Resolutions

04 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by in Personal, Randomness

≈ 6 Comments

My list of things to do feels terrifyingly long and filled with the sort of annoying stuff that could take forever or could not.

Example: I’ve been hearing weird noises, which at first I attributed to the dogs, or visitors, but yesterday all visitors were gone, the dogs were with me, and I still heard weird noises. I’m thinking animal(s) living in my walls, and probably not mice. It’s not little skittering noises, but banging and thuds. So somehow I need to find out what’s visiting me and get rid of it. Could be a big job, could be a little job.

Second example: I took down the Christmas tree but I haven’t put away the ornaments. I left them all piled on the window seat and the chairs and the floor. So they need to get put away, but I have no idea how long it will take and it probably depends on how carefully I put them away.

Third example: writing a book. Oh, wait, I know that one’s a big job. Bigger than it should be because I started over again right before Christmas and am back on Chapter 3. Bad me. I’m not throwing everything out, though, just… well, just a lot of it. I am so appalling impractical as a writer. So adding a fourth huge job, find a real job that pays me money so that I can continue to be impractical when it comes to writing, without letting the dogs starve. Well, or me starve either, but I fell in love with CostCo’s dark chocolate sea salt caramels in December and it was not good for me. I’ve got some room to go before I’m starving.

Meanwhile, though, my entire face hurts because my jaw has locked up. I’ve had Temperomandibular joint problems since I was a teenager — and ugh, that wikipedia link is depressing. This is the worst pain I’ve had from it since I was seventeen and I’ll probably be headed to the doctor later this week, when I’m sure my new health insurance is active. But maybe not since wikipedia tells me that there aren’t really any effective treatments, other than what I’ve been working on myself already — trying to relax and lower my stress level.

Ha, and I just realized that I’m missing yoga because I got distracted by that long wikipedia post and my phone’s in my purse so the alarm didn’t remind me that it was time to go. How’s that for irony? R would point out that I’m misusing the term, or rather using it in today’s conventional (yet non-dictionary approved) meaning of an unfortunate coincidence. So yeah, it’s an unfortunate coincidence that I was too busy thinking about feeling stressed and reading about the physical consequences of said stress to make it to my life’s best de-stressor. Alas.

But that brings me back to my resolution: to take one thing at a time. How’s that for a nice straightforward resolution? And the current next thing will be to finish this blog post and go find some breakfast that doesn’t require chewing.

Goodbye 2015 and Hello 2016

01 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by in Randomness

≈ 5 Comments

The last swimming day of 2015 turned out to be New Year’s Eve. My brother and his family were here for my father’s 75th birthday party and as far as they were concerned, 80 degree weather is acceptable swimming weather. They were right. I swam, too, and it was reasonably nice. A little on the cold side, but refreshing cold, not horrifying.

I thought about trying to make today be the first swimming day of 2016 — I could have, it was again nice enough — but I didn’t. Swimming fit right in to yesterday’s fun chaos of kids and barking dogs and adults having conversations around interruptions, but today was the solitary quiet of needles dropping off the Christmas tree as I pulled off the ornaments. Not swimming weather mentally, even though it was just as warm as it was yesterday.

Yesterday I made fruit salad — cantaloupe, watermelon, pineapple, strawberries & blueberries — and a maple cream cheese French toast casserole for a family brunch. On Christmas Eve, I did appetizers and desserts for family and friends. With Thanksgiving, that makes three occasions recently that I’ve cooked for ten plus. My conclusion is that I don’t mind the cooking, but the clean-up is seriously tedious. I used paper plates on Christmas Eve and even with paper plates, lots of cooking and eating makes lots of mess. But it was nice to have people here, of course.

Hmm, everything I write today is coming out a little blue. I guess I’m not quite ready to barrel ahead into the new year — I apparently need a little longer to recover from the holidays. But I wish you all a Happy New Year! May 2016 bring adventures and joy!

The Longest Night

21 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by in House, Personal

≈ 6 Comments

On Saturday, I decided I should hang Christmas lights. I don’t get serious about them — I am not one of those people with decorations on the roof and lit-up lawn displays of Santa and all his reindeer — but I do have a few strings of blue and white danging icicles that stretch across the front of the house. I also have incredible scratchy hedges that protect the front of the house from people wanting to do stupid things like paint or hang lights. But I dragged out the ladder and the step-stool and the lights and tried to find the nails that we put up last year.

Hanging lights is one of those chores that reminds me how my life has not turned out the way I expected it to. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, I don’t even think about being single. Solitude doesn’t feel “alone” to me, it feels normal. But hanging lights and putting air in the car’s tires makes me bizarrely resentful. Where is the partner who is supposed to be taking care of these chores? How come he never showed up? This year, I tried to convince R to help me but he was so passive-aggressively hostile to the idea, in the way that only a teenager can be, that I gave up on him. But I grumbled as I hung the lights. An extra ten inches of height and another pair of hands would have made it so much easier.

And then I kicked a hole in my wall.

I was trying to balance on the edge of the window to reach a spot that I couldn’t get to on the ladder because a dying tree is in the way. I feel guilty about the stupid tree because the lawn people write me notes telling me that I need to treat the trees because they are sick. The notes are nice notes, they point out that trees are expensive and that treating the trees is cheaper than replacing the trees, but I can’t afford to treat the trees and so I ignore the notes. And I ignore the tree. But when it’s in my face while I try to get a ladder past it in order to hang Christmas lights, it’s tough not to notice the yellowing leaves, the brown spots, and the white spots that are probably hatching bugs.

I was doing a good job of not noticing the tree, though, or at least of only thinking of it as an inconvenience, as I tried to squeeze past it to reach the corner of the house, so I could hang the lights. But it meant that I was balancing precariously on a very tiny ledge of brick. When I leaned too far, I… I don’t even know what happened. I am trying to picture it now, but mostly, I think my foot hit something that should have been solid and it wasn’t. The wood just crumbled away at the pressure. It wasn’t really the kick that did the deed — the wood was waiting to go.

After that, my interest in hanging lights declined to nil. I draped them across the other corner and let them hang. It is the most half-baked light hanging job ever. If light displays were graded, I’d get points for showing up, but a C for effort and a D- for execution.

But yesterday I went to church. I think I was thinking that if I can’t find the holiday spirit with lights, maybe the music of my childhood would do? It didn’t — largely because the music was not the music of my childhood. Even the offering song wasn’t the same. But the church is having a service today, this evening, a longest night service. The minister introduced it as a service for people who find the holidays hard, a moment to remember those we’ve lost and a time for quiet meditation. I’m not sure if I’ll go — I missed yoga all last week because I’ve been sick, so I’d like to get some exercise today — but I love the concept.

On this, the longest night, I remember my grandparents. I remember my mother. I remember the friends I’ve lost. I reflect on my worries — houses and trees, money and health — acknowledge them, and let them go. I think about my loved ones, with problems that I cannot control or fix, and I remind myself that those problems are not in my hands.

On the longest night, I remember that dawn will come, and that tomorrow, the night will be shorter.

Yin and Yang

16 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by in Personal, Pets

≈ 5 Comments

2015-12-14 16.08.41

Z’s attitude to B has been, from Day One, an appropriately regal, “You are invisible to me.” This is infinitely superior to her attitude toward M, which was a wary, “You might be dangerous. Do I need to defend my person from you?”

The latter led her into some very painful behavior. Painful to both of us — breaking up dog fights is not fun and has generally involved damage to my person, except for the one time where I scooped Zelda up and threw her into the pool. I read something about Jack Russell terriers once that said you should never own two of them, because if they fight, they will fight to the death — they are incapable of giving up. M had every advantage over Z but when Z decided she needed to fight, she would not let go, and M, quite sensibly, defended herself. Anyway, I think that book was probably silly — plenty of people own two JRTs without trouble, but Z has a stubbornness and a focus that is innate. She would have been good at catching rats, I suspect. Put her on the job and away she goes.

Her job, however, at least as she sees it, is me, the care and keeping of. Her focus is on reading my mind, delivering her interpretation of my wishes, keeping me safe. B has just been a peripheral creature, innocuous, not threatening, not interesting. Lately, however, I’ve been leaving the house a lot more often than I used to, and leaving the two of them home alone. Gradually, slowly, tentatively… well, you can see the photo. R called them Yin and Yang. I call them adorable.

Sick, sick, sick

14 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by in Personal, Randomness

≈ 4 Comments

R arrived home from school, trailing germs like perfume. Although, actually, I don’t suppose I had a long enough incubation period to catch whatever he’s got, so possibly R arrived home just in time to have to listen (unsympathetically) to me whine about the cold that’s hit me.

He has apparently been sick since the beginning of November, unable to kick a cold or possibly coming down with one cold after another, so he’s quite brisk about suggesting drugs and keeping his distance. He did, however, go off to Panera to buy me a bowl of autumn squash soup, so I’m not complaining. It’s nice to have him here, even though I barely made it out of bed yesterday and so far have done little better today.

And I thought I had the energy to write a blog post, but finding that link used it all up. I have to go take a nap now. Ugh, I hate being sick.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

10 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by in Books, Grace, Personal, Reviews

≈ 12 Comments

First of all, switching computers and operating systems and browsers and absolutely everything — I even have only one trackpad button now, instead of two — is really disorienting. But I love my new little computer. The battery life is incredible and the keyboard is clicketty perfection. Okay, not quite perfection — I keep getting a 1 when I try to get an !, but apart from that, it works really well and feels great.

Writing-wise it’s sort of interesting — the screen is so small that I can really only see a few lines at a time as I write. It makes it hard to assess the flow, but it also feels like I’m starting to write faster, because I’m not spending all my time being critical of the words I’ve already written. They disappear so fast that I don’t have the chance to stare at them gloomily.

However, my writing got horribly negatively affected this week when the library delivered Naomi Novik’s Uprooted to my Overdrive shelf. I was on the waiting list and it was finally my turn. I’m feeling slightly guilty right now that I haven’t returned it so that the next person on the waiting list can have her chance, but I haven’t yet, because I keep wanting to just drop into that world again for a little visit. I loved it so much. I’ve read other books by Novik — I think I read maybe the first three books of her very long Tremaire series? I enjoyed them but not enough to keep going when I reached the end of the series that had been written when I first started. I hate trying to remember what happened in a series that I haven’t read for a year so I often let series go. But this book was nothing like those books.

It’s a fairy tale mix of… oh, Robin McKinley and Patrick Rothfuss and Suzanne Collins and … someone grim and bloody and someone magical and stubborn. Maybe it is its own thing entirely? After I fell in love with it, I listened to the Sword & Laser podcast about it and then read a Slate review of it. One of the things that both of those sources pointed out was that it’s almost a trilogy in one book: a coming-of-age tale with a fantastic heroine where for the first third, she’s learning in a classic Beauty and the Beast scenario, and in the second third, she’s off to the city in a Mercedes Lackey/Patrick Rothfuss watch-out-for-the-evil-peers story, and in the last third, she is engaged in epic battles to save her home, ala people that I don’t read because I’m not so much an epic battle sort of reader. (And wasn’t THAT quite the run-on sentence.) The Slate review criticized that, suggesting that it would have been better as three books, but I totally disagreed — this is an all-things-in-one, breakneck speed, completely engrossing read. For me, it was perfect.

Well, pretty close to perfect. On a second read, I started to quibble with some things. (What happened to the wolves? Where did they come from and why were they never seen again? Why didn’t the obnoxious girl get transformed into a toad? Seriously, on what planet is tilting her headpiece a year’s worth of humiliation for someone that bitchy? Also holy cow, there are a lot of dead people by the end — I’m not sure I’ve ever loved a book that was quite so bloody.) BUT! None of those things remotely occurred to me on my first read and really mostly I just loved it to death. So much so that as soon as I finished, I went back to the beginning and started again and since then, I’ve been dipping in and out of it at regular opportunities. And worst of all, my night-time and morning day-dreaming — the moments when I’m half-awake and story is unfolding before my eyes, words drifting into my imagination — all those moments are being stolen by Novik’s world. *sigh*

I should really return this book to the library right now and try to forget all about it. Noah needs to finish his confrontation with Lucas and Akira needs to get back from her honeymoon. But you, on the other hand, you, dear reader, should promptly put your name on your library’s hold list. I’ve added the book to my Amazon wishlist and someday after I make it through the holidays, after I finish writing a couple books of my own, I’m going to be buying my own copy of Uprooted so that I can read it until the pixels wear out. (Thank God they never do!)

And oh, bah, I was actually going to write the story of my Christmas tree, but I’m out of time. Oh, well. I have a Christmas tree. It feels magical. It’s not really decorated yet, but I feel a decided glow of happiness when I think about it that matches the glow of its lights.

Christmas tree

Can’t miss reads

07 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by in Appetizers, Personal

≈ 4 Comments

One of the sort of exciting, sort of traumatic elements of switching computers — including switching operating systems, web browsers, and storage systems! — is the opportunity to recreate my computer world. It turns out that my former RSS reader doesn’t work in Chrome. This is not so much of a problem really — I wasn’t all that fond of it and I’ve thought for a long time that I should switch to another one. But it’s tough to get motivated to switch something so basic because, ugh, what a lot of work. It’s so much easier to just stick with the familiar, even when the familiar is not so satisfying. But now I have no choice. The question is: do I keep the old computer open while I copy each and every blog over to the new system or do I just start with the few blogs that I remember and let my RSS feed once again evolve organically? Honestly, it feels like a serious dilemma. I haven’t made a decision, but I suspect that not making the decision will turn out to be a decision.

The new RSS reader, feedly, currently with only two blogs in it, seems quite nice, though. I particularly like the simple way that you add new blogs: they get a little icon in the bottom corner that lets you click and add them to the feed. Huh, I should probably check and make sure that my blog has said icon for other RSS users.

But the real question ought to be: what are the two blogs? If I can only remember two blogs off-hand, they must be my favorites, right? They are The Passive Voice, to my mind the single essential self-publishing news site (because he’s a great compiler of other people’s important posts), and Captain Awkward, a great and interesting advice site. I’m sure that I’ll be adding other blogs as I remember them and miss them or stumble across them again, but those are the two that apparently are my “can’t miss” reads.

In other “can’t miss read” news, Robin McKinley has Kindle books on sale for $1.99, including her classic retelling of Beauty and the Beast, as well as Sunshine, the only vampire book that I’ve ever loved. (Vampires = overgrown mosquitoes. Yuck.) If you haven’t read these books — well, any of the books that she has on offer for $1.99 — it’s a wonderful opportunity. And if you have read them, it’s a great chance to add the ebooks to your collection. I’ve been ruthless in paring down paper books in the last decade, but I still own all of the books that she has on sale and yet I bought each and every one of them because I was so pleased to have the chance to get them in ebook version. Then, of course, I wasted my entire afternoon reading. But you should do the same. 🙂

Chromebook progress

05 Saturday Dec 2015

Posted by in Boring, Randomness, Writing

≈ 4 Comments

The abuse of the last couple days of NaNo — hours banging away on the computer to get those last 12,000 words — was a little too much for my laptop’s keyboard. The 8 key had already been sticking, but the i key and the n key stopped working regularly. Argh. Trying to write and having every sentence turn into “tryng to wrte” is disconcerting.

I’m hard on my keyboards, I’ve discovered. Back in the day when I used Apple machines most of the time for work I didn’t have problems, but when I quit my job and switched to cheap Windows PCs, I started needing a new keyboard every year or so. And not because I spilled stuff on them, just because steady typing takes its toll.

This one, though, left me with a dilemma. I’d promised myself that when it bit the dust, I would go back to a Mac, figuring that the quality was worth the investment. A computer that didn’t need a new keyboard every year and that had some operating system stability (don’t get me started on Windows — I hated 8 but my problems with 10 never ended) would be a bargain in the long run. Not to mention the time I’d save by not fighting with it all the time. But I’d hoped to at least finish a book on it first. Maybe two! In other words, I needed it to last long enough for me to earn some money on it before I could make that decision and yet, there it was — it’s tough to earn money from writing when your I and your N are only optional.

Enter… drum roll…. a Chromebook. It’s the other anti-Windows option. I have no idea (yet) whether it will suit me long-term, but when I started looking, I managed to find a deal on Amazon that basically cost me $122 with free same-day delivery. It’s a working keyboard, software that I can use to write on, and for the investment, all I need is for it to last for a few months. And it is so, so, so cute.

Unfortunately, it does have typical Google interface problems. They are so remarkably bad at design. The people there may be incredible coders, but even reading the instructions doesn’t help me figure out how to do things that ought to be obvious. Example: opening up a hangout so I can chat with a friend. It took me probably ten minutes to figure out that I needed to go to the Chrome Web store and download an extension. The things that looked like links on the search results page just didn’t work at all. And figuring out how to use the trackpad is going to take me forever. I may need to put a cheat sheet next to me while I work to remind myself to use three fingers for… well, something or other. I remember reading in the instructions that I could do something by swiping with three fingers but I no longer remember what the something was (proof of the need for a cheat sheet.)

But every time I get impatient, I will remind myself: working keyboard, ability to keep writing without going insane, I key and N key and 8 key… and for basically the price of a single CostCo grocery run. I have to admit, too, it really makes me want to head off to Starbucks and write at a coffee shop, just because it’s so usably light. I could seriously tuck this machine into my purse and not even notice that I was carrying it around, but it still has a usable keyboard. I can also put my iPad in my purse, of course, but writing on that keyboard doesn’t work at all for me.

Anyway, enough rambling about my new device. I’m going to have to experiment with google docs and see if I can set it up to be functional for me without a huge learning curve, and I don’t think this is going to be a complete replacement for a computer — for one thing, I don’t know how I’d create an ebook using only Chrome-capatible software — but first things first. Until I finish writing Grace, I really don’t have to worry about creating an ebook, so time to get started with the writing! Thanks for the good wishes on my last post — I didn’t answer comments because I’ve been very computer frustrated with everything taking longer than usual, but I appreciate them!

Jigsaw puzzles

02 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by in Grace, NaNo, Writing

≈ 3 Comments

Re-reading all the words I wrote in November to pick out the good bits and sadly, there are so many ideas, and — less sadly — so many good bits, but they do not fit together at all, at all. I think I called it a jigsaw puzzle once — it is more like one of those three-dimensional puzzles where all the pieces have the exact same shape. I say “one of” — I don’t actually know that such a puzzle exists, but if it did, this conglomeration of words would resemble it.

Conglomeration is maybe not the word I want. But it’s not collection and it’s not cacophony and whatever it is, it starts with a C.

I don’t want Grace to be a story that gets stuck in a drawer, I really don’t. But yesterday I just bailed. I read the Parasol Protectorate all day long, finishing Book 5 this morning at about 11. So yeah, five books in 24 hours, not exactly the most productive use of my time. She deserved a better editor, in my opinion, although she did some fine retro-fitting to plug up her world-building inconsistencies. But I bet she got some letters of complaint before she did. Is that my problem, I wonder? Am I worried about people complaining? I don’t feel like it should be — so far, with a few rare exceptions, I’m my own harshest critic.

But really, I suspect it’s the jigsaw puzzle problem. When I started, I was writing three stories at once: a romance between Grace and Noah; a mystery about stock options, anonymous threats, and bodyguards; and the story of the ghosts. When I started over again from the beginning, back in the summer, I jettisoned everything except the romance, but now I’m back to trying to write the romance and the ghost story and feeling like the mystery was the glue that tied the two together. So, option one: keep writing, even though I’m lost and spinning in circles. Option two: back to the beginning and start revising, see where I can go if I fix all the things that are already bothering me. Option three: write something else for a while.

Option four: go back to bed and wallow in depressed, gray, miserable gloominess.

I’m thinking option one. I may not be getting anywhere, but as I learned from my re-reading of all my not-getting-anywhere-of-November, there were at least some good ideas. And I did discover — especially in the last few days of November — that when I simply force myself to write, whether I know where I’m going, whether the words are any good or not, things start churning around. I wrote a lot of words in two days. I didn’t much enjoy them. But I don’t think they’re bad words. I’m probably not going to use a lot of them, maybe not any, but pushing to create them was… well, it felt like exercise. Not necessarily fun, but healthier at the end, healthier when I was in the middle of it, and even if it’s not forward movement, at least it was movement.

Three o’clock and I haven’t had lunch, so I think I shall go hunt down some food. But after lunch, it’s time to start writing again. Today will be Day 1 of a fresh writing chain which is, someday, I am really quite hopeful — or maybe just thinking positive — going to end with a book.

Success (more or less)

30 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by in Randomness

≈ 3 Comments

Print

Not a real novel, not completed, not scenes that make sense at the end… but 50,000 words written in a month — 12,000 of them in the past two days — and I did learn something from it. But I’ll write about what I learned some other time, because right now, I am so done with this day.