I promise, promise, promise that as soon as my contracts have reached the publisher and All Is Official, I will signal the simultaneous opening of virtual champagne across North America. Then we can all drink to me and my Cool New Career. Yay me.
In the meantime I’ll chew my fingernails yet again, hoping they get to where they need to be on time.
Maybe once all that’s over with I can think about NaNo.
Ah, the first cold I’ve had in months. I so have not missed being sick. The general ache, the out-of-it feeling due to the sinus pressure, the boxes and boxes of tissue….
Thursday night I had a dynamic pair of students in a workshop, which was an enjoyable switch from the usual silent note-taking type. Friday night I got to make a flying visit to the first Montreal NaNo coffee gathering and met some terrific new people while re-acquainting myself with terrific people I’d met last year. And, as a result of a highly amusing misunderstanding, I have resolved that my story will have a psychic ferret involved in it somewhere (you just had to be there). (And I called Tal insane. Ah, well. There’s a reason we’re related by choice.)
It was a lovely Thanksgiving weekend (apart from the cold, of course, which ensured that I couldn’t taste my in-laws’ wonderful harvest feast to the degree it deserved), with a nice gift at the end: Salem, my favourite local cat-who-is-not-mine, ate about 30 ccs of food after refusing to eat for a period of days. Sure, it took three of us to hold her (including one and a half animal techs), but she ate; she even ate willingly after being force-fed a bit of it. Then I got to cuddle a corn snake while I watched the new trailers for Matrix Revolutions and The Return of the King.
This afternoon is a legal presence at the Palais de Justice (no worries, it’s all good), and then an intimate get-together at Hurley’s to celebrate a few different milestones achieved over the past three months.
(Palais de Justice, for our non-Quebec-resident readership, is the fancy French term for the city courthouse. It does not, in fact, have anything to do with a superhero team. More’s the pity.)
Slowly but surely, I’m getting my mind back into the writing mode. I managed to get my printer working again (using the popular kick-it-hard method combined with replacing an ink cartridge) and printed out the existing copy of two half-finished stories, then took them to the Second Cup with me Friday afternoon to edit and add to them. Re-reading work that I haven’t touched in months is a remarkably good carrot to use when I’m stuck; it’s often better than I remember it being. Must stop drinking lattes and mochas while doing it, though. Herbal tea all the way!
Six thumbs up for Ceri’s apple pie. Not too tart; not too sweet; not too gooey. Perfect pastry. Her Nanny would be proud.
My husband enjoyed another piece for breakfast and says it was just as delicious the morning after.
Over tea last night the topic of ancestors came up, and I was thinking about it this morning. It’s always such a pity that by the time we’re old enough to appreciate the stories and the knowledge that our grandparents possess, they’re gone. It’s some sort of comfort that my spiritual path involves honouring my genelogical ancestors, and my spiritual ancestors as well. I have a connection to the past that extends past the living face-to-face exchanges, and I value it greatly.
I also have an adorable black kitten who actually jumped up on my lap for a cuddle when I got home this afternoon. And I was initiated into the mysteries of making perfume waters at work today. I even labelled them, and they look just like the ones on the shelf. I am terribly proud of myself. I picked up my beautiful, pristine, luminescent copy of Neil Gaiman’s Endless Nights this afternoon as well. So, all in all, quite the red-letter day.
Now, if I could only get news of how the submission of my contract to the publishing board of the US publisher went today, my happiness would be complete.
I’m waiting for my chicken cacciatore to thicken so that I can bring it over to the Harvest potluck we’re attending tonight. Let’s hope it goes better than the rest of the weekend has, because wow, have I been out of it.
Let’s see: While talking, I’ve been trailing off into silence, losing my train of thought. Not what you want to have happen when you teach four classes in three days. (Mercury in retrograde? Ah. Check.) I also have the attention span of an adolescent gnat. I’ve been battling headaches as well, which I’m certain is connected to the pressure yo-yoing up and down. At least I slept soundly last night. My incapability to sustain a coherent thought likely explains my horrendous no-no in the supermarket this afternoon, where I saw my goddaughter and reached for her without announcing my presence first, probably scaring her poor mother to death. I would never, never do something like that while thinking straight.
I did, however, manage to remember everything I needed to pick up in the store. Wonders will never cease.
We’re tidying and vacuuming while the stew thickens, too, because we have a couple of friends coming over for tea tomorrow night. The cats are nowhere to be seen, of course. While we’re out tonight they will undoubtedly shed fur with joyous abandon, rendering the whole exercise completely futile. Ah, well. At least we made the effort.
I’ll go check on that cacciatore. So far, this recipe is a definite keeper. (It’s from the October issue of Martha Stewart Living, which I picked up solely because it had pumpkin owls on the cover. Turns out it has terrific cookie recipes as well as this cacciatore recipe.)
I’m going, I’m going…
Last week I packed up a notebook, a pen, and a sweater and walked to the Second Cup in Westmount. I ordered myself a decaf mocha with whipped topping and settled down to write.
By the time my mocha was gone, I had another four pages of Crossroads.
There’s something I really enjoy about writing or reading in a cafe. It’s a change of pace; it smells good (roasting coffee, mmm); there’s a touch of sophistication (i.e. I feel like an adult for some reason); and you have to do something, otherwise you’re just sitting there with a mug in front of you. The distractions are minimal, unless the music is terrible or there’s a pair of high school girls nearby, and time really works in your favour, for once.
Plus they have evil bakery items, should you have an extra couple of dollars in your wallet. That means that you can’t write as easily, though, because you have to handle a fork and a pen.
More and more I’m associating the computer with Work-type-work, and my pens and notebooks with my Writing work. This just might cause some serious psychological friction when November rolls around. Speaking thereof, only 45 days till the insanity begins once again…
Damn. Had a blog post about amusing misspellings on a website, but I can’t post it because it revolves around a gift for someone.
Drat.
But I did find something else: a new liqueur called Absente. It claims to be “a dazzling emerald green spirit, distilled in the tradition of Absinthe, from a potion of botanicals without the wormwood.” It substitutes Southernwood, or Southern Wormwood (same artemisia family, same absinthol oil which gives it the characteristic bitter taste) instead to make it legal.
For all you bohemians out there, the site also provides recipes and serving instructions. (Dear Gods – the Energizer is just scary.)
The gods love Goldschlager.
S’all I’m saying.