Appreciation

18 Thursday Apr 2019

Posted by wyndes in A Precarious Magic, Randomness, Writing

a fluffy calico cat, with narrowed golden eyes, looking annoyed at being interrupted in her sunbathing — Vivi’s narrow-eyed look. She appreciates the sun, too.

In yoga the other day, the instructor said that we were entering the season of the sun, that the rain was nearly over and we might not see it again for months. That sounded fantastic to me. Go, sun, go! Yay, sunshine! More, more, more!

But when I was walking home from class, reveling in the feeling of warmth on my face, I realized the rain is what makes me appreciate the sun. In Florida, I take the sunshine for granted. Once in a while I notice a particularly nice day, but most nice days blend together. In fact, I’m more likely to be critical of those nice days. Oh, sure, it’s pleasant enough but 78 is a little warm, isn’t it? 56 is positively frigid!

But in Arcata, 56 and sunny is charming and delightful. (So is 46 and sunny, for that matter.) I couldn’t tell you about 78 but I’m pretty sure if it came with sunny, I would find it glorious. And appreciation is — well, “good” seems far too bland, but that’s the word I want to use — appreciation is good. The act of appreciating makes life good. On a cold rainy day, appreciating the flowers brings pleasure into the day that I would have missed if I’d just walked on by those flowers. Hmm, now I want to post some flower pictures.

A pink flower, unknown variety — A random flower pic. One of the houses down the street has a fantastically overgrown garden. Right now, with multiple flowering plants almost obscuring the house and fence, it makes me think of fairy tales and portal stories.

Anyway, all that reminded me that I should appreciate the rain, too. But I’m really happy to have some sunny days. Yesterday, I was still staring at my computer at 7PM or so. I’d not come anywhere close to my Camp NaNo word count, but I also hadn’t even broken 1000 words and I was annoyed with myself. But I looked up and realized that it was a beautiful sunset and a full moon, so instead of continuing to stare at the computer, I took the dogs for a walk and breathed in the fresh air and was thankful for my life.

Ten more days to make real progress on Fen and then I’m going to Idaho. I know already that I can make all the promises in the world to myself about how I will write while I’m on the road and none of them will come true: traveling is simply not conducive to writing fiction for me. I can’t live in my imagination when the real world demands so much attention. But Val Kyr is shaping up to be an interesting place — if creepy — so I’m going to make the most of my time there for now.

A snippet:

Scattered lights didn’t penetrate the dark corners of the streets and the smoke hanging heavy in the air felt oppressive, but something about the city felt unreal, like a dream landscape. It wasn’t until they were walking alongside a canal and passed an empty flat boat gliding along the water that Fen realized it was the silence. There were no motors, of course — no cars, no trains, no trucks beeping as they backed up or electric hums from power lines — but there was also no music, none of the bells or splashing water or friendly cacophony of Syl Var.

“Is it always like this?” Luke asked Kaio, his tone muted as if he were reluctant to break the hush.

“Not always, no,” Kaio answered but he didn’t elucidate.

Fen wished he would. Maybe this was the Val Kyr equivalent of a Sunday morning? Even downtown Chicago felt oddly empty when the 9-5 workers had gone home. Or maybe Val Kyr, unlike Syl Var, lived on the same type of circadian time as human beings and it really was the middle of the night. Maybe in a few hours, the city would wake up — there’d be pastries baking and chickens crowing and the Val Kyrian equivalent of a newspaper delivery boy tossing the daily paper on people’s doorsteps.

The thought was encouraging, even though Fen was pretty sure Val Kyr wasn’t going to have any equivalent of a newspaper delivery boy. If they needed to distribute the news, they’d probably have little birds flying around warbling their messages.

Rough draft, of course; not edited; going to change before the final version. Maybe even going to change in the next twenty minutes — those last couple paragraphs are rough. But that’s where I’m living today!

On being a unicorn

15 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by wyndes in Randomness, Self-publishing

≈ 3 Comments

David Gaughran is one of the few self-publishing experts I follow: I read his blog, I’m on his mailing list, and I’ve got at least a couple of his books on my Kindle. When I do decide to take the plunge into advertising my books,* I’m sure I’ll be using his advice.

* — Any day, now, really. Probably. Maybe.

Last week, he sent out an email updating self-pub authors on some changes with BookBub ads, notably that in their ad creation space, they’re now listing the number of “Readers” an author has, as opposed to the number of “Followers.” Readers are (probably) the people who clicked on an author’s book somewhere along the way, while Followers actually clicked on the link to follow an author and therefore get updates on their posts, reviews, ads and new books. Followers, obviously, are the people who are actually interested while Readers are the people who maybe took a chance on a free book and haven’t read it, didn’t like it, or at the very least, weren’t interested enough to try to remember the author’s name.

Unicorns are the authors who have lots of readers and many fewer followers. They may or may not be a good target for ad creation. I am very, very much a unicorn. An extreme unicorn, in fact. TBH, I find that depressing, but I mention it for the sake of any of my fellow self-publishing readers: if you’re advertising on BookBub, my name might (or might not, who knows?), be a good target for ads. If you give it a try, let me know your results, because I would be curious!

Moving on: I love Tosha Yoga, the yoga studio here in Arcata, so much that I’m already sad about leaving and I’m not planning on leaving for another month. But two days a week of yoga and I can feel myself getting stronger and more centered. And Suzanne, the teacher whose class we’ve sort of settled on (initially mostly out of convenience), is fantastic. We are not the only ones to have figured that out — we’re arriving earlier and earlier to get a spot, because the class gets crowded. Things I love about her classes: she takes the time to teach; she has some challenging sequences, but both encourages you to push and gives you permission to respect your body if pushing is not where you’re at; she has a sense of humor and makes the class fun; and she’s doing that spiritual thing where she offers words of wisdom and you’re like, “Um, was that directed at me?”

On our last class, as we were going in, I was telling S how much I hate writers. In fact I was saying I was going to write a blog post about how much I hate writers. I gave up being an editor in large part because I was so tired of dealing with writers: they’re needy and impractical and obsessive and narcissistic and generally just PITAs. I figured as a therapist, I could work on helping people get over those qualities. Instead I became a writer and now I’m needy and impractical and a PITA. (I was always obsessive; I’m pretty sure I’m still not a narcissist. Could be wrong on that, though, because I don’t think narcissists usually know what they are.) Practically the first thing S, the yoga teacher, said was something about how our culture teaches us to view things as extremes, good or bad, and that in our practice, we were going to try to find the space between acceptance and aversion, and try to simply be where we were instead of rejecting or accepting it. I’m pretty sure she was talking about those moments in yoga where you’re in pain or not in pain, but in that moment it sure felt like she was talking about my writer vs editor grumpiness.

Speaking of which, the writing continues. Not as fast as I’d like it to, and definitely not as coherently. I feel like I’m playing with the pieces of a big colorful jigsaw puzzle — very colorful, very big! But some of the pieces are starting to line up properly. And the characters are starting to take on lives of their own, which can be inconvenient, but can also be fun. A snippet:

“Maybe one of us should go, sir?” Trevvi said. “I—” He cleared his throat. “I think I speak for all of us when I say that I’d rather not be the one to tell Lady Cyntha that we left you and Lady Gaelith here.”

Fen pressed her lips together to suppress her laugh. She agreed with Trevvi — she didn’t want to face Lady Cyntha either — but the sheepish expression on the big man’s face made him look like a kid who hadn’t done his homework.

“Sadly, it must be done,” Kaio replied briskly. And then his face relaxed and he gave Trevvi a warm smile. Fen’s stomach fluttered. Damn it, even when she was most annoyed at Kaio, he pushed her buttons.

Not edited, of course, and no guarantee it will show up in the final version, but while I’m trying to avoid developing a cast of thousands, Trevvi is starting to sneak his way into a speaking role. Without being ultra-spoiler-y, I think I found the ending of the story this weekend and Trevvi was there for it. I was pleased to find the ending, but also like, “Um, you? What are you doing here?” Not a bad thing to be happening, though!

Also in the works, my developing travel plans. I’ve got two more weeks in Arcata, then S and I are going on a road trip to Idaho. One more week in Arcata after that and then north to Washington. I had thoughts of spending some time in Oregon, but I think I’m probably going to make it fairly fast so that I can have more time with friends in Seattle. And then after Memorial Day, I’ll be heading east again. After discovering that I’m already too late to make reservations for the state park I wanted to stay at in Oregon, I am reluctantly realizing that I ought to make some definite arrangements. Flexibility is lovely, but I don’t want to spend the month of June camping in parking lots because I wasn’t organized enough to do better.

First, though, more words with Fen. Happy Monday!

Foggy weather, but spring-time green in the hills.

Disinclined

08 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by wyndes in Marketing and promotion, Randomness, Zelda

≈ 11 Comments

I woke up this morning feeling… disinclined to engage with the day.

The preceding sentence, both in structure and content, is what happens when you’re reading too much marketing advice. Bah. It’s not that I dislike marketing, actually — more than once in my previous job, I wondered whether I’d have more fun working for the marketing department. I liked selling books. I just don’t like selling my books.

I keep promising myself that I’m going to work on that piece of the self-publishing puzzle — really, truly, any day now — but it makes me want to go back to bed. The crawl under the covers and not re-emerge until summer going back to bed, not the snooze for an extra ten minutes going back to bed.

Anyway, despite my disinclination to engage with the day, a cute little furry face bouncing around at the end of the bed was persistent enough that I dragged myself up and took her for a walk in the rain. I’d thought it was just drizzle when we left the van, but it become clear quite quickly that it was rain-rain. The kind that’s going to sop through your shoes and soak your socks; force you to keep your head down or get water in your eyes; turn your blue jeans into deadweights with minutes. Bizarrely enough, it was very nice. It fit my mood so perfectly. I was grouchy to begin with and there I was, getting soaked and uncomfortable and cold — it was like the universe agreeing with me, it was a day to stay in bed.

The nicest thing about today’s rain is that it was supposed to be yesterday’s rain. The weather forecast for yesterday was bleak and it was both my birthday and S’s day off, which meant bleak was annoying. As it turned out, the weather didn’t reach us as scheduled, so we had an early morning opportunity to fulfill my birthday wish and take Z to the beach. The only thing better in life than taking a puppy to the beach is taking an old dog to the beach and watching her run around like a puppy.

zelda at the beach — My camera batteries died, so I didn’t get to take nearly as many photos as I would have liked. But Z ran and dug and sniffed and had fun, which meant I had fun, too.

After the beach, we stopped in Trinidad for coffee. I already had coffee and it had started to rain so I didn’t much want to go into the shop, but I kept S company anyway. It turned out they had gluten-free chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing, so for my birthday breakfast, I had a chocolate cupcake. Yum. And then we went home and I made gluten-free blueberry pancakes and bacon for my second birthday breakfast. Yeah, it was a high-carb day. (Asparagus risotto with chicken-apple sausage for dinner, more carbs!)

Today’s plan: to write some words. And maybe bake some granola. And for dinner, cioppino over rice, possibly with some gluten-free garlic toast, and definitely with a side salad. Meanwhile, to sit and watch the rain turn the view into an impressionist painting while staying dry inside. I might even admit the truth — that despite the date, it feels like winter! — and turn the heat on.

Glorious sunshine

08 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by wyndes in A Precarious Magic, Randomness

≈ 9 Comments

My van is parked in S’s driveway, which means my view is basically of her street and sidewalk. Most of the days that I’ve been here, I’ve had a very good view of a great deal of rain. Today, however, it is gloriously sunny. Still chilly — there was frost on the ground this morning — but blue skies and sunshine. Everyone is appreciative, including the cat and all the many passersby. While I’m writing in the van, I’m an invisible audience to their interactions. It’s pretty entertaining, because wow, people are chatty with animals. A third of the population wandering by admires the cats and another third says hello to the dogs. It’s really quite charming.

Yesterday, I went to a meditation class, where the phrase that struck me, in the midst of the usual “follow your breath” and so on, was “open-hearted curiosity.” I don’t remember the context, but when I got home, I wrote it on my white board. I want to be approaching Fen with open-hearted curiosity. I want to see where the story takes me/her. So far that has not transformed into words flowing, however. I also downloaded an app to keep me off the internet, so that I would be forced to stare at my document instead of running away to read news stories and Facebook posts. My hour of internet-blocking netted me 73 words today; not a success, but I’m going to keep trying.

Also, I finally went to yoga! I am lamentably out of shape. That’s not a surprise, actually — it’s been a long time since I managed any more exercise than a short walk with the dog. But there’s not going to be any side planks in my near future. Still, yoga’s like writing — the more I do, the easier it becomes. And I know that if I go regularly (at least for the couple of months that I’m going to be in Arcata), I’ll get better. Plus, it felt great, even though I was dropping into child’s pose every other minute. I still got to have the lovely ending meditative rest. And I would look up the actual spelling of the lovely ending meditative rest, but I’ve blocked the whole rest of the internet to force myself to work. So maybe later. And meanwhile, I should get back to the working part of the day.

But, per request, a snippet of Fen:

First things first. Fen needed to call a glider. She scanned the sky, searching for a moving shadow. She didn’t see one, but she waved anyway, arm moving wide across her body, a gesture as big as she could make it.
Then she stopped herself, feeling stupid. She’d just made herself invisible. How the hell was the glider going to spot her?
“Elfie, can you summon a glider?” she subvocalized.
There was a pause. Then Elfie responded, “A data access pattern should not summon a glider. It is not within the parameters of my function.”
“Uh-huh,” Fen said, voice dry. “We’re past that now. Answering my questions is your function, right? So I’m asking a question. Can you summon a glider?”
“I am capable of such a thing, yes.”
“Will you?”
There was a longer pause. Fen waited, beginning to muster her mental arguments. Gaelith had created Elfie to help Fen, Elfie was a non-traditional data access pattern for a reason, if Gaelith had intended Elfie to limit herself to merely providing information, surely she would have used a traditional design… but she didn’t need them.
“Yes,” Elfie said.
Fen let go of the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

No guarantees that will make it in the final book, of course. And it’s quite random, it’s just what I was working on today, so also unedited, etc. But I will stop with the excuses, it’s a snippet!

Warm huckleberry muffins

04 Monday Mar 2019

Posted by wyndes in Food, Personal, Randomness

≈ 9 Comments

Last night, I was cozy in the van, snuggled up under the covers, when S texted me, “Warm muffins and ice cream…?”

Um, that would be a yes.

I slipped on my sandals and maybe grabbed a hoodie and hurried into the house where I ate a gluten-free huckleberry muffin fresh out of the oven with some Haagen Daz vanilla bean ice cream. Yum, yum, and more yum. I am not going to start counting calories any day soon, but I’m definitely growing wary of the dessert potential of Arcata. Well, wary and appreciative, simultaneously. These were homemade muffins, but the local farmer’s market has a gluten-free baked goods stall, and the closest grocery store — two blocks away, so a quick walk — always has gluten-free options. And not the usual run of frozen Udi’s products, which are easy to avoid because I don’t like them.

Over our warm muffins and ice cream, S & I talked about plans. One of the reasons I’m ostensibly here is to help with the post-bereavement cleaning out and organizing. It’s a big job. But I think the more important reason I’m here, at least for this moment, is to be an escape companion. S wants to go places. She’s working full-time, so we’re mostly talking about quick adventures up in Oregon — Ashland, Medford, Gold Beach. I’m hoping the weather becomes reasonable, because traveling with three dogs is sufficient challenge for me without them being three wet, muddy dogs. But I’m already plotting out what should move from the van into the house for maximum space optimization for group travel, and it’s going to be fun to see more of Oregon.

Meanwhile, writing proceeds mediocrely. I am falling farther and farther behind my word count goals, not helped by deleting everything I struggled with last week. But I think the struggle was necessary to clarify some of my ideas about character and direction, so I’m trying not to regret that too much. And I do feel like I’ve resolved some problems, so maybe I can get back to the entertaining portion of the writing agenda.

Yesterday, I went to a meeting of the Humboldt County Writer’s Group, hoping to find some local writing buddies. A fun group, but I felt very old, not just in years, although those, too. But there was one other newcomer there, who I promptly invited out for coffee. She’s currently planning an intensive novel-writing April, so maybe we can join forces for some real-life writing sprints. Until then, I should get back to persevering on my own. Fingers crossed for a better word week this week!

a rainy bridge — My scenic shots are tending to be very gray. The writing group promised it would stop raining someday soon, though!

Arcata weather

25 Monday Feb 2019

Posted by wyndes in A Precarious Magic, Randomness, Writing, Zelda

≈ 10 Comments

I was warned that Arcata, the town where I’m planning on spending the next few months, was a chilly, gray, foggy sorta place. I’m not sure any level of warning would actually have prepared me, though. In defense of my weather shock, my weather app keeps sending me warnings. Severe Weather Advisory! Area Flood Watch! Flooding rain will cause hazardous travel. Hard Freeze Warning in effect. Etc. Nine warnings over the past few days, which I think probably means that this weather is not normal, despite the cold gray reputation.

As a result, my new favorite possession is my eggplant coat, which S refers to as my “puffy.” I call it an eggplant coat because I think it makes me look like a plump eggplant, but you know what? That is just fine. I am perfectly willing to look like a plump eggplant. I’ve become so attached to this coat that I start to feel anxious when it’s out of my sight.

Yesterday, I ventured out of the van exactly twice, both times to walk Zelda, both times in the pouring rain, because it really wasn’t possible to just wait for the rain to stop. Or rather I did wait for the rain to stop and finally gave up. Fortunately, I quite like hanging out in my tiny home listening to the rain. Poor Z does not like the way I’ve been walking her, though, because I’ve been carrying her from the van to the street and back again. She thinks it’s undignified and wiggles to get down, but I think muddy dog footprints all over my beds can only happen once in a while, not twice a day, many days in a row.

In more fun news, S took me roller-skating on Saturday night. I’ve never really been a roller-skater, although I ice-skated some as a kid. I wobbled a lot and never got so comfortable that it felt like flying, the way it looked for some skaters, but I had fun. The best part was watching the other skaters, though. Roller skaters tend to crouch and lean forward, but there were a couple people skating who were probably originally ice skaters: they had great posture and a totally different way of moving. If the roller skaters looked like they were flying, the ice skaters (on roller skates) looked like they were floating. I don’t know which I’d rather do, float or fly, but it did make me want to try ice-skating again.

On the writing front, I’ve been flailing. I joined a FB group for writers of Humboldt County, hoping I might find some real-world writing partners here, to help keep me accountable and maybe meet up with me at a cafe now and again to help my motivation. I didn’t go to their Sunday meeting, though, because it was pouring. Maybe next week. Meanwhile, I added a new note to my white board: Trust the reader. I think part of why I’m flailing in Fen is that I feel like I need to explain things that you will have forgotten and remind you of things that have already gone by and anytime a writer has to “explain”, a story is stuck. Maybe Fen 2 is going to have to start with a note that says “reread the previous book” but one of my other white board notes says, “skip the boring parts, the reader will thank you,” and I am going to try very hard this week to follow that advice. Last week, I was stuck in a boring part and got nowhere, so this week I’m just going to glide right over it. Or try, anyway. I might fall flat on my face. But if I do, I will get up, dust myself off, and think about Badonald’s for later. Or maybe a nap.

Zelda on the beach — Before the rain began, we had one quick trip to the beach. Z would have stayed and played, but it was COLD! We saw the ocean, took a picture, then headed back to the warmth of the car.

Lazy rain day

28 Monday Jan 2019

Posted by wyndes in Personal, Randomness

≈ 13 Comments

Yesterday was a torrential rain day. I never got out of my pajamas and I spent far too much time playing Candy Crush (for the first time in years).

At about 6PM, I thought, “I have wasted my day! I should…” and then I stopped myself. A decade ago, I could easily have taken a rainy Sunday as a chance to do nothing much. To watch some television, putter around the house, play some video games, maybe read a book. At 6PM, I might have felt guilty enough about my laziness to throw a load of laundry in the washer, but I might not have, too.

Somehow life in a van and, I suppose, self-employment makes me feel like I have to do things every day. All the things. I have to run errands and write words and go for good walks and check social media and answer email and read books and work on becoming a better meditator/photographer/cover designer/inspiration of the day…

But yesterday was just a lazy day. It was chilly and wet and the van was cozy and it was nice to be snuggled under the covers with Zelda on my feet. And I have no regrets. As I look at my week ahead — a busy week, which I expect to end in some other state, maybe Texas by next Monday? — I’m glad that I appreciated my rainy day as an opportunity to do nothing.

And now, to do all the things…

This peacock was hanging out on the playground down the street. I love Florida.

A book party

21 Monday Jan 2019

Posted by wyndes in Personal, Randomness

≈ 6 Comments

Listening to my dad tell stories about me.

When I decided to sell my house and all my things, the hardest decisions were the books. Every day, I’d go through my bookshelves. For the length of a shelf, I’d pick up two books at a time and consider them: Sharon Shinn’s Mystic and Rider or Jennifer Cruisie’s Welcome to Temptation? Lois McMaster Bujold’s Paladin of Souls or Nevil Shute’s A Town Like Alice? I’d decide which one mattered more to me and I’d put the other in a box to go to the library. Trip after trip after trip to the library.

Eventually, I wound up with about a hundred books, the ones that I simply could not let go of. I sat down on my living room floor, the books piled around me, and one at a time, I looked them up to see if there was an ebook version available. If there was, I put the book in the pile to go to the library. If there wasn’t, I set the book aside. Eventually, I took one lone bag of books to a storage unit. A year later, I took that bag to the library without looking into it.

Only two books survived the purge.

I wish I had those books with me now, so I could quote the inscriptions inside them, but they’re stored in my brother’s basement with my mom’s china, my wooden Christmas ornaments, the stained glass Nativity set that my grandparents made, and about a dozen scrapbooks — the belongings that meant too much to say goodbye to. But one of the books is Winnie-the-Pooh, a carefully printed message inside in my mom’s handwriting wishing me a happy 4th birthday. And the other is Anne McCaffrey’s The White Dragon. The message inside that one congratulates me on having read over a hundred books, sometime in 6th grade.

This weekend, my dad and stepmom had a party to celebrate my books. It was sort of a book signing, or at least I gave everyone who came a copy of Cici and signed all of them, but mostly it was lunch and conversation and family and friends wishing me well. It was lovely, really truly lovely.

My dad told stories about me, what I was like as a kid. Mostly I was a reader. But he reminisced about my sixth grade year (best year of my childhood) and talking to my teacher at the end of the year about how much I read, and he talked about introducing me to Anne McCaffrey and how I just took off into reading after that. I believe I was seven when I first read Dragonflight, maybe eight, and yes, it pretty much shaped my life.

But I didn’t save The White Dragon because it was my favorite Anne McCaffrey or even because I still reread that series — unlike Winnie-the-Pooh, I have pretty thoroughly outgrown McCaffrey. I saved it because it is the visible, physical symbol of the love and support and encouragement my parents always gave me.

If I’d thought about it ahead of time, I would have come prepared with stories about what my dad was like as a dad. Fortunately, all my friends figured that out without any stories from me — one of the nicest parts of a very nice party has been the messages and texts from my friends since telling me how terrific my dad and stepmom are. Yes, they are. And I am really lucky.

Chickens and other randomness

18 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by wyndes in Pets, Photography, Randomness, Zelda

≈ 7 Comments

I’m very fond of the neighbor’s chickens. They are less fond of me, perhaps because I come accompanied by a dog? Not that Z bothers them at all. The one time they came almost close to a confrontation, everyone backed away hurriedly. Some of those chickens are just as big as she is and Zelda is not the kind of dog who wants to chase things that might chase her back. Squirrels, yes. Chickens, no.

But the chickens do flee every time I try to take pictures of them. It’s making me think about getting a new camera. The one that I have is a basic point-and-shoot, but it’s slow and it makes noise with every photo taken. It makes it hard to catch the chickens when they’re being cute. Or even when they’re running away.

Cameras, though… wow. It’s like learning another language. I’m not sure I’m up for the level of vocabulary necessary to understand what I’m looking at. I’m also not sure it’s worth the expense: the above picture is not any of the attempts I made with the camera, but the quick shot I grabbed with my phone as the chickens ran away.

I’m really not convinced that one in front is a chicken, either, which is part of why I’ve been trying to take pictures of them. No insult intended to it — who am I to judge the shape of a chicken? — but it’s such an odd shape that I feel like it ought to be something else, something living with the chickens. Maybe someday I will see the neighbor and ask.

Had a lovely dinner with my writing friends this week and some good writing time with one of them afterwards. We tried to write for an hour and I got nowhere, but at 9:50, I said, “All right, ten more minutes, must write some words,” and in that ten minutes, wrote the only good words I’ve written all week. Writing sprints are so useful.

Zelda had a crazy out-of-the-box treatment at the vet’s last week — one of those, “well, it won’t hurt and maybe it will help,” things involving radio waves. Since then, we have gone on three real walks, the kind we used to do before August. She has eaten her food every day. She has played with her toys. She even ate some kibble last night. Kibble! The vet’s office called today and asked how she was doing and I said, “Great.” The tech said, “Normal, then?” And I said, “No, not normal, great. She’s eating, she’s exercising, she’s playing, she’s fantastic. That’s not normal, that’s great.” The tech laughed uncertainly and I therefore knew that she was not the same tech who gave Z her crazy, New Age, non-research-supported treatment, and spent twenty minutes discussing the travails of canine dementia with me, but I’m totally sold. Z turns 14 this week — in fact, she turns 14 tomorrow! — but she is acting 10 at most. I like that.

The Best of… Me

06 Sunday Jan 2019

Posted by wyndes in Best of, Personal, Randomness

≈ 9 Comments

I’ve been thinking about this post for a couple weeks, trying to decide what I wanted it to be. It has a significance that is invisible to you, but has been looming over me as I watched the counter on my dashboard tick inexorably up… 996, 997, 998, 999, and today, 1000.

One thousand posts! It’s a milestone, although I’m not sure what kind. After all, no one is ever going to read all of them. The XML back-up file has 1.7 million words in it. That’s about 20 books worth of words, and although some of those words are the XML code, most of them are not.

Personally, I really wish there were a lot more of those words. I didn’t start blogging until 2006 and then I blogged very lightly for the first few years of my blog, I think primarily because I worried about sharing too much of my personal life in a place that business colleagues might discover. But one of the things that I love about my blog are the links that show up at the bottom of the post that tie back to some previous day. Sometimes the previous day, whatever it was, bores even me. But other times I love the serendipitous reminders of where I was and what I was doing on some past moment. And I wish so many more of those reminders involved an adorable toddler and a stubborn six-year-old and an entertaining eight-year-old. Yes, I wish I’d been a mommy blogger! I wish I’d cared less about what other people might think, about the possibility of being perceived as unprofessional, and more about what I would want to remember. C’est la vie, however.

I also wish I hadn’t lost many of the photos from old posts somewhere along the technological path. I know it happened when my last domain host killed my site and I had a transitional period on wordpress and then switched domain hosts, but knowing how it happened doesn’t bring those photos back. Some of them I might still have somewhere, but I am not going to drop into the major, major rabbit hole of trying to find them and re-post them on those old posts. That would be a fine way of killing some days, but I’d rather use those days more wisely, like, maybe, writing a book?

All that said, and more to the point, even I am unwilling to read the entirety of my blog. Skim some of it, sure; read the occasional post, yes. But not the whole thing. In recognition, however, of the fact that this is a post I will remember, and a post I will stumble upon in the future, and a post that will link me back to my past, I’m going to share some of my favorites, at least of the ones I’ve stumbled across in my browsing over the past few weeks. I’m not going to claim that they’re the best or even worth reading necessarily, but they’re ones I’d like not to lose in the sea of my next million blog words.

August 4, 2009: The two Floridas

December 26, 2011: Anatomy of a year (2011)

January 5, 2014: To the people who dumped their dog on my street last July

September 3, 2015: Dyslexia

October 31, 2015: Swimming and yoga

August 15, 2016: The eye of the beholder

March 2, 2017: Palmetto State Park

May 31, 2017: Best. Vacation. Ever.

February 6, 2018: Bartleby

May 23, 2018: Commencement and other things

I don’t usually ask for comments, but if there’s a post I’ve written that you remember particularly for some reason, I’d love to hear about it!