Author Archives: Autumn

Gnarr

I have thrown up my hands and walked away from the computer twice today. This last time I did it because the computer thought it would be a good idea to rename the drives, and then told me it couldn’t find any of my music because the G drive had mysteriously become the H drive. Apparently my computer has previously nicknamed my printer the G drive, so when I turned my printer on for the first time since adding the external hard drive to the family it remembered that the printer existed, shuffled everything down one step, and the poor hard drive got bumped. I tried turning the printer off and restarting the computer, but no luck.

So it came down to renaming my drives, or rebuilding the media library again. I chose option B, because I’ve done it before and nothing blew up.

But before I restarted it, I practised the cello some more to calm myself down and change my headspace. Spiegel im Spiegel! Go me!

Yet still, no actual new words in the book. It seems to be either feast or famine when it comes to actual production these days. It’s a low-energy day and I’m trying to cut myself some slack, but it’s hard when the deadline is muttering in the distance and I have to handle those pregnancy copy-edits next week or the week after that. I’ve been listlessly reading through the existing document today, trying to find something that my brain jumps on and wants to expand. Recipes. I should do recipes. Right. That is what I will do for the next hour, before HRH and the boy get home.

Sigh

Win some, lose some.

I had a lovely lunch out with Marc. Then I got home and discovered that I’d been shipped the wrong replacement battery for my cell phone, and the company’s return policy is only valid within fourteen days from the ship date… which was fifteen days ago. I’ve sent them an e-mail; we’ll see what they come up with.

Now I have to try to do something about this book.

Today I Have…

– done a load of laundry

– practised the cello (that second movement of the Gounod symphony, and my fifteen minutes stretched to twenty before I deliberately stopped because I could have gone on but I really don’t want to push things and ruin it for myself, and why is it always that I can play things perfectly well at home?)

– handled the day’s news and correspondence

– actually put make-up on for the first time in ages, because Sandman7 will be here in a few minutes to pick me up for our lunch date. Yes! I am leaving the house! It is so exciting!

– made an optometrist appointment

– tried to make an appointment for a haircut, but was foiled

– opened the hearthcraft file and messed about, but no new words of reportable consequence yet, only resequenced ones

Not bad at all. I’m trying to feel better about all the other things that have been accomplished instead of fixating on the no-new-words part.

Hearthcraft Book Update

Total word count, hearthcraft book: 37,306
New words today: 2,206

Today’s topic: Food as a spiritual thing. I have to admit that some of today’s words came from an article that I wrote in the fall of 2005, that was in turn salvaged from a bunch of stuff that got cut from the green witch book. I’m considering them note-form thoughts for the moment, and so they’re all in bulleted italics awaiting rewriting and refocusing, because while it roughly delivers what I’m trying to get across I want to say it differently so as not to bore devoted readers! to better blend with the subject of the book. So they’re understudy words until the principal words are ready to go on stage.

Yikes. A day or two more of work and I’ll be at the two-thirds-done point. Then it’s just a couple of thousand words to the three-quarter mark, which is where I begin hyperventilating because there isn’t enough room to fit it all in, and there’s no way I will hand in another 80K book on a 60K contract. They’re not paying me enough.

The Unexpected

Out of the blue, I have received not one but two floral tributes today from friends. One was hand-delivered; the other I found waiting for me (ingeniously tucked into our door knocker) when I went to deliver a card. They’re currently on my desk, looking cheerful. Thank you!

I wish Liam had finished his Valentines earlier so that those who will receive them by mail could have opened them today. There’s only so fast you can make a two and a half year old work. (He also insisted on making one “for us, Mama!”, which is currently displayed on a bookshelf.)

Back to work.

ETA: If you want to give flowers, robbing a florist the night before Valentine’s Day is not the way to acquire said flowers.

Oops…

So that’s why the owlies have been drooping despondently around here, languishing over books and pixels and casting sorrowful looks in my direction.

I missed our own sixth-year anniversary on Tuesday

So, er, happy six-years-and-two-days anniversary to us, blog! Here’s to many more years together!

(Why do I keep a public on-line journal? The About the Blog page captures some of my past thoughts on the subject.)