Dear Amazon

You and I have an on-again off-again relationship. I’ll order stuff I can’t get anywhere else in a flurry while I’m working on a book, then ignore you for months on end. I consult you for research and for maintaining wish lists, and tell people to buy me things elsewhere. I use you, I admit that. And I don’t mean in a tool or services kind of way; I mean I abuse you callously.

And still, you gamely try to convince me that we’re meant to be. “Look at these shiny new books!” you say, sending me e-mails with colourful covers displayed in them. Except if you really loved me, you’d think about the titles you recommend to me. Just because I bought the same book that someone else did doesn’t mean I like everything else in their past orders. Ninety-eight percent of the time I roll my eyes at your eager but pathetic suggestion and delete them. The other two percent of the time I click through and dismiss them after reading the summaries. No, I don’t watch the movies you try to sell me just because I bought something as a gift for someone else. And no, I really don’t want to play the Nintendo DS or Xbox games you wave at me. My purchasing history and wish list picks really, really don’t line up with the average cross-indexing of your database.

Also, what’s with recommending me things that I have already bought from you? “We’ve noticed people who have bought books about XYZ also buy these titles!” Yes, they do. I’m one of them. Why recommend books I already own? Especially when I bought some of them through you in a spate of book research three years ago? Don’t you listen to me? How could you forget?

The one lame thing you do that endears you to me, you pathetically adoring creature, is that you recommend my own books to me. Why yes, I would like to read a book on hearth- and home-based spirituality. That’s why I wrote one. Thank you.

I can only imagine the equal bemusement experienced by other clients when you send them e-mails saying, “We’ve noticed that people who have purchased Mass Effect for Xbox in the past have also purchased this new Wicca title!” Or this new book on musicology, or knitting techniques, or a biography of Queen Isabella of France, or female musicians in seventeenth century Venice, or breastfeeding. Because really, Amazon, I know that although you’re swearing up and down that you do love me for myself and we’re meant to be together, I know you’re just phoning it in. You’re simply not trying. You’re attempting to keep this relationship going by skimming how-to books and relationship magazines in supermarket check-out racks and using superficial techniques to try to catch my attention. I’m not your average girl, and trying to entice me closer by waving best-seller stuff at me won’t work. And you’re trying to hook up with millions of other people at the same time, too, hoping that one of us will fall for it.

You get marks for trying, but you’re coming dangerously close to stalker status, Amazon. Especially when you send me mail from thinly disguised sock puppet accounts like .com and .co.uk as well as from .ca. I know you’re all the same entity. You’re not fooling me.

Face it, Amazon. I keep you around because you can get me books I can’t get anywhere else. Sure, sometimes I go slumming and toss a mass-market paperback into my shopping cart because it will bump me over the minimum required for free shipping. But I’m not an easily wowed or cheap date.

Sincerely,

Me.

Enter The Clue By Four

The copyedits for the anthology landed in my in-box this morning.

Naturally, even though I didn’t write 98% of this ms., my first instinct was to quail.

I should really remember that I’m very good at my job more often. The ms. is pretty darn clean, with only a handful of queries in the first half that I’ve done today, most of which I can handle myself without checking with the authors. Most of the copyedits are simply punctuation and house style stuff.

I am good at what I do. Why does this fact elude me so often?

Of Course

Trust my son to have a breakdown because the ribbons aren’t covering the entire Maypole. “But there’s still wood at the bottom!” he wailed.

Other than that, awesome Pagan playgroup meeting this morning. Nothing like having six under-nines learning how to do a Maypole for the first time. I think the parents had even more fun coaching and watching and laughing.

Yesterday was an excellent Day One of the local Beltane Fair, where I met Judika Illes for the first time and saw other friends whom I don’t get to see often as well. My workshop went decently well, as did the authors panel afterwards. Gorgeous day, too; twenty-six degrees Celsius, brilliantly sunny with a good wind. Lovely. Brought the boy back home, had dinner, crashed; the boy woke up at three, as he’s been doing lately, and ghosted into our room to ask for cuddles. I took him back to his bed but he didn’t sleep, so forty-five minutes later, after a glass of water, he looked at me with soulful eyes and said, “Mama, may I please cuddle with you and Dada in your bed?” And to do him justice, he did sleep properly once there. I did not, but they gave me an two hours of sleep on my own after they got up at seven.

Today’s Day Two of the fair, and we’re going back again after the boy’s nap for Tal’s book launch and to mingle with new and old friends for a while longer. I’m glad the original plan to be out of town today was cancelled so we could go back one more time.

And since this looks like the weekend roundup, I will mention that I had a most excellent cello lesson first thing Saturday morning, too. It was the kind of lesson where there were a couple of breakthroughs, and I felt suspiciously like a Real Cellist at the end. I also cast on my Picovoli sleeveless sweater Friday afternoon, using a lovely Pima cotton on the new Harmony circulars I ordered from KnitPicks. And it’s my dad’s birthday today, so happy birthday, Dad!

Ongoing

Doing the evaluation of the final third of Orchestrated today. Why is it not finished, when I have had all week to work on it? I… keep falling asleep. No, really. Not because it’s bad or boring, just because my body has been wresting the steering wheel out of my hands and saying “NOW WE WILL NAP” around two every day, and bang, my eyes are closing and I have to put the ms. or whatever book I’m reading down and pass out for an hour or so. Then it’s cello and making dinner and the boys are home, and yeah.

What I’m discovering about the ms. is that it flows decently well. I haven’t yet found a gap or a hole that really absolutely needs to be filled; there’s nothing obvious missing. Things need to be tightened up here and there or expanded a tiny bit, but overall it’s surprisingly solid. I also have really good places that can be used as chapter break points. I may need to go back and insert one or two more clues to the eventual crisis of a main character, but that’s actually minor. I found a place where some of my intro-stuff-written-for-me-but-unnecessary-for-readers can go, and in the new place set in dialogue will actually serve the purpose of character interaction/deepening.

I read pretty much the entirety of Perri Knize’s Grand Obsession in one day. It was fabulous. I was worried at one or two points that it was going to veer a bit too far into the mystical (and coming from me that’s saying something) but it righted itself in time. After all, how do you define how music affects us? It’s a twofold story about a woman deciding to study piano in middle age and buying one, then trying to understand what the personal connection to a specific instrument is (not violin or cello or piano, but one specific example of the chosen instrument), and an exploration of how pianos are built and maintained.

We had out second rehearsal with our third guest conductor and I enjoyed it even more than the first. He’s good. There is a problem with his voice carrying to the back, but he’s terrific in his bilingualism, and his musicality and his interaction are fabulous. He knows exactly what to work to smooth out problems, and how to phrase what he’s looking for. We’ve added Grieg’s Norwegian Dances to the programme, and (hurrah!) Vaughn Williams’ English Folk Song suite. Of course, the Vaughn Williams starts in A-flat major (F minor? no, pretty sure it’s Ab) which is four flats, augh! I have enough trouble remembering to flatten my As, and he wants me to flatten my Ds as well? But it is Vaughn Williams and I am over the moon.

Also in cello news, while I was working on some ensemble stuff earlier this week and trying to isolate why my intonation was unstable, my left elbow kind of said, “Oh, I’ve got it,” and moved a millimetre or two forward on the horizontal axis, all on its own. And it solved the problem. I was amazed and very grateful to it. Perhaps the next time I have a problem of some kind I shall consult it.

My friendly neighbourhood postperson brought me my two Harmony circular needles I ordered from KnitPicks today, along with the sample skein of green Pima cotton yarn I ordered. The colour’s a bit bright for the sweater I ultimately wanted it for; it was a bit less yellow on my monitor. Not a problem; I ordered it to test it out in a washcloth kind of swatch anyhow.

Did the groceries and some birthday shopping this morning and also acquired a new blouse for myself. It never ceases to amaze me how much I hate shopping for clothes, and yet have managed to acquire two new pairs of shoes, two blouses, and three sweaters in the past month. They all kind of ambushed me, though; it’s not like I decided I needed new stuff and went looking. Well, okay, I needed new black shoes, but I found them by accident just browsing in Winners. And I went into a store because I remembered seeing a blouse and ended up not buying it but two other sweaters. Still. And while I bought the blouse today I wondered, Where do I wear all this stuff other than to orchestra and my cello lessons? I work at home. I mean, I occasionally go out, but not often. I wear jeans and t-shirts most of the time. Maybe I’ll institute a one-day-a-week workday in the library just so I can wear slightly nicer stuff. Good grief.

Right-o; back to work. Also need to collect wrapping paper and addresses for a trip to the post office later.

Today’s Plan

Know what I’m doing today, after I finish baking oatmeal cookies? (And in between batches, chasing the stubborn little grey mackerel tabby off the top of the warm stove, drat her paws and whiskers?)

Research in the living room! I have books and pens and notebooks and sticky tabs and my new recording of the Planet Earth soundtrack (George Fenton, how I love thee) to keep me company. I have the Orchestrated ms. to work on, and coven/writing research to do, and a new book to read to help me with Harpsichord Dreams. There ought to be some celloing in there as well. In other words, today is a work day that emphatically does not feel like one, seeming instead like a day of personal indulgence. We should all have more of these.

He Doesn’t Even Particularly Like Ketchup

(Background: There is homemade macaroni and cheese baking in the oven. Apologies in advance to anyone who enjoys ketchup with their mac and cheese, or with anything else; you’re welcome to it, but the idea of consuming it on anything other than fries or burgers and hot dogs ourselves makes us shudder.)

    SPARKY: [on his way to the bathroom] You know what I love?

    MAMA: [from her office] What?

    SPARKY: Macaroni and cheeeeeese.

    MAMA: Good, ’cause that’s what we’re having for dinner.

    SPARKY: [in bathroom] You know what else I love?

    MAMA: What?

    SPARKY: Ketchup!

    [There is a pause.]

    HRH: [from the living room] No. Oh, no.

    MAMA: You do know that those things don’t go together, right?

    SPARKY: Why not?

    HRH: Because you’re not. that. person.

    SPARKY: [gaily] You’re right! I’m not! Hahahahaha!

And he proceeded to laugh loudly as if he’d set the whole thing up, and it sounded like he was the laugh track for a bad sitcom. We laughed so hard we cried in our respective rooms.

But the really weird thing? He doesn’t particularly like ketchup.

Today’s Grand Announcement

The taxes are finished! Woo-hoo! Or more correctly, the pile of prep for my taxes to be done by our very excellent accountant is finished. All the required exchange rates for various dates were located and calculated accordingly, then the final pile of receipts added up, and everything sorted into different labelled envelopes and clean new file folders. (Elapsed time: three hours.) I very strongly suspect there will be decent coin returned to me by the government.

Yay me!

Now to move into the living room with the Orchestrated ms. again, pen in hand.