We had a fun afternoon with my parents yesterday. Again, it was a bit hard to get into the rhythm of the day; one wants to relax yet one’s brain is also saying, “But they’re leaving in a couple of hours, we should be doing things!”
Liam’s always doing things, though, as illustrated by these photos taken by my father:
I’m not saying much these days because the things I want to say aren’t very helpful to anyone. I’m tired of being the responible person in almost every situation I’m involved with. I just don’t have the energy any more. I’m tired of drama; I’m tired of crises; I’m tired of people taking things the wrong way. I’m tired of people insinuating that they’re annoyed at me doing responsible things, but not stepping up to the plate to do it themselves instead. I’m tired of other people taking and not giving back.
So if you come to me and ask for help or input or anything along those lines and I tell you no, it’s not personal. It’s self-preservation. (And frankly, it’s to protect you too, because I don’t want to lose it somewhere along the line and take you out.)
This is not in response to any one thing that has happened, so everyone thinking “Oh no, this is my fault” can just stop now. This is just me drawing the line out loud.
More writing today. I’m taking Liam over to his grandma’s when he wakes up from his nap, then Mousme‘s coming over to jam. I, of course, will be working. Because that’s all I seem to do, whether I’m in my office or not.
Happy Lughnassadh, everyone! Yes, it took me a while to understand why I’d had an odd desire to bake bread over the past week, what with the ridiculous heat and humidity, but when I finally clued in yesterday I cheerfully whipped up a batch of my herb bread. Every single herb in it came out of the back garden. Rosemary, lemon thyme, oregano, onions — everything. And I made it with whole wheat flour, because it’s what I had. I’ve never used entirely whole wheat flour for it before; in the past I’ve blended one-third whole wheat to two-thirds white, but the recipe creates a heavyish bread to begin with so I wasn’t drawn to replacing more. The whole wheat flour made it even heavier, and added a nice nutty flavour. It’s definitely something I’ll need to be in the mood for, though.
I got my contracts in the mail today, both for ESTC and the series editorship. So hurrah, it’s poring over dense prose tonight with a pair of glasses and a pencil to make sure all’s in order before I sign them and ship them back.
We had a tremendously violent storm last night, which was exciting once we’d unplugged everything and HRH had done his weather-thingy to stop the funnel cloud from fully forming a few blocks away. (Yeah, not so fun, looking off your back porch to see the clouds circling like that, and feeling the downdraft begin. Good thing I live with a weather god.) Our upstairs neighbours brought down ice cream and cream soda and frozen raspberries for floats, and after everyone had provided HRH with the energy necessary to fight the bad things off without totally killing himself, we all sat in the kitchen to drink them by candlelight while we listened to the storm play out. Lots of mess and damage around the island, we noticed this morning. Some parts of our borough still don’t have power.
This morning Scarlet and I took a short trip out to an art supply store in the East End we’d never visited before, and I finally came home with candlemaking supplies. It’s good, because I’ve been dying to pour new candles to use while I write this book; it’s important, for some reason. I have vegetable wax, since they didn’t have beeswax beads and I didn’t feel like hacking at a beeswax block. I’ve never worked with it before, but I’m looking forward to trying something new.
Okay. I’ve done work-related research and correspondence, and some adjusting of my TOC, and a brief look through the contracts. Time to get going on the MS itself.
So we finally had that smallish birthday thing on Saturday afternoon, organised by Tal and co-hosted by him and Prospero’s Daughter. It was pleasant, but it ended up exactly as I had been trying to avoid in my own planning: I spent most of my time keeping an eye on Liam, so I never really got to relax or actually talk to people. I really appreciated it when a couple of people made a point of coming over to sit or stand next to me for a few minutes to share some time with me now and again, because I was feeling remarkably isolated. It was the trade-off I couldn’t avoid: if the people I wanted there were in attendance, then there was no one to watch Liam elsewhere. Everyone else seemed to be having a really good time, though, so I’m happy for that. The cake was awesome, and I deliberately took the corner bit so that I got extra icing and a huge buttercream rose on top. Although pretty much as soon as I finished that we had to flee because Liam was cranky and tired, which rushed the present-giving and subsequent thank yous, making me vaguely irritated and feeling like I’d never really had the opportunity to enjoy my own party, let alone have a second piece of cake.
And speaking of presents, I was caught completely by surprise by the group gift being a cheque to finally allow me to purchase the CD player for the car that I’ve been trying to get around to buying for two years now. We went out yesterday to research and price them, and if I add the gift certificate that was the birthday present from my in-laws, it will pretty much cover the cost of the unit we’ve chosen, the parts needed to fit it into the car, and the extended warranty. The vague plan is to go back to the store today before I pick up Liam to purchase it and make the appointment for installation later this week, which happens to be free as part of a current promotion. Thanks, everyone!
Notwithstanding the lack of a second piece of cake, I did have a cup of excellent beer given to me (liquid barley sugar that carried a 14% alcoholic kick!), and a cup of the now infamous Baronial sangria. I had to make myself hot dogs at home after Liam went to bed, though, because I’d only managed six bites of a brochette at the party what with making Liam’s dinner and feeding half a brochette to him, and dropping another half on the ground while sitting on the edge of the deck trying to feed myself and watch Liam eating at the same time.
Another excellent birthday gift was the first season of Slings & Arrows, given to me by Elim, the second and final disk of which we enjoyed after we got home.
All in all, I’ve liked that my birthday celebrations began the weekend before my birthday, and have sort of quietly been carrying on for the past three weeks, what with people handing me little gifts or treats or doing nice things for me here and there. Next year, though, if we do the party thing at all I’m putting my foot down and scheduling it when my in-laws are in town, even if that means August, because I want to be able to fully enjoy my own birthday extravagana.
Not bad at all for day one of the writing schedule. Welcome back, little Wordmeter!
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2,700 / 50,000
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(Oh look, they recoded it to include the fractional percentages, so I don’t have to go in and fix the HTML myself.)
Total word count, ESTC: 2,700
New words today: 2,061
I started off with 639 words of notes and outline, if you’re wondering why the two numbers don’t match up on the first day.
The working title of the new book (Everything She Touches Changes) is too long to type out every time, so the acronym it is. This is the only time I’m going to explain it. Henceforth, it shall be a mystery.
Today he cut not one but both upper one-year molars.
No wonder it’s been so painful for everyone around here over the past ten days. And today was a special sort of insane. I discovered the first one in the top right gum around lunch. Then jteethy came to pick us up in order to whisk us over to share the afternoon with him and Paze (thank you thank you thank you for the change in scenery and company!), and I discovered the second one on the other side. It literally came through an hour later.
Brave little guy. There have been lots of tears and hugs today, in amongst the screaming and blissful unconsciousness imposed upon him by the car as we took a long, long drive along the Lakeshore. Lots of growing accomplished.
The other big news of the day: We set up the car seat to face forward. He’s definitely a big boy, what with molars and sitting so that he can look in the direction we’re headed like the adults do, and eating Popsicles like he did on Sunday (very fun, even though he kept trying to hold the cold ice part instead of the stick and dropping it because it was, well, cold) and grilled cheese sandwiches too (first one yesterday — it’s cheese! and toast! awesome!).
I am in complete and total gourmand heaven. Rajura introduced me to Juliette et Chocolat today at lunch, a creperie and chocolaterie on St-Denis street. My tomato-mushroom-Gruyere crepe was perfect, and the mi-amer chocolat noir to drink was literally like drinking thick, smooth, liquid chocolate. It took forever to pour into my cup!
We talked and talked and talked, and would probably still be there if I hadn’t realised that I had to get back to the public lot at the metro station to reclaim my car before my parking pass ran out. I made a quick stop at Archambault to pick up a CD but they didn’t have it. They did, however, have a big promotional display of francophone Quebecois(e) artists who record under the Tacca label, so I got the only Jorane CD I was missing for ten dollars. A good buy, and really what I was in the mood for, I discover now as I listen to it.
Now I’m going to log off and unplug the computer because we are having a delightful thunderstorm. Good thing the book’s at a point where I can work things out in my notebook.
