life after the apocalypse – Page 3

The Mating Dance

Tuesday. Sunny and pretty dern cold. Trash and recycling are at the curb. The chickadees and the titmice that dined with us yesterday told their friends down at the bar and this morning we also have cardinals and mourning doves. I haven’t seen any other interest, but I fear mine will have to be a pop-up diner.

Breakfast was stir-fried leftover veggies and rice. After I finished stir-frying, I removed the veggies to my bowl, cracked an egg into the frying pan, scrambled it around and added it to the bowl. Worked out well. Lunch will be soup today (yesterday, I decided on fish and the veggies of which I had leftovers this morning).

I really should leap right into the taxes, but — when I was sitting with the Happy Lite this morning with Firefly on my knees, I read an article about marriage proposals and how they remain the last stage for the Grand Gesture in Romance (which is not true, actually, unless no one’s doing epic weddings anymore?) — the man down on his knees, his intended shocked, and charmed, and if she hadn’t been exactly in love, this Lovely Gesture is the final nudge, because of course one must say yes! And how you film it and post it on Insta for all your friends to see. And how they’re getting more and more over the top, because nothing says “I love you” like putting somebody into a spot where they don’t dare spoil the spectacle.

Trés romantique.

I, of course, never intended to get married, and nor did Steve, having done that once and found it not to his taste. We did have, as I may have said once or twice, an instant connection, and I was prepared to share a household and cats with him forever, because we worked, snapped into each other like Legos. We decided to marry as a practicality, to ensure that, if I fell ill (again), I would be assured of someone who actually cared about what happened to me out there taking care of the details.

When I did fall ill, I couldn’t even talk to Steve at his temp-agency job to tell him where I was, because I wasn’t his wife. The receptionist at the agency did take a message, though.

I will pass lightly over the Utter Horror that I felt, sick, so very sick, when my mother walked into my hospital room.

The agency got my message to Steve, and he did eventually arrive. At which point my mother did one of the most humane things she had ever done for me. She told the doctor, “He’ll take care of whatever you need.” — and left.

When things were less fraught, and I was recovered, Steve and I talked this event over, and I said, “I don’t ever want that happen again. Do we need to go to a lawyer and get something written up to say that you’ll speak for me?” And he said, “Let me think about it.”

A couple days later, when I came home from work, he poured me a glass of wine, and handed me a carved wooden box.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Open it,” he said.

So I did.

For Art! and Science!

I . . . have been remiss in updating the blog, for which my apologies. The last couple days have been not much worth writing about anyway — mostly reading and doing daily chores, with intermittent sadness.

That said, we move on to!

Monday midday already. Sunny and cold. I put paper plates of seeds out on top the snow on the deck. I prolly shouldn’t have done, but I miss seeing the birds. The cats are fascinated and the new sliders in Steve’s office gets them right up close and personal.

I called Dead River this morning, while I was still sitting under the glow of the Happy Lite, and was therefore taught the new method of oil delivery. Back in the Old Days, the oil truck came on — oh, Tuesday. Or possibly every other Tuesday. But, they delivered to a schedule, which they could be expected to keep, to top off the tank. This was … simple. We have now graduated to a more complex system, wherein oil usage for a particular address is calculated, using known data, and when the oil tank at that particular address reaches what ought to be one/third full, an oil delivery is triggered.

I pause here to mourn simplicity.

The helpful office person I spoke with at the crack of dawn this morning explained this to me, though she could not tell me when the delivery would be triggered. We left it that a truck would come by sometime this week to top off my tank, and then I will Observe the System in Real Time, so that I may see for myself how well it works.

Moving on. Yesterday, my back hurt, and my hands hurt, and — let’s just say that I was a hurtin’ person, enough that I was aware that I was hurting. After I finished my work with the WIP, and had written a draft of my Remarks, I decided to field test a gummy. For Science!

I cut a gummy in half (taking it from 10mg of THC to the 5mg recommended for newbies), which dose is said to make one feel calm and subtly relaxed. It made me feel that I had drunk way too much wine. Not a pleasant buzz, but rather a “shouldn’t have had that last glass” light-headed-and-unsteady feeling. I mention here that the muscle relaxants and prescribed pain relievers also make me lightheaded and foolish on my feet.

On the plus side, I was feeling no pain. I spent the next while drinking lots of water, and eating snacks and listening to my audiobook, and eventually the “too much” feeling went away, and pretty soon thereafter, I went to bed, and slept very well.

And when I got up this morning, I was still pain-free.

So! Conclusions. Do gummies work for pain relief? Yessir, they do, and they don’t make me sick. Most of the prescribed pain relievers and muscle relaxants really make me sick. Already, I’m ahead of the game. Do gummies work as a muscle relaxant? Seems so, since the pain hasn’t come back today. And let’s not discount that lovely night’s sleep.

Obviously, I’m going to have to be very cautious with them, and I may want to conduct a follow-up experiment with one-quarter of a gummy, to see if I can get relief and! still be able to function.

But that’s for later.

For today, I spent the morning reviewing the WIP and have less than 50 pages left to read. I’ll be doing that after lunch, which will be bean and veggie soup out of the freezer. Unless I decide on something else.

Tomorrow, I will start the day off by opening the tax portal and will hopefully finish filling in the necessary forms before it’s time to go to needlework.

Wednesday morning, first thing, Tali has an appointment with her vet, and when I come home I will begin reviewing beta reader comments, and starting the process of producing a final draft of the WIP.

Doesn’t that look tidy and fine?

So! Who else is tidy and fine today?

Ah. One of the things I let get past me was the Celebration of Talizea’s Gotcha Day, on February 3. Here, we have Then:

And now:

I gotta get another hat. . .

What went before Thursday: So, I bought a stability ball today — also known as a Giant Yoga Ball — on suggestion of PT, and by doing so I learned several things.

Thing One. I had to go to Wal*Mart to obtain this item. Now, I haven’t been in a Wal*Mart for at least 8 years, and at that time, I was in the Augusta Marketplace store and it was filthy and ill-kept, misfiled, and nerve-wracking to be in — you know, like all the stores are now. The Waterville store, today, was — spacious and well-lit, the shelves were stocked appropriately, signage (with a notable exception, which I will share) plentiful and easy to see. The gentleman in the red vest and ID tags who I stopped to ask where I should look for a Giant Yoga Ball told me that I would be going to the back of the store, to the Sports section, and then he used his phone to tell me that Giant Yoga Balls could be found in Aisle I-15.

Thing Two. Being as I had to walk to the furthest corner of the store to find Sports, I did have plentiful opportunity to look about me, and discover those things reported in Thing One. When I got to Sports, however, I found I-14 and I-17, but not Aisle I-15, which would be my luck. I asked a young lady who was stocking shelves, and whose face immediately said she didn’t want to have anything to do with me why there was no Aisle I-15, and the young man who was her partner said, “Oh, no, I’ll show you,” which he did (I-15 is, in the Waterville Wal*Mart, where they file the bicycles), and when I said, “There are no Giant Yoga Balls here,” led me to the exact shelf, which is where I learned Thing Three, which is!

You have to inflate the Giant Yoga Ball when you get it home. It comes with a cheap, plastic, manual air squeeze, and it will, conservatively, take me three days to inflate this thing. However! I have the ball in house, and have started on the inflation project, and I’m calling that progress.

I am now needing to get to my backlogged email.

Tomorrow Sarah comes in the morning to do the cleaning, and I believe I will be blocking out the rest of the day, which will give me 4.5 days to concentrate on reading/writing until I’m next needed elsewhere. I may, in fact, make a weekend of it, and order in, so I can keep focused on the WIP, with short breaks to blow up the stability ball.

So! I have what passes for A Plan. I note that this Plan may mean that I will be not much around the Internets. It’s OK; I’ll be working.
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Friday. Cold and intermittently sunny. Sarah changed her hours to Saturday.

Woke up at 5:30, got up at 6, sat with the Happy Lite, ate breakfast and was reading the WIP before 8. Read 200 pages, did a couple loads of laundry, broke for lunch — chicken Alfredo from … I have no idea, actually. Pasta Americana? It was good and I have leftovers, which is also good.

The story is not nearly as terrible as I had feared. In fact, it’s pretty good. So that’s a relief. I have 68 days until I have to hand it in, and even though I have to Really End It, excise those 9,000 words, and probably write … two? more fill-out scenes, I should be able to make that deadline.

Beta Readers! If you are still reading, do not despair! My Method is to do my read, then read your comments, once I have the story in my head in its present shape. You are, in a word, Still Relevant — very much so! — and I look forward to your notes with anticipation.

The stability ball has been inflated, and the cats are of the opinion that nobody needs a ball that big.

Dead River, after assuring me yesterday that my delivery was scheduled for today — has not yet delivered. I’m in no danger, but I would very much like to know why it’s suddenly become difficult to deliver oil to this address.

I still need to finish my Remarks and choose something(s) to read for my Event on the 21st.

The missing 1099-MISC arrived today, which would be my luck, because I wrote to the issuing party regarding its whereabouts yesterday. I now have to block out the better part of a day to enter everything into the accountant’s portal, because the thing is purposefully designed to force you to fill it in All At Once. In former years, when I was working from paper, I would have been filling the forms in as columns were added, and paperwork arrived, and the manifesting of the last 1099 would mean that I filled in one final line, reviewed, and took the whole packet down to Oakland on Monday morning.

Stoopid portal.

What else? The now-called Business Office, formerly Sharon’s Office, looks like a bomb hit it again. I used to write and do business in here, and . . . I can’t figure out how I did — oh, no, I do know. By this time in the Proceedings, the manuscript would have taken over the living room, and Steve would be reading it while I did the taxes, and I would have been able to keep up better with the day-to-day paperwork because Steve would have picked up the laundry and the cooking and the dishwashing, because he would rather do those things than the taxes.

deep breath

Nope. Still Not Preferring this timeline.

Last night, I collapsed into bed earlyish and asked the Boox to read Cuckoo’s Egg to me. Now, I have read Cuckoo’s Egg manyManyMANY times. It is, in fact, one of my favorite books. I know this story. But listening to it is a Whole Nother Experience. I have not had this particular sensation of . . . newness . . . with the other books — all old favorites, because I’m still learning — I’ve listened to, so that’s interesting.

And that I think catches us up. I’m going to take some time to excavate my desk.

Ah. Today’s blog post title brought to you by Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Thursday open for bidness

OK, let’s see…

Thursday. Sunny and cold. Feeling much more the thing than yesterday, which — just let’s say that it was a day when you drink peppermint tea and honey because your stomach hurts and that turns out to be a bad idea.

Got in an early four hours with the WIP this morning, and have verified that I’ll be removing about 9,000 words. This is not a surprise; I kinda sorta knew I was going to hafta do it, unless I Thought of Something. Which I haven’t, so — into the Pull File they go, and maybe they’ll be useful later.

I have a doctor’s appointment at 2:30, and need to verify where I’m going. Also, I have emails that I need to answer, and! I need to tell Draft2Digital that, yes, I do want Pinbeam Books to be listed with Bookshop.

Still waiting on that one outstanding 1099-MISC.

I see that the judge overseeing the Anthropic Settlement has extended various deadlines for opting in, out, and sideways, which will likely put back the expected payout schedule, originally projected to begin in August. Granted, I never expected to see any money from this “settlement,” but the whole thing’s so infuriating that even reading the subject line kicks up the blood pressure.

And FedEx has just arrived to deliver a letter, so it looks like the range for hitting my house really is between 11:15 and noon. Which is actually useful information.

Trying to figure out if I want to try to see John Mellencamp’s off-Broadway fine-tuning of his play at Ogunquit in October. I expect if I want to do that, I’ll have to reserve a room at Ogunquit realsoonnow. Must lookout prices.

For now, I need to do my duty to the cats, and then heat up the soup I didn’t eat yesterday, ref stomachache, and — oh, yeah, find where the heck I’m supposed to be at 2:30.

How’s everybody doing today?

Tuesday morning, with biscuits

Tuesday. Sunny and cold. How cold you ask? Five-Fahrenheit-feels-like-minus-five-Fahrenheit.

Trash and recycling are at the curb, boxes of books are in the back of the Subaru, I’m sitting in the comfy chair in my office getting a dose of sunlight, and Firefly is marching around on my lap slapping my face with her tail.

No, wait, now she’s laying on her side making biscuits, no — now she’s tucked up under my chin and gazing soulfully into my face. She’s purring really loudly. So I guess that’s my good morning.

Last night, I watched the first episode of Riot Women and I’m having a good time with it. For values of a good time. They are, after all, talking about a subject that interests me greatly as an old woman, which is the sudden facility to become invisible once you’re past a certain age. This is especially interesting to me because I passed most of my early life as an invisible person, when I wasn’t being told I was lazy and stupid.

Firefly, for those keeping score, is now sprawled across my lap, smiling up at me, purring, and continuing to make biscuits with one paw. I would say that this is a spoiled cat.

In a few minutes I’ll be getting up to get breakfast, which will be oatmeal, chocolate chips, and almond butter and then I’ll get on the road to get my haircut and to deliver books.

What’s on your schedule today?

May your days be brighter

And a blessed Imbolc to all who celebrate.

I celebrated by changing out the cat boxes, and vacuuming the basement.

Because my roommates are not good with telephones, nor, frankly, with understanding when I might need them to use the telephone, a couple years ago, I upped the population of Google Nests in this house, making sure I had one in more or less every room.

I have at last count 7 Nests, and when asked all will give me the current weather in the city in which I live.

Except for the Nest in the bathroom — you know, the room in the house where people are most likely to fall? Yeah. Well, for the past two years the Nest in the bathroom has operated under the persistent illusion that I live in Portland. Or at least that the bathroom is in Portland.

I have today — I believe — repaired that delusion. I will of course test this multiple times, but just now, after the fix and the reboot, when I asked it what the weather was, it gave me local conditions in this, my own, city. And when I asked it where I was located, it gave me the correct zipcode.

Other things accomplished today — books pulled and boxed and ready to go to the bookstore, where they will be entered into The System, and brought to the library on the day of my event.

The aforesaid changing out of the cat boxes and vacuuming of the basement, moving clean dishes from the washer to the various cabinets where they belong. I still have to wash the pots and pans and then? It will be Coon Cat Happy Hour.

So, yanno, not an earthshaking kind of day by any means, but I got through it, and that counts.

Tomorrow, PT first thing, then I have to stop at the bank for the first time in at least a year, then home again for work on the WIP and revising the Remarks. Oh, and I should write my wrap-up for Conflict of Honors, seeing as I’m halfway through Plan B.

Everybody have a good evening; stay safe.

I’ll check in tomorrow.

Late Saturday check-in

Well, then. That was Saturday.

I drafted my Remarks for my library event. I think they may be the wrong Remarks, but you can’t revise what you don’t write down. Still need to figure out how I’m going to handle the reading/what I’m going to read. I’m torn between several small scenes or one big one. May have to resort to flipping a cantra piece.

Spent part of the day loading the apps I usually use on my phone to my Samsung tablet, where they will be larger, which — in theory — will help with this current bout of eyestrain.

I also made a couple more adjustments to the new toy. It did a very credible job of reading several chapters of Getting Rid of Bradley to me last night while I just laid in the dark with ninetyleben pounds of coon cat on me, eyes closed and listening. Rookie, predictably perhaps, has really bonded with Zach.

What else? Oh, Had an email from the owner of Oliver and Company who will be handling the sales table during my event, and it seems we Have A Plan. Always good to have a Plan.

Happy Hour was a touch early tonight, and now the cats have scattered. In solidarity, I have a glass of wine with me here at the computer, and my stomach is informing me that I need to rustle something up for dinner RSN.

Tomorrow starts a Warming Trend, with temps soaring into the mid-twenties and thence into the! thirties! By ghod, it’s practically summer!

Speaking of tomorrow, next week is going to be busy. Yes . . . busy.

Tomorrow, now that my knees and hips don’t hurt enough for me to notice, I’ll change out the cat boxes, only a couple days late.

Monday, first thing, I have a PT appointment. Tuesday morning, I have a haircut scheduled, and needlework in the evening; Wednesday, I need to visit the vampyres, which may be an excuse to have breakfast out; Thursday, I have a podiatry appointment, and I should probably go to the grocery somewhere in all of that. Friday morning Sarah comes by to clean, and in the afternoon, I want to go to the tea at the library. I have a pretty flowered skirt and a top hat, so clearly the sartorial part of the venture is well under control.

Tomorrow, I will also be starting my read of the WIP, so that’ll be fun.

And that? Is the state of affairs at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory.

Friday morning 10 a.m.

Friday. Cloudy and sort of snowing. Cold.

Firefly has once again joined me on my lap to celebrate the happy lite and to look out over the long backyard. She even had a taste of my tea. Firefly has previously not liked tea, but Sprite used to demand a drop out of every cup, so it looks like she’s found both Sprite and Belle’s books.

I slept badly, and have been arguing with myself about whether or not I’m going to eat breakfast. I think I finessed that. Macaroni and cheese is breakfast, right?

Today the taxes take top billing, followed by writing my remarks for my talk next month. After that, we’ll see.

How’s everybody holding up?

Dictated to my phone

Rabbit Hole Thursday Part II

And my tablet has arrived. Thank you, Robert of FedEx for ringing the bell, and wishing me a good day. Screen signed and package inside. 11:37 am

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New tablet. OMG so cute!

Of course, I have no idea what I’m doing and I’ll need to find a translation for what the icons mean, but I repeat: OMG so cute!

Ahem.

So, after a brief, doting new-parent, delay, dinner is in the oven — a chicken breast patty with a slice of mozzarella on top, and crushed tomato sauce on top of that, under a tin foil hat in the oven.

Leftover peas for veggies, I think, and maybe a slice of bread.

Yeah, that sounds like lunch…
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Well. Speaking of rabbit holes. I sat down with the Boox, which has made Many Assumptions about how people deal with their devices. I’ve managed to figure out how to annotate, which is, along with the e-ink tech, what I wanted the thing for, so that’s a plus. Having figured it out, I’m not sure how useful it will be, but it’s early days.

I increased the font, monkeyed with the refresh rates, got the stylus paired, and a bunch of all those other things that you do when you get a new device. I’m still a little hazy on what the symbols on the navigation bar mean, but I halfway solved that by changing them out for symbols that I recognize.

I’m baffled by the absence of what is to me a recognizable home screen, but there’s probably a way to finesse that, too. Later.

The biggest frustration so far is that the on-board manual ain’t on-board. It helpfully gives you an address where the document ought to be on the device, but it’s not there, and the web download instructions simply make no sense. Oh, and I just tried that address from this machine, and there isn’t a manual for the B&W Go-7, which would explain why it can’t be downloaded, hey?

Well.

Tomorrow is, they say, another day. However, I really can’t play with my new toy all day tomorrow. No, I mean that.

I did a second go-over of the tax questionnaire, but I didn’t make my phone call, so that’ll have to happen tomorrow.

The cats have been checking in on me. Tali has made it her habit to join me here in the business office after lunch, which is very pleasant. Rook usually checks in a couple times, but he really does love his basket back on Steve’s desk. It’s funny that Firefly will use the basket on my desk — last known as Trooper’s Basket — but neither of the new kids use it anymore, though they liked it a lot when Grandpa was still with us.

So, I guess that it’s for the day.

Everybody stay safe.

I’ll check in tomorrow.

Rabbit Hole Thursday

This never happens

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Thursday. Sunny and cold.

Firefly came to join my in the comfy chair this morning, and spent some time gazing up into my face, and kneading, and rubbing her cheek on my hand, and offering her chin and belly for rubs. She’s never this demonstrative. After she had expressed her devotion, she curled up on my lap and went to sleep, which, yes, also never happens. She’ll sleep next to me on the couch or on the bed, but she hasn’t been a lap-sitter.

Needless to say, I spent an extended time in the chair, thinking thoughts, and trying just to Breathe. It was nice. She did finally stretch and jumped down, with a very high tail, and we both got something to eat.

Before I forget: Chocolate tea is much improved by a dash of half-and-half, but I think it will not become a favorite with me.

Today, I am on FedEx Watch. They’re being cagey, and will only say that the package is on a truck and will be delivered “today.” They usually come by between 11 and noon — in fact, yesterday’s note was left at 11:11, so — fingers crossed. I don’t, of course, dare to go into the back of the house or downstairs, but it’s not like I don’t have things to do.

. . . like go down the rabbit hole of new Motorola phones, because I have never bonded with the free Pixel 9 Pro. I mean, it’s a phone, and it does the phone-like things that I need done. It weighs too much, and it gulps down battery power like a chimp with a crate of bananas, but apparently all the new phones are power-hogs, and Seven! Days! Between! Charges! is a thing of the oh-so-long-ago.

I was briefly tempted by the Moto G Power, but — yanno, the Pixel works, and whatever it did yesterday to produce that spark of “Yanno? You can be replaced.” has already faded.

So, late getting started here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory — call it half a writer’s day off. I do very much need to call the CPA, and work on my talk for the Waterville Public Library in a couple weeks. And play with my new tablet if/when it arrives.

Realsoonnow, I’m going to have to start doing my read of the WIP, but that can wait another day or two. I also need to put some serious thought into how I expect to stay solvent after this contract is finished — that was one of the subjects Firefly and I touched on. She likes this house, as I do, and wanted to make sure I wasn’t thinking about moving. I’m not. I mean, yeah, it’s too big for one old woman and three cats, because ghosts don’t take up that much room, but the reasons for the house — this house (all on one level, in town, near shopping, the cats’ vet, and the not-exactly-a-hospital) — are still good. Plus the ghosts. Steve put a lot of care into making this a Lee-and-Miller History House.

So, that’s where I am at mid-morning.

How’s everybody doing?

More morning pics: