Daily Archives: August 14, 2007

Absent Friends

Of all the days to have forgotten BunBun at daycare…

The boy is very out of sorts today (not surprising; we did two six-hour drives in four days and had lots of fun with Nana and Granddad and cats and cousins in between). After a couple of half-hearted nibbles of rice and carrots at dinner, he cried for no apparent reason as we changed him for bed (we suspect because HRH sat him on his lap to slip his pyjama shirt on — usually this is fine, just not tonight for some reason). He sort of settled down during the stories, but insisted on holding every regular toy I brought in to put in his crib (his arms got quite full) and sang snippets of the Cars soundtrack while HRH read. And then he had a little heartbreaking crisis when BunBun was not awaiting him in his crib after his stories. He didn’t have a tantrum — he whimpered BunBun’s name a bit, sat up and looked around, and said, “BunBun? BunBun in?” When I told him that BunBun had stayed to play with his caregiver, there were some big fat tears that rolled down his cheeks, a sob or two, and he lay down and pushed the little white rabbit he calls Peter away when HRH tried to give it to him. “No, no Peter,” he said, lying down and turning his head away, lower lip trembling. “Oh, BunBun, BunBun, BunBun in,” we heard him mumbling as we blew him kisses and closed the door.

He fell asleep in five minutes anyhow. But a bad day to have left BunBun behind.

Also: this morning I found that the tiny chip in his left lateral incisor at some point got chipped again, and is now a huge chip. Argh.

Ping!

Guess what just landed in my inbox? The first of the two revised files to edit! And I get to start all over again! This isn’t a simple cut and paste; this is a full-version reworking.

I am so very glad this complete reworking is through no fault of mine; it appears the translators only did a portion of the full file at first. The work I did before on the original version of these two files isn’t completely useless, it’s just… a small fraction of the larger file. The original file isn’t a unified chunk of the larger file, either; it’s fragmented and scattered all the way through the file as a whole. It will take a week to edit, and the only reason it’s a week instead of two is because I have the first full file to refer to (which took me two weeks on its own back at the beginning of July).

Well, a week for this file and a week for the one that will soon follow. It’s all money for my time. One must cog in order to buy kibble and Cheerios, after all.

That Writing Thing

Last week I found myself writing down interesting words that I came across in order to spur writing at a future date, ending up with a page of completely unrelated but fascinating and mysterious words. This was generally as close to writing as I got. One of those days I wrote a new paragraph in Wings & Ashes, the story I’ve been trying to work out this month. Then we were visiting family for four days, and I never get writing done there.

Today, however, upon hearing some news, I found myself handwriting a 700-word scene. Like W&A I’m not going to transcribe it to computer immediately, and if I did I wouldn’t share it because it’s very triggery for people with/who have family members with fatal illnesses. It’s just a scene to tuck away somewhere. The last page needs reworking because I said the same thing three different ways — basically because the narrator needs to work it out and restate it three different ways in order to understand it, but still, what’s sauce for the character is not necessarily sauce for the reader.

Am writing. Go me. (Cautiously, of course, because one mustn’t scare the idea pigeons away.)

Also done today: laundry, sweeping, finishing Jasper Fforde’s latest, First Among Sequels (O how I love Fforde with much love!), and picking up that parcel (two of the four used books in it are slim and I have basically already gone through them as they are NF/reference-type books that I now may never read again, sigh). Huh. When I write it all out it sounds more impressive.

Home Again

We’re home from the wilds of southern Ontario, tired, achy, trying to settle back into daily life. The cats were thrilled to see us in their own ways, Maggie following us around and Cricket hiding behind the TV; Nixie was being ill and very sorry for herself, but it serves her right from climbing up onto the kitchen counter and stretching to nibble the lowest shoots of the spider plant. I came home with a pile of historical fiction and non-fiction from my mother and Liam came home with new trains. As usual we didn’t get to do half of the things we’d planned to do, which is sigh-inducing as some of it has been put off over the past couple of trips as it is. We did get to spend time with my cousin and his family, which was really great, as was the food (as always). The weather was lovely, and the drive down was excellent (only one stop! not too hot!), with the drive back feeling twice as long and cranky, as usual.

We’re catching up on phone messages and e-mail, so please be patient with us. I see Liam’s monthly post didn’t go up as I thought it had, so I’ve manually published that too. Some of the news waiting for us has not been so good, and our thoughts are with certain friends in hospital themselves or with family members there instead.

Naturally, the postman attempted delivery of a box of books hours after we left on Friday and is now languishing at the post office. Although that cheque I’m waiting for hasn’t arrived, and is now a week later than when cheques arrived on average when I was working in-house. Hmph.

I met Charlize this morning, and oh my goodness, I had forgotten that a six week old baby is very tiny. Such wee feet! Such feathery eyebrows!