Happy anniversary, HRH.
You make life worth living.
Here’s to many, many more.
Seven
Author Archives: Autumn
Brief Liam Update
We have been pretty miserable here for the past few days. Liam’s been waking up every two to three hours at night in full howling end-of-world mode. Sometimes we can get him back to sleep, sometimes not. This morning began at 4.30, and the three of us walked through the day like zombies. The appetite is more miss than hit. So he’s a crank because his food and sleep are off, and we’re cranky because he’s not eating or sleeping normally, which means we’re not sleeping properly. Plus the fact that he’s a crank wears us down too.
He’s still a good kid. He’s just going through something, whether it’s teething or working out a new schedule for himself with only one nap, or working through night terrors. We’re just very, very tired, and out of energy to deal with pretty much anything.
However:
New words this week: “peekaboo”, “socks”, and the sound of a rooster crowing.
New food: leeks. (The verdict? Pretty decent.)
New actions: waving bye-bye when people are actually saying bye-bye, fitting two single MegaBloks together, opening the crank-powered windows in his room, setting bath ducks on a shelf. There are more, I’m just so wiped I can’t think of them.
And a new photo for you all, because it’s been a while:
(Scarlet had brought down some Harry Potter stickers that day, and Liam had one on his forehead for a few hours. In some way it feels like we’ve come full circle from this photo!)
Today he played my cello (remarkably well; I moved my fingers to make different notes, and he bowed), and played HRH’s bodhran for the first time too.
I was in bed at six last night. Tonight I may make it all the way till eight.
ESTC Update
Total word count, ESTC: 32,131
Total words yesterday and today: 1,444
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32,131 / 50,000
(64.3%) |
The week is not getting better. With Liam’s regular homecare person away on vacation, I’ve been recruiting friends to come play with him for a couple of hours while I try to work. Apart from the average daily quota on Wednesday, yesterday was pretty much a failure thanks to Liam being cranky and clingy and spending most of his time hanging over the child gate in my office doorframe crying for me. This morning I discovered that my mother in law wasn’t expecting to watch Liam today, as he’s also going over there tomorrow, and I had a moment of sheer panic wondering if I would get any work done at all this week other than those two hours Wednesday afternoon. She rallied, however, and has taken him for a few hours so that I can get something done. Stricken from the list of things to do today as an unfortunate result were a nap (Liam’s been waking up two to four times throughout the nights recently, and HRH sleeps right through it), and the purchasing of a new ink cartridge for the printer and a pair of jeans that fit. The shower is going to happen, though, come what may.
On top of it all, Liam appears to be showing every classic sign of beginning to teethe again: rashes, excessive drool and the accompanying cough, incessant chewing, the night wakings…. Can we just have some time out, please?
In general, things have been working up to a point where I would like to scream. Perhaps cry, or some sort of similar expression of frustration. My so-called vacation is a mountain of work, and the next weekend trip might not even happen thanks to bad scheduling. I have a wild urge to throw everything I agreed to organise and do back at the people for whom I’m doing it, and telling them all to deal with it themselves.
I did have a nice evening out last night: Pasley and I went to see The Illusionist, which was a beautifully made film. I enjoyed it a lot.
I’ve done a few hundred words today and that’s going to have to be enough, because I have other stuff piling up that’s due this weekend and next week for various commitments, and I have no other time in which to do them. And I have to go pick the boy up early.
Once More Unto The Breach, etc.
Jan arrived for her afternoon with Liam, and whisked him off for a walk.
The first thing I did once alone, even before sitting down at the computer, was clean the bathroom, because somewhere between yesterday and today it went from “the bathroom needs to be cleaned this weekend” to “I have to clean this bathroom RIGHT NOW”.
I feel much better.
Also cleaned the fishtank earlier, and am drying apple slices. Am on roll. Go me.
Gifties
ESTC Update
Ugh. Have been having a Bad Week, and a Particularly Bad Day.
Nonetheless:
Total word count, ESTC: 30,687
Total words today: 1,684
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30,687 / 50,000
(61.4%) |
This is completely and totally due to Ceri taking Liam duty for three hours this afternoon. Well, that and the research I did at 4.30 this morning. (The Particularly Bad Day began then, and I had to do something other than lie awake and stare at the ceiling, wishing I was asleep.) I have absolutely no idea how over sixteen hundred words appeared in my manuscript — it occured to me that I may have copied three pages into another chapter instead of cutting and pasting, but I can’t seem to find it — but I’m not going to turn them away. I’m at that point in the book where I’m adding little things all over because the bulk of each chapter is done, and that never feels like I’m writing a large amount.
Orchestra tonight. I’m so tired that I can’t even remember what we’re playing.
ESTC Update
Total word count, ESTC: 29,003
Total words today: 3,443
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29,003 / 50,000
(58.0%) |
Four and a half pages on miscarriage, two and a half on bed rest, two on infant hospitalization, five on a ritual to help spiritually and emotionally release a failed pregnancy. And you wonder why I was avoiding the chapter on grief? Soon I get to write a requiem ritual. The fun never stops.
Part of me wants to write another sixty words to hit 3,500 today, but I’ve spent the last forty-five minutes saying, “I’ll just write X more words to hit this nifty close round number” over and over. My back hurts, and there’s the boy to go fetch. And hmm, I’m hungry.
Today’s amusing typos: Germanium essential oil helps soothe stress. (That’s likely to amuse the original membership of the Nebula Book Club.) And then there was the right to greve, which is probably only funny if you live in a francophone city where various unions go on strike regularly.