Category Archives: Diary

Wednesday, Thursday

My parents came into town for the day yesterday, and of course that was the day the two-year-old fairy decided to visit and dump her bag of tricks over Liam’s head. He woke up at 5:30, he upended his cup of milky tea on the floor of the kitchen, he upended my cup of tea into his toy drum, he pulled over the water fountain. He screamed for an hourish after being put down for his nap, and when he woke up he didn’t want to come out and see his grandparents, calling me into his room to curl up with him on his bed instead. Eventually he came out and socialised, and he cheerfully ate a big dinner (on top of the two bowls of Cheerios and milk he devoured once he woke up from his late nap). I took my parents to the airport while HRH handled the bath and bed stuff, and the boy was in bed cooing to himself when I got home. I went in and sat on the edge of his bed and he smiled at me with sleepy eyes, as if it had been a wonderful day, and mumbled a goodnight. I kissed him, and he snuggled down with Bun-Bun and was asleep within five minutes. He didn’t wake up till 6:30 today, and was in a great mood. I think he has to have an uber-cranky day once in a blue moon to make up for how great he is the rest of the time. His cold is much much better and almost gone; I now must grudgingly admit that I have it, although it’s staying in my sinuses and is almost gone too.

It was really nice to see my parents, though.

I bought a bread maker this morning. When even no-name generic sandwich bread goes up to $2.10 a loaf, I put my foot down. I also bought black socks. It’s probably a bad sign of something when I feel that buying plain black socks is a big thing.

I mailed out my contracts for the new hearth magic book on Wednesday. Also in work-related news, I’ve been getting pings from private individuals about small editing jobs this week. One of them was an indirect response to a message I sent out requesting info as a consumer; the recipient noticed my sig file and said she wrote short stories in English, her second language, and wanted to know more about how I could clean up her work. Nothing concrete yet, just responding to queries, but more queries mean more potential for work.

I wrote about a thousand words of inane stuff in the Vivaldi novel on Wednesday. I’m restless, now that the other YA novel is finished; I can’t seem to settle into anything. Research for the hearth magic book is, of course, ongoing.

Randomness

Wow; rereading my monthly Liam round-up, it must seem as if all we do is watch TV and movies with him. We don’t, of course. It’s just that they leave such an impression on him that they’re what he talks about and re-enacts and incorporates into his play.

It’s getting harder and harder to write these monthly posts. I have an ongoing draft in which I note things down all month, but when it comes time to actually expand them and link everything together in some sort of semi-coherent order, it takes longer and longer. I may start evolving them into a slightly different format. I have no idea what just yet, but something different, to save sanity and time.

I finished editing my 2002 YA novel at a writing jam last night. Next on the list of things to do: write up a precis, chapter summaries, a hook, craft a query letter and sort through all the agents I’ve bookmarked. You know, in between all the parenting and writing the other, actually contracted, book.

I’m so tired, though, that I think I’ll take a short nap then settle down with some hearthcraft research books before I have to go pick the boy up. He woke himself up coughing at 5:15 this morning, and as I hadn’t been able to get to sleep till midnight-thirty, my eyes are now rather dry and red and my brain is pretty fried.

PSA

Gentle readers, Liam’s monthly update will be published sometime tomorrow or possibly the next day and backdated to today. He’ll be staying home with me tomorrow because he’s still too sick to go out, which means I have to finish the reviews that are due tomorrow this evening, because I can’t work if he’s here.

Today was my first non-headache day in six days! I’m still short on sleep because the boy keeps waking up at night and having very short afternoon naps (that damn cold — now with a nasty throat-tearing cough!), but not fighting a headache makes a big, big difference in dealing with the cold-miserable toddler.

Misery, Woe, and Meer

Liam is sick. Very sick. As in, he has a horrible chest cold that started out Friday morning as a full-blown thing with nothing signalling or leading up to it.

I have been fighting a headache all week, from slight and ignorable to pounding and not-ignorable. Every couple of days it blossoms into a full-fledged migraine.

The good news is that medication (thank all the gods for Triaminic) and a humidifier are managing Liam’s cold very well, so well that he may even be able to go into daycare on Monday. The bad news is that (A) his/our attendance at weekend events such as birthday parties and welcome-homes have, alas, been cancelled, and (B) nothing seems to be help my migraines except silence and darkness and time. That means all my commitments such as reviews and introductions have been slowed down. The lack of sleep due to child waking in the night hasn’t helped much the past two days, either.

We bought him a set of two little hockey sticks today. He insisted on carrying one in his stroller with him as we did the rest of our errands. It was very cute. He hasn’t quite grasped the concept of hitting the ball with the stick, though; he runs after the ball and picks it up in his free hand, saying, “That Liam’s!” It will come with time.

And in other completely unrelated news, I had my hair cut on Friday. It is… erm… short. And layered. I like it very much, but it’s shorter than I’ve had it in many, many years.

This Week So Far

Scattered flurries are called for later this afternoon. Not that I want winter to be here any time soon — for some odd reason I’m actually enjoying the seasonal weather at the moment, possibly because the cold, damp, and very windy thing is still novel — but I’m feeling moderately insulted and stood up by the snow fairies. Everyone else has had snow, it seems; where the heck are our first snowflakes? It’s Montreal, for the love of cats. We wrote the book on spastic weather.

Liam and I had a great playdate with Arthur and Curtana yesterday. This was followed by a less than stellar nap for Liam (and none for me at all because I used the first hour of his nap to clean up and check mail, and then suddenly there wasn’t a second hour for me to use), and a good shopping outing where we picked up Ratatouille and the Pixar shorts collection on DVD. I also got doorknob safety covers to keep Liam from getting out of bed once we’ve put him down to sleep, or wandering out in the middle of the night to cheerfully ask his father where his toy trains have gone. He’s also thrown open our (accidentally unlocked) front door and tromped out into the staircase on his own.

I had an insanely productive editing day on Monday: many hours of work with Mousme during the day, where I worked myself into a fried zone, then another couple of very enjoyable hours with Sandman7 and Talyesin in the evening at our inaugural NotNoWriMo meeting, despite a bad headache. (Oh, we are all so very pleased not to be doing the usual November thing; so very, very pleased. We’ve all been there and done that with multiple wins, and now we need to move on.) All in all I edited a third of the book yesterday, and now there are only around seventy pages to go.

Our coven celebrated Samhain with a quiet, good ritual last night, featuring a needfire that burned bright and long enough to make up for the lack of needfires over the past couple of years.

Today’s mail yielded me a free copy of Author 101: Bestselling Book Publicity, sent to me by the publicity department of my publisher. Enclosed was a form letter of publicity tips that began by saying, “Welcome to our company!” I am very amused, as the pregnancy book coming out next fall is my fourth with this publisher.

Today, I read a new book and write a note-form review, as well as write a second note-form review for another book I read a couple of months ago and I need to reacquaint myself with it first. Then Friday, I will expand the point-form reviews into real live reviews and send them off. Today, though, I mainly need to focus on staying upright; I’m exhausted, despite a good night of sleep, and I ache all over. Good thing I bought acetaminophen yesterday. I will not be sick, damn it. I’ve had a dry cough over the past week that I am certain is directly connected to turning the heaters on, but the aching? Not a good sign.

Finished!

Wow! Editing Goddess Moi strikes again. The zipped-and-yet-still-humongous file is currently uploading, my editorial memo is just waiting for the upload to be done so I can attach it to an e-mail saying as much to the recipient…

I shall have a cookie for this. Or a cupcake, anyway.

Every time I do an edit I think, Oh, I could have done better. What I always forget to add is if I’d had more time. And I really should stop thinking that way, because I did my best in the time allotted, and the product is improved. Sure, I have have missed a word that ought to have been capitalized, or a comma somewhere, but all in all, I did some good. And to be honest, I edited this at one and a half times my usual speed. Still, there’s that fretting and minor anxiety when I send something off. Is it okay? Did I screw it up? Did I misunderstand it completely and make it worse, somehow? (Answers: Yes, no, of course not.)

And as a note to myself: A deadline of noon means you have to factor in the uploading time, too. Duh.

I wonder who I should send my invoice to. Hmm. Although I’m going to wait till tonight to do that, as I’ve said I’d take another look at it after someone does the rewrites, if they’d like.