79 posts tagged “my warped self”
In honor of Canada Day, show us your favorite Canadian.
Today, it's me, for being a good writer! I spent the morning finishing edits on my novel for the publisher, re-read the whole last act in the process, and still found it gripping, even though I wrote it and knew what was coming next.
/end shameless bragging
Also, I ran into this FSotD that I forgot I'd written:
“I am so bagged, I should be full of groceries and stuck in someone’s minivan,” Jeff said.
Show us a flag.
What does your flag mean to you?
That I don't take no shit from nobody.
...like tripping on the asphalt and skinning your knees and palms like a little kid. No sympathy needed, a little antiseptic spray (chlorhexedine gluconate also works great on cat scratches) and all will be well.
I hope I get big, colorful bruises, too, for show and tell.
Another Saturday blown to hell. I sat in front of the computer for hours and got virtually nothing written. It wasn't writers, block, exactly. It wasn't the internet distraction, entirely. I don't know what my problem is, all I know is this is the umpteenth Saturday afternoon that I crapped out after sitting down to write.
Maybe it's in my pattern. I get up at least an hour later on weekends. I'm an insomniac and weekends are the only time I get nearly enough sleep. I have yoga Saturday mornings at 11. I usually have enough time to read the Saturday paper before I go. When I'm done yoga, I usually get my groceries right after, because I'm halfway there. So I'm not home till one, groceries get put away, some lunch is had, and I have a bath with Epsom salts which helps me not have aches the next day from the muscles I just spent an hour stretching that don't get stretched all the rest of the week. So I'm not really sitting down to write till 2 or a bit later. Maybe that's just too late, or I've done too many other "productive" things all in a row, that I feel like I need some downtime once I get to that point.
Maybe I have to write off (no pun intended) writing on Saturdays and make Sunday my only writing day, and leave all of Saturday for other life chores. But since the weekend is the only time I have much time to write, writing only on Sunday feels like leaving one's homework till the last minure. But I sure as hell hate to sit around trying/pretending to write on Saturday, and spending hours neither accomplishing it, nor getting to any of the chores, either. But there will still be things that come up on Sundays, too -- like tomorrow's vet appointment for Tumbleweed smack in the middle of the day.
It feels like falling off a diet week after week, with the attendant sense of constant disappointing myself. With a diet, there's always tomorrow to start fresh and start eating carrots for snacks instead of chips. As I head for bed tonight, I have this inward vow that tomorrow, I won't even read the Sunday paper over breakfast -- I'll be virtuous and start writing while still in my jammies and get several hours in before leaving the house at 12:30 with cat.
I'm sure you'll hear how that goes.
Since it's a little quiet in the 'hood today, here's my lame contribution of ephemera.
- the statement above is from my physiotherapy guy. After being sick and coughing a ton I had a pinched sciatic nerve for three weeks before one visit to the chiropractor and two visits to him managed to give me an adjustment that freed it. By that time, it had gotten into the habit of being flared up and it's taken another visit to figure out how my biomechanics are contributing to the problem when I'm not locked up. I engage the large muscles in my back too much (it's true -- I perch on the edge of my desk chair a lot of the time, and overwork them, and clearly have no idea how to relax). He did some "medical acupuncture" on me this morning to help the situation (i.e. not the Traditional Chinese Medicine kind to do with chi and such, but the kind to stimulate particular nerves.)
- I don't care what anybody says, acupuncture needles hurt, when they go into the large, "grippy" muscles in your back.
- I have just had approximately my 9th snack of the workday. Yes, I had both breakfast and lunch. But in between have been: a small yogurt, some brown rice chips, carrots, jujubes out of the candy bowl at Reception, carrots, more brown rice chips, more jujubes, celery, Diet Coke, an organic "Oreo". I am, however drinking a lot more water than usual this week. I don't hydrate enough. Apparently, I don't eat enough at meals, as well.
- speaking of brown rice chips, these are my new favorite snack. At first, only two of the six flavors were out up here in Canada. I'm hooked on the Sweet Chili flavor, mostly passing on the simple Sea Salt. Within the last two days, me and Terri, my snacky-friend at work have run into the Salsa Fresca and Sesame Soy and have been sharing back and forth. Thumbs up all around.
- I'm headed out after work to catch Indiana Jones and Whatever The Problem is This Time. Seriously, I am a fan.
- the sailing ship on my computer deskstop is the smooth sailing version this week. Aaaaah.
Tom's QotD:
Name three words or phrases you wish you'd coined:
1. Fictioneer. -- It's my word for myself as a writer. I cribbed it from the Tommy Lee Jones movie, Nate and Hayes, where he plays a pirate. I may have been the only person who saw this movie, so people do think I came up with the word myself.
2. Cubic assload. -- Gotta ditto Lauri on this one. TM Bobavey. An incredibly useful term for "humungous amounts".
3. Batshit crazy. -- Don't know the genesis, just know it works.
Further to my post Friday night about book news, I realized that if my book is now in the publisher's catalogue, it must have an ISBN number now. Sure enough, it's right there, only I was so caught up in the other info that I missed it first time around.
So my official number ISBN 978-1-894917-66-7. It doesn't bring up anything yet, if you google it or plunk it into an ISBN search function on a book site on the web, because they haven't pre-sold it yet (my understanding is the sales reps just recently got the info on it, and apparently are quite keen on the book).
I started saying last year that the only tattoo I would be likely to get, if I was so inclined, would be my ISBN number of this, and possibly future books. It's a number that will always truly be associated with me.. Like how parents tattoo their children's names onto themselves, or Angelina Jolie tattoos the latitude and longitudes of the places her kids were born onto her arm.
Which reminds me -- another book I'm sure I'll never have enough time to write is sort of an Illustrated Man kind of collection of short stories about the stories behind some really out there tattoos that people all get from this one tattoo artist.
Gotta go start my Sunday chores. There's cats to be trapped.
I've lately been racing through the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin novels at a great rate of knots. There are 21 books in the series (the last unfinished, because O'Brian died), and I just finished #11 this weekend. My kid sister has loaned me a good number of them, and the library has supplied the ones she doesn't have, or the ones I needed before I saw her next. But I am becalmed! While the library copies have been readily available (as long as I leave a couple of days' lead time for them to arrive at my nearest branch for pickup), all of a sudden, #12 (The Letter of Marque, for those of you keeping score) has two holds on it ahead of me! And I'm not due to see my sister till Mother's Day! I made up for it earlier this week by watching the movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (made loosely from books 1 and 10), which I always thought was a thumping good movie even before I read the books. I watched it on VHS in the bedroom, where I only have a VCR, during my long, sickly lie-in, thankful I'd hung onto my taped copy after I got the DVD with some birthday money last year.
This weekend I'm off to my friends' cottage and I thought I'd bring the DVD and maybe watch the extras quietly on my laptop and get my fix without disturbing my friends while it rains all day Saturday and we're loafing around. Since I have to pack tonight, and I was thinking of it this morning, I decided to haul it out of the bookshelf and lay it out ready to pack.
But no! It's gone! I've run aground! Nowhere could I find it! Now, I don't have that many DVDs that I can overlook one among the hundreds, or dozens even. Apart from Arrested Development, multitudinous Harry Potters and Pirates of the Caribbeans and a couple of seasons each of Chef! and West Wing, there isn't a lot else there.
Damn and blast! Someone's grog is getting stopped for this.
I stayed at my Mom's place overnight for a little one-on-one time before the whole family descends for Easter dinner later. I brought cake truffles and am making some lemon meringue tarts later.
I'm also doing a little writing while Mom's at Easter mass. And have discovered that something is suddenly amiss with the "s" key on my laptop this morning. I keep thinking I'm pressing it, then I have to backspace over where it didn't type and fill it in more forcefully. Which is how Easter turns into Eater. Though there will be a house full of happy eaters today, too.
Since "s" is a pretty useful letter in the English language, you'd think I'd be freaking out about my laptop. I don't think it's the keyboard, though, but I did do a mental check to recall that the laptop is still under warranty. I think it's the finger I type it with (I touch type, so fourth finger on left hand). Some of my fingers are double jointed and a couple of knuckles on that hand some times sort of collapse and lock up. Which used to happen when I took organ lessons as a kid, and they'd lock up and I couldn't move them off a chord I was holding. (No great loss to the music world, trust me.) All of a sudden today, it appears that finger's flattening out as I type instead of staying curved over the keys, meaning I'm not putting enough pressure on that key when I think I am. Mental check on own warranty -- long expired. Hmm.
Anyway, here' the FSotD from this morning, and it was inspired by the photo of Aubrey's Easter dress in her post yesterday:
Knowing little girls’ fascination for weddings, Lael had invited a group of them, so giddy and bouncy in their frothy dresses that they might have taken flight already if not for the tethers of their oxygen hoses and IV poles.
Happy Easter to all my marshmallow Vox peeps out there.
Further to my other post on the planning, I'm pleased to report that the execution of the Dessert Nachos was not only successful, but top-notch.
Here are the ingredients:
That's chocolate tortilla chips (no, they're not electric, that's just my cellphone charger plugged in behind them), brightly colored cupcake sprinkles, rainbow shredded coconut, white chocolate chips, and tinned mandarin orange pieces. After I bought the white chocolate chips, I realized I should have bought the white chocolate in blocks so I could have grated it like cheese over the chips and put them under the broiler to melt, but after cat trapping yesterday, it was too late to make another run to the store, so I just melted the chips in the microwave (I used a half a bag, but then dropped the dish as it came out of the microwave, sending smashed crockery and melted white chocolate over my kitchen floor, so it was good I had another half a bag for the second try).
So I glopped the chocolate onto the chips, sprinkled on the other things (if the mandarin oranges are whole segments, it's best to rip them in half, so you get more coverage and also, don't forget to drain them first). This is how it all looked. And no, it didn't go into the oven.
It's like a party in a pan. It's made especially festive by my red oblong pan. Here's a close-up.
This made a perfect Oscar-night junkfest dessert.
