‘Fess Up Friday
For today only (I hope!) a special edition of ‘Fess Up Friday called “What I have been doing instead of writing my novel.” It goes a little something like this:
Doing the real estate thing. We’re looking at houses and this an incredibly time consuming task. You’d think that it might be limited to a couple of hours on the weekend or something, but you would be wrong. There is the general house looking thing that can stretch into three or four hours (ugh), then there is the sorting through emails about properties, then there is the speculating about this neighborhood or that neighborhood, and then there’s all the thinking about houses and comparing houses and the list goes on and on and on.
In short, it has taken over my life.
And I am not terribly happy about it right now.
But enough about that. I have also been cleaning out our house just in case we find our dream home and need to sell this place. I made some mighty fine progress on the hall closet last week. It turns out that we actually have a floor in there. Unfortunately, that is only a small dent in our clutter-filled home, but since we have no dream home on the horizon, I’d say we’re doing okay.
I took the boy cat to the vet this week. I have to brag on him for just a moment. Anyone who knows me or has read this blog has been subjected to the saga that is Mr. B’s health problems. The short version is that he had IBD. The treatment for the IBD gave him diabetes, which we treated with diet and insulin. That eventually gave him hyperglycemia and indicated that he was diabetes-free. But he still had the IBD. For a while there, we were making vet trips pretty much every month.
On the last visit we settled on a food trial plan for Mr. B. The food was expensive, but worth it. Especially since Mr. B has been puke free for about a month now (knock wood). The vet says that this kind of progress may indicate that we can stop the food trial and just keep him on the special diet. I’m very excited about the prospect. I love my vet and the staff, but I’m perfectly happy to not see them monthly. Keep your fingers crossed for continued kitty health.
Anyway, that’s some of what I’ve been doing instead of writing. At least, that’s the more interesting portion of it. Running continues to go well. And I’m slowly but steadily working up to a 9500 Singstar score for “Torn.” Achieving that may be my biggest accomplishment this summer.
Happy weekend!
‘Fess Up Friday
Um . . . Yeah.
I did nothing this week. Seriously, there’s not even a point to breaking it down into categories because I didn’t accomplish anything. On any of them.
Today, I’m not even going to try to write. I didn’t sleep until 4 this morning and the house is something close to a disaster. So I’m going to straighten the house, do some reading, and hope to God to take a nap this afternoon. I am planning to shut myself in my office sometime this weekend with only the novel to work on, so maybe I’ll make some progress this weekend.
Happy weekend all.
How Do You Sleep?
I have not been sleeping well this week. I’ve had insomniac tendencies for as long as I can remember, but lately they’ve gotten out of control. It’s very annoying. On Monday I woke up at 4:50 to take Hubs to the airport. I thought that I would come back and go back to bed after that, but, my mind had other ideas. Apparently 6 o’clock in the morning is a stellar time to be thinking about the central conflict of the novel, and well, the fact that there isn’t one yet.
Last week I made an attempt to go to bed early (11 p.m. is early at Casa Chicklit), ended up sleeping for two hours and then was up the rest of the night while Hubs slept soundly.
Crazy as it is, I think I’d feel a little bit better about these insomnia episodes if I managed to get something done during them. It never works that way, though. While my mind (at least part of it) is happy to be awake and working in the middle of the night, my concentration does not follow through and I often find myself bouncing between web pages or meandering around the house.
Despite all my whining, I realize that my sleep habits suck and I need to do something to fix them. So starting next week I’m going on a strict bedtime and wake up time. I’m also going to make a point of no TV or computer (eep!) two hours before bedtime. I’ve heard that helps, so I’m willing to try. What else should I be doing? And in the meantime, know of any good cures for insomnia?
Friday-itis
I have a severe case of Friday-itis, a condition characterized by spending long hours staring into space and pushing sentences around without actually doing any work. This wouldn’t be so bad except that I’ve also suffered from Thursday-itis and Wednesday-itis as well.
Also, I’ve been watching the mailbox like a fiend this week and (I never thought I’d hear myself say this but) when are the darn rejection letters going to come in? I’m getting anxious over two stories that I’ve had two stories out since November. I also mailed a batch in March and have another batch that I’d like to send off before most mags close for the summer. So in this case, getting some rejection letters wouldn’t be all bad. (Except, of course, for the spirit crushing nature of rejection letters.)
And finally, on the current theme of not being productive, I’m trying to decide which of these three albums should be my next iTunes purchase:
The Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America — To indulge the part of my that loves a good rock n’ roll song like “Stuck Between Stations.”
Shout Out Louds, Our Ill Wills — Happy Swedish pop group whose “You Are Dreaming” has already firmly lodged itself in my head. (Beware! That link goes to a Harry Potter fan video. I am not happy about this, but it’s the best version of the song on YouTube. I’m sure spoilers abound.)
Charlotte Gainsbourg, 5:55 — Lots of beautiful, quiet tracks like “5:55” and “Beauty Mark” that would make a nice accompaniment on days that I do actually write.
What do you think?
What To Do On a Rainy Day
When the weather outside looks like this:
And the kitties inside are doing this:
It’s the perfect kind of day for making these:
This week has been dreary for reasons beyond just the weather, so I decided to just call it a sick week and not worry about the writing I haven’t been doing. Today I braved the muck to get some Christmas shopping out of the way; however, a couple of hours in the rain was enough to convince me that errands can wait too. So I came home and made spiced nuts.
Spiced nuts are a Christmas staple in my family. My mother makes them every holiday and a few years ago, I took her recipe and began making them as well. Every year I bag up some nuts as gifts and they’re usually a hit.
Unfortunately, this is the one recipe I selfishly hoard. I gave it out once when I was a secretary and my boss fell in love with them. She demanded the recipe. She even went so far as to call me at home on a Saturday to make sure she was doing it correctly (not that it’s that complicated, but she was a bit flighty). Anyway, she made a batch and gave them to her clients. For several days following I fielded phone calls from clients who gushed over the nuts. One of our bigwigs even gushed while he was in the office and not once did she even mention that it might just be my recipe that she had used. Not that you have to credit the source, but even a private thank you to me would have been nice.
Anyway, since then I’ve refrained from giving out this particular recipe. Any other I’ll be happy to share and take Saturday clarification phone calls, but this one stays in the family.
Bad Day
I spent a great day writing at the Green Muse on Tuesday. Unfortunately everything else in my life went to hell on Tuesday night. Okay, so not really to hell exactly, but immediately after writing, I went back over to the condo to find out that a pool of dirt had seeped back through the carpet after the cleaning. This was blamed on a dirty pad and so now I have to replace the padding and have the carpet cleaned again.
And of course, the bathroom project has gone over the estimated two days and the condo can’t go on the market until it is finished.
And then I got home and found that my white cat had dug into my knitting bag, pulled out my Lopi Lace Scarf, and, in dragging it to the living room, had dropped half the stitches and broken the yarn. This scarf is cursed, I tell you.
So on Wednesday, I spent no time writing, and all my time calling back carpet cleaners, tracking down documents for the condo, and getting a thousand other chores done, that all somehow involve around the condo.
I was hoping today might be better. That I could get the condo stuff out of the way in the morning and spend the rest of the day focused on the story I started on Tuesday or, at the very least, fixing the story I want to get submitted this week. No such luck.
I got to the condo to meet the Salvation Army pick up people, with whom I was sending off my sofa, bookcases, entertainment center, and other heavy stuff. As they were backing their truck down the drive, one of the yard people came over and told me that they couldn’t drive their truck down there. Um. Okay. One of the residents of the codo drives a huge truck that is regularly parked down that drive. I told him that they had to drive the truck down there because there was no way they were going to carry a queen-size sleeper sofa out my door and few hundred feet back to the street. He kept going at me about how it was against the rules, how they could ruin the trees, how someone was going to have to pay. . . and all the while, the truck is safely backing its way down the narrow drive and how exactly am I going to stop them without being run over? So I just shrugged and walked away.
Y’all, I am not normally that rude. But I am at the end of my rope. What the poor yard guy didn’t realize is that I am already on my last nerve with the HOA because every time I tried to report my neighbor’s noise violations, they refused to do anything about it, even while acknowledging that the noise was a problem. And because the minute it looked like my condo was going to go on the market, they began passing stipulations to keep me from renting it out. And so, on what should have been my last day of dealing with this stupid HOA, I was being chewed out over rules that are not universally enforced.
I am so annoyed. So writing today? Probably not. Sitting and fuming sounds a little more like it. Sorry for the vent, y’all. We’ll return to our regularly scheduled snark and cheer shortly.
