Ketchup Post

Because, in the dialect of my youth, “ketchup” is pronounced “catch up.”  Or possibly the other way around.

Before I get started with the catching up of bidness, I have some, eh, Breaking News. We have been talking to Baen re narrators for the Audible edition of Trader’s Leap. We don’t have a date — hell, we don’t even actually have a narrator — but the fact that we’re having this discussion would seem to indicate that the audiobook is moving forward.

We now return you to your irregularly scheduled blog.

I have slightly too much on my plate at the moment, which is my excuse for the irregular updates here.

So, what is on your plate, I hear you ask.  Well, I will tell you.

Deep edit of a story that wouldn’t leave Steve alone, working title “The Port Chavvy Comet.”  I hope to have that done by the end of this weekend, so it can start making its way to chapbookhood.

Also!  I am the Front Office here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory, which means, I do the accounting, and interface with the accountant re taxes.  Even if the story isn’t done by tomorrow night, it will on Monday take second place to Getting the Tax Stuff Ready for the Accountant.

I’m taking a pain management course, which has quite a bit of homework attached to it.  Turns out that it’s true what they say, If ya wanna manage pain and stuff, you gotta sing loud.  And do the homework.

I’m still learning the new way of eating mandated by the Cancer Survivalist Program.  Which means I’m doing a lot more Actual Cooking, which is swell, because the new diet is, on the whole, very tasty, but that’s time I used to spend on other things, like, yanno, blogging.

Speaking of post-cancer living, that also comes with homework.  Who knew?  There’s walking and other exercise to be done, and while I have a walking and exercise schedule previous to my mastectomy, if I got into a writing crunch, I ignored  it.  Not an option anymore, along with the previous I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead lifestyle.

So, I guess what I’m saying is that a brush with mortality provides both a new lens and an…opportunity to re-organize.  Given that, I’m still re-organizing.

Those who are tired of the whole cancer discussion, can skip the next bit.

It turns out that coming back from cancer therapy is kind of like unboxing a matryoshka — or, more accurately, like putting one together.

Post-op, you feel lousy; then over a period of weeks, you feel less lousy; then you feel like maybe you could actually walk fifteen minutes a day, in five-minute shifts, around the upstairs of the hours. Gradually you get that 15 minutes into one Monster Shift, until one day you feel a lot better, well enough to go downstairs and walk for fifteen — or twenty! — minutes altogether. A little after that, you find that you’re bored, so you start swatting a Wiffle ball at the wall with your pickleball bat; and suddenly you’re walking 25/30 minutes at a go, and upping the pace, and one day you realize that you’re gonna have to increase the time to 35/40, and! that you’ve out-strengthed the size of your Wall Ball court.

So, my new project, with Steve’s help, is to set up a Tai Chi space in the wall ball court downstairs. We have a couple of screens that are good enough for video, we have Frank the old Windows 7 computer, we have a Windows compatible DVD player, and! we have Tai Chi DVDs. There’s no need for Frank to access the internet, which I understand is a very dangerous place for a machine of his age and persuasion, but he can interface between the DVD player and the screen, and I? can dance daibri‘at.

So, yeah, that’s another new project on the plate.

I hope to get back to more regular blogging here, as the rest of my new schedule takes shape around me.  In the meantime, thank you for your care and your patience.  I love you all.