Stuff to Do Today

1) Make pancakes
2) Finish reviewing tDW series synopses
3) Update full series character database from tDW appendix completed yesterday
4) Pay Verizon bill
5) Write 1000 words of Black Desert
6) Go grocery shopping (stay within $90 budget)

Things I have already blown off today:

1) Eye appointment. I really need to stay in-network. Money issue. Will reschedule at another place.

Things I might still blow off today:

2) Hair appointment. Is getting highlighted hair really worth all the extra time and expense? I certainly need an updated look in this a looks-obsessed culture, but I can afford the one-time cost, not regular maintainence. Do I want a house in two years or lighter hair?

Perhaps I can solve my need for an updated look with new glasses from above-mentioned in-network provider.

We'll see.

Blah blah.

Can't Sleep

Can't sleep, too much in my head. When does this bullshit go away?

I have a million things to do tomorrow, and I need to fucking get over this.

I wish a million things.

When I wasn't ready, I had to end relationships because they were ready. Now that I'm ready, they're ending relationships because they're not ready.

Not ready for what, I don't know. I just know I was happy. We were happy. Two people. Us? Having fun. I have never laughed so much in my life. I could always make him smile. I loved to see him smile.

But I don't want to go back to being a distant, cold-hearted bitch, you know? I don't want to go back to hiding from the world. You get hurt, you get back up again.

I guess I just really miss my friend.

I miss him.

Robin Hood

So, sometime back, Susan blogged about the BBC series, Robin Hood. And I checked out some fan clips on You Tube. And then the episodes were available on Netflix and I'd finished Rome, so really, why not...?

Tonight, I watched the first disk of Robin Hood.

Oh my!

The Old Man, drawn by the inexplicable power of the camp, sat and watched it with me, and we giggled the whole way through. Stephanie came in later and the three of us kept up a steady stream of laughter and banter and merry men jokes. Ohhhhh was this series up to merry men jokes.

Random slow motion, jump cuts, absolute CHEESE dialogue.

I was giggling with pure 14-year-old glee, the same way I do whenever I watch The 300.


The dialogue is just this side of cheesy, the situations and particularly the fight scenes more than a little ridiculous, but oh, I love all of these characters! I love them love them, every one.

Upon realizing my giggling was not at the badness, but in glee, the Old Man said, "This show is almost as bad as Flash Gordon! You'll watch this show but not Flash Gordon!"

"This show has way hotter guys than Flash Gordon," I said. "The only reason you watch that show is for those chicks with the bouncing boobs."

"OK, that's true."

"And I'm watching this show because Robin is hot and Marion shoots people!"

Mmmm.... Robin Hood guys: sly, scrawny, witty little tricksters.

Not at all like geeky hardware guys.




Shut up.










In any case, it's a wonderfully campy show.

Glee, I tell you. Girlish glee.

Latest Pony Mods

It must be winter....

Stephanie thinks my pony mods should be more "brutal." Brutal takes a lot more work, as it turns out. Isn't that always the way? Pretty and fem is easy. We have a script for pretty.

But I'll see what I can do.






As an aside, Jenn once asked me if there were any black or brown My Little Ponies you could actually buy off the shelf. I had to think about it a minute, and consult my collection... and you know what?

There aren't.

Blue, green, purple.... and white, of course.

But black and brown?

Good luck.

Another reason to make my own.

Tonight's Song, Stuck on Repeat

"Chasing Cars"
Snow Patrol

We'll do it all
Everything
On our own

We don't need
Anything
Or anyone

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

I don't quite know
How to say
How I feel

Those three words
Are said too much
They're not enough

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

Let's waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads

I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see

I don't know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Spending Your Spoons: Or, What it's Like to Manage Chronic Illness

"Most people start the day with unlimited amount of possibilities, and energy to do whatever they desire, especially young people. For the most part, they do not need to worry about the effects of their actions... The difference in being sick and being healthy is having to make choices or to consciously think about things when the rest of the world doesn't have to."

She handed her friend a bouquet of 12 spoons, explaining that unlike healthy people -- who have an unlimited supply -- those of us living with CI (chronic illness) have to always monitor the limited number of spoons we possess, and think carefully about how to "spend" them.

Christine then asked her friend to list the tasks of her day, whether chores or fun activities. Each item would cost her one spoon. And if you didn't sleep well the night before, or skipped your medicine, or dosed it incorrectly, or caught a cold, that would cost you even more precious spoons. "You do not want to run low on spoons, because you never know when you truly will need them," Christine explained.

In general, I have three parts of my life that I just can't get to all go well at once: work life, writing life, personal life.

There are a lot of spoons involved in making all those things work, in doing that much, in doing it well, in doing it all. We all have a finite amount of energy. I just have fewer spoons than most people.

I try to spend them wisely.

City at the Edge of the World

Life Instructions

Dreams

I dreamed about Wiscon last night. All sorts of fuzzy things, too many people, tricky social situations, obsessive concern about my own presentation, doubt, worry, panels, people.

It's not that I'm overstimulated these days. I just have too much time to think.

Too many changes all at once, the last couple of years.

Geekery

I find it vaguely embarrassing that I have an epic fantasy series that requires a detailed character list.

Not just to keep myself straight, but to unconfuse confused readers.

I hate these things, because I feel like your characters should all be fleshed out enough that nobody gets them confused, even if you've got a cast of thousands.

This is the last big push to finish the tDW package, and it's annoying. Why is it so annoying? Because I've gone through tDW and cut out, combined, renamed and tagged characters over several revisions (about seven thousand revisions. I "finished" this book in 2003), and I have to go through the whole fucking book again, compare it to my current list, fix my current list, and then format and organize my current list. As of the last pass, I still had an industry pro who's major gripe with the book was getting all the characters confused.

I'd say this was getting Jordan-like, but it's only going to be five books.

Really.

No, no... REALLY.

For the Roommates

If you lived in my house, this would be HILARIOUS.

Work and Workout: the Good, the Bad, the Just So

I've upped my evening workout times from 30 minutes to 60 minutes, and will soon be moving from 3-4 days to 4-5 days (next week, when the new health & wellness program starts at work).

The good news is, I have more energy when I get home, so I'm not collapsing into bed at 9, but dawdling around reading, writing, or working on pony mods until at least 10 (this is quite reasonable. I get up at 5:30 am for free weights and breakfast).

As said, we're starting a health & wellness thing at work, which means 90 min workouts twice a week with one of our health & wellness trainers at the YMCA next door. I figure these are a great way to break up my gym time, so I do these ones twice a week and the regular 60 minute ones at my own gym 2-3 times a week.

It's a lot of effort, not so much in actual exercise time as commuting time. It eats an extra hour a night, but to be dead honest, what the hell was I really doing during that hour anyway? Surfing the internet? Going to bed early?

Gymming keeps me busy, keeps me from spending more money, keeps my mood stable. Like anything worthwhile that requires effort and a time investment, it's annoying, but ultimately satisfying. I remember how I felt in Alaska when I was working out 6 or 7 days a week, those long summer nights, miles and miles of bike rides. I felt better that summer than anytime since. I wouldn't mind feeling that way again.

And so.

P.S. work is also insane, but satisfying. Those training videos I scripted turned out a lot better than I thought. That videographer did wonders. My first scripted work! OMG!

Satisfying.

Will, Desire, Bravery, and Shit Like That

When I was twelve or thirteen, I started getting these prescient dreams. I'd start dreaming about things that ended up happening a couple of weeks later. Not big things, but certain situations, events. I'd dream in snapshots. They weren't terribly useful sorts of dreams, because how can you prevent or prepare for the arrangement of bottles or boxes and where people sit in a room? Why would you want to?

These days, the prescient dreams are more emotional than situational, and have veered away from fortunetelling to pure subconscious anticipation. I had them a couple weeks before relationships ended this year; they're more about relieving emotions I must know, on some level, are coming down the pipe. They deal with fears I already have, situations that are yet to be that I'm sure some part of me can see coming.

But at twelve or thirteen, back when they were situational, what concerned me about was that I seemed to be living the same life over and over again. If I was predicting situations - people sitting in certain arrangements, objects situated in particular ways - then I must have already lived this life. I'd been here before. And if I was living this life over again, it probably meant it was because I'd done something wrong the last time.

We all create belief systems based on our experiences, and in my experience, I was reliving the same life over and over again.

I wanted that to stop.

I didn't want to know what was going to happen before it happened. I wanted big, bold, uncertainty. If I took enough risks, maybe I'd do something right this time around.

So I decided, in my later teens, that what I needed to do was live my life differently. I needed to take risks, follow my heart, do things I was afraid to do, live a life I could not predict.

This is the life I've lived since then. I left the house three days after turning 18, moved back home six months later, bought a one-way ticket to Alaska eight months after that, went to grad school in South Africa, moved to Chicago on a whim. All the choices I've made - relationships, living situations, world jaunts, have been things I've done on a whim, risks I've taken, because they felt right in my heart, in my bones (this gut-feeling system went severely haywire for a year when I was dying - you can't listen to a gut-feeling properly when you're crazy, cause you can't sort out which is which. Another reason I take really good care of myself these days).

When I take too long to think about things, I get scared and cowardly. I want to hide under the bed. It takes an active effort, everyday, to live a life that's worth living, to me. Most days I want to stay home, eat something full of carbs, and feel sorry for myself.

But the more days I get out from under the bed and get out and do what I need and want to do - despite the fear - the better I feel, the better I am, the more I'm the person I want to be.

I read once that the first step to becoming the person you want to be is to start acting like the person you want to be. You say, "What would a strong, confident, kick-ass woman who was incredibly brave and intelligent do right now?" She would not hide under the bed. She would not settle, would not lead a dull, stale life.

I don't always succeed. Sometimes I don't want to go to the gym. I don't want to write. I don't want to get my heart hurt. Sometimes I want to eat donuts and drink beer and hide out in my room watching "Titanic" all night.

But, as with all things in my life, I come back. I'll break down and give up for a night or three, and then it's back to writing and gymming and French and low-carb tortillas that don't give me headaches, and building something to get me to where I want to be.

I've reached a point in my life where I honestly don't know what's going to happen next. I don't know how things will turn out.

I do, however, know what I want. I know the sort of person I'd like to be, and I consistently take the steps to get there. I act like the person who already is there.

Most days.

One of my favorite shows to watch while gymming is MTV's "Made." Pick something you want to be. Do that.

Not everybody has the ability or force of will to get there, but you know what? Aim for the stars, and you'll hit the moon. Aim for the moon, and you're still just stuck here back on Earth.

Not that it's a bad place to be... I just want something more.

Always wanting something more. Knowing what I want. Stubborn desire.

Persistence.

Yeah. I Write This Stuff. Sue Me.

My Favorite New Year's Poem

i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twentysix and thirtysix
even thirtysix but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me

- lucille clifton

Black Desert (Excerpt)

Nyx put her hands on the edge of the well and looked down. The water was glassy black; she stared at her darker half, gazing up at her from the bottom of the well. There was nothing but water and her reflection and the stir of the water around the rope.

The rope.

She reached out and gave a sharp tug on the rope. The rope stayed taut. There was something on the other end.

Nyx ran to the pulley on the other side of the well and took hold of the lever. She began rotating the wheel, and grunted with the effort. The best way to poison a well was to tie a body to it. She had one long stretch of time to think about who it was on the other end of the rope; Inaya, Khos, no, they would have tied the children here. Their bodies would be sodden and blue, and perhaps even a little stiff.

Prepare for the worst. Always prepare for the worst, because if you see anything less than that, it will be a prize, a relief. If she saw Khos there, perhaps, it would be better than seeing dead children.

Fuck, I’ve gotten soft, she thought, and then she heard something splashing in the water.

Nyx let the lever catch and leaned over to peer into the well again. There, at the other end of the rope, was the bucket, and two pairs of hands desperately clinging to it. Two cold, went faces peered up at her, shivering; their expressions shadowed and terrified.

“It’s Nyx!” Nyx yelled at them, stupidly, but it was dark, wasn’t it, and how could they know her in the dark? “I’m getting you up, come on now!”

She turned back to the lever. A stiff wind buffeted her from behind, and she heard a scattering of dead leaves roil along the dirt drive. She heard the wind stir the tree. She raised her head. She saw a hundred cicadas crawling along the trunk of the tree, flitting among the branches, and as she wind stirred, the cicadas stirred as well, flew outward around the tree like a cloud, and she began to brace herself, squint her eyes, prepare for a swarm.

But something else happened.

The tree began to tremble. The wind died and the tree still trembled, and the cicadas swarmed and then pulled toward the tree, pulled toward a tree that was rapidly condescending, becoming smaller. The dead leaves moved along the ground, drawn back up into the tree’s branches. They melted together like butter, merged with the cicadas. Nyx had a dizzy moment of vertigo. The world seemed to twist. Something in the air around her twisted, tore, and the tree and leaves and cicadas became a liquid thing, like mottled, melted cheese. Something screamed, something inside the tree, the cicadas, maybe, dying.

Branches flung up, a crown of leaves, branches became hands, the crown of leaves elongated, shuddered.

“Oh God,” Nyx said, and the breath left her body. She knew what it was becoming, what the tree, the leaves, the air, the bugs, were becoming. Were shifting into.

“Oh God,” she said again, because she was suddenly sick, because it was like something in the world had been distorted; something very, very wrong was happening.

And as the tree’s color paled, the melted shape took on a more human form, and the gaping hole in the face, the half-formed mouth, vomited a black cloud of flies, and with the flies came another scream; not from the bugs this time, but a true human scream; the rage and pain and terror of birth.

The figure stumbled toward Nyx, shaking and shuddering, slinging off long strings of mucus and leaf pulp, and the black eyes grew lashes and the irises formed and focused, and the cascade of hair and leaves went black, black and long as Inaya’s hair; Inaya’s face, round but still slack-eyed, and the fingers at the ends of the new arms were held in tight fists, oozing mucus and blood and something else that had the tangy smell of oak hybrid sap.

Flies and leaf pulp, dirt and the shimmering wings of cicadas, stuck to the slick mucus covering her naked body as she stumbled toward Nyx.

Her fists reached out, made open hands, and she clung to the edge of the well, and then her eyes focused, and she was something more or less human, more or less Inaya, and Nyx knew her then, really knew her, and nearly lost her stomach.

Nyx felt a deep cramping in her stomach, sudden nausea, and she backed a half step away.

Inaya screamed into the well, and as she screamed, she coughed and a handful of flies escaped from her nearly-formed lungs.

“Up!” was the word she screamed, or maybe that was just some grunt, some noise, but the next words were her children’s names, and not even Nyx could mistake those.

“Are you all right?” Inaya yelled at them, and the children cried up at her.

Inaya raised her head to Nyx, her damp, mucus-crusted head, and her eyes were so very fucking black, and the look on that face, in that face...

“Haul them up!” Inaya snarled.

And Nyx grabbed the lever and hauled them up like some other woman, someone far younger, far stronger. Sweat beaded her brow, ran between her breasts, her shoulder blades, long before she was tired or spent. She was trembling, she realized, with fear.

When the bucket was close enough, Inaya reached into the well and hauled up Isafan first, and then Tatie. The children hit the dirt and then clung to her.

Inaya patted them down, asking after hurts, looking for any they’d missed, and when she was done, she turned her face again to Nyx, opened her mouth to speak, and stopped. She turned to the blazing house.

It was like watching some kind of phantom or demon, something so Other than Nyx had no real name for her.

Inaya took in the burning house and said, “Khos,” and then, “Watch the children.”

And in a breath, an instant, she seemed to blow apart, piece by piece, and each piece disintegrated into another piece, another, smaller and smaller, until there was only a pale mist, a fog, and the mist blew across the yard and into the burning house like some contaminated wind over the desert.

The children gathered around Nyx and gazed with her, open mouthed, toward the house.

Nyx’s mouth was dry. She tried working some spit into it and, “She do that often?”

“Never,” Tatie said, breathless.

“Holy shit,” Nyx said.

“Holy shit,” Isafan said.

Nyx grabbed them each by the hand. “Let’s go, come on,” and started walking toward the blazing house and the demon.

Randomosity

Too much writing. Not enough boyfriend.

Silly sadness.

One For the Road

Thought of the Day

"90% of achieving anything is about not quitting."

That is, 90% of accomplishing anything is taken up in keeping ourselves from quitting, fighting through the urge to quit, convincing ourselves not to quit, distracting ourselves from quitting, not giving in to excuses for quitting, and convincing ourselves we still want to continue.

10% is the actual work of continuing.

Which, if true, says a lot about how much effort it takes us all not to sabotage ourselves.

Life, success: persistence.

Ringing in the New Year....

... with pancakes and snow.