Proof of Life. Writing this morning, movie this afternoon. Movie is Hadestown.
#
So that’s 1,085ish new words for a WIP total of 31,220ish.
Someone asked the other day if Trade Lanes had “ever been written.” I’m writing it now.
Now to do my duty the cats, call for a haircut, catch-up the blogs, and see about a pre-movie snack.
#
Came around the corner to find that Rookie has made an art installation.
Sunday.
So I figured I was hale enough to do the shopping, which I was. I bought two different kinds of protein shake (so I can perform a taste-test), along with other needed supplies, along with Sanpelligrino Lime, and so-called ginger ale. Didn’t ginger ale used to Actually Have ginger in it, rather than “ginger flavoring”?
Though I was fit enough to get the shopping done, I am now, I suppose predictably, exhausted. Had some pudding after I got everything put away, and listened to a couple chapters of Salvage Right, which — writing a character with PTSD isn’t easy, but I think we did a credible job. Also? I do so love Seignur Veeoni.
In a couple, I’ll start the oven to heat lunch, and then I think I’ll concentrate on bookkeeping and mundane desk work, and correspondence.
The cats think I should take a nap, and they may be right, but, if that’s found to be the case, it will be after lunch, not instead of lunch.
How’s everybody doing?
# # # #
I see I forgot to update yesterday. Herewith, the cold news from Saturday:
A break for PT homework and to throw a load of towels into the washer.
This morning, I have been in the comfy chair in my office, Sitting With The Big Ideas. I have Notes. I have an inclination toward More Notes, so I’ll head back to the comfy chair after I finish this note and collect a cookie as my reward for doing my homework.
I’m working with notes that go back to 2022, at least, trying to identify recurring themes. I wish to honor Steve’s vision for what were his character and story, far more than it was mine. Which isn’t as easy as it sounds.
I had early cat assistance, but just before I broke for homework, Tali and Rook decided that I was well in hand, and took themselves off to Steve’s office to recharge. I know they’re recharging because they’re curled up in the plentiful sunspots.
On the health front, I have this morning decided not to take naproxen, which is really not something you want to be taking all the time, even given anti-nausea meds. So far, I’m maintaining at a whisker over ignorable levels, so that’s Good. Naproxen does have a long half-life, so I’m guessing any increased discomfort will start showing up this evening.
Interestingly, for values thereof, while I can concentrate on the WIP, and am doing good, sharp work there, for anything else, it’s an extremely fuzzy day in the neighborhood. I hate feeling stupid, OTOH, pay copy is being written and/or plotted, so — onward.
Looking at next week — The 1:45 showing of Hadestown on Monday, needlework, and on Friday, which would have been Steve’s 76th birthday, a morning nature cruise on the Messalonskee, if it doesn’t rain. Maybe, if I can keep to current levels, I’ll actually be able to get my hair cut by a professional some day next week, and before I take a pair of kitchen shears to it.
How’s Saturday treating you?
Saturday’s editor:
Friday.
Watched the 2010 Swan Lake last night (aka “the Swan Lake for our times”), after I decided that the production I was offered–The Velveteen Rabbit– was taking too much of my limited store of patience. My state of mind might have come over to Swan Lake, which was … not riveting, but certainly watchable, and I did watch it. I did not at all like the man who danced Prince Siegfried, and found the Black Swan much more compelling than the milquetoast–ahem–White Swan. Still, it took my mind off my problems for a while, so that was a thing.
Had a bad night, despite the best effort of cats, and only this morning realized that I have an answer to the problem of wanting to put heat on my back during the night. I have two heated throws, one of which now joins the bed furnishings.
Got grumpy on an email list, did PT homework, ate breakfast.
Wrote +/-660 new words, bringing the WIP entire to 30,145ish words. I’m still subscribing to the Write What You Know then fill in the scenes that are left mode of writing, and this morning I did leave a space for a chapter that has to be there, but the guys in the cellar haven’t gotten me the deets yet, and went on to write a scene I didn’t know I needed, until I looked at what my fingers were typing.
The cats were Very Pleased that I decided to join them at work, and they are still in Steve’s office, taking in the air from the sliders. I’m increasingly glad that I had the French windows replaced with the Andersen sliders. Yes, they were heart-stoppingly expensive, but the entire household is made glad by their presence.
I need to do my duty to the cats, then find something to eat. After, I intend to find someplace comfortable to sit-or-lie-down and try to work out some of the WIP’s future bits. I’m really enjoying the daily writing momentum. I’d like to preserve it, if I can, and give the whole Descent into the Slough of Despond a miss this time.
It’s a good plan.
How’s your Friday shaping up?
I wrote new words. Eleven hundred new words, in fact, bringing the WIP entire to 27,888. So that’s a thing.
Yesterday’s visit to the walk-in clinic was both lowering and interesting. Interesting: The walk-in clinic Does Not Prescribe pain relief medication. They do prescribe muscle relaxants and anti-nausea medication.
The PA sent me to the hospital for an x-ray of my back, just to make sure I hadn’t inadvertently broken something since the last time my back was x-rayed. As I had not broken anything, I was given a prescription for muscle relaxants and anti-nausea medication.
Since one is strongly discouraged from taking T3 and muscle relaxants, I have broken into the (still in date) naproxen left over from last year (because now I have anti-nausea medication, in case naproxen turns ugly), and took the first dose this morning. The muscle relaxants are to be taken at bedtime, and I perhaps have seen a slight lessening of the pain — well. I was able to write new words today, and do all of the PT homework, instead of just the Good Parts, so, yes, muscle relaxants had an effect.
I have also unearthed a crazy little hand massager (a big plastic marble in a holder) that I’ve been running firmly over the hurtin’ bits, and also still with the lidocaine roll-on (yes, I know about lidocaine patches. Have you ever tried to put a goopy, floppy, patch on your own back? Sticks to itself. Sticks to your hands. Sticks to your clothes. To your back? Not so much. And that’s without mentioning the necessity to twist around with an aching, spasming back, trying to get the fool thing in place.)
The clinic’s diagnosis (this is the “lowering” part of the program) is bone spurs, aka “small anterior osteophytes” and “mild mid thoracic spine spondylosis,” which is age-related, degenerative arthritis, and therefore nothing to be done, save what I’ve been doing, and wait for the flare to ease up or I manage to increase my ability to ignore pain.
(Aortic atherosclerosis was also noted, as an aside. This is not New news, and aside from being separate from the reason I was at the clinic, I’m thinking it wasn’t mentioned verbally because the plaque level hasn’t reached the Magic Number yet.)
Onward.
Ellen Richmond is yesterday’s hero. She brought me to the clinic, the hospital, CVS, and picked up the prescriptions. Later in the day, Beth and Steve Symonds stopped by to replenish the cookie supply, which was much appreciated.
I now need to figure out something that looks like lunch, and whether or not I’m going to take a nap, after.
Rookie is clinging like a clingy coon kitten, which–he really is too big to curl up between my cheek and my shoulder, but he’s doing it anyway.
So, there’s my news.
What’s your news?
In breaking news, the Perambulating Package has arrived!
Credit where due, the box was in perfect shape, despite having traveled ten thousand extra miles, as were the contents.
Today has otherwise been a day of parts. I worked until I couldn’t push through anymore (bearing in mind that the goal is not to make myself sick, but to extend my useful hours), then took a break until the pain eased off, and went back to it..
I have finished reading/proofing the 114 pages of the WIP, ate a kind of wandering breakfast, and a better lunch, plus ice cream with blueberries on top.
I’ve also listened to quite a few chapters of Accepting the Lance, washed the dishes, and done my duty to the cats.
The plan going forward is to read until Coon Cat Happy Hour, have a hardboiled egg sandwich for the evening meal, and go to bed early-ish, hopefully waking up in fit case to write.
Everybody have a good evening. Stay safe.
I’ll check in tomorrow.
Aaaand. Back pain has returned. We. Are. NOT. Pleased. Currently working on trying to up the efficacy of my superpower by doing what needs to be done, and when there’s a spike, telling myself, “It’s only pain,” and keep on with whatever it is I’m doing. Let it be known that I’m not doing the wire act, and certainly not the trapeze.
The local post office gives me to understand that the Perambulating Package is on the route jeep and scheduled for delivery at my house today.
Yeah. We’ve heard that before.
A question for the Tech Folk, Internet Domain Division. If someone has registered a domain through a wholesale service and “can make any changes to the domain” that they wish to make, does that not make them the owner of that domain, regardless of if they allow someone else to register the domain with a provider, post content and act in all ways as if that name belonged to them? That the person registering the domain can, in theory, and at any time, evict the person using that nameserver?
Spanish Aunts.
…it seems that standing up is the current correct position insofar as my back is concerned, so I’ll be bringing the pages I have left to read of the WIP to the standing desk for perusal.
I have Tali in position under the standing desk in my office, and Rook in his box on the edge of the big desk, where he can get the breeze from the open windows, it being a nice enough day, so far.
What’s happening with you, today?
Today’s blog post title brought to you by .38 Special, “If I’d been the one.”
Wednesday. Sunny. Temp 74F Humidity 74%. Windows are closed.
I? have ordered in breakfast on the theory that I will eat an omelet if all I have to do is open the damned box and get a fork out of the drawer. I’m flailing around for strategies to get myself interested in eating food — and I don’t at this point care if it’s healthy, particularly — and came to remember that I never had any strategies for that particular quirk in a stupid quirky nature. When I was living with Steve, he cooked 90% of the time, and I’d sit at the table to be sociable, even if I didn’t feel like eating, and would have a bit of this or that while we were talking. Yes, Steve was a genius. However, that solution is no longer operative, and I’m a bit at a loss. And before anyone panics — I’m not sick, my stomach doesn’t hurt. I just — don’t want to eat. The urgency is that I cannot allow this to fall into a habit.
Argh.
Moving on to more amusing topics: The perambulating package is now in! South Portland. USPS promises delivery, but we’ve heard that song before.
We had a bunch of thunder and some lightning, but if there were violent thunderstorms in Maine last night, they were someplace else. While I don’t regret the violence — or the possible tornadoes — I do regret the thunderstorm drama.
Today’s Plan is to read the 100+ pages of the WIP, which will not only hopefully hang together as a tale, but provide sufficient hooks to hang the rest of the story on.
Writer math.
break to eat breakfast Which. Was. Good. Remember this, Self? Food tastes good. Sheesh.
A friend posted a meme yesterday about “When I was growing up, we were thrown out onto the street, helmetless, with our bike after breakfast and told to come home before dark.” Which encouraged some conversation including, “What is this “helmet” you speak of?” And that got me to thinking about How Things Change.
For instance. In my life — which, we do have to factor in the determination that we were writers above all else, which did have an enormous bearing on finances — I think that people who have two homes, or a camp, are well-off. The course of my life being such that we could barely afford one house, and were always skating the edge between solvent and me presenting Steve with a fanned hand of bills and saying, “Pick a bill. Pick any bill. The bill that you pick is the bill we won’t be paying this month.”
So, that. And then I think back to — my parents. Who had land in the mountains of Pennsylvania that they intended to build a camp on. They never did because they’d gotten taken in the matter of boundary lines and water, but that aside — they owned property other than their primary residence. My father was a spotwelder at the General Motors factory in Sparrow’s Point, Maryland. My mother was a stay-at-home mom.
Going back a generation, and the reason I’m so “surprisingly” at ease on the water, my father’s parents had a camp on Middle River in Maryland to which they retired every summer. They also had a mini-farm at what was then the edge of the town of Parkville, Maryland. My grandfather was a tailor for a large tailoring house (I often remember the name, but not this morning) in the city. My grandmother was a stay-at-home mom.
Tailor and spotwelder — these are not positions associated with great amounts of wealth. And yet, they were able to buy “extra” properties.
Well. The past is a different country.
Time to go to work.
What was your childhood summer like?
Sunday. Sunny. It’s going to be warmer than yesterday.
My back does not hurt. No, I misspeak. What I mean to say is that my back only hurts the normal amount and that I can, literally, work with that.
Prudence dictates that I do not go to the Oxford gem show today. I’m sure they’ll do fine without me.
The actual plan for today is to not weed the garden, which really, really needs it. Maybe I’ll throw in a load of laundry to feel like I’m doing something to alleviate the chaos that is the present state of the house.
I will be writing.
I’m about halfway through EMoon’s Horngard, and having a really fine time with it. You guys are going to love this one!
This morning I received news from the US postal service of interest to us all. The perambulating package left New York yesterday, arrived in New Hampshire, and was drop kicked to — anyone? . . . Yes, you, right here in front . . . In fact — yes. Thank you.
The Southern Maine sorting center, the root cause of all of this unseemly gadding about the Northeast.
USPS informs me that I will have my package tomorrow, Monday, July 13th.
I await developments with interest.
What developments are you awaiting with interest on this fine Sunday morning?
Dictated to my phone. Please excuse voice-os
#
Getting started snippet. This will perhaps be familiar to anyone who has been on, or witnessed, a panel at a con.
“Right,” Tez said. “Meetin’ rules. Hear me out—all the way out, Cousins!—before questions. Question period’s limited to questions, neither captain nor crew is asking for advice or alternate plans. The quicker the questions are put and answered, the quicker we can get back to our beers. Who of you don’t understand what I just said? Put up a hand.”
#
Spent the morning trying to track down this “ruler fractin” Jethri has in his pocket in Steve’s last draft. I have concluded that this was not set up in Fair Trade, and now I get to decide if it’s useful/I want to keep it. If I want to keep it, I have to introduce it, which ought not to be completely impossible, being as Jethri took delivery of a Whole Lotta fractins from Elsvair.
Well.
Research is still writing, but it’s not words, and I want words while I still know (more or less) what I’m doing. Once we leave Sactizzy, things are not nearly so straightforward. What a surprise.
All that to say that I’m taking a break in order to make something that looks like lunch (and, yes, to eat it, not just admire it). I expect to go back to the WIP this afternoon and write a chapter.
I’m still feeling somewhat off-center, which I guess losing six pounds in three days will do for you. So! Lunch. And maybe even ice cream.
Tomorrow is book club, and I have to reschedule the appointment to get my hair cut, since there was no way I was able to keep Thursday’s appointment. And of course, there’s needlework on Tuesday evening. After that, it looks like I have a good handful of days in a row to actually bear down on the WIP, so I’m really trying to be sure that I have something to bear down on.
I also need to figure out how to take care of the garden I have, which is so low-maintenance I’m embarrassed that it’s a problem. Before my back staged its most recent drama, I had been thinking that I would go out every evening and put in a solid 15 minutes, which, so I reasoned then, wouldn’t challenge either my back or my knees. Too much. I’m going to have to re-evaluate this.
In the meanwhile, if any of my gardeners are still with me, I have a question. A blackberry bush has appeared in that same front garden, which — blackberry bushes are weeds around thisaway. I know the birds eat the berries, and I’m not unwilling to let them have at it, but! Blackberry bushes are also on a mission, as I understand the case, to take over the earth. I wish to avoid the blackberry bush fulfilling its mission in my garden. How do I contain it?
Spanish Aunts.
And! I need to go put the pieces of lunch into one plate, so I can actually eat.
How’s everybody doing so far?
Saturday. Sunny and not going to be quite so hot.
Had a good sleep and a fine dream just before waking. Steve and I had been given the happy news that we were being given a permanent residence and needed to move out of our temporary apartment. We were in the process of this when something I don’t quite understand happened to divert our attention to what was perhaps a police action. However, by the time we had been called to assist in that, we had moved our stuff- we seemed to have a lot less stuff in the new situation- and located our cat, who was on the other side of the parking lot. Steve got the cat inside just as the call for our attention came in.
It was a puzzling dream but not particularly unhappy or fraught.
I woke up soon after and my back didn’t hurt, but that’s changed now. This is getting old.
I’ve sat longer in the window than I meant but I had Firefly’s attention for some time, and since she had quite a lot to say, I figured not to interrupt her.
I’m planning on scrambled eggs for breakfast and then going to write. I thought I was going to Oxford today for the gem show but I think that’s off the table.
For those following the Perambulations of the Package, as of this morning it had made its way from the Rochester NY sorting station to the Northwest Rochester sorting station (which seems to be the wrong direction, but perhaps it’s a matter of “North” trumping “West”), and the United States Post Office disavows any knowledge of when it may arrive… anywhere.
Firefly has cleared my lap, Tali has visited briefly, and also moved on.
My first cup of Russian caravan tea is gone. Sounds to me like I ought to go find breakfast.
How’s everybody doing today? See less
#
So, that’s 1,130ish new words written, bringing the WIP to +/-25,525, finally breaking 25,000 words, something I’d thought I’d see much earlier in the week.
I need to do my duty to the cats and then, I believe I shall, oh. Eat something. And then sit in the window and read my book.
#
I have progress to report!
I ate lunch, for definitions of lunch. I unloaded the dishwasher and put the dishes away! I reloaded the dishwasher from the sink full of dirty dishes! And! I did the dishes that can’t go into the dishwasher.
Now, of course I’m exhausted, but that’s what my book is for.
When I sat down in the comfy chair in Steve’s office, Rookie immediately threw himself into my lap so I guess I’m here for awhile.
Today’s blog post title is from Cake: “Short skirt, long jacket“. Yes, again.
I have, apparently, been having too much fun, and my back decided to take revenge.
Deets below, but first — have some day lilies:
#
Wednesday:
And today’s snippet to live by, from Diviner’s Bow: A contract negotiation between a master trader and a trader. The master trader has just asked if the trader has reviewed the proposed contract and found it sufficient. She replies that she wishes to change one thing.
“You astound me,” [the master trader murmured]. “Expose, I pray, the contract’s deficiency.”
“I found no deficiency. Merely, I wish to amend the initial period to three Standards, rather than six.”
“Six Standards is our usual term,” Shan said, sternly.
Padi opened her eyes wide.
“Is it, indeed?” she asked wonderingly.
Shan laughed. “I taught you that,” he said.
#
Thursday. Sunny and going to be hot.
Yesterday afternoon fell apart in a big way because my back started hurting, and it all went downhill from there.
On top of the pain, or because of the pain, I have had a very dicey stomach and today seems to be more of the same. Sitting in the window right now with Kelly on my lap and a cup of well honeyed ginger tea. Pretty soon I’m going to have to figure out something to eat.
Hope everybody is feeling better than I am. I’ll check in as can.
#
Friday:
Business first: “Kelly” cited in yesterday’s posting to the internets, is actually Tali. Speech to text is not always very smart.
Well. Friday. Sunny, though the weather beans insist that it’s cloudy.
Woke up this morning pain-free! I immediately started making plans more fool I, though I did manage to eat food for breakfast before my back started in again. So win, I guess, and I really do need to eat, before I get to the point where I just don’t bother, a known danger which needs to be avoided at all costs.
To be fair, my back still doesn’t hurt as much right now as it did yesterday, even yesterday evening when I convinced myself to eat an apple tart with ice cream, on the theory that even dessert is better than no food at all.
I had hoped that I would be able to write today and I’m still trying to figure out how to make that happen. On the one hand, it doesn’t do anyone any good to just sit at the desk and stare, so the first assessment should be: Is my brain clear enough to allow me to write? And I guess the first test for that is sitting in the office chair and seeing if it hurts so much that I can’t think.
What fun.
I should report that Tali is very much in favor of the sitting/ lying around doing nothing schedule. She’s been my more or less constant companion in this. The other two have given up in fustration, and I really can’t blame them for that.
I did yesterday finish listening to Neogenesis, and I must report a notable lack of “AI technobabble.” Also? Boy, does a lot happen in that book! It’s a trilogy all by itself.
I’ll be taking a break from Liaden books for the next while to read Hornguard by Elizabeth Moon, which I’m looking forward to.
And now that my teacup is empty and Tali has gotten up to have a wee snack, I guess I’ll go back and see how the desk chair likes me.
I hope everyone is having a lovely Friday.
PS. Apologies in advance for typos (voice-os?) that may appear in the above.
#
Later that same day: Sat with the manuscript and added about 500 words.
I’ve been alternating ice and heat every hour and a half, I guess, to try to help get my back to normal.
I have eaten lunch!
There are many chores that I should be doing– clearing the dishwasher, reloading it, putting things away and etc. That’ll happen later, by I which I mean–oh, tomorrow, or maybe even Sunday.
For now, I have dared a Tylenol against increasing pain, and hoping it won’t make me sick.
My plans for the afternoon are taking my book to a comfy chair, turning on the heating pad, and reading.
This is even more boring than writing all day. My apologies.
#
This is one of Rook’s whiskers. It is four-and-three-quarters inches long.
#
Sigh. So, I was warned a couple days ago to expect delivery of a package via USnail, which was not delivered and in addition vanished from Informed Delivery. It showed up in the timeline again today as an expected delivery, so I went to look at it on the Informed Delivery page.
The package under question left Maryland on July 7, and made it all the way to the Southern Maine sorting center, from whence it was sent on to the Essex MA sorting center–which is to say in the Completely Wrong Direction. Essex decided to send the package to Rochester, NY, where it languished for a day or so before this morning hopping on a mail truck going north.
The package is still listed as Going to be Delivered by 9 pm today, which probably means to the local post office, and not my house, but even so.
Even so–it still needs to get through at least one, and probably two, sorting centers in Mass, then the Southern Maine sorting center, which is the center that sent it back to Mass in the first place.
I wonder if I should start a betting pool…
#
And that’s what’s been going on at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory. Fingers crossed that this will all be History tomorrow.