OMG What have I done to myself?

On a totally different note:

http://www.modcloth.com/store/ModCloth/Womens/Dresses


OMG these dresses are cute....

Yesterday was a good day.

I'm back down to 190, having been 205 when I got back from the hospital. Water weight -- BE GONE! Still snacking more than I should, but -- baby steps, baby steps -- I plan to get that under control again soon.

Spent the day working on Lucy's story. Just tweaked the first three chapters as a way of plowing back into the project. Fourth chapter is Grady's and I'm trying to readjust his old chapter to include a small fight with his wife prior to him discovering her in bed with the landscaper. I should be able to finish it up today, and after that everything is in bits in pieces, but it means I'll have four solid chapters done for about 12k of initial set up.

Also got to the gym. I'd put a note on my monitor that said "Gym 4:00" and a little before 4 I stopped writing, put on my tennis shoes and went. Yeah, me. I walked for 10 minutes and then lift weights for 40 minutes. Today I'm hoping to walk for 30 minutes.

All and all, a good Monday restart.

Unfortunately Tuesday has started by waking up at 4 am and not being able to get back to sleep. ARGH.

So I got up today with grand hopes that I can restart this week with this new week a dawning.

Unfortunately, first thing Don said to me was "Looking forward to next week." Oh yeah, Zac has all next week off....

WILL NOT THINKING ABOUT -- WILL FOCUS ON RESTARTING!!!! (sigh)

Been writing -- not on the correct thing, but getting words on the page for the first time in a long while. As usual, I've let writing take over my life, from the moment I wake up until after I crawl into bed. To counter it, I've decided today I'll just take of life. I'm heading off to the food store to stock up for the week and generally planning nothing else useful.

While I was in Japan I noticed a very odd trend. The Japanese don't seem to like to watch TV alone. All cooking shows and such featured at least two people in the kitchen. All the evening shows featured an "audience" to watch with the viewer. These people aren't the mass sitting behind the camera, but a select few up on stage sitting in front of the camera.


This clip shows it well. Watch the upper right hand corner. Almost every show I saw in Japan used this extensively.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=991ugfaioiQ

Write.....delete........write.....delete......write.....delete
write
delete
delete
delete
writewritewritedelete.........delete....delete.....
tap fingers
walk in circles
write....delete....write....delete
play spider
read manga
write
delete
Word count of the day...zero

And writing stuff other than my main WIP -- but I thought I'd share. I'm using the word xylophone to describe a instrument I made up in TINKER but forgot what I called it. It's a half-circle of wood slats played with hammers, kind of a cross between steel drum and xylophone.

#

The elf was just outside the train station, standing in front of a Coke machine, staring at it as if it was the most amazing thing in the world. Her thick braid of walnut-brown hair swung back and forth as she swayed hip to hip, nearly dancing to music only she heard. She air-drummed the silent melody with a pair of (xylophone) mallets, complete with absent-minded flourishes. There was something innocent and charming about her. It made Oilcan smile despite his bleak day. He found himself slowing down as he drove past the station, watching her.

She was surprising short for an elf and impossibly slender. It made him think that she was an adolescent – certainly she wasn’t over a hundred years old. A small mountain of brightly colored travel sacks and the distinctive bulk of a (xylophone) sat at her feet. As he rolled past her, she paused in her drumming to reach out cautiously and touch the selection buttons on the Coke machine – clearly mystified. The train aside, it could be the first machine that she’d ever seen.

He reached the light at the corner before he realized that it was odd that she was just standing there, alone. Usually one of the elves at the train station would be herding a newcomer to safety, especially a child. He sat through the red, studying her in his rear view mirror. It took him a minute to realize why she was alone – there wasn’t a speck of Wind Clan blue on her. She wore a loose red shirt and black leather pants and slouch boots. Even the ribbon threaded through her braid was black. She was Stone Clan or Fire Clan.

The elf clans weren’t allowing a common enemy to deter them from feuding. Since the train station was Wind Clan territory, none of the elves there would help the female.

He sighed, put his pickup in reverse and backed up to pull even with her.

“Hoi!” He called to her in Elvish. “Do you have someplace safe to go to? Is there someone who knows you’ve arrived here?”

She startled, looked behind her as if suspecting he was talking to someone else, and then came down to the curb to look in his pickup window. “Forgiveness, are you talking to me?”

“Yes. The streets aren’t safe after dark. The oni have been raiding at night. Do you have someplace safe to go to tonight?”

Her eyes went wide at the news. “I – I’m coming to my majority.” He was right, she wasn’t an adult. “I’ve heard so much about Pittsburgh. I’ve heard the music they play here – it’s so raw and wonderful -- and – and with the war and everything, the Stone Clan is receiving remuneration…”

Oilcan sighed as she trailed off. “Do you know anyone that lives in Pittsburgh?”

“I – I have a letter of recommendation to the domana Earth Son -- is that bad?”

His dismay must have shown on his face. “Earth Son is dead.”

She gave a quiet “oh” of hurt as her plans unraveled. She frowned at the ground, worrying her lower lip with her teeth. ‘Majority’ for an elf was a hundred which made them psychically equal to an eighteen year old human. She seemed more like sixteen, which would have made her young as eighty. He’d found that the elves sheltered their children so much that the extra years did little to prepare them for the human city.

“My name is Nahala kaesae-tiki waehae lou.” There was a reason most Elves in Pittsburgh picked up short English nicknames. Literally her name was ‘echoing of merriment in stone,’ but truly meant ‘laughter echoing through a cave’ with the implication that it was the innocent laughter of children. The focus of sound in her name meant that her family was most likely musicians. If he had to pick an English name for her, he’d probably choose Merry.

Merry gave him a hopeful little smile.

“I’m Oilcan.”

“Oilcan.” She repeated the English word, clearly puzzled by it but undaunted. “There, we know each other now. I know someone that lives in Pittsburgh.” She paused, losing courage, but then rallied to finish with, “Can – can I stay with you tonight?”

Why were the human runaways so more streetwise than the elves who were nearly five times their age? She clearly had no idea what kind of danger she could be stumbling into. He shook his head. “The oni burned down my house yesterday. I was looking for someplace to stay myself.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry for you!”

“I wasn’t home when it happened.” He’d been drinking beer and playing music with Moser and his band until after the curfew so he’d crashed on Moser’s couch. He’d come home in the morning to smoking ruins and one desperately worried cousin.

“But all your belongings!”

He gave a click of his tongue which the equivalent to shrugging among the elves. “I lost nothing important.” It had left him, though, oddly adrift. In the last few months, so much about Pittsburgh and his life had changed that it felt as if the fire cut the last of his anchors. He’d been driving aimlessly for the last hour, trying to decide where to go. He had several places he could stay. He had a workshop in a barn in the South Hills where he worked on sculpture. There was the trailer they used as offices at the salvage yard or the loft where his cousin used to live before she got married. But none of them seemed right – they belonged to a man he was no longer was. The problem was he didn’t know what fit him now.

“Let us be lovers,” Merry suddenly said in English, stunning him. “We’ll marry our fortunes together.”

He laughed after a moment, recognizing the lyrics, keenly aware that they were across the street from the old Greyhound bus station in Pittsburgh. He sang the next line of lyrics back to her. “I’ve got some real estate here in my bag.”

Her smile was radiant with delight. “You know the song!” She cried in Elvish and dived into one of her travel sacks to pull out a hand bound journal. “A (xylophone) apprentice that I know let me copy his songbook.” She flipped through pages of carefully hand-drawn musical scores to find the Simon and Garfunkel song. Below the English lyrics were Elvish translations. His eyes caught on the line: I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.

Yes, that’s the way I’ve been feeling.

The first line had been horribly mangled in translation. “Lovers” had been mistranslated to an Elvish word that meant members of the same household and “marry our fortunes” to “face a common enemy.”

Oilcan laughed, shaking his head at the discrepancy between the two. “Yes, let us marry our fortunes together – for at least tonight.”

Getting back on my feet! Yeah me!

Managed to pick out the panels for my Guest of Honor stuff for Marcon. I chose:

How to Find A Literary Agent
Editing Your Own Book
How to be Edited
How to Submit a Proposal
Business of Writing
Writer Beware

All topics I know well enough to talk about. I even volunteer to moderate them. I offered an autograph session, reading and kaffeeklatch on top of that.

I still need to finish a bio. Bleah. Hate writing bios.

I played with a new Elfhome novel this weekend in order to get back into writing since the surgery blew me totally off course. I'm having fun with it but I'm not sure how viable it is. Need to get back finishing Lucy's project -- Baen keeps calling wanting to know where my next book is. So far I've had my agent soothe the waters.

Went and saw the doctor today and got cleared to resume life as I know it. Yeah, I can take baths and lift weights and eat normal food again. I asked for more details on the surgery and he said that basically there was one band of tissue stretched across the intestine that was taunt as a violin string. On one side, the bowel was extremely extended and on the other side, things were normal. He said it was very straight forward as to what was wrong and what had to be done to fix things.

I've got a billion and one things to do but still kind of wimpy on the energy side.

Up early to get kid off to bus since husband is sick.

(Eyes awake husband.)

Why am I awake again?

(Eyes awake husband who wants to go pick up MY car which is still at hospital.)

Grumble.

Hate recovered husband on mission....

Apparently while I was in the hospital, Zac was vomiting sick. By the time I got home, he was over the worse. Don went on at length about having to clean up after the vomiting child. I nodded politely and didn't say anything about seventeen years of cleaning up vomit, including nights where I'd have to strip Zac's bed three or four times or the time he dumped what seemed like a gallon of vomit down into my bra at a doctor's office.....

Yesterday, Don got his own tickets to the vomit train. He wondered around the house with a plastic lined trashcan, moaning. I said nothing about driving to the hospital on my own, feeling much like he did. I said nothing about having to clean up after Zac several times over the years feeling the way he does now....

Isn't love grand?

I had food on tuesday, don't remember what but it wasn't Thanksgiving kind of food.

Wednesday I had one piece of toast.

Thursday I had nothing but IV solution -- nothing by mouth, not even ice chips.

Friday I had ice chips in the morning, two jellos and a little beef broth.

Saturday I had a little applesauce, a instant breakfast, a jello cup and a pudding cup.

AND I'M UP NEARLY 8 LBS!!!!!

So unfair.

So I went to the doctor about my "cramps" and ended up in surgery. Turns out that I had a blocked bowel. Just got home with four new little scars on my tummy. Sigh.

still feel lousy. additional sympothm now include dry heaves every time I try to drink more than a teaspoon of water.

Bleah.

I *think* but I'm not sure I'm having the worse cramps of my life. I'm not sure because I never get cramps, so it's unfamiliar country for me. Certainly I've never had cramps where I've wanted to curl up and die before. I'm not running a fever and there's no one point tender, just lots of hurting and its the right time of the month. Don, however, is muttering something about parasites from sushi. Sigh. I'm taking tyenol and going back to bed and hoping it passes. If it doesn't get better by this evening, I'm going to the doctor tomorrow.

And that means shoveling out. I shovel, congratulating myself on the two birds with one stone thing -- exercise and a clean driveway. I shovel, telling myself its nice and fairly warm and quiet outside. I shovel, and please myself with the knowledge I couldn't do it this well two years ago. I shovel, hoping I'm not throwing my back out. I shovel, thinking about writing the bio for Marcon and the one guest membership they're giving me. I shovel and think about the two strong men in my house asleep.....

I stomp inside and wake said men.

Well, I got like a third of the driveway cleared. They can do the other two-thirds.

for at least six months. I went in for draining my cyst and was told due to calcification I would have to go through it all again in six months. Sigh. Biggest problem is that I believe our truly wonderful insurance runs out in three months and we'll have to get cheap, icky insurance after that.

I feel like of silly in that lately I've been very depressed even though, compared to other people, my life is a bed of roses. Other people are seriously sick, with massive problems to deal with, and I have all these great things going on in my life. Yet, I haven't been able to get my head into a writing zone for almost a month. Because of all the holidays, I hadn't been meeting with my shrink. We met on Monday and she talked about how I normally dig myself out of these depresses is by doing stuff. Dig in, put nose to grindstone, and go. I don't remember this, but since I've been seeing her for several years now, through bad times and good, she probably is right.

I've started today by rechecking our recycling calander. The recycling hadn't been picked up last week and we're drowning in it. Once I've established that, yes, I'd been wrong and this week is recycling pickup, I've taken the crates out to be picked up. I need to write some bills, wash some dishes, and then I'm going to try to write.

Yesterday was a day of annoyance. I'd gotten a notice that my yearly mamogram was up and considering my mother's breast cancer, I bit the bullet and made an appointment. The Monday after Christmas I went in for the first round. It was quick and fairly painless evening appointment with no doctor on hand to read the scans. So, of course, they called and wanted me back for more pictures. This is why my mamograms usually take hours.

Yesterday I went back for follow up. The technician was much more exacting than the evening one. Then it was hours sitting in a waiting room waiting for someone to view the shots and decide if I should have an ultrasound. Then, the ultrasounds.

I had cysts in my breast since I was teenager and this was the circus that I go through every time someone gets near my breasts. When the doctor doing the ultrasounds was saying "Oh, you have LOTS of cysts," I was like "Yup, I know."

For some reason, instead of drawing fluid off the most suspicious cyst right there and then, they made me a third appointment for next Wednesday. Not surprisingly, I hit the gift shop on the way out and got candy. Bleah. When I got home, I wasted the rest of the day watching a marathon of CHUCK, which I'd never seen before.

Maybe today I'll get work done.

Yes, the Christmas tree needs to be taken down. Everything needs to be put away neatly. The fridge needs cleaned -- badly. The bills need to be paid. I need to see the dentist and get a mamogram. All good stuff, but also I'm aware that I've been a busy little bee, getting these things done, all in order to avoid writing. Sigh. It triggers a weird guilt/pride reaction. Look at all I got done! Look at what I didn't do!

Oh well, the upside is that I do get some pluses to procrastination.

Zac was so excited last night to ring in the new year, not sure why. We turned on the television at 11:45, watched the chaos at Time Square until the ball dropped. We drank sparkling apple cider, clinking the glasses together to toast in the year. And then Zac got all disgusted with all the kissing, both on the television and in the family room and stomped off. Don and I watched a little of a television show where some spoiled American girl tried to become a geisha and couldn't even getting the sitting down right. Somewhere around 1 am, we went to bed, both wishing we'd called it a night at 9:30. Ahhhhh, we're getting old.

THe new year is turning my thoughts to the future and to the past. I have three GOH this year and will have to do speeches at all of them. I'm thinking about what I can talk about. I don't really want to just do a rehash at all three since its possible that anyone that goes to one would go to the others.

I'm also thinking about weight loss. Over the last few weeks, I've edged back up over 200. I want to get down to 150, so I have to refocus myself. Sigh. I know its not going to be easy but I want to get the rest of the weight off.