Survived

I made it through the first and the worst of the three-part root canal experience. The next two appointments will not be as long and won't involve nearly as much rooting around in my mouth. The worst part about yesterday's appointment was anticipating it. My stomach was a mess yesterday and the day before. And the minute I walked out of the dentist's office, I felt 100% better, back to the normal I've been feeling since the middle of last week. Yes, mornings are still strange, and apparently Junior really likes having me up at 4AM every morning. But everything's really calmed down from what it was throughout the first trimester.

I've got a couple posts nattering around in my head, mostly about my adjusted writing goals for the year and such. Hopefully I'll start posting at least a couple times a week soon. It all depends on the DDJ and if things start to settle a bit here.

Wha?

I had a post about entering my second trimester that went just before my little snippet about getting a root canal. I know I didn't hallucinate it because I even had some comments on it. I'm confuzzled.

Can We Say Fun?

The mildly annoying toothache that started up this weekend just became a real pain in the ass. Turns out I've got enough decay in one particular tooth to make my dentist cringe in sympathy pain. Thursday will see my initiation into the Wild World of Root Canals. Thankfully the procedure is just like having a cavity filled only longer (well, "just like" from my perspective, at any rate). And our dental insurance is nice enough to keep the price tag on this way down. But, wow. Didn't expect to deal with this kind of a first during my first pregnancy. Joy.

Ten Weeks Down

I got on-line over an hour ago to post something deep about myself and my pregnancy. I made the mistake of trying to catch up on my blog reading first. (See, I've been out sick after lasting a glorious half-day at work yesterday. I keep having pep talks with Junior about letting me sleep through the night and operate with a passably normal stomach so I can go earn that silly little thing called money that will be very important for things like food, clothing, and diapers. Sometimes they take.) Sheila linked to a post by Patrick Nielsen Hayden about some crank's fun ideas about women and hard SF. The ensuing comments on the topic sucked an hour out of my life. It had its entertaining moments, lots of headshakers, but it left me with an overall thought that The Battle of the Sexes will be perpetuated forever, with women always having to prove something and men never having to do so. So that hour was a pretty sad hour.

But it wasn't why I hopped on-line. I wanted to post because I'm now a quarter of the way through my pregnancy. That's not the milestone I'm most interested in, of course, not when I still feel like a foreigner in my own skin. Not when I still can't guarantee I'll be able to get through a full week of work. Not when breakfast still decides to make a return appearance a couple of times a week (though thankfully not this week...yet). As I went through yet another day spent at home instead of at work because the thought of being more than twenty feet from my bed and my fridge makes me not only nervous but faint, I thought that I might be having a better time of the first trimester if I actually enjoyed my job. Wouldn't it be easier to work through my feelings of ickiness if I liked what I do for fourty hours every week? Maybe, maybe not.

Such thoughts lead me to consider why I don't like my job...and why I didn't like the one before that...and so on. I can make excellent arguments for why I haven't been happily employed ever since I realized that I didn't want to get my PhD. And all of these arguments skirt around a greater potential issue: the problem isn't the job(s), it's me. No wonder I skirt around it. But something about being pregnant at the same time that my brother's in Iraq, my mother's going through her own private hell at her job, my grandfather's been diagnosed with lung* cancer, and Mark's grandfather just survived a heart attack, really got me thinking and analyzing and taking a severe look at how I perceive myself and my life.

At some point during my childhood, I told myself that life would be "happily ever after" once I finished school and got married. I'd get a job and be successful, as would my husband, and we'd have a perfect nuclear family, and eventually we'd retire to go RVing through the country and harass our kids. But here's the thing: that "happily ever after" mentality led me to the grossly inaccurate assumption that life only required effort through school and finding a mate. That everything would be peaches and light with no active input on my part. Disney's probably the biggest culprit behind such a horribly flawed reasoning. I mean, we never see the "happily ever after". It's just assumed that everything will be OK from then on out. That just getting together was the hardest thing they'd ever have to face in their lives (sometimes worked in with another Big Issue that, miraculously, always resolved itself seconds before or after they got together; nice timing). This combined with my parents' big push for me to get a college degree before I got married (with the unspoken caveat of "or you'll end up like us"--which sounds way harsher than I mean; my parents did have it rough until my father became an officer in the Air Force, but things always seemed to be more or less average middle class after that; of course, I could be wrong, I was only 6-18 at the time :)), led me to the conclusion that life wouldn't be anything to get worked up about after college and marriage.

Gotta love those fun, debilitating delusions. Even though I just blamed Disney and my parents, it was a more or less conscious decision on my part at about the age of 12 to come to that incorrect conclusion. And then, genius that I am, I let that flawed logic rule my life until a few weeks ago. The logic hasn't been working so well the past couple years, always leaving me bewildered when I realized that I hated whatever job I had at the time and that I couldn't do the work I wanted to because life circumstances just don't allow me to not have a guaranteed income at the moment. That twelve-year-old inside me as been crying out "no fair" for a while now, causing a lot of hurt and confusion and depression and general ickiness. I never understood how I could be so unhappy with true love beside me and a successful education behind me and gainful employment to boot. I started to think something was wrong with me, that I was just a bad person. Mark kept insisting that this couldn't be true because he loves me and he wouldn't if I were a bad person. Since I trust his judgement of character pretty much implicitly in all other things, his argument made logical sense. But I wasn't buying it.

Then I got hammered with the reality of Life After School and Marriage over the past month. And one thing became very clear: "happily ever after" is not a passive thing that just happens. It requires the same effort that life required before. Even as light bulbs starting flaring to life in my noggin, so did a whole lot of frustration and shame. I couldn't believe that I had honestly deluded myself for so long that life could require anything other than my active participation to be a happy thing. How much of the past 2-3 years have been a hell of my own making because of one stupid mistake in reasoning in my childhood? I could really go on, railing away at myself, but I suppose that's something best reserved for my next session with my therapist. And, honestly, I know enough about myself that at least 75% of the diatribe would be more for the sake of drama than anything else. What can I say? I'm a writer with a long history of Drama Queen tendencies.

My big cathartic moment most likely came in the middle of a crying jag after a sleepless night and while my stomach was debating the pros and cons of retaining whatever I had just fed it. I had probably just missed a good day or two of work and gotten some odd comments on it. And the realization that my body, this vessel that I've known for more than 26 years, that I've grown accustomed to, that I know so well, is suddenly as unfamiliar as an undiscovered planet--all that combined to make me realize that Life Just Happens. You have to deal with it as it comes, preparing when you can, analyzing when you can. But you can't sit back and go "it wasn't supposed to be like this". For starters, it's hard to get anything done that way. And, the longer you sit around and look at something in dismay, the more new things there'll be to shake your fist at once you stop.

This realization took greater shape as I really looked at the way those I loved were dealing with their own unique events. My brother still cracks the same annoying younger brother jokes in his emails and calls. My grandfather insists he only knows he's sick because some doctor keeps telling him he is. My mother keeps "getting back on the horse" and doing what she has to do to make a bad situation better and she still manages to find the time to ease her daughter's "ohmygodwhatshappeningtome" fears. And then there's Mark. Taking all the cooking and cleaning and grocery buying in stride and always finding a way to make sure he has the right comforting things to say or do when things get rough for me. After I get over the initial reaction of "I'm a selfish twit of a person who doesn't deserve all this", I realize that I must be doing something right. No matter the silliness of "happily ever after" and how long a part of me clung to it, there had to have been at least one part of me doing the right thing and actually living my life instead of railing against the things I couldn't control. Otherwise, all these fabulous people in my life wouldn't be in my life.

I know that was a lot of personal junk to throw at you. It's worth it if any of my readers stopped and thought about their own "happily ever after" notions clinging to them from childhood. And I'm not exactly one to shrink away from airing my dirty laundry to the world. Probably part of that Drama Queen stuff again. Sometimes you just have to share those insights, even if they should have been obvious, even if they revealed a flaw you might be a tad uncomfortable with. Now the only thing I'm left to ponder is how long this insight would've taken were I not pregnant.

*I originally typed that as "lunch" cancer. This could be a sign of that other pregnancy sypmtom, something about reduced mental acuity. Damn horomones.

Baby's First Picture

At my appointment on Tuesday, I was surprised with the opportunity to do a sonogram. Not the one with all the bells and whistles that's going to happen at Week 20, but a sneak peak of baby all the same. The little tyke (and there's just one, so either the psychic thinks I'm going to get pregnant again this year--and I bet you can hear my joyful whimper at that prospect--or she was a tad off) was barely 1.5cm at the time. So click here to look at Junior's first opportunity to say "cheese".

SciFi Friday

Friday nights are great. First of all, it's the start of a weekend, and that's ALWAYS a good thing. Second, I get to hang out with some writers in an on-line forum and toss around ideas and jokes and such. Third, I get to watch three great science fiction shows: Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Battlestar Gallactica. Lotsa fun. Last night was no exception. SG-1 likes to do clip shows on a fairly regular basis, and they usually do a decent job of weaving the clips into a passably entertaining story (defending their jobs to the ever-annoying Senator Kinsey, revealing the existence of the stargate to other world governments, etc). But last night they really outdid themselves. The backbone story for the clip show was about a guy who, seven years ago, stumbled across a piece of Ancient technology at a garage sale. This little device gave him the ability to see SG-1's adventures through the eyes of Colonel O'Neill. He started writing it down as stories (which, of course, were always rejected by the top SF mags). The whole show was about this guy's life and what knowing of SG-1 did to him. His reaction to Daniel's departure at the end of season 5 was priceless. The writers obviously had a good time using this story-telling device to reveal the show's inconsistencies, dropped storylines, fan criticism, etc. It was great.

I'm still waiting for something with all three shows, though. Don't get me wrong: I like them and think they are excellent. But they've also all set themselves up for something more and they're not delivering as yet. SG-1 has had a strange season because they wrote themselves into a bit of a bind by having O'Neill run the SGC instead of remain a part of SG-1. So the usual "go off-world and battle the bad guys" storyline is rarely used. And Atlantis seems to be trying to pretend it's in a third or fourth season instead of its first, so we don't have nearly as much situation set up as I would've expected. Sometimes that's a good thing, but sometimes I get frustrated at the obvious depth of the world they live in that we just don't see. Granted, Battlestar Gallactica just started its series run in January, but a few things already bother me. It seems to me that a civilization capable of FTL travel and such should have medical technology a bit more advanced than our present day standards. I mean, what does it say about humanity if we can populate twelve worlds, chase the stars in ships, create a robotic race like the Cylons, but can't cure breast cancer or speed up the recovery of a knee injury? What exactly have they been doing since they left Earth? Everytime something medical comes up in that show, it always throws me right out of the story. I just can't believe that we'll be so far advanced in everything but medicine in a few millenia.

Anyway, despite my grumblings, I really like these shows and they make for an excellent Friday night.

The DDJ Strikes Again

I was right. The Dreaded Day Job is now even more dreaded. They took away my new responsibilities and the hopes I had of getting a new position. Which is really funny considering this is the second time this has happened, and I've only been aware of the new positions because OTHER PEOPLE in the company have shoved me into their path. I'm getting whiplash here. Do you want me to advance or don't you? Do you want to take advantage of my six years of higher education or do you want to keep me in a job that I could have easily done in junior high? Figure it out, people. It may not be the easiest thing in the world to get a new job while pregnant, but I'll find a way if this shit keeps up. And there will be Hell To Pay if I find out that I was denied the new responsibilities and position because someone got wind of the fact that I'm pregnant. If that's what happened, then I'm going to have a rollicking good time getting the DDJ to cough up the money we need to guarantee that I won't have to go back to work anytime soon after Junior's arrival.

Update: Seconds before I went to publish this post, my manager called me and my counterpart into his office and told us that we would be attending an intense training session with project managers and data management employees about addressing problem areas in the company. Not a new position, but it certainly is a change from the attitude of "no, we won't give you that opportunity and we also won't do anything to help you get any other opportunities". So things might be improving. Maybe. I won't believe anything until it's been happening for weeks and has been signed off by everyone in the company, thought.

The New Fail Safe

Jello. Jello is the only thing that works in the mornings now. Once I've had a bowl of Jello in me for about an hour or so, then I can move on to the apples and yogurts and such. If this stops working, then I'm going to look into the Unisom+Vitamin B6 tablets to see about making breakfast a more successful endeavor. The good news is that the nausea and bucket-hugging is primarily limited to the morning. Sometimes dinner is a challenge, but chicken seems to work very well there, so we're adjusting our menus accordingly. Now, if the chicken dinners keep working, then maybe I'll feel brave enough to start taking my prenatal vitamin every evening. Right now, I have to gauge how stable my stomach is feeling. I'm not too worried about Baby, because the little sack of cells is going to take everything it needs right out of my system. I AM worried about my own health if the prenatal vitamin intake is so spotty this first trimester. Especially with my history of anemia. But the docs are watching that stuff, so I'm sure I'll be fine.

We had our first appointment today. It was just an informational class with other pregnant women, and then we had to bleed for the docs. My first one-on-one with the nurse practitioner is next week. And then the next appointment after that will be the one where we'll hear the baby's heartbeat. We're excited about that one. That'll be in a month. I'm pretty sure that we could see/hear the fetal heartbeat with a sonogram either this week or next week, but that's not part of the health plan. So we'll just have to wait. It was hard coming in to work after all that baby talk this morning. I would've much rather spent the day at home with Mark, planning and making lists and being all gushy with the parents-to-be stuff. But there's yet another meeting this afternoon to discuss my new responsibilities at the DDJ. (Basically, they're trying to take them away from me now and just make me go back to the boring world of only faxing and filing. Yes, more fun changes afoot. Gotta love this place.)

On the writing front, I had a great session with my crit group. I was a bit nervous because I had brought a rather racy Masque scene (the word "breast" made an appearance--always a toughie to say aloud in the Borders cafe) and I had no idea if I had written it well. But they liked the scene and had a lot of good comments to make it even better and bring out a few plot points that were a bit too subtle in the midst of a hot and heavy kiss. You'll also note that "Princess Incubus" is now in creation, with a grand total of 407 words. It's a rough beginning to write, I'm finding. Going to need a lot of work in revision. As for getting new words in The Masque, I've got a lot of ideas to work with to push myself past the latest roadblock, thanks to a great Think Tank session at Forward Motion. So hopefully I'll start making some progress there soon.

Things are feeling more normal. But that's been known to fluctuate over the past couple weeks, so we'll see how it continues.

The Fail Safe Failed

For the past few weeks, I've been dealing with my new biochemistry to varying degrees of success. But the one constant I had was that apples and yogurt made up the perfect breakfast for me. Not so this morning. I could really gross you out with the details. Suffice to say that my stomach said an emphatic "hell no" to the apple and then to the yogurt an hour later. It's been appeased with Sprite and crackers. Soup for lunch should be OK as well. The really funny thing is this is the best I've felt all week. When I was semi-concious in bed on Monday and Tuesday (yay! more missed work), I remember thinking that morning sickness would be preferable to the insomnia and over-active acid that refuses to let my stomach stay full for more than a half hour. And I'm very surprised to find out I was right. It's amazing what you can tolerate if you've had a full night's sleep and less than eager stomach acid.

Mind you, I'm still very much looking forward to the second trimester when all this fun stuff is supposed to go away. It's like I can hear my bod going, "What the HELL is this new horomone? And you want me to prepare for WHAT? I'm sure the genes are in here--somewhere--for this, but do you know how long it's going to take me to find them and get them going and get this thing ready for THAT? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll do it, but I don't have to like it." I'm thinking I might wear my "I survived the first trimester" badge with more pride than the "I got through delivery" one. That's probably NOT what I'll be thinking in the middle of contractions, though.

On the brighter side, it seems like my writing might just be able to get shoved into a schedule again. I was about to go crazy without it, but I've been so tired at home and busy playing catch-up at work that it just hasn't happened. The one saving grace there has been the Two-Year Novel course I'm doing at Forward Motion. I've had to address something writing related once a week since the beginning of the year. That keeps me from getting too far adrift in my other projects. And it keeps me sane when I just can't get to the other projects.

Intuition

About ten days before the home pregnancy test yielded two pink lines instead of one, I had a vague sense of being pregnant. Nothing physical, nothing scientific, just a mild case of intuitive insight. It happened when I went to the dentist and they asked if I was pregnant before doing Xrays. I told them it was possible--something I've had to do before at a doctor's visit and felt absolutely ridiculous doing because the chances were slim, but the scientist in me knew it was possible so I couldn't say no. But it was different this time when they opted not to do the Xrays until I knew for sure that I wasn't. I didn't feel ridiculous. I didn't think much of it at the time, except to file the information away in the "that's interesting" stash in my brain. By the end of the next week, I noticed that I had some mild nausea every morning at about 10. Nothing that a couple of Tums or just a quick bite to eat couldn't fix. Again, it went to the "that's interesting" pile. Then I was brainstorming some writing ideas the following Monday and on a whim decided to take a home pregnancy test. (Yes, not your average whim, but I've never claimed to be average. Or even sane.)

It was an interesting moment when Mark and I saw that positive test. Joy, excitement, peace. All bundled together to make for one of the most amazing feelings I've ever experienced. No doubt. No panic. Nothing negative. Over the course of the next few hours (in which Mark made me take two more tests before we let ourselves get too happy) I was in awe of the sense of focus that pumped through me. I knew everything was going to be fine, that this was right, that this was supposed to be happening. I knew. The only other time I've felt that way was when Mark and I decided to get married. That's not to say that I was so blinded by joy that I couldn't think rationally and consider the challenges of such a life-changing event. Instead, I realized that there would be challenges, and that we would survive them.

Since that Monday night, I've had fears and doubts and negative moments. Kinda hard not to when your body is dealing with an onlsaught of new chemicals and physical changes. But every time those swings start, I give myself a moment to remember how I felt when I first found out I was pregnant, and it takes the edge off.

Now, if only I could have such a focusing, intuitive moment regarding my writing, I'd be set.

Change

I've got a really good reason for the recent lack of posting, so good that ever other reason I've given before seems remarkably dull and inconsequential in comparison. And that's about all the lead-in I can think of. Better brace yourself for some big news.

I found out last Monday that I'm pregnant.

And now I can't think of a way to transition into the post about how that news has been impacting my life. I guess I better get the basics out of the way first: Mark and I have been planning for Junior's arrival for a while now, so we're absolutely thrilled and as prepared as anyone can be for this sort of thing; our families are extremely excited, giving us lots of fun phone calls and well-wishes and warm-fuzzies all over the place; everything seems normal and healthy at the moment; and I'm due October 3 (date definitely subject to change). This child will be the first grandchild for both Mark's parents and mine. The first great-grandchild for both my mother's and father's parents, and I believe for Mark's mother's. I'm pretty sure the first great-great-grandchild for my grandmother's mother. And I suppose now's as good a time as any to mention that when I had a free psychic reading done a couple months ago at the same shop that sports all the great Amy Brown stuff, I was told that I would have twins by the end of 2005. Of course, we're waiting for Baby's First Sonogram before we start buying double.

The immensity of this change is at once both joyfully and terrifyingly overwhelming. The physical impact of this change hit me hard last week. I was up all night with acid reflux and insomnia, one night only getting a grand total of 30 minutes sleep. I stayed at home Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, trying to figure out just what kind of food my stomach was going to prefer and seeing about getting at least a few hours sleep here and there. The stomach fun lasted into the weekend, making it impossible for me to do anything but sit in bed and crochet Baby's First Blanket (I'm halfway done, thanks to the ickiness last week). Things have been pretty good physically this week. My stomach likes the morning routine I've set up for it and is pretty happy with the food for the rest of the day. I make sure to eat something just before I go to bed to last me through the night, and I now sleep sitting up, so the acid reflux is minimal. I'm still pretty tired, I've got to deal with a propensity to be a lot warmer than I'm used to, and then there's the whole "I didn't think I could ever pee this much" issue. Mentally, wow. Having most of last week off was both good and bad. Good because it gave me a chance to sit back and go "This is HUGE!" and actually start to absorb the life-altering reality of being pregnant. Bad because I was so far removed from my normal routine of work and basic health, that the change got a bit too overwhelming at times and I felt like I would never feel "normal" again.

I actually looked forward to work this week. I wanted to get back into a regular pattern of living and start weaving this new piece of my life into that. It worked very well this week. It also helps that the Powers That Be at work finally figured out that it would be a Bad Thing to keep making me do my current job without acknowledging that it's far beyond my original job description. So they're going to update my job description and check with HR to figure out if I should have a new title or salary. That's a load off my mind. And it makes the frustrations of the DDJ easier to handle. I don't care if my new duties don't warrant a raise (which I really think they will)--I just wanted the acknowledgement that I'm not doing what I was hired to do.

Now the big task is to weave writing into this new situation even better than I had before. I'm pushing my way through some Masque blocks, and sticking to as much of my writing routine as possible. I'm still planning on finishing a draft of this book by the Pikes Peak Writers Conference. 2005 is definitely going to be an interesting year.

Another Week Looms

OK, here it is. Another Sunday night. Ask Mark: this is usually the point where I go a little whacko thinking about how far away the next weekend is. Tears, anger, frustration, resigned silence, you name it. Nothing good. I was going to say that I started that before things got crazy at work, but that's a lie. Things have been crazy at work since mid-November when I found out that one of the temps was quitting because of my counterpart. And then people started getting fired and quitting. And then rumors sprang up like wildfire and no one's even trying to put them out. And then management got really fucking good at double-speak and chasing their tails. Yeah, downhill for a while. Here's hoping my resume is being considered at the places I've sent it.

But I didn't start this post in order to bitch about the Dreaded Day Job. I started this to talk about my great weekend. Yesterday, Mark and I had barely pulled ourselves out of bed when someone from my crit group called and asked me to go with her and another of our critters to a writing workshop down in a southern Denver suburb. All that was required of me was to help said person set up coffee and cookies. I said sure. We got there and set up in no time, only to have not even a dozen people show up for the RMFW business meeting scheduled for just before the workshop. Somehow I ended up being impromptu secretary for RMFW's shortest meeting ever. (The minutes are about three lines long.) And then we all went to lunch and chatted. The best part of that conversation was when someone said to me, "You're published, right?" Glad to know I look the part or present the impression of being published. Then we had the actual workshop given by Sharon Mignerey, all about how to deal with this crazy job description we writers have. At one point I asked a question (basically revealing again in front of fellow writers my personal psychotic perfectionist tendencies - more on this later), and got a free signed book out of it. Always nice.

And today I read that book for a bit, just relaxing and pretending that the Dreaded Day Job was just a demented figment of my imagination. Later I sat down with some brainstorming software and mapped out the status of my writing. It wasn't quite as cathartic as I had hoped, but it did help to get it all out of my head and visualize it. Then I mapped out all of my ideas for "Princess Incubus". Everything from the original inspiration to the research to the plot outline. All on one brainstorm map. It's a very busy map, but I like it. Again, nice to have it all in front of me, with clear deliniations of relationships and ideas.

Tomorrow night I hope to do some brainstorming for The Masque, or actually write some of "Princess Incubus". It'll depend on what, if anything, the day takes out of me. Still, I'm pleased with the weekend. It was a nice assertion that the Dreaded Day Job (aw, hell - I'm just gonna start calling it the DDJ from now on; the world never has enough acronyms) isn't who I am, it's just what I have to do at the moment.

On the Recent Silence

I could've also titled this post "Why I LOOOOVE My Job - Ha!" Why? Because I've been given new responsibilites. I just cut a few lines of a rant that threatened to go on forever; they were cut because a couple of people I work with know this link--not that I think they'd run and tell anybody what I said, but CYA.

Anyhoo, I've been insanely busy learning new software, attending training to get the basics of just what my company does in the first place, and general craziness revolving around new people in new positions (not me; pittance raise, but no promotion in sight; but things are so unstable at the moment, so who knows). The past two weeks, I've come home (usually a couple hours later than usual) and collapsed on the couch, sometimes having the energy to turn on the TV. Any free time at work is usually spent speed-reading my blog list and email to give me some sort of break from all the insanity. And lunch, what's that? But I think next week might start to settle a wee bit, so maybe I can get back to my usual sporadic blogging routine.

As for the writing.... Not going well. All the recent work upheaval has made my mind so unbelievably scattered. When I've tried to focus it on my writing--ANYTHING about my writing--it's like I'm trying to hold water in a collander. Just ain't happening. So I've taken to listening to writing-related music on my commutes and letting my mind slip-n-slide all over the place with writing. Sometimes a few thoughts will gather substance and stay put for a bit. I tend to put the songs that generate that on a repeat loop and let that substance build.

After briefly toying with the idea of going into work this weekend (and those of you who know me--at least since I left the PhD program--know that ordinarily the thought would never, not in a million years, not if I earned 100x my normal pay, ever cross my mind; THAT'S how bad things are getting at work), I've said an emphatic hell no and decided to do skitterish writing things as they pop up in my head. Brainstorm several ideas, converse with my characters here and there, work on "Princess Incubus", outline revision ideas for The Masque, whatever. I'm looking forward to it. And I finally bit the bullet and decided to have my crit group read HD and give me all the painful comments in June. So hopefully by the end of the year I'll have a final decision on that book's fate. :)

The short of it: Work Be Nuts, and it's messing up my writing in nasty ways. Next week's task will be to assess the ways I can remedy the situation (other than apply for other jobs, which I'm already doing).

Quick Plug

I was remiss last week in trying to beat into all my dear readers the absolute necessity of watching the Battlestar Gallactica miniseries and series premiere. Not this week. So, here's the plug: WATCH SCIFI FRIDAY TONIGHT!!!!! BG is wicked cool, and you should already know that SG-1 and Atlantis rock the Kasbah. Get with it and watch these awesome shows. Thank me later. :)

I'll write more about my silence in a couple hours.

I Have Seen the Enemy

Went to my new dentist today. Let's just hope there won't be a repeat of what happened the last time I was able to say that (i.e. I got fired before I could get my cleaning after the initial "my don't your teeth look lovely" visit.) I really like this new dentist. She has lots of groovy new toys. A laser tool that can check teeth for signs of deacy. A tiny camera to get upclose and personal with me teefies. This was actually a little daunting because I could watch the camera's output on a 20" TV. Blech! I ain't never gonna be no dentist! I actually got to see the plaque buildup in all its disgusting, yellow glory. Don't get me wrong: it was wicked cool to see what my teeth look like. And it was nice that they could get a sense of decay without doing myriad Xrays. But yipes! I think I may have been permanently spooked into flossing daily for the rest of my life.

Nah. Who am I kidding? :)

Annoying

Maybe I just didn't attend enough meetings at IBM to notice it there, but upper management at my current company is remarkably adept at carrying on a conversation without saying anything at all. Or worse yet, they'll say all the wrong things and create more work for the "underlings". I never thought a simple question such as "When is the next training class?" could generate five minutes of useless, barely even tangential, verbal diarrhea. And this, unfortunately, is the future of my life at this job. Gotta find a way to deal with this and stay sane. I thought such conversational gems were the province of politics. Obviously, I was very much mistakent. Grrrrrr.

Self-taught

Didn't get any writing done this weekend for The Masque. Basically, I had hit a chapter where I only had vague ideas of one or two things that needed to happen. I kept hoping that Muse would get her act together to give me at least a thousand words over the weekend, but no. So I used the time for other things. On Saturday, I read all the relevant bits of a book on Satan and his crew to finish up the research I wanted to do for "Princess Incubus". Got a few more ideas about that story, and I should be able to start oulining shortly. (Incidentally, I've marked this story with the status "in worldbuilding". That phrase as come to be my personal indicator for "pre-writing". Not sure why, just seems to make sense to me that way.)

I figured Sunday would certainly see a few bits of inspiration trickling from my fingertips, but no. I even tried to sit down and force just my questions and vague notions about the next chapter, but my thoughts kept sliding all over the place--to the point where I sat at my desk, pen poised, notebook open, and all I could think about was the chorus of a song I had just heard and it kept repeating for large chunks of time. I eventually got pretty pissed at this, so I put together a rather long playlist of good songs that strike me as appropriate for The Masque and the characters therein. I probably won't be able to write to it all the time as the songs, while good and relevant, can often distract me from the writing. Instead, the CDs will serve as driving music on my commute. I get a lot of good scene and idea sketching on that drive, even moreso with the right music.

But still my thoughts kept skittering away every time I tried to focus on them. I thought a movie might be nice, and "The Fifth Element" was on TBS. But I found that I couldn't even concentrate on the movie because of the regular commercial breaks. I got sick of this pretty quick and decided to trek over to WalMart and pick up stuff to teach myself how to crochet. My grandmother taught me--or at least tried to teach me--the basics a good fifteen or so years ago, but I never got into it then. And I've been wanting to learn for the past couple years so I can crochet while watching TV or movies that we've already seen. I picked up two little how-to booklets, the needles, some yarn, and a bigger cross-stitch hoop just in case I struggled too much with the new craft and wanted to go back to something more familiar. Then I put on our videocassette version of "The Fifth Element" and went to work.

My practice pieces are certainly nothing spectacular, but I've got the basic stitches down and enjoyed the learning a lot. My thoughts were still kind of skittery when it came to writing afterward, but at least they had settled with regard to every thing else. And then once we had dinner and settled into watching some "Simpsons" episodes...THAT'S when the writing ideas started clicking into place. And then they kept me up past midnight. That's my muse, though.

Taken Out of Context...

My husband abandoned me today, just like he did yesterday. Said he was off to collect virgins. He'll be impregnating them later this week. Such are the joys of being married to a man who does research on fruit flies. As he also studies their sex determination genes and proteins, asking him about his day often involves intriguing statements that might be rather shocking when not heard in the right context.

New Look

It took three hours, but I think the blog is stable for a while. I'll probably continue to play with it over the next few weeks (particularly the archive list - ick!). But I like the color scheme and layout. And I've figured out this whole title thing. I guess I'll have to think of another reward for writing tomorrow - assuming I can get Muse to clue me in a bit more on what exactly my characters are going to be doing in the next chapter.

Adventures in Astronomy

Mark and I braved the cold and snow last night to try to catch a glimpse of a comet, the Orion nebula, Saturn, Andromeda, and the Perseides (sp?). We managed to see the Orion nebula (pretty, whispy blues and greens) and Saturn (with the little bright speck of Titon right next to it) before his telescope decided to go on the fritz. One teensy, tiny screw broke, thus preventing the scope tube itself from resting appropriately on its stand. So we had to call it a night early and rush home to partake of amaretto-laced hot chocolate. And, of course, Mark has to special order that teensy, tiny screw at God-knows-what price before he can use his telescope again. I'm sort of mixed about this problem. On the one hand, there's a lot of cool stuff that I want to see and that Mark knows how to find and when to best view it. On the other hand, it was really, friggin' cold out last night! :)