Category Archives: The Boy

Thoughts on a Grey Day

It has taken me over an hour to realise that I have been working with no music on. All that time instead, I had the new Loreena McKennitt album running through my brain. Actually setting it to play in the real world frees my brain RAM up to do other things, like, oh, work properly.

Coming to the end of the time I have in which to touch it up, I find that ESTC is much better than I remember it, and yet still so very far from being the very serious spiritual self-examination I originally envisioned it being. In actual execution it became a more practical collection of information and exercises designed to sort out how one feels about various aspects of pregnancy within a Pagan spiritual context, and while it’s very good, it’s not what I wanted it to be. Apples and oranges, really, and I’m very proud of what it is, but I do feel a bit wistful about the book that never was. Silly Imp would likely tell me that the book-that-isn’t is still in me to write after a few more years of thought and introspection, and she’s probably right.

Things are being cancelled left, right, and centre today thanks to the dreadful weather. Both HRH and Liam are home, which is doing nothing for the absolute silence and solitary feeling I need to work. I love them both, but Liam is crazy due to those lower canines, and I pick up on that as well as the frustration HRH feels when he deals with Liam in a mood like this. Plus with my office right next to the living room, well, it feels like we’re all in the same room a lot of the time. It’s days like this when I wish I had a writing haven at the bottom of the garden, something like a one-room tiny cottage with excellent insulation and an electric kettle with which to boil water for tea. (And an awesome sound system. It could double as a cello practice studio.)

It being December first, I opened this year’s new Christmas CD and put it on. Sarah McLachlan’s Wintersong: very pleasant. Lots of piano.

Break’s over.

I Aten’t Dead

Tired, tired, tired. Working lots. I also played six hours of cello on Wednesday, what with two rehearsals for different groups. By eight o’clock I was brain-dead, which led to me either completely being in the cello zone, or not able to play three notes after one another. (Guess which mindset I was in when we were playing the cello-only parts of the Messiah. As long as everyone else was playing, though, I was fine. I intend to go through a couple of pieces and write the bowing in for every single note, because it was what tripped me up the most Wednesday night.)

The novella’s rolling along, and it’s about seventy-five percent complete at 52K. (Of course, a third of what’s currently there will end up being thrown out, but them’s the breaks in a first draft.) Touch-ups in ESTC have slowed as I have reached the point where I have to really think out what changes/updates I want to make, if any at all, and decide if they’d be any better than what’s already there. Overall, I’m surprised at how minor the changes I’ve made have been, but there has been lots of thought behind each of those changes.

Liam and I took the bus to the shops today for various things, and he was very good. (It helped that the weather was ridiculously warm, around fourteen degrees above the seasonal average. Of course, we’re about to pay for it with freezing rain and snow and plummeting temps.) His lower canines are now making him crazy. New words: “broom”, “angel”, he’s been saying “Santa” as of yesterday (here we go!), and why do I keep forgetting to record that he says “turtle” and has been doing it for over a month? New foods today: the lettuce, raw green pepper, and black olives from my sandwich were all hits, and he ate more of the breaded chicken nugget at dinner than I expected him to. He and his broom are inseparable. (Well, the broom probably doesn’t care much, but he does.) I gave him his first haircut last night — cut off those long curls at the back of his head. He looks tidier, but I loved those curls. Oddly, now the rest of his hair looks longer.

Adding ribbon loops and making labels for the herbal sachets I’ve made for a local Yule craft fair is on tonight’s and tomorrow’s list of things to do. And I keep feeling that there’s something else I’m forgetting, although my brain is fairly certain that there isn’t.

Books And Brooms (Or, Is It Child Labour If The Child Does It Voluntarily?)

You haven’t heard from me because I’ve been working up a storm. Things are going very well, but I’m drained; writing is work, no matter how enjoyable it is, and at the end of a day I often feel as tired as I used to feel after a day of retail. I’m still uncertain about the new things I’m adding/old things I’m changing in the-book-that-will-probably-not-be-known-as-ESTC, but second-guessing the improvements is always a given at this point in the game. And the novella is charging along. As it has evolved I’m beginning to see that it could end in two very different ways, instead of the way I had planned, and I think I will write both endings to see which works best. I expect the novella to be done by the end of the year.

Today Liam and I dropped HRH off at work and went to the bookstore to buy holiday gifts for others, and ended up walking out with gifts for ourselves instead, the gifts we went in for not being in stock. I now have the final two books in the Temeraire series, and Liam has a book on musical instruments as well as some letters for the fridge door. We also went to the toy store and bought a broom for him, because he is obsessed with using the big corn broom we use to sweep the kitchen.

We will never have to sweep again, because once I got it out of the wrapping he proceeded to enthusiastically yet carefully sweep the entire house, including under his crib. I got him a tea set too, and as soon as that was out of the package he picked up the teapot and poured me a pretend cup of tea. I was very touched.

Also, Liam has finally figured out that shoes and socks come off, and this is what he does to entertain himself in the car. He only removes the right set, for some reason.

Both upper canine teeth are out, thank goodness. Now the lower ones can quit dallying and break the surface any time, thank you.

Today, Briefly

I would like to state for the record that my new cello pickup is teh awesome. There is zero loss of sound quality between the actual string vibrating and the amp output. Zero. I didn’t think that was possible. It’s worth every single penny. (Plus I finally get to use the patch cord I bought a year and a half ago.)

Also, band practice was excellent.

Liam’s new word today: “bubble”, said while watching his bath fill. This led to the phrase “bubble bath” directly afterwards as he put two and two together. He proceeded to eat a handful of them, then generously fed me a handful too, because he is all about the sharing.

I’m wrong; there were two new words. The other was “balloon”, because one was given to him by a server at the breakfast place we went to this morning. No, three: he said “soon”, too. Yes, the new words are coming thick and fast these days.

Poor kid, his teeth are driving him round the bend.The upper left incisor is now threatening to break the gum any moment. We can’t get our fingers near the lower set without being bitten with great and frustrated force, so we have no idea how close those two are. I picked up more infant Tylenol today on the way home, for everyone’s relief.

Now I’m going to go read Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon in bed, because I have only one-third of the book left and it is good enough to be finished in a third sitting. It’s been sitting on my to-read pile since it was released, and I’m partially upset about having failed to read it before now and partially glad that I didn’t, because it’s perfect for what I want to be reading this week. (Also, as much as I adore Neil Gaiman’s writing, Fragile Things is not exactly relaxing bedtime reading because most of the stories hinge on slightly odd and/or creepy twists at the end that get odder and creepier the more you think about them.)

Liam Update

We have a new tooth! The upper right incisor has made an appearance. We are Bad Parents for not being quicker on the uptake: it looks like it came in a few days ago, and is a quarter of the way out already.

New words and sayings in the past two weeks include “bless you”, gentle, door, Grandma, Papa (Grandpa), two, close, “car go!”, shirt, apple, “all gone”, “all done”, as well as clear and properly used “thank you”, “yes”, and “no”.

He points at everything (or goes to touch it!) if you say the name of an object. Fridge, door, cat, chair, table, bath, light… but the best moment came about six weeks ago when he was eating dinner and babbling, “Mama, mama, mama” with a big smile while swinging his head back and forth. “Liam, Liam, Liam,” I chanted back at him and he stopped moving, sat up straight and patted his chest with both hands, a pleased little grin on his face. It was the first time he’d actively identified himself to us. It was an awesome moment, and I’m surprised I didn’t record it when it happened.

He’s started actively matching two images on his own. If there’s a dog on one page and a dog on the other, he’ll put his first two fingers together with his thumb and touch one, then touch the second. It’s interesting that this is a very specific hand position that he only uses to indicate two of the same object.

He flips through books with animals and says their names, mangling them sometimes in Liam-speak, but he knows them. He doesn’t seem to discern between the animal name and the sound it makes, so a cow is usually “mmmmmmoo”, a cat is usually “cat”, a dog is “dah” or “ff ff ff” (as in “arf” or “woof”), bees are “bssss” (and I have no idea if that’s the sound they make or the actual word), and fish are “fsh!”.

He can say “crow” too, because he was calling the Halloween crow prop over at his caregiver’s house an owl, and she taught him the right name for it. He confused us for a while by pointing to the top of the bookcases in the living rooms and saying “owl, owl”, and we kept trying to redirect his attention to the stuffed owl on the lower shelves. This past weekend HRH happened to be holding him at the time he said it, and finally caught on that Liam was pointing at the displayed cover of Solitary Wicca for Life, which has a small buff-coloured figure in a robe in the lower lefthand corner of the cover. From the other side of the room, it does look somewhat like an owl.

Okay, that’s your quick catch-up on Liam’s World.

The General Novemberity Wearing Me Down

Matthew Cheney made me laugh today.

If you write about the weather, use as many adjectives as you can, or else your nouns will wilt and become adverbs.

Some coaches insist adverbs are stronger than nouns, but an independent panel of statisticians has proved otherwise. Despite appearances, though, statisticians don’t like nouns so much as they adore conjunctions.

The whole list of deliberately obtuse writing rules can be found here. And I found them via Justine.

Liam had a terrifying asthma attack late Wednesday night, triggered by a coughing fit in bed. The coughs compounded, and his bronchial tubes constricted, and then he started crying because he was upset and scared, and the whole thing just snowballed and got worse and worse. We finally got a shot of his inhaler contents into him after a struggle, which was surprising on its own because he usually loves his little mask, but he was having so much trouble breathing because he was coughing and crying that he wouldn’t let us put the mask up to his face. It took a while to get him to calm down enough to even give him a single breath of the medication, and then he still sounded awful all night. I lay awake all night listening to him over the monitor, and dealt with anxiety attacks the likes of which I haven’t had in about eight years, sourced only partially by the worry about the decision to not take him to the hospital. I hate this time of year. It’s wet, and damp, and there isn’t enough sunlight, and this year seems worse than others, somehow. I got quite ill the next morning, which didn’t help. HRH stayed home because neither Liam nor I were going to be able to handle the day otherwise, neither of us being very user-friendly or even available at times. I felt much better by the end of the afternoon. And I even made cookies, lovely excellent cookies from a newly tweaked recipe, which very closely resemble cookies from a long-gone bakery I used to visit now and again. (Basic shortbread ingredients and proprotions, being sure to use icing sugar instead of granulated, add one egg, plus loads of chocolate chips; chill for two hours; roll and bake. Once the fuses in the oven have been replaced, that is. You mightn’t need to do that last bit.)

But I had a wonderful, wonderful night of sleep last night, and a lovely outing this morning. I was dropped off at daycare with Liam and spent some time playing with him, his caregiver, and one of the other kids. I’ve missed this, since HRH has taken over the boy-chauffeuring job. I got to see Liam open the rabbit’s cage and lean in gently to kiss him, and Boo reach his fuzzy little nose up to kiss him gently back, several times. It was exquisitely cute, and did wonders to soothe the soul of Novemberity/sick/bad sleep ravages. Then I took the metro back and walked to the mall, picked up some sweaters for me and new PJs for the boy, and bussed home. The weather may be overcast but it’s so lovely and warm. It was a good day for an outing.

Since I’ve had the whole day to myself on Liam’s daycare days I’ve been trying to work as soon as he leaves, and this week has proven to me that I shouldn’t even sit down at the computer until after lunch. If I do, then the morning gets wasted anyhow, and I feel upset because I haven’t accomplished any work and half the day is gone. Well, at least I gave it a chance. From now on, the morning is for music and reading and walks. The afternoon is for work. If that’s how my brain has to separate things, then that’s how it’s going to happen. I get exactly the same amount of work done if I sit here for eight hours or three, so why force myself to be here for those first five if I can put them to other practical use?

Now I have web work to do.

Liam Update

New word this morning: “Waffle.” When he saw them he thought they were huge crackers, and he was overjoyed. Waffles are a definite hit, just as French toast was last week.

There are pictures of him wandering around with one, but I’m too weary to go through the whole process of finding the camera again, downloading the pictures, then resizing, saving, and uploading them. Later, sometime.