commitment. That’s what it takes. Make the decision to better yourself every single day. Don’t rely on motivation, rely on your desire and determination to not stay where you are.” Runningmandz

Yesterday was a 3000 word count day. All the words were terrible. Some of them were a rant about how much I was hating writing and how much I was hating the book I was working on. Some of them were a feeble attempt to write a different book, which, it turned out, I Hated just as much as the real one. (I have no idea why my fingers randomly capitalized hated in that previous sentence, but I’m leaving it even though it’s wrong because it amuses me. Yes, my hate yesterday was worth of capital letters.) But I really tried to keep my fingers moving. As of today, I need to write 11,500 words in the next two days. I am willing to accept absolutely any words as an element of this goal, no matter how bad they are, despite the fact that realistically, that’s kind of stupid.

What’s the point in writing a lot of bad words? Except the point is something to do with motivation, with setting a goal and achieving it. Even if all the words are terrible words, if I’ve written fifty thousand of them in a month, I will have accomplished something. Admittedly, not the something that it would have been good to accomplish, namely finishing the first draft of A Gift of Grace. Even if it was 20,000 words, it would be better to have a solid first draft at the end of the month then a ton of unusable words. But persistence, commitment, desire and determination — as long as I keep opening up that damn file every day, I will get there in the end. Seriously, yesterday was close to giving up again, though. I have thousands of words that are basically just trying to find the next scene and no understanding of why it’s being so difficult. I feel like it should be straightforward — Noah’s got a job and is working until Akira gets back, what’s complicated about that? — but it feels super murky middle.

I suspect my real issue is that I want a lot of time to pass in the book, months ideally, and that is never my strong suit. The best I’ve ever done with that — oh, ha, the ONLY time I’ve ever done that — is “six weeks later” as the starting of the seduction scene in A Gift of Ghosts. That is literally the only time I’ve ever made significant time pass in a story. Well. Huh. Perhaps I’ve just realized why I’m spinning my wheels. That’s a useful accomplishment, go, blog post writing. But all my other books take place in literally days. In fact, I think I can go back to a blog post I was writing in the midst of Ghosts where I discuss my exact inability to make time pass. It has a name, narrative something-or-other, and apparently I still haven’t mastered the skill.

Moving on, at dinner last night, I took a break and read — well, skimmed, really — a classic Josephine Tey novel, Brat Farrar. What I wanted to read was a Ngaio Marsh mystery, having recently been reminded of those books. But unfortunately, the ebook versions that exist of Ngaio Marsh are ridiculously expensive. I hope her heirs are at least the people making the profits of those books, but I suspect it’s just a publisher. There’s a whole ocean of books that would be nice to have as ebooks — Ngaio Marsh and Agatha Christie, old Dick Francis, Elswyth Thane, Elsie Lee… — but the publisher wouldn’t have the ebook rights in the contract, since the books predate computers, giving them no motivation to make electronic editions without new contracts.

And as a business opportunity for an outsider, it’s probably risky. You’d need a good lawyer, the original contracts, clear owners of the copyrights, all for sales that might wind up being trivial. When I think about that way, it’s more obvious why Ngaio Marsh’s ebooks should be $9 each. But still, I wasn’t willing to pay. Instead, I found the Project Gutenberg library and Josephine Tey and read Brat Farrar for free. It was very soothing. The world in the book is peaceful — well, despite having a psycho murderer in it — but serene and friendly and warm. Darkness is there, all around, with tragic deaths and past wars and death duty taxes, but the sun still shines golden on the hills and riding a horse can be a sublime experience. It didn’t make me less discouraged with my own book, but it did remind me that I can relax and take my time and have some scenes that are just there to be pleasant. I don’t know what kind of crazy standard I’m trying to write to, but I think for today being reminded to take my time is a good thing.

And these words are feeling very incoherent, not to mention rambling, but that’s okay. Given that I need to write 6000 words today — a number that makes me roll my eyes — a few rambling words to begin with are probably good for me. The real issue with that ridiculous word count goal is that I’m bringing R back to his ride to school. For me, it’s a great deal. Instead of a five hour drive to bring him all the way to Sarasota, it’s a two hour drive. Hours of time saved, excellent. But on a day when I aspire to write thousands upon thousands of words, and even more hope that at least a few of them will be good and usable words, chopping out a couple hours in the middle of the day is sort of unfortunate. Of course, that’s the whole deal with NaNo in November, anyway. Losing a couple days to cooking a big dinner is not so efficient, although if I wasn’t the cook, having the holidays would probably be really nice to increase my word count. I bet a lot of writers with full-time jobs pack their Black Fridays with words, words, and more words.

Anyway, the real issue with losing time to the drive is not so much the drive, but the coming home to an empty house. It’s so nice to have R here. I still wind up spending a lot of my time cloistered away at my computer, but when I wander out to the kitchen, I enjoy the company and the conversation. I suspect that when I return to the empty house, I will have to go through a period of being sad before I can settle my head back into Tassamara.

However, that gives me a new goal — to finish Grace before he comes home again for Christmas. It would be so extraordinarily nice to have a final draft of this book completed. At this point, having spent over a year working on it, it’s almost impossible to imagine. It’s the book from hell. It will never end, it will never make sense, I will always have dozens of paragraphs (good paragraphs) that simply don’t fit in anywhere at all… how’s that for pessimistic? Yesterday, when I was trying to get the new version of ALM finalized, I wound up organizing some files and I found some great scenes from Grace that I wrote a while ago. Truly, great scenes. Unfortunately, completely USELESS because I went in a different direction when I wrote and they no longer make sense, but they were very well-written. *sigh*

Okay, time to stop whining. There are two more days left in November and I have the desire and the determination to use them wisely. Waiting for meaning to spring full-blown into my imagination hasn’t been working, so instead I’ll be pouring out the words as fast as my fingers can move and hoping that eventually all my babble will start cohering into something meaningful. Or fun, anyway.

I believe this post gets the Boring tag. Someday soon I will be updating Goodreads with all the books that I’ve read in November — a list that includes the entire Finishing School series by Gail Carriger, the entire Paladin’s Legacy series by Elizabeth Moon, and alas, some other library books that I already don’t remember. Drat. Yeah, Overdrive was both a good and a bad discovery for me. But if I don’t reach 50,000 words (not that I’m giving up — I’ve got 38 hours left!), I sure will have read a lot of books — at least 15 in November, not counting the ones that I didn’t write down, so probably closer to 20. Maybe I should have called it National Novel Reading Month instead of Writing Month? That would have worked better for me.

Gah, I should not have wasted the past twenty minutes on Goodreads. No time for reviewing books! On to writing. And still thinking positive — I can do this, really I can! Desire and determination, that’s all we need, right?

Edited to add: I went looking for the narrative something-or-other post and it’s called narrative summary. My post was nothing special, except for the link to Patricia Wrede’s site where she usefully explains different aspects of the technique. It’s worth a read.

Winter

14 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by in Bartleby, Boring, NaNo

≈ 2 Comments

Winter has finally arrived. My neighbor was out putting blankets over his bushes, which I assume means that it might even freeze tonight. I haven’t bothered to look that up, of course, nor will I make any effort to save my bushes, but I don’t think he was doing it to dress up the house.

Given that it’s the middle of November, I suppose it’s about time, but it was really nice to get to swim so long. Summer swimming was pretty miserable this year, because it rained so much and so long. If I hadn’t swum by about 10AM, chances were that I wouldn’t get to swim at all until late August. One can, of course, swim in the rain, but in Florida, rain generally comes accompanied by thunder and lightning and swimming with possibility of lightning is a no-no. I assume if the pool gets hit by lightning while you’re in it, you basically get cooked, but I have never looked it up.

Huh. Now I have a gory fascination with the idea. Off I go to google… well, I did not find any graphic descriptions of people dead from swimming during lightning storms, but definite internet consensus that yeah, it’s stupid to swim outside during a storm and yeah, the lightning will kill you if it hits the pool.

Side note: why do we call them thunderstorms when the thunder is meaningless? Noticeable, of course, but lightning storm feels so awkward and yet the lightning is the dangerous part of the storm. Storm alone could, of course, simply mean heavy rain and wind, so I understand the need to clarify that we’re talking about electricity, but I think its strange that we think the thunder is the meaningful part.

Ahem. Moving on! B was a very good dog at the vet yesterday. He had many things done — blood drawn, his ears cleaned, an ultrasound, a biopsy of the liver — and apparently he was well-behaved throughout, even when he was getting his ears cleaned. I assume they put a… whatever their fancy name is for a muzzle… on him because he has a clear notation at the top of the file warning the tech that he may not be so nice. But he was nice. I’m proud of him, but it’s funny to try to explain to your dog that you’re proud of him for behaving well. B gets that I’m talking to him and paying attention to him and thinks that means he should try to lick my face a lot, which disrupts the glow of good behavior pretty thoroughly. Still, two years ago, he would growl and snap and try to bite, so having the vet tech tell me he was a sweetheart pleased me in the same way that parent-teacher conferences used to please me.

Words… well, didn’t do much yesterday. I did make it to some understanding of why I’m stuck, but I didn’t get unstuck and today — well, it’s 5:39 and I’m still writing my blog post. But I’m hoping to get a solid hour of writing in, so I’d best get to it. Good luck, fellow NaNo’ers. I hope you’re doing better than I am!

Not the writing day of my dreams

08 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by in Boring, Grace, NaNo

≈ 4 Comments

Yesterday’s writing flailed.

Well, I guess I flailed. The writing, it more sputtered and trickled and crept.

Until about 1 AM, I couldn’t figure out what the problem was. It’s that Noah is getting hit with all sorts of revelations that would be mind-blowing and I need to discover what he’s like when his mind is getting blown. Poor Noah’s been a bit of a volatile character — what’s he like when he doesn’t think he’s going crazy? The fact that I’m not quite sure seriously stalled my writing. Word count made it to 766, I think, but didn’t come anywhere close to the 2K I was hoping for.

I did, however, swim and enjoy the sunshine, so hey, that’s something. I know I keep writing this, but November 7th is definitely the latest I have ever been pleasantly swimming. This is a very weird weather year. Whenever someone comments on it around here, it’s with a wish for winter to get here, but I’m still enjoying summer, so I don’t mind.

In other news… nope, I got nothing. Yesterday was a quiet, frustrating day. I’m expecting today to be equally quiet, hopefully less frustrating. My goal for today is words, of course, but I’m also going to try to be productive around the house — clean sheets, laundry, vacuuming — so at least if I get to the end of the day and my word count is abysmal, I’ll be able to look around and see that I accomplished something. Eliminating dust bunnies is not nearly as satisfying as spawning plot bunnies, but it’s better than nothing!

Zombie dinosaurs and em dashes

07 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by in Boring, NaNo, Randomness

≈ 6 Comments

Blogging every day is made much easier by doing NaNoWriMo because I always have a topic on my mind: word count and whether I made it or not. I didn’t make it yesterday. Drat! But it was a busy day and I was out of the house a lot. I hit 1200 words in the morning, which was great, but when I got back to the house and tried to settle in to writing, I couldn’t kick my brain into gear again. I decided I’d write in the evening, but instead I went to sleep at 9. Nine! I wish that meant I was back on a normal sleep pattern, but instead I was awake at 3. I finally fell back asleep around 4:30.

The most annoying thing about that was that if I’d been awake at 4:30, I could have gone outside to see Venus, Mars and the moon line up, with Jupiter in the same vicinity. I did go out at 3:30 or so, when I remembered, but it was too early. The moon was nowhere to be seen. The night sky was lovely, though, and there was a little bit of fog in the air, which made it feel spooky beautiful.

It was strange being outside so early, though. I’d been woken up by a nightmare, which was some sort of mix of Jurassic Park with the zombie apocalypse — zombie dinosaurs in a kitchen, maybe? — featuring the Vlog Brothers being mildly heroic and rescuing trapped children. I wasn’t young enough to be rescued by them so I was going to have to find my own way off the island. I woke up as I was trying to decide whether to open the walk-in freezer that might or might not have a zombie raptor trapped inside. Not a particularly fun dream, although it sounds a lot more fun in retrospect than it was while I was in it. But I didn’t stay outside in the spooky beautiful night, because hey, zombie dinosaurs. My grill made a noise — probably a mouse living inside it — and I scurried inside and locked the door behind me.

Even though I didn’t hit my word count yesterday, I had a lot of fun writing. For the first time, possibly ever, I really got into the NaNo spirit. No tinkering, no tweaking, no polishing, just one word after the next. Well, all right, that’s not quite true, but minimal polishing. In particular, I let the em dashes fly. I normally try to be careful about how I use em dashes. My instinct is to use them all the time, everywhere, but I pull myself back and try to limit them to one phrase set off in em dashes at most every several hundred words. Yesterday, it was em dashes, em dashes, and more em dashes.

Today is going to be the same, I hope. I’m still in the scene that I thought would be fun to write, and it was, so that’ll be a good starting place for today. I’m in a little bit of the murky middle at the moment, though — I know this scene, but after I finish it, I’m kind of vague on what happens next. It means I’ll probably slow down a bit. Given that I’m slow already, compared to the NaNo pace, that’s probably not good news. But that’s okay. If it weren’t NaNo, I’d be pleased with my daily word count this week, so I’m going to do my best to break my goal of 2K, but otherwise not stress about it.

Last night’s dinner: ham and a baked sweet potato. I bought these white sweet potatoes from Trader Joe’s and I’ve eaten them mashed a couple of times, which was pretty good, but yesterday was the first time I baked one. Much, much better. If it weren’t Saturday, I’d be headed back to TJ’s today to pick up some more, but the parking there is a nightmare on Saturday, so I’ll try to make it sometime next week. But it was so good that I ate every single bit, including the skin, leaving none for poor Bartleby, who adores sweet potato. Fortunately, he whimpered at me which alleviated my guilt, since one of my basic rules of parenting/dog parenting is that whiners should never be rewarded for whining.

The ham was from CostCo, purchased because it looked like an absolute bargain of a protein: I chopped it up and put it into the freezer in packages with enough for maybe three or four meals for me, and I’d guess I will be eating it for months. I’m sure it’ll average out to less than $1/meal. (With no carbs in my diet, I need plenty of protein.) Unfortunately, I realized belatedly, after I got it home and started chopping it up, that it was cured with nitrates which I’m not supposed to eat. At the moment, I can’t possibly tell if I’m reacting to nitrates — way too many other things that I’ve eaten that I’m not supposed to — but I’m hoping that once I get back on track, it doesn’t turn out to be a trigger food. I’d be very sad to have my freezer filled with protein that I shouldn’t eat.

Good luck with words today, fellow writers! I hope we all catch the current.

Autumn arriving

02 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by in Boring, Editing, Food, Swimming

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

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It felt like fall today, so I made myself winter food for breakfast: veggie hash, which is basically just whatever veggies I have available, chopped up reasonably small (for fast cooking) and sauteed, with some protein source mixed in. Today, it was acorn squash, sweet potato, carrot, parsnip, bok choy, and red onion with bacon. Some spices — garlic-salt and ginger — while cooking. At the last minute, I added half an avocado because I had two that are ripe. Wow, the avocado just made it. It added a touch of cool creaminess, but the heat of the veggies was enough to soften it, so all the veggies became lightly avocado-flavored. That sounds weird, but it was delicious.

In the last four days, I have edited 150,000 words. (Mostly not my own words.) I am seriously wiped out. Editing is such focused work. But I enjoyed it. Most of all, I enjoyed going over to a friend’s last night for our weekly writing get-together and getting to be back in my own world again. Spending my day hours editing made my evening hours of writing all the better.

I haven’t thought much about editing as what I should be doing to make money while I write for fun, but now I’m considering the idea. I thought I was so burned out on editing that I would never go back, but… well, I don’t know. Maybe.

Yesterday, first day of October, I stretched my lunch break to two hours so that I could spend one of them floating in the pool and reading a book. I think this is the first time that I’ve still been swimming regularly as October begins. This year I saw maybe two love bugs, that was it. Usually by now we’re infested with them. Maybe the summer was too wet? But I’m grateful for the last lingering days of enjoying the water.

This feels like a very boring blog post, but I’ve got a bunch of businesslike things to do — making a new box set, pulling The Spirits of Christmas from non-Amazon sites, downloading a translation, writing a book description and a forward — and I’m feeling so fried from the editing that I’m avoiding all those things. Plus, avocado in veggie hash & swimming in October are things I want to remember, and blogging works that way for me. But back to work I go…

Monday morning randomness

02 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by in Boring, House, Personal, Randomness

≈ 1 Comment

I didn’t watch the Superbowl yesterday, because I don’t have anyone in my life who would make watching the Superbowl enough of a priority that we would have figured out how to make it happen. My television is only connected to the internet, so it would have meant caring enough to go somewhere to watch it. I don’t care enough (surprise!), but it is always sort of weird when most of America is having a certain kind of party, with the grocery store filled with the foods for the occasion, to just not do it. Instead, I turned on the butterfly lights in the backyard and lit the torches and ate steak and asparagus on my great-grandmother’s china.

The food choices were because I still don’t have a kitchen sink and so I’ve been grilling a lot. A steak can last me for three meals, so is more economical than it seems. The china was because I do have kitchen cabinets, ones with enough room that I unpacked all of the dishes that have been in boxes in my garage for the past five years. The lights and torches were because it still gets dark early and the kitchen table is packed with stuff that should be sitting on kitchen counters that I still don’t have. All practical reasons, but it amused me to be feeding myself a romantic fire-lit dinner on the patio. I should do that more often, because it really was lovely. Not having company shouldn’t mean not appreciating an enchanting evening.

Anyway, I’ve decided to use the china, because otherwise R is going to wind up needing to make the choice to get rid of it. (Or have a huge kitchen and maybe lots of kids.) Someone is going to be breaking this china, and it might as well be me. The very first use I made of it, somewhat accidentally, was as a temporary water bowl for the dogs. The story behind that is boring, but it was just a convenient thing to do. I had a moment of wondering if my great-grandmother would be horrified — and then I almost heard her laughing at me. She wouldn’t have minded. I only knew her really at the end of her life, when she was in her 80s and 90s. For the last decade, she never had any idea who I was, but she didn’t care. In a wheelchair, in a nursing home, memory shot to hell, she was cheerful and happy and joyful, always positive. I will probably not think of her every time I use her china, because eventually, it will just start to feel like dishes, but I hope it’ll serve as a reminder of her for a while.

I should post kitchen pictures. It’s… getting there. Kitchen cabinets are in and refilled with my kitchen stuff, but I have no counter-tops and no sink. It’ll be, at best, the end of this week before it’s done. More likely sometime next week. I have had moments of great uncertainty. Picking out cabinets, a color, hardware was remarkably stressful. There are so many different styles, so many colors, so many choices. So far with this house, I’ve bailed on even the most basic of choices. I thought when I moved in that I would paint everything colorfully, but nope, not so much. I’ve been too worried about making a bad choice to do anything more than the same off-white that most rentals have. But with the kitchen, not making choices was not an option. I’m sort of at a halfway point, where I can how my choices are turning out, and so far, so good. I went with this cabinet style with these handles. Simple but polished. My kitchen is small — not a galley type, but basically a one-person room, so I was worried that the cabinets would be overwhelming, but I think they work.

It does make me wish I’d had money for new appliances, though. It would look so good with black, instead of the mismatched white and off-white that are in place. Someday, maybe. It depends, I suppose, on my priorities. What do I want most in life?

Hmm, that’s getting very philosophical for a Monday morning, warm-up-the-fingers blog post, but I have been thinking about my goals lately. It’s the January new year’s thing in action — what do I want, where do I want to be, etc.? Last year, I should have started looking for a job in January. That was always the plan. Quitting my job, taking two years to finish grad school and internship, finding a job in 2014. Instead I quit my job, dropped out of grad school after a year, spent a year writing a book and then… eh, started my own business and wrote another book.

So I have deviated from my plan and there’s a new plan in process. And I know that would make a lot of sense, in this new plan, to minimize my expenses dramatically. Do I really need to own a house? Having a lawn and a pool and a spare bedroom — those are all expensive choices, not really suited for the start-up entrepreneurial mentality. And yet… I want to keep my house. So, yes, goal-thinking — how do my plans serve my goals and what are my priorities? Sadly, we’re into February and I still haven’t figured out my answers.

When I decided to go for it on the kitchen — my cabinet choice was not the most economical — it was with the knowledge that if I was going to sell the house, a good kitchen would add value. But now that I (almost) have my kitchen, I’m even more reluctant to give it up. On the other hand, do I really want to make job-life choices in order to have a nice kitchen? Maybe.

All right, my fingers are warmed up and it’s almost yoga time. Writing this afternoon will be all about Noah. For the first time in a while this morning, I actually had snippets of conversation happening while I walked the dog. A good sign!

Halloween!

31 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in Boring, Randomness, Self-publishing

≈ 2 Comments

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I feel as if I should write something spooky, but eh, I’m not feeling it.

Yesterday no words got written. But I did reformat A Gift of Time, proofed it again (seance was the trick word that the formatting screwed up) and posted it to most of the sites. I also resolved my kitchen remodel dilemma, more or less, and went out to dinner with my dad. It was a really nice day. It should have included some writing but I’m going to make up for that tomorrow, the beginning of NaNoWriMo!

Today I’m going to finish updating sites. Tomely doesn’t have all the new covers, I need to upload the new files for Time, and I need to update my web sites. I’m also going to outline my NaNo project in yWriter, including as much character information as I can, so that I don’t waste time looking up names from previous books. Some names I remember–Maggie is unforgettable. But other times, I have to return to the books to remember who a character was. This time, I’m going to have all that information at my fingertips. It’s going to be fun!

If you’re trying NaNo yourself, my user name on their site is wyndes. Look me up and let’s be writing buddies!

Priorities

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Boring, House, Randomness, Writing

≈ 1 Comment

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Yesterday I was exhausted. I didn’t write a word. I didn’t even open up the file. But I did dismantle the plumbing under my sink to unclog my clogged drain which involved completely emptying the cabinet and then putting everything back into it and I did deal with some work stuff, including some that was not pleasant, and I did call CenturyLink to find out why the internet wasn’t working, so it wasn’t a collapse-in-a-heap sort of day. I could have written. I should have written. At least a couple sentences to get myself back into the spirit.

Today I am off to take my car to the shop (and have breakfast!) and when I come home, I need to move most of the small items in the house, including all the books, into my bedroom, so the flooring guys can fix all the floors tomorrow. Doesn’t that sound fun? I am so not in the mood. But I am going to try to write–not 1000 words, because that would be a ridiculous goal and I’m sick of failing the goals I set for myself, but at least a paragraph.

Tomorrow, flooring guys. I suspect the day will be disrupted and loud, but I will try to write.

Thursday, the cabinet people come. I’d like to make it to yoga, because apparently I’m not going to make it there today or tomorrow, but I think choosing yoga is probably ambitious enough that it would mean not choosing writing. Maybe I’ll play it by ear.

But I need to stop letting one disruption dictate my day. In my head, writing is my priority. In my life, other stuff keeps stealing my energy.

I still haven’t managed to reformat the books and post the new versions, so I’ve also got that as a goal. But first things first–off I go to the car place.

Today’s goal: to write something!

Clever Title Here

15 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by in Boring, Personal, Randomness, Writing, Zelda

≈ 8 Comments

Not a very clever title, is it? But it’s Monday morning and I’m sick. The dog has been trying plaintively for two hours to get me to take her for a walk and I’m just not up to it. My muscles hurt, my chest is heavy, my throat itches, oxygen isn’t making it through my sinuses… so I have to type. Zelda is smart enough to know that when I’m engaged in any other activity, I *might* be willing to take her for a walk, but when my hands are on the keyboard, I’m working and it’s not going to happen. So writing is, at the moment, a self-defense against a dog who doesn’t understand the difference between a human with a cold and a human who’s being lazy.

I really resent this cold. I’m three plus weeks into the 30-day autoimmune protocol diet, and I have been so, so good. I haven’t cheated once. To the best of my knowledge, not a single bit of any of the forbidden foods has crossed my lips. I say “to the best of my knowledge” because a couple times I used something, then later looked at the ingredient list. Green ginger tea apparently has “natural flavors” in it. I have no idea what those natural flavors might be so maybe they’re okay and maybe they’re not. I stopped drinking ginger tea after I figured that out.

I figured it out because eh. Even before the cold, I wasn’t feeling as good as I had hoped I would. So maybe I need to stick with it longer or maybe I need to up my doses of fermented foods and organ meats or maybe I need to try the FODMAP version… but at the moment, I’m not convinced it’s worth it. On the other hand, I have a cold. I feel like crap. So possibly now is not the best time to be making this call.

The good news of having a cold: I binge-watched Once Upon A Time over the weekend. Just the first season. I don’t think I would have gotten into that show without a need for sleepy sick television, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have stuck with it–it gets quite slow during the middle of the season–but I’m happy I did if only for the sake of the story of Red Riding Hood. What a great twist on a fairy tale! I won’t provide spoilers, but watching the whole season was worth it just for the development of that character.

The bad news of having a cold: well, it’s a cold. Sufficient bad news, yeah? But writing just hasn’t been going well at all. I’m not finding Fen’s voice again. I’m going to go back and start the first chapter over–I think it’s the right time, the right place, the right overall experience, but there’s something wrong with it and I think it might be Fen. But I suspect that’s probably not going to happen today. Today feels an awful lot like a lie in front of the television drinking green tea and piling up tissues sort of day, and good news for me, I still have two more seasons of Once Upon a Time to watch.

As for my website redesign… well, I changed the site. But I realized as I spent hour upon hour trying to create materials that would be my “landing page” on the Web, my “portal” to selling my books to new readers, that I really just don’t want to turn my blog into that sort of space. I’ve been posting here off-and-on for eight years and it’s personal, not professional. Changing it, fine. Making it a “sales tool”–nope, not okay with me. So I’ll have to think about that some more, I guess. Maybe I can optimize the Rozelle Press site so that it becomes top of the search results for my author name and then it can be the professional marketing space and this can stay my nice little casual, low-tech, unprofessional corner of the internet.

Being sick

11 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by in Boring, Personal

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Three times in my life I have been ridiculously sick. Not sick like major illness, scary life-threatening disease sick. Sick like ridiculous.

The first time was twenty years ago. I got sick over Thanksgiving and I stayed sick until February. It was the first Christmas after my grandfather died. We spent it in Florida, and I can remember being absolutely miserable, trying to be a good tourist, visiting Disneyworld, shopping at flea markets and so on, but with the energy of a sloth. I went to the doctor when I got back home with a fever of 103. She told me I had the flu. I said, “but you don’t understand, I’ve been sick for six weeks.” She said, “you’ve probably caught every flu going around.” Gee, that’s helpful.

The second time was the summer of 2000. We lived in a second-floor apartment. The laundry room was down the stairs, across the parking lot, and down another flight of stairs. I sat on the steps and tried not to cry between loads because I was so tired that the walk felt like a marathon. At one point during that summer, I called to make a doctor’s appointment. I wound up spending an hour on the phone with the nurse, because she was very committed to the idea that I should go to the emergency room right away, and I was very committed to the idea that I was much, much, much too sick to go to an emergency room. After about two months of being miserable, I was watching television and saw a commercial for my allergy medication that said “side effects can  include flu-like symptoms.” I promptly stopped taking it. I promptly got better.

The last time was in Santa Cruz, right before we moved to Florida. I got sick in March. I went away on a business trip. I got better. I came home, I got sick again. After about a month, I went to the doctor, was diagnosed with a sinus infection, started antibiotics, went on another business trip, got better. Came home. Got sick again. More antibiotics. Went on vacation, got better. Came home. Got sick again. Then got seriously sick with shingles.

Some people apparently have mild cases of shingles. I was not one of them. The pain from shingles felt like bolts of electricity zapping my side. It was … well, I did natural childbirth. I’ve got a pretty good pain tolerance. One time, I twisted my ankle and four days later a friend — a former professional biker who’d quit because he’d injured himself so badly — told me it was the worst-looking sprained ankle he’d ever seen and he couldn’t believe I hadn’t gone to the doctor. (I did after that; it was just a sprain.) I’m not really tough — I hate pain, I do my best to avoid it. But I’m reasonably stoic while experiencing it. Not with shingles. Shingles was hell.

After that, I put two and two together and figured out that my house was making me sick. We had a mold problem, I have allergies, it was a bad combo. We moved out, and I got better.

All of this leads us to now. R and I have both been sick — with ups and downs, but more lows than highs — since he came home on New Year’s Day with a cold. I am very, very tired of it. I’ll be better for three days, start to feel like life is in my control again, and then, pow, back down. I’ll have a day or two where I think, eh, I’m just a little allergic and then I try to get something done and have to take a nap halfway through. But it’s most frustrating not to know for sure what the problem is. Is it 1) flu leading to colds leading to flu and back again, the viruses simply winning or 2) a reaction to my current allergy pills or 3) allergies or 4) something else entirely?

We are both on antibiotics now. I have a horrible history with antibiotics, absolutely horrible. Emergency room visits and side effects that lingered for months. And yet I’m desperate enough to take the chance because in nine days, we are getting on an airplane and going to Belize. And damn it, I am not going to be sick.