Category Archives: Diary

Rescheduled

Today’s plans were cancelled, alas, due to inconsiderate movie theatres not sticking to the schedule they posted two weeks ago (read: I didn’t double-check to confirm that things were being screened at the same time when I know movie schedules can shift weekly). While I’m disappointed, it does free up the afternoon to continue working on the tech review. I’m still going to have to work over the weekend, but not as much. And now I can look forward to the plans next Friday instead, with the new schedule.

I managed to review an entire chapter last night before I had to go take that bath and go to bed. An acceptable work rate, but I wish I could have done more before I reached the point of not being able to review in a focused and constructive fashion.

Liam seems all right; still has the nasal congestion, still clingy, and a bit cranky, but otherwise okay. He slept really well, thank goodness. I think I’m fighting not to catch the same cold.

I’m going to go heat up the leftovers from yesterday’s excellent dinner and keep working.

Ought To Be In Bed

All I want to do is take a warm bath and go to bed, but I have work to do. I only slept for five hours last night, so I was wiped by around midafternoon. My parents were in town, though, so I had a pleasant time chatting and cooking today. What with handling a work issue and writing important work email yesterday, having company today, and being out for half the day tomorrow, I must continue reading and tech reviewing at whatever hour I can. I’ll work until I need to stop tonight.

Liam woke up today with a cold. We pulled out the Triaminic right away this time and set up the humidifer. Despite being cheerful, the poor kid was a bit all over the place and out of sorts despite the fun company, and went to bed an hour early. Every once in a while I hear a sneeze or a hoarse cough from the bedroom. This is what I get for realising the other day that he hadn’t had a cold in a very long time. No, I didn’t say it aloud to anyone, but simply noticing seems to have tripped the balance of fate nonetheless. Also, we think the two year old molars may be beginning their movement. (Please, gods, no, but it’s possible considering the amount of chomping and drooling that has been going on.)

Back to reading and the tech review.

Not What You Think It Means

I really want to believe that a journalist was aiming for a punnish-like thing in composing this headline, but it’s more likely that s/he simply didn’t think this through:

Rare gladiator marbles discovered in major Italian art bust

Rare because gladiators weren’t big marble players; they preferred tetherball. And these must be really special marbles, too, because they were discovered during an art bust (“*in* an actual bust, as the headline could also be read, would be stretching my patience just too far), so they’re probably collectibles!

(Yes, I know what marbles are. But I’ll bet that at least eighty percent of people who encountered this headline didn’t until they read the article.)

The Excitement Of Tuesdays

Not only have two boxes of books just arrived, but my new issue of Fine Cooking was in the mailbox too. Life loves me today. Of course, the doorbell woke Liam, but as he’s only been napping for an hour and a quarter I’ll see if he falls asleep again.

I went to bed with my copy of Northanger Abbey around eight o’clock last night and was asleep by 9:30 once I’d finished it. Naturally this means I woke up at 4 AM, and after trying to go back to sleep for half an hour I got up and worked for an hour and a half. I puzzled out some of what needs to happen next in Swan Sister, worked out some world-stuff, and sketched out a scene or two, then went back to bed around six for a while. It was my own fault for allowing myself to fall asleep too early, but I was just so tired for some reason.

I received a manuscript to review and for which to write a preface today, due back in a week. I’m two chapters into it already, which pleases me because I want to be able to really think about the preface. Not knowing exactly when things like this will be sent to me means I have to make sure the rest of my projects are scheduled in a flexible fashion. I’m glad I got so much work done on the WynterGreene articles yesterday; it takes some of the pressure off that might otherwise have built up when this MS was sent to me, because it naturally takes priority over whatever else is on the go. Fortunately I was also clever enough to start these articles in plenty of time, too.

No, the boy’s not going back to sleep. In fact, he’s singing. Back to parenting.

Spiritual Housecleaning

I dusted off my personal altar today and rearranged things a bit. I updated my spellbox with new petitions and burned old ones that had seen fruition or pertained to events now concluded. I lit candles, purified with incense, and settled down to meditate. This is part of what I’m doing to keep in touch with the foundations of my practice.

One of the changes I want to make in my life involves dealing with how overwhelmed by spiritual administration I’ve been feeling. For the past six years I’ve written and taught and led and guided and it’s time to pull back from that to focus on reacquainting myself with my own personal spiritual practices once again. The energy I’ve been putting into supporting other spiritual experiences has to be turned inward for a time to nourish my own spirituality.

And having said that, this afternoon I sat down to begin putting the basics down in a document for an article I proposed to WynterGreene for the Spring spiritual gardening issue. More spiritual-guidance type writing, yes; but I’m doing this from a different perspective. Also, it’s been over a year since I handed off the green witch book, so my brain has had time to recover from intense immersion in the subject and the ensuing evasion of even thinking about it (a perfectly natural form of self-defense when one has eaten/breathed/slept a single subject for over a year, in order to avoid burnout), and now I’m actually beginning to sense a revival of my interest in the topic again. It’s terribly nice to finish this article outline and already be a third of the way to my target word count. It means that when I expand the point-form outline into full sentences I’ll be over halfway there, and then when I add sentences to further explore/explain and link things I’ll be right where I’m supposed to be. As a requested submission for the same issue I’m also working on an annotated bibliography of sorts of selected titles I used as reference for WotGW, and it’s much harder to narrow the list down to my top ten ten picks from the list of books than I expected it to be. It feels good to have made this much progress on both articles when I was only expecting to work on one.

Countdown to Imbolc, my favourite festival: Nine days!

Brief Weekend Roundup

Gratuitous icon post to show off Curtana‘s genius! She made this icon especially for me to use on those days when I amme indeed sick to my hart of typefetting. Or typing, as the case may be.

I had a good weekend, which surprises me somewhat (and again, I am saddened by this observation; when did my weekends become not enjoyable?). It’s the first time in a long while that at bedtime on Sunday night I didn’t feel as if the weekend had been a write-off or had gone too fast or had been more exhausting than the week itself. HRH made an excellent mess of ribs according to his father’s recipe on Saturday for company, and they tasted just as good the next night when we reheated them after going out visiting. Liam was certainly a fan of them when he finally got to taste them, as he’d gone to bed before they were ready the previous evening.

The social aspect of the weekend was especially pleasant. I spent time with people I don’t see often enough on a regular basis. I also got to see the fabulous paint job HRH had done in the ADZO household, and it’s lovely.

Speaking of Liam, I am very proud of him today because he ate a whole bowl of real oatmeal with raisins and chopped apple with a touch of maple syrup. This is noteworthy because he has been much too busy doing Liam-things involving trains and books to eat much breakfast for a week or so, preferring to eat breakfast muffins and fruit on the go. To get him in his chair eating a real sit-down meal sometime between waking up and lunchtime is a very big thing. I tried yesterday and he had a few mouthfuls but I ate most of it. Today I only ate a bite, and he ate the rest. Also, he blew kisses back to me while HRH was getting him into the car and I was waving from the window. He hasn’t been too clear on blowing kisses up to now; he tends to cover his mouth and kiss his palm. Today he added the hand motion and it made my day.

Swan Sister Update

Total word count, Swan Sister: 29,617
New words today: 2,866

There’s a tiny voice in the back of my brain that’s saying “you’re only 150 words away from accomplishing 3K today”, and I am putting my hands over my ears and singing “LA LA LA” to drown it out because I am exhausted and I refuse to drag this out.

Angst, characters trying to figure out what happened, more angst, characters trying to figure out what to do next, some angst, then skinning and dressing a swan and practicalities like what to do with all the bits.

Yeah, it’s been that kind of day. Three and a half hours of this. But I may have gotten the story to a place where it can actually move again, now. The Significant Stuff of this portion of the book has been dealt with, and now everyone can get going and act.