Confessions of a Fictional Historian

My love for OK Go continues unabated. I have seen the treadmill video (thanks, YouTube!) and am very impressed. Due to that, and the handbell thing, "Here it Goes Again" and "What to Do" are stuck in my head pretty much constantly. Every time "Here it Goes Again" comes on in the car (it is track three on the CD), I get stuck there and put it on repeat about twelve million times. Hooray! Sometime (...tomorrow?) I will post YouTube links.

Just a quick entry to say that I spent the morning working in the kitchen (hot but peaceful), and the afternoon in my classroom (neither hot nor peaceful), went straight home after work for the first time in more than a week, and spent a mellow evening at home. I did the dishes, cleaned up a little, crocheted, watched very little TV, took a deep breath, and wrote 1100 words in my "AEFB warm-up" piece. It is, I am pretty sure, the first time I have worked on anything relating to AEFB since before I got sick (going on three or four weeks ago), and the first time I have written in over a week.

Surveying my month and trying to decide what to do with it. Don't know what's going on with Thanksgiving (and I really, really don't want to go; would rather stay home, make my own food, celebrate my dad's birthday, and go to Winterfair, but I think my mom wants me to go...), and want to go to various craft venues I discovered are happening this month.

The past couple of days have been frustrating. As I told my co-teachers on Friday, I needed some serious retail therapy.

So yesterday my sister and I went shopping. We went to Urban Outfitters, where I was determined to find and buy a pair of turquoise T-strap skimmers. (I found them, tried them on, and determined them too painful. I was sad. They were beautiful shoes.) My sister had never been to Urban Outfitters, and she, having much more money than me, bought many beautiful things, including brown houndstoothy sneakers, brown houndstoothy mitt mittens, and a gorgeous soft yellow sweater. This sweater may be the sweater of dreams; it looked good even on me. And I am not a yellow person. (It was also expensive. I am thinking about going back and buying it. Sometime.)

I found some other beautiful things, but settled on something I've been looking for for ages: a red cardigan. I figured red cardigans would be more plentiful in the fall, but maybe it's a Christmas thing, because I've only seen pinks, neutrals, blues, and greens. I was looking for the right color (I am talking cherry-red, not brick-red or maroon or pinkish red), the right length (hits at my hip area, not my thigh area), and the right style (preferably V-necked, not scoop-necked). This one was perfect, and it looked perfect on me, the only problems with it being that it was more than I would have liked to pay and that it was thin and silky and hand-wash only.

I bought it anyway. It was perfect in every other way and my lust for a red cardigan was starting to get desperate. (In a month, they'll be everywhere...) It will look fabulous with everything I own.

We also went to Barnes and Noble, where I was looking for a book and a magazine and found neither. I was grumpy. We perused the books, mostly the children's and YA and bargain books, and I caught sight of one book with an interesting-looking cover. I am a huge fan of illustration, and lately books, YA books in particular, are using photographs on their covers instead of illustrations. So this book--I completely forget the title and author, I only remember that the title probably started with an M and maybe had something to do with a mirror and the author was a man, I think--had an illustrated cover, a black-and-silver tall tower thing and I reached out and read the blurb on the inside flap.

Most of a sentence later, I smacked the book closed and put it back on the shelf. The blurb said something about a young man tired of his dull life as a village weaver and I think it went on to say something about wanting to get out of his village for adventure.

People. I am so, so tired of this. First of all, I think being a weaver sounds way cooler than Standard Fantasy Adventures. Second of all, every damn fantasy is exactly the same: some teenager is bored with their life and runs off to have adventures. PLEASE. Can we do something different here?

(An Eye for Beauty is a YA novel about a young woman who is hired as a personal seamstress to a famous magician/professor. She does not have adventures. She is good at what she does and takes pride in her work. She is, basically, a servant, and she interacts with other servants, and they gossip, and they all hate the magicians and students (they work at a university for magicians). She does, however, have a family to take care of, and what I hope is one of the major points of the novel is what kinds of things she is willing to do to ensure that she continues to make money so that she can take care of her family.

I ranted to my sister in the car later that should AEFB ever get published, it won't do well and no one will even notice because it's not about some stupid kid running off to kill things and become a princess. (Actually, I think what I said to her was "...become a princess. Or marry a princess. Or both." Wouldn't that be a cool book?) Not so much that I mind the idea of a novel of mine not becoming a bestseller and me making a kajillion dollars--because how often does that happen, let's be real--but rather that this is the genre I love and WE NEED TO SHAKE IT UP, AUTHORS.)

Moving along from that.

I still have not finished the last ten pages of the second draft of AEFB, being lazy and afraid of it as I am, but I have been working (some, not as much as I should) on my research for it--typing up the things I've gotten from the books I have just now (I still need way more), so that I can return the books to the library and just have the notes to refer to on the computer. That's something I hope to work more on today.

Elyse and I also stopped at Mammoth's (I love that place so much. They don't offer a lot in the way of food, but it's a cool place regardless) and split a turkey club croissant sandwich and a yogurt. Delicious.

She and I and our dad went out to IKEA to look at their kitchens. I just...I don't know how to feel about that store. On the one hand, I like their designs and colors and prices. On the other hand, everyone else loves them too and the place is like a freaking mall and they sell practically everything but clothing there and I feel dirty for shopping there. Also, it's like a half-hour drive and it takes hours to get through the store, so every time I go there I get really tired and grumpy. Plus I specifically wanted to see this white metal side table with a magazine rack built in (I posted about it here), because I loved it and haven't been able to find it on their website or in their catalogue. I was going to take a picture of it, because I knew I wouldn't buy it ($50), and I just wanted a picture to remember it by, and to prove I wasn't crazy and making up tables. It wasn't there.

I hate that damn store.

Tonight I am going to see an OK Go show at Southgate House, which I am kind of excited and terrified about. Right now, I really need to get up, get dressed, and get some groceries (I have been awake for more than two hours and have only eaten breakfast), plus I think I will probably go to Sin City today, probably/possibly make some cookies, do the dishes, and work on my research.

Today sucked. It didn't seem so bad until the end, when I suffered from the kind of stress (stress of being around toddlers all day) that made me want to knock heads around or rip my eyes out. Then I went home, made a fried egg sandwich, and watched The Simpsons for the first time in like five days (I was going through some serious withdrawal there) and sulked and spent the rest of the evening reading and resting and writing.

I read about books--visited Tamora Pierce's blog for the first time in a little while, saw some book recs that look interesting, and read about some upcoming/new works of hers. I've mentioned before, I'm pretty sure, that I tend to have mixed feelings about her work, but generally, I like it, and also, I've made a point of collecting almost everything she's written, which pleases me, and I am always interested in new and different things she writes.

Last week I was bored a lot. Also, I had constant Internet, which I think made the boredom even worse. Plus I wasn't reading or writing anything. So in my browsing I happened by the SurLaLune Fairy Tales Blog, where I learned that there is going to be a Fables spin-off miniseries about Cinderella and also that Fables is still going. I may have had a spaz attack when I read this. (Did I know that it was still going? It's been months since I read volume twelve, but the plot I remember seemed...final.) I found volume thirteen at the library and there is still Jack of Fables, which I need to catch up on, and also apparently there's this novel, plus there is the James Jean Fables cover art book that I have been dying to see (and which, conveniently, is missing from the library...)

Yesterday, to my delight, volume thirteen of Fables came in for me at the library and I consumed it. It's so good. It made me want to run out and buy every single issue. I read about half last night and the rest this morning and then it was all I could think about all morning. Excellent, and sad.

Another thing that came in for me at the library was the graphic novel Skim, which I just read tonight and really enjoyed.

And when I was supremely bored on Sunday, and had just finished watching Firefly and was still in the mood for more, I started reading Serenity Found, which is the second volume of essays about Firefly. I like it. This volume has no crap and spastic essay about anthropologically incorrect woman-power.

Since coming home, I've been very bad about my habits and about finding the good habits again. I'm eating candy (and other junk food like biscuits) constantly at work, I'm not cleaning up around the apartment or doing the dishes, and I'm not writing. I'm trying to find my good habits again. (Though as I write this I am lying on my stomach on my bed, which is a very, very bad habit that I broke myself of. It's like I can only maintain two good habits at once.) I wrote tonight for the first time in what's probably been two and a half weeks--not in AEFB (which is what I should be working on, so close to finishing the second draft), but in something I started in March and rediscovered on my hard drive last night. I wanted to work on something different, something easier and with less of a commitment. 1700 words.

So I'm pretty much all better, except for a cough that gets worse when I talk (especially if I sing), and this itchy-lung feeling I get when I take deep breaths. The doctor said my chest x-ray looks much better than before. Now all I have to do is find my good habits again...

Thinking about books, comic books, writing (kind of spastically not-thinking about AEFB, because the next scene to work on is the romance scene, ugh), money, Christmas, Thanksgiving, work, and all the cleaning I have to do around the apartment. Yuck.

I am pleased. Work was crazy-busy but tonight my leftover shrimp tasted better than it did last night, I did the dishes, I listened to some podcasts, I finished crocheting a random experimental scarf, and just now I finished the biggest and most difficult scene to rewrite in AEFB. I don't know if it's any good or not, but the foundation is there for me to build on later if necessary. I'm only about eight pages from the end, and once that's done ("that" here referring to making minor changes in the draft, mostly eliminating words like "sort of" and "rather" and "quite" that come naturally while I'm working but drive me crazy afterwards), I'm going to go back and write some other new scenes that need to be put in. Hooray!

Also, tomorrow looks to be a relatively mellow day. Knock on wood. We've had a lot of kids around lately, and I miss the mellow summer Fridays of having three or five kids in our class, but I suppose beggars can't be choosers.

...sometimes I wish I had kids because right now it seems like the whole world is full of beautiful things for children, and obviously to buy them without having children would make me crazy. Example: I love these log pillows.

I am, as usual, excited for the weekend. Among the things I plan to do are:

-Laundry
-Probably/almost definitely do the Newport Gangster Walking Tour (I have decided that I must do this, while I have the chance, despite the money issue; I am now only concerned about this gross rainy weather--really, WTF, fall?)
-Visit Sin City Antique Gallery (.......again)
-Go to Barnes & Noble, for magazines
-Go to the post office, for stamps
-Possibly go out Saturday night with girls from work--there were vague plans to do this and then I haven't heard anything about it in like a week
-Finish up the last eight manuscript pages of AEFB and then start writing me some scenes

And I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but whatever.

Last night was another bad night, sleepwise--about 3 or 4 hours of sleep. Again. And this time I did not sleep in my car on my lunch break. So I'm hoping I'll sleep better tonight, like I did Tuesday night, but I would really like to just sleep for a full seven hours every night regardless. Gross.

Yesterday's leftover lentil soup was a success--I ate it with crackers and it was delicious. I've kind of been failing at food otherwise this weekend, though...Ramen noodles, a hot dog, lots of eggs, and a complete failure at fixing that gross ravioli from last weekend.

A lovely day. It was some kind of "Second Sunday" health and fitness festival on Monmouth Street, which I walked to with my mom and sister. We watched bellydancing and I tried spinning (I love spinning), and met some of my mom's biking friends. It was a perfect and sunny day, and I enjoyed watching all the different fitnesses and walking around outdoors. There was roasted corn that smelled delicious, and my sister bought fudge from Mammoth's. Also, we discovered the existence of a Newport Gangster Museum--I MUST GO. (I'm already seriously considering spending some of my precious RenFest money on the Gangster Walking Tour, because it only lasts through October and it is like my dream come true--a historical walking tour of my own city! Later I discovered the existence of a HAUNTED NEWPORT TOUR, but it is, sadly, booked through the rest of the month.)

While my mom was shopping for discount bike clothes, my sister and I went to Sin City, which is one of my favorite places ever. There are always so many beautiful things, and today was no exception--a collapsible top hat, one of those sewing boxes on legs ($25!), a beautiful folding table with green metal foilage legs ($30), an awesome metal milk carrier thingie ($30; I'd put wine or pop or something in it and put it on top of my fridge), and two things I've admired since I started going there: a set of black folding trays for $45, and a box of printing tiles (it used to be $60--now it's $25!). It was all so lovely, and if it weren't for the upcoming RenFest, which I won't even have much money for anyway (I'll have to wait at least another year before getting a cloak, sigh), I would have bought things.

I also went to the yarn shop and pretty much drooled on everything. I learned about the knitting classes they have there and the lady was very nice and helpful, and I just love seeing the long twists of yarn hanging on their hooks. They were all so beautiful and soft (and expensive), SO much nicer than what I buy at Hancock's! LOVE IT.

Also: I worked a lot on AEFB yesterday. A lot. Some of it was research, plus I worked through around ten pages of the manuscript, plus wrote about 1100 words. It was good.

I've been sitting here for way too long and now it is time to do the dishes, yuck.

Bored, and hungry. I'm out of bread, fruit, and veggies, and running low on cheese, with some stuff in the freezer (shrimp, pork, chicken, bacon) that would require cooking, or requires something to go with it. I also have some Ramen noodles and misc. pasta in the pantry, plus in the fridge some leftover lentil soup (wasn't nearly as good as the first time I made it, and that will probably be my lunch, maybe with some crackers) and some kind of ravioli my mom gave me that was gross and which I will try again tomorrow, after grocery shopping, with garlic and mozzarella.

Seriously. I can't even make a grilled cheese. I can't even make toast. I am very displeased. (I could make a quesadilla, but I made one on Monday. It was a really good quesadilla; I treated both sides with peanut oil and stuck it in the oven because I had a class on Monday and was too tired/lazy to fry it and sometimes I like to bake them instead. It was perfect.)

Some links to interesting things:

I love this vintage jacket.

Interesting note/article about a German-based women's magazine no longer using models in their magazine.

An art show that pays tribute to The Iron Giant. I nearly started hyperventilating when I came across this. There doesn't seem to be a lot there, but I like what I see!

Are those random lightweight scarves too "fashiony"? I've always kind of thought they were, since I have several scarves and a pashmina already, and I'm not into fashion scarves, really, but this talks about how to make your own lightweight scarf. Figures, I hate something until I learn how to make it myself...

I also love this poster an illustrator did for a Decemberists concert.

Another note: Queen of Fashion, by Caroline Weber, is a really interesting book. See here. I picked it up for research for AEFB, but it's really interesting outside of that, and also, there's not a lot of material in there I can use for AEFB. One of the books's themes is how big an influence fashion had on the downfall of Marie Antoinette the eventual revolution, which I think it interesting.

All right. Going to go and try the soup; maybe more pepper will make it better. Dinner--who knows? If only I could find that recipe for lemon grilled shrimp... (Also, I really want to try making an herb tart. Do you suppose that's more of a springtime dish or a fall dish?)

I am so glad it's the weekend, and I've spent my evening watching TV and looking at artwork online. Not the best use of my time, but looking at artwork I like inspires me and makes me want to improve. Also, Dollhouse was unexpectedly awesome (after the enthralling season finale, the second season opener was meh, with periodic bursts of interestingness, the second episode was meh all around, and this one--the third--was awesome in many ways, including serial killers, English literature, and Michael Hogah. You can never go wrong with Michael Hogan)!

I just need to kick my not-working-on-the-manuscript-on-weekends habit...

This is the main thing I wanted to report tonight: it is that my mom's missing cat Fox came home for good yesterday. The story is cute, I think--my mom thought she'd try leaving the yard gate open so that he could come into the backyard if he wanted to, and within a few minutes of opening it, she heard him crying at the back door. When she opened the door, he ran off to hide (in one of his usual hiding places in the yard), but she called to him. He looked back, and when he saw her, and the open door, he came right in. Which is good, because it rained hard for a lot of the afternoon yesterday. My mom reported last night when I went to see him that he hasn't been skittish or weird at all--he seems happy to be home, and cuddly. I came to the same verdict in the mere fifteen minutes I was there last night. Hooray!

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my weekend; I have vague plans to go to a health and fitness festival on Sunday, and I keep thinking that I should work on AEFB for some big chunk of time during the day tomorrow, but I don't know. Also I'd wanted to go to Sawyer Point sometime soon, but if it rains tomorrow and I'm busy Sunday...

More tomorrow. I think I will try reading for a while (Graceling, by Kristen Cashore. Not bad, but reading it right after Shannon Hale makes it seem...not as good as I'd like. Or maybe the book of Arthurian short stories I pulled off my shelf a couple of days ago.) before going to sleep.

A strange day. It has been one week since my mother lost her job (fired) and her cat (missing), and ten years since my niece Rowan was born, and today the air was cold but the sun was bright, making for good outdoors weather, if only I wasn't only wearing my Target boyfriend cardigan over my Pitaya sleeveless gray tunic.

I do not like to think of the day that Rowan was born, which I remember in weird, vivid, broken pieces--Kenny had coupons for that steakhouse in the Newport Shopping Center area, so we walked there (he liked walking to the Newport Shopping Center) and I ate too much and while walking home, in the area that's now been bulldozed down to build a Target and a Kroger's Marketplace, I had to stop and sit in a driveway while waiting for my stomach to settle. We got back to my mom's house, her old apartment, and I stood in the doorway of her bedroom and she told me that Rowan had been born, and that she was a girl, and that her name was Rowan (they knew she was a girl, but I wanted to be sure, because there are such things as mistakes, and if she'd been born a boy, her name would have been Jack, a name which I like, but which my dad didn't), and that Val had been diagnosed with leukemia. After that is when it gets weird and broken--I remember nothing else of the day, except for one little piece of a scene, lying on the couch (the green futon), watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and crying to myself. I think Kenny was there with me, but I don't remember why we were watching Buffy or why I was just crying by myself. Because I was awkward and fifteen, maybe?

That is not a pleasant memory. But I am glad to celebrate the fact that Rowan, my only niece and a bright, funny, creative, playful girl I can't wait to share things with, has turned ten. (My gifts to her were Prismacolor pencils--too expensive for me to afford myself, though I've heard they are excellent pencils and I could use some colored pencils--and the Lemony Snicket books The Beatrice Letters--one of my favorite books in all the world--and The Unauthorized Autobiography, since Rob said she's just finished listening to the entire Series of Unfortunate Events, books that I love, audiobooks that I love, and that I have been recommending to her for ages and ages. I am so thrilled, and strangely proud, that she's read them and loved them.)

A good night last night, shaking off this like crippling melancholy I've had lately. I did the dishes and then sat down at my desk and worked for an hour, writing notes and working my way through tenish pages (I didn't count, only took note of how far it was until the part I wanted to get to--still ten pages). I felt good last night, and I felt good when I woke up this morning. I slept with the curtains closed but the windows open, because the apartment has started to smell a little lately and I wanted to air it out without getting cold, and at some point during the windy night, I heard for the first time my little wind-chimes, which I bought at the Broad Ripple Art Fair with Caroline, made of forks and spoons and hanging crookedly by my window getting tarnished in hopes of catching a breeze. They didn't jingle much, but I heard them in the night, and was happy. I didn't go back to sleep after my first alarm went off, but lay snuggled in bed, half-awake, thinking, and read the latest Shannon Hale, Forest Born, over breakfast, and liked it.

And a good day today--cold, and hectic, but somehow I was outside of the hecticness. I was happy, somewhat cheerful. I was glad to sit on the floor this afternoon and talk to and play with my children, holding them on my lap and encouraging them to play with cars the right way (on the floor, going vroom, vroom, beep, beep) instead of rolling them off the sides of the shelves. And we listened to a Halloween CD today that I liked, one that had "Monster Mash" and "Witch Doctor" and "It's My Party" and "Little Red Riding Hood" on it and was fun to rock to. Three kids had accidents today, and one of the toilets clogged and overflowed and my co-teacher was irritated throughout the day, but I was mellow. I rolled with it. Maybe I was powered by the thrall of a good book, by Shannon Hale's beautiful and enviable words, so easy to read and compelling.

(I like reading Shannon Hale. Most of the time. I read five of her then-six books mostly in the space of a week or so in February of 2008, and when I think of reading Shannon Hale books, I think of being curled up in bed with a plate of muffins and reading happily, reading things that are good and that I like reading, things that feel fresh and funny and interesting, and are comfortable to read on cold days.)

I came home and made spaghetti and meatballs and garlic bread (we had spaghetti and meatballs for lunch at work today, and I remembered that I still had a serving's worth of meatballs in the freezer), and they were delicious. The garlic bread, not as much, because it tastes best the way my sister makes it, with seasoning salt and garlic, and also I had to make it on an Arnold's bun or else go without a sandwich one day this week, but it was still pretty good.

And then I settled in to finish reading Forest Born (I picked it up from the library last night. The spacing is a little funky, a lot of white space around the edges, I think, but it's four hundred pages long. A little less.), plowing right on through it and thinking about how I could use beautiful words in my writing, and how for me beautiful words are, like, a state of mind, or a conscious effort--I put things down as I see them, or feel them, and then leave them there, and they are obvious, indelicate, lacking even the basic grace of Stephen King's (who does not really use beautiful words, if you understand what I'm saying here).

And then came the little patch of melancholy for the evening--realizing that Forest Born is very much like AEFB and possibly--probably--better. Awkward. And then my mom texting me to say that they'd followed up on a call about missing Fox, and gone to see a lady on 10th St. and then the cat wasn't Fox, didn't have the weird black spots on his nose that Elyse and I are pretty sure are from letting him sniff the business end of permanent markers, and he had his claws. And then I felt sad for my mom, for feeling hopeful and then the cat not being Fox, but still being a stray which they couldn't take home.

I finished Forest Born, a bit into my writing time. (I have decided to write this instead of AEFB, though I am definitely going to put in some real AEFB time before going to bed, because putting good effort into it makes me feel good about myself.) I liked it well enough, but not as much as the others, and it felt younger than the others. (I did like that it had zero romance in it, even less than Princess Academy. I love romance, but it is everywhere, and I figure we can do with a shot less of romance every now and then.) I got on the computer and caught the Internet signal and got on here with the intention of writing about my excellent mellow day followed by the patch of melancholy...

And then while I was writing this my sister texted me and said they'd seen Fox on the porch, and I called right away and she said he'd come up on the porch and was eating the food there and was still skittish so ran off--but he's alive, and he came to us.

And now I feel happy again, and hopeful.

Weird and boring day. I went to the park (this would be Devou) today, in a thrift-store dress, a homemade headscarf, RenFest shoes, and Target leggings. I ate a muffin and an apple and sat on one of their many stone benches flipping through The Goose Girl and occasionally taking notes. I walked around a lot, across green hills and on the paved paths, and thought about AEFB and other things. I took pictures. I enjoyed the sunshine. Originally I thought I'd just go and chill on the hill overlooking the city (best view of Cincinnati anywhere, except maybe from the window of the Barnes & Noble Starbucks at the Levee), but in the end, I couldn't resist the outdoors, the weird trees and the hints of paths hiding around corners. I was there for somewhere around two hours, and walked for most of that time, but also sat on benches reading and taking notes and drawing.

I have decided I need to go to the park more often, especially in this excellent weather. (I also want to visit Sawyer Point again. I LOVE Sawyer Point. Maybe sometime I will take my rollerblades there...)

Ended up being weirdly bored today. I read, I cleaned a little, I watched The Fall, and now I am bored again. :-/ (I could read more, but I've read more than a hundred pages today and I'm a little tired of it, and I am trying really hard not to idly watch TV today. The book I'm reading is Guenevere: Queen of the Summer Country, which I've had since my Arthurian obsession but have never read. It's an interesting interpretation, not boring, at least, but not really my favorite. Unfortunately, no matter what spin you put on them, Arthurian books tend to be pretty predictable, with the exception of a few big ones...)

A few weeks ago at work I wrote out a little page of notes for AEFB. Then I lost the notes. For at least a week I've been all anxious about it, thinking that this paper holds the secrets to AEFB and I wrote down the secrets so I wouldn't forget them, and then I LOST it. Today I found the paper--there are no secrets, alas. It is much less helpful than I remember it being.

(I wrote the last two paragraphs of this and then posted it and then the Internet crapped out on me and here we are half an hour later with the last two paragraphs GONE, sigh.)

I haven't been working on AEFB much the past few days, not actual revisions. Thinking, researching (not nearly as much as I should be), sometimes picking at little extra scenes that will get inserted in later (today: 2000 words), and very occasionally revising a few pages (which is what I should be doing now and not playing on the Internet...). I am at the point where I am convinced that the book is awful and I am awful for writing. I'm pretty sure this happens to everyone. (See this. I think I am on "The Revision, Month Two", even though in reality it's been much, much longer than two months, because writing is not my job and hence I don't work on it as constantly as I should.) I just want to get it to a semi-finished point and go from there. My words are not pretty at all and I am pretty sure the plot kind of revolves around my man, who is then part of the romance, which makes me suck.

And on that happy note--back to work!

It's Sunday morning, and I have a lot of work to do.

I didn't do much yesterday (looked for Fox, and watched TV and did a lot of sketching--a few pages in my "show sketchbook" (as I'm starting to think of it) in charcoal, and twoish pages in pencil in my normal sketchbook), and my apartment is trashed. Dishes need to be done, laundry needs to be put in the hamper, cleanish clothes need to be put away. I haven't even made breakfast yet--don't particularly feel like cooking breakfast, plus I'm out of toast, so I have to cook breakfast. (I really want some waffles. Stupid Heroes.)

I have really been wanting to do more creating--sewing, drawing, writing. I don't have a sewing project I particularly feel like working on, but I need to do reference drawings (haven't done any in ages) as well with keep up with normal drawings. If I stop drawing, my skills will degenerate, and I think they've already started to.

Plus there is AEFB--I am not yet halfway through the manuscript, I haven't been working on it every night, plus I have extra scenes to write and historical-type research to do plus have been intending to do a careful and gentle study on some books I love to get a feel for the language and style.

And there's a writingish project I was planning to start on, and another project I should be working on, plus I need to get groceries and go to the library today.

...I haven't been very happy the past few weeks. I think today will be a good day and I will get lots of things done and still have time to watch season two of Heroes. Also: things will get better.

The pain of the day is the right side of my jaw. It hurts to clench my teeth, chew, or shift my jaw at all. It made me very crabby at work today, and I am not looking forward to tomorrow. At all.

Tonight I did the dishes, and looked at some of my artwork, and worked a little bit on AEFB. The problem is, my leg has been hurting, and I wondered if maybe sitting sprawled around in my desk chair was contributing to the problem, so I tried working in bed. It doesn't work. If I'm writing something random, I can write in bed or on the couch, but I really focus so much better on a project when I'm at my desk. Plus I have more space to look at the manuscript there. So I worked through threeish pages, and then wrote half a scene, maybe three hundred words (I did not do a wordcount), and then gave up, annoyed. Maybe I will supplement it with research.

Last Thursday, sick of the weather, at work we got out the TV and put on a Barney video. (Our class will sit still for movies; the younger class is entertained for maybe ten minutes. Great.)

The Toddler I teacher has issues with Barney. I mean, it's a weird show (one of the points T-1 Teacher made is that the kids are on the show until they're like fifteen), but then T-1 Teacher made a good point:

T-1: Wait, how do they all know each other?
Co-teacher: What?
T-1: Barney and Baby Bop and BJ. Are they related? How do they know each other?
Co-teacher: Baby Bop and BJ are brother and sister.
Me: Yeah, they're related.
T-1: Okay, but how do they know Barney? Is he, like, their brother? Uncle?
Me: He's just some guy they know.

Saturday morning I made pancakes. It was National Pancake Day and I knew I had to, plus I have a passionate love of pancakes. However, I woke up Saturday morning and as I lay in bed I realized I had no butter. What is the point of pancakes without butter? I went to the grocery store last night for buttermilk, pecans, and a couple other things, but forgot butter. Plus I was suffering from leg and foot pains, so getting up and going to the grocery store before even eating breakfast was not what I wanted to do. (Also, what else could I cook for breakfast without butter? I couldn't even have toast!)

So I called my mom, and she brought me some, plus oversaw my first batch of pancakes. It was the first time I ever made pancakes, and I'm glad to say that even though the later batches burned a little, and most of them were thicker than I like my pancakes, they still tasted extremely good. There is NOTHING like pancakes and sausage for breakfast, NOTHING.

Determined to stay at home Saturday, and hampered by a sore leg and foot, I mostly laid around watching The Simpsons. Later in the morning, I worked on sorting my artwork--I started drawing in earnest (and boredom) somewhere around 2005, and often at school, and I saved all the pages with good stuff on it, so I have a gigantic pile of scrap paper and looseleaf covered in drawings of various qualities. I've been trying to sort it by character and date--my most favored subjects to draw are Trillian, Rourke, and various Lemony Snicket characters--but there is so much of it and I’m not really sure what to do with it all, or how to sort it. I have a file folder thingie to put them in, but...yeah. There’s a lot of them.

(Unfortunately it reminds me that I still have massive amounts of organizing to do in my work space...roughly twelve zillion tearsheets from my millions of EW magazines, just hanging around in file folders, doing nothing but take up space...)

Sunday was a good day. My foot pain completely went away (YES THANK YOU GOD), I slept in, and I did about half the things on my to-do list. Sunday was also the antiques day in Mainstrasse, so I walked down there and saw many beautiful things: vintage light bulbs, jars of old buttons and wooden spools, a press box, a magazine rack, plastic bags of trim and ribbons, a stereo optic viewer (if that had been anywhere near affordable I would have bought it instantly), and more stuff I'm sure I'm forgetting. However, I only had $10, and I finally had to go with a print tile drawer. Those are so supremely cool, and I can't deny that I’ve been keeping an eye out for things like that lately. Plus I'm pretty sure the guy I bought it from is the same guy I bought my shoe block thingie from, and I like him--he not only knows about the things he buys, but he likes them too.

So I carried it home, and once I got it there, I wondered what to do with it. For now, I have set it up in my workspace, as a means of holding post-its and cards and pencils, but it is too big for the area and while it's a good idea, I'm afraid of getting claustrophobic over there. I'm trying it out and we shall see.

Bed now--slightly earlier work tomorrow, plus a project to work on after work, plus a zillion other things I would really like to be devoting time to. But such is life. Bed.

A quick update:

-Back on track with writing, though tonight I only worked through eight pages of revisions. And I've started a list of scenes I will need to write once I've fixed the little things in the piece. It feels like revising will never, ever end, but I have less than a hundred pages left (which is not as impressive as it sounds when the manuscript is 148 pages in Times size 10), which means that if I keep up the pace of roughly ten pages every night, I could have worked through the manuscript in less than two weeks, and then turn my attention to writing scenes.

Also, I've reached the point where I am pretty well convinced that it's no good. Hooray!

-Heroes yesterday was good. Noah was perfect and I wanted to draw hearts over his head, and Sylar was hilarious. That is really all I ask for from Heroes (well, that and badassery), but in addition, Claire was awesome, Hiro was cute, Danko saved Noah's life, and Ando kissed a girl. Hooray again!

-Work. I've talked a little bit lately about how much it sucks, and it's starting to feel like if it's not one thing, then it's another. It sucks all around. A woman I work with said that no one is happy with their job (we were talking about her husband and his job), and I pointed out that there is a difference between being unhappy with their job and being happy with their job. Or something like that. Basically that a person can not be happy with their job but tolerate it, but if a person is unhappy with their job, well. Toleration is more difficult.

-Also, I've been really tired lately, like wanting to go to bed at 11 PM tired, and waking up in the morning feeling groggy tired.

-Muffins make good snacks. Hooray for muffins!

.....I use the word "hooray" a lot here, but it was not a great day. However, I completely avoided eating sweets of any kind (read: candy, cookies, or cupcakes); I had a granola bar, a yogurt, and two muffins, and those were the sugariest things I ate today. I was happy.

Conclusion: I need to work harder at finding time to do things. Also, I'm tired and I need to go to bed.

A hasty entry, because I should be working. Actually, I should be sleeping, and I should have been working nearly two hours ago. Again: I was doing so well for a week, and then I got busy and then ill and fell out of writing habits, and now forcing myself back into them is rough. :-p

Good day today: slept in (ordinarily the sun wakes me but today it was overcast, so I slept until 9:30!), did not buy too much in the way of groceries, did the dishes, cleaned the floors, made poppy seed muffins, cleaned up around the living room, finished the book I was reading, had a ham dinner at my dad's house, went to a concert at church with my dad, laid around (that part was not as good, but whatever, I'm tired).

New Heroes tomorrow (and new House, but I'm going to watch Heroes tomorrow and watch House later. My sister is DVRing it.)! It's weird. My interest in Heroes waned over the summer with nothing new to sustain it, and now that season four/volume five is about to start, I just keep remembering the bizarreness of the last episode and... I don't know what to think. This is what I last wrote on the show, in an attempt to express my displeasure. Basically: Sylar is one of my favorite characters (currently second place to Noah, though tentatively), but I am not okay with this plot development. Also, I am pretty sure that my third-favorite character, Danko, gets killed. I'm not really okay with that either. So we shall see!

Gah. My body wants more sleep lately. It gets upset when I go to bed after midnight. Writing now (do I do the less thinky, more cheaty way and write, or do I do what I should be doing and requires more thought and effort and revise?).

(...revise, I think. Gah.)

A long and belated entry--I was busy and then didn't feel well and then the Internet was being a jerk.

( Read more... )

Awful awful awful day. I made myself not eat any Oreos (or candy; there is a TON of candy in our cabinet) today because yesterday I had like five Oreos and three jawbreakers and at least three mini candy bars, and I told myself that this is a bad, bad habit to get into, but then at snack time I had two plastic cupfuls of goldfish crackers and they were SO GOOD--crunchy and salty. Mmmmm, PMS!

Yeah. Ran late for work this morning because I changed my clothes about twenty times and was stuck with something I really wanted to wear but technically couldn't because my racerback bra showed--in the end I just wore a sweater over it, so whatev. Tried working on a thing online before work and ran up against a wall because half my personal files (the non-writing half) are stored on a hard drive instead of on this computer. Did some blah stuff at work (could have been worse), spilled some deodorizer beads and oil all over a CD player and the floor, ran up against problems with dishes, misplaced a tray of pizza, and had the kind of afternoon where every child was crazy and every little voice made me want to start knocking heads around. And then when things were starting to mellow, in the last five minutes of the work day, I was berated for not keeping things clean enough. SUCK.

I went to the Party Source after work and bought a bucket of mojito mix and some Captain Morgan for a party I'm going to at a coworker's house. And then to Kroger's, where I bought some supplies for an art project for work, artichoke hearts to make artichoke dip with (for the party), barbecue sauce to moisten up the leftover Labor Day barbecue, mushrooms to make omelets with--stuff that made me happy.

And then I went to the library, and then came home and had leftover corn on the cob with butter and salt and pepper, and leftover barbecue with tons of sauce (I am acquiring a taste for barbecue), and watched Juno, which is one of the coolest movies ever, and which I've only seen once, and it was ages ago. Hooray!

I feel pretty good, though--the kind of good that comes from leaving a sucky day at work and letting go of it and moving on with my life. That, and I've got plans for the weekend (unfortunately, most of the live music scheduled for Oktoberfest or the Bellevue art festival thing is during the party I'm supposed to go to, but I'm still psyched about both!), and AEFB and I are getting along fabulously...

Every night, more or less at 10, I sit down at the computer with something to drink and sometimes something to eat (I realized last night that if I have snacks sitting nearby then I eat them compulsively while working, so maybe lay off that a little) and work on revising AEFB for roughly an hour, working through about ten pages every night. I hesitate to say it, because I hate to jinx it, but I feel good about it--feel good about the progress, about the work I'm doing, about the ideas I'm getting for it.

Seriously. Tomorrow will probably suck ("Tomorrow is going to be an Oreo day," my co-teacher said as she was getting ready to leave tonight, though in my experience the worst days are usually Wednesday and Thursday), but I'll make Vietnam rice for dinner, and on Saturday I'm going to make a swiss-and-mushroom omelet for breakfast and then go visit some festivals and then go to a party and Sunday I WILL finish my work in my mom's basement, and then all will be right with the world.

(PS: I am loving The Shining. And Brideshead Revisited, but here I'm specifically addressing The Shining. I am always so anxious about reading Stephen King books, because I don't really like to be scared, and in some cases--such as with The Stand--the length intimidates me, even though I really admire him and have never disliked anything of his I've read....though The Dark Tower came close. Today I was reading The Shining during my lunch break, and it would have been so nice to just keep reading...)

Now for some food--I think some cranberry juice and the rest of my Ritz crackers and some Swiss cheese--OMG I just love cheese so much and I haven't just eaten Swiss in about a million years and it's so good--and back to work.

I just want to say that I've had an astonishingly great weekend. I didn't get much done in terms of CP stuff (that will have to wait till next weekend--why did I think I could do it while working on my mom's party at the same time?), but I had a good time at my mom's Labor Day party. I cleaned the house and made zucchini fritters (verdict: people liked them, but I think next time I would use more egg or something--they didn't hold together well--and definitely more flavor; maybe garlic as well as pepper? Or just more pepper? I found a more complicated recipe online, but the one I used was here, and is basically zucchini, bread crumbs, egg, pepper.); my mom made barbecue. People who came to the party also brought food; I mostly ate barbecue, pretzels, carrots, Oreo balls (AMAZING), brats, and barbecue walnuts (AMAZING TOO). Also, some ganache and pound cake. Oh, and my mom had me try this apple I've never heard of--Ruby Johnsons. They were DELICIOUS.

Mostly I sat around and chatted with people and ate way, way too much food--all the Burkes came with their respective others, but I had a good time and there were some people I was glad to catch up with.

Most people cleared out around 8 to see the fireworks, but I figured I'd wait until they started (9ish?) and then either walk to the dog park or down to the river, but then when I actually went to the dog park, I wasn't terribly impressed, and didn't feel like walking to the river. Instead, my mom and sister and my mom's friend Amy sat around chatting. Everyone else came back after the fireworks and said it was an excellent show--I must make a point of seeing it next year. Anyway, after the fireworks it was a matter of staying awake until my mom got back from her motorcycle ride (UGH. Don't ask.), until the guests had left, and until the food was put away and the dishes rinsed off.

I stayed the night at my mom's, since the Labor Day traffic in Newport is notoriously bad, and this morning my mom made pancakes and bacon and I also had some leftover shortcakes. It was all delicious! Then my sister and I played video games and ate leftover barbecue for lunch and she did some work on my/her computer. And then I came home, unpacked, made iced tea, and cleaned up around the apartment. Hooray!

Plus over the weekend I went to Half-Price and got rid of a bunch of books and bought some new ones and some comic books (Half-Price comic books are like crack. Cheap and plentiful crack.) And now all the books I own (except for two that seem to have gone missing) are here at my apartment with me, which makes me very happy.

Books: I just finished two, Arabian Nights and Days by Naguib Mahfouz (I am not positive about the spelling of that name and am too lazy to double-check it) (it defies definition, except that it is kind of a sequel to The Thousand and One Nights, and was interesting), and Dragonharper by Jody Lynn Nye (a weird and funny book--about Robinton of Anne McCaffrey's Pern series, and it's basically a combination between a Choose Your Own Adeventure book and Dungeons and Dragons. It's basically a game. It was weird to read, and kind of hilarious. It's not what I would call the defining Robinton book (I love Robinton. Love him. I think he was probably my first book character crush), but it ended up enjoyable.

And a couple of weeks ago I finished reading Sherwood Smith's A Stranger to Command. Her book Crown Duel is one of my favorite books of all time; I've tried reading more of her books in the same world (Senrid and Inda, but struggled with them, unimpressed. I wanted to read ASTC for a long time, since it was on the Athanarel LJ community as Shevraeth in Marloven Hess, but I never got around to it, and when it was released in print, I was not anxious to pay $25 for a book I wasn't sure I'd like. But when it was re-released in trade paperback with a sharper cover, I knew I had to have it. It took me a while to get into it--it didn't sit in Shevraeth's head much, and it didn't really get into many of the characters. For a while, I thought the character I'd like best was Savona, and he only appeared a few times throughout the book. Then it began to get unexpectedly, and subtly, engaging, and I was thoroughly satisfied with the ending. When he met up again with Savona and they rode back into Remalna together and saw the sharp difference between Shevraeth and Vidranic, and then the use he brought upon himself, and his decision regarding what kind of woman he could love--it was perfect. I would have liked more character development on the part of Shevraeth and the other boys, but it was a good book.

Writing! I fell out of my strict writing habits during the show, and then had trouble falling back into them. To get back into the swing of things, and to practice, I started a new AEFB related piece, determined to write interestingly about Liabet without Vantiller. This was on Thursday. 1300 words on Thursday, words I felt okay about. Saturday, I added more words to that: 2800 words I felt good about! I also worked on the second draft of AEFB, just a page, but better than nothing. I'm very pleased with that.

No real plans for the week, except for some work stuff, but next weekend I have a lot of plans--it's Oktoberfest in my neighborhood, which I wanted to go to, plus there was an art something in Bellevue I wanted to go to, plus I think I'm going to a party for a coworker on Saturday, plus I was going to finish up working on CP costumes. We'll see how all of that goes...

I am going to make corn on the cob for dinner, and probably some manner of chicken--however, I got into the habit over the summer of eating out a lot, which means that I keep getting these cravings for Chinese food, Indian food, pizza, and buffalo wings...

I do not like to make to-do lists here, because then I start feeling stressed and cluttered, but I am spending a mellow afternoon doing laundry, so here is my list:

1. Grocery shopping
2. Wash sheets and towels
3. Lysol all CP shoes and pack in boxes
4. Put away all clean/sprayed CP costumes and props
5. Do at least one more load (preferably two) of CP costumes
6. Investigate and register with Pandora Internet Radio
7. Clean kitchen, hallway, and bathroom floors
8. Do dishes
9. Get rid of some of the flowers
10. Water plant
11. Back up files from big computer to hard drive; back up current/important writing projects on USB stick so can write on little computer without big computer spazzing out
12. Wash vintage clothing
13. Take some books & yarn home along with laundry
14. Survey and consider extensive Tamora Pierce collection
15. Work on secret project
16. Look up recipe for zucchini fritters
17. Write at least 1000 words in some AEFB-related piece to get back into A) the swing of writing every day, and B) the feel of AEFB, in preparation for going back to revising soon.
18. Go to bed at good/lame hour with a book
19. Mmmmmm...sketchbooks...

Most of the things that come out of my mouth are sarcastic. I mean, in most cases, when I'm saying something unpleasant, I'm being sarcastic. Lately there are two phrases I use sarcastically, a lot: "don't worry" (i.e. "DON'T WORRY, the house is on fire!") and "calm down" (which I have no example for but use at least five times a day, and which I picked up from my co-teacher--she uses it on children and on me, at least). Hence the random post title.

There's a pleasant rain outside and I wish I had something really good to read. And also that my clean laundry wasn't piled in my reading chair near the window. It's also very pleasantly cool--I'm so pleased; I love cool weather!

Today was fairly uneventful. I ran errands in the morning, bought things from Seventh St. Gifts because I love them and they are so nice and they are putting up a poster for us, had lunch with my mom at Newport Pizza Company (DELICIOUS--Buffalo Something Pizza! SO SO GOOD!), and brought home the bookcase I bought last weekend. It's not in great condition, but it holds books. I've put it in the kitchen. Also, I did some show work (more of that tomorrow), and read a teeny tiny bit, went to Target with Caroline and bought leggings (hooray!), and now I'm really just posting to put off the moment when I sit down at my desk and start working on AEFB again (for the first time in six days...ouch). Because we will go into tech in a week or so, and once that happens, who knows when I'll have time for writing?

Tomorrow: cleaning, working at the school, and hopefully more writing. And some other work, some for the show and some for actual work, the latter being quite unpleasant and tedious. At least the show work is something I'm in charge of so I know what needs to be done when.

So: pretty boring day, but I've enjoyed the boring-ness of it, seeing as how I'm going to get pretty busy soon. Hooray!

I am slow, and busy. But--currently--pretty happy. Rehearsals and work are pretty regular, in terms of stuff happening, and I just realized that I have a big project I should have worked on yesterday but completely forgot to in view of all the bio-collecting. Whatever, I'll do it tonight.

I finished Little, Big and it was lovely--dreamy, and about a house and a family and fairies and reminded me of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and after a while felt a little bit Neil Gaimany, so... American Gods? I mean like in the mythic modern fantasy sense? I liked all the characters, though eventually Auberon the younger grew to be my favorite, with Smoky a close second, and the scene where Auberon and Smoky have revelations about each other was my absolute favorite, with the two of them realizing they are more alike than they realized. The ending was kind of drifty, but it suited the book.

Now I am re-reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, because Caroline's excitement infected me, and because I decided at some point that HBP was my favorite and I haven't read it in years and that was where I stopped during my giant re-read and note-taking project. I started out taking notes but realized that this was part of the reason I'm having trouble with Harry Potter--too much interpretation. So I stopped taking notes, and I'm trying to read just for enjoyment. I am vaguely planning a Harry Potter post soon.

Anyway, aside from Harry Potter, I have five books I'm hoping to read. (Why did I make a summer reading list? Why do I not remember that I never get anything but the show done in the summer?)

Writing--I wrote 1500 words yesterday while watching SNL just to get something out there. I was not entirely pleased with it, but kept picking determinedly at it, until I realized it was getting a bit shady. Then I stopped. I haven't worked on AEFB itself in a couple of days, but I am trying really hard to fit it in at least a couple of times a week, at least until dress rehearsals take over my life.

Best of all, Caroline and I went with her parents to a concert at Devou Park last night. It was a wonderful, lovely concert. It was free, it was Over the Rhine with the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, and it was in Devou Park. I love live music, I love outdoor live music (due to going to Ichthus for a weekend in the springtime for many years), and I love Devou Park. Also, let's talk about the awesomeness of Over the Rhine--a local band with great music, now nationally known. I only knew their songs "Mary's Waltz" (beautiful!) and "All I Need is Everything" (awesome!) but nothing else. Back when I was still downloading music, I downloaded a handful of their songs: aside from the other two, also "Eyes Wide Open" (which I kind of know), "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear", "Too Late", and something whose title I forgot.

Rest assured, I am now a fan of Over the Rhine. I bought their new album, The Trumpet Swan, and was tempted by their other albums, and even kind of wanted their new songbook for The Trumpet Swan (I peeked over a man's shoulder at it and it looks lovely!). They are a wonderful and talented band and I am going to get more of their music soon (and possibly.... this book, which looks awesome...) They played some great songs, including an awesome cover of "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)", and also, "Afternoon Delight." LOVE.

A random thought about Mainstrasse: needs more variety. It's a pretty cool neighborhood, but there are a lot of restaurants and bars here. I really wish that the old theater showed movies and was not a guitar store. Some days I pass the old Gypsy Cafe on the corner and wonder what kind of interesting thing should go in its place--originally I thought a cupcake shop, because those are popular nowadays, but you can get cupcakes at La Cherie and we don't need more food in Mainstrasse. I wish a Pitaya would move in there. It would also be cool to have a yarn store nearby, though I really can't drudge up interest in crochet during the summer months. (Also, I am not terribly interested in crochet projects right now.) I mean, there is a magic shop around here somewhere; why not a yarn store? I'm just saying.

The entry title refers to the fact that the local birds have started hanging out around my windowsill. It's because I feed them. I love birds, and I love seeing them, and hearing their little feet scrabbling on my windowsill, but I wish they would come to the fire escape instead. It can't be good to have them eating birdseed off the windowsill, which is flaking to reveal blackish stuff underneath...

I'm tired and I've been lethargic the past couple of days, only to realize that every week-morning I took ginger lemongrass tea to rehearsal with me, and lately I haven't, so, hi, I'm going through caffeine withdrawal.

Forgot to mention, for anyone reading who does not already know: Ft. Thomas Living ran a lovely, three-page article on Peter Pan, with gorgeous pictures, and a closing promotional paragraph on Oliver.

(It occurs to me that I haven't written much about the show this year--very bad of me. Soon, soon!)

Almost finished with Little, Big, which is excellent, and I like all the characters (except maybe for Ariel Hawksquill, who is kind of boring, but has an agenda I'm interested in), and even young Auberon (who struck me as a male version of myself at first, and also kind of awkward and lame--so maybe exactly like me) is growing on me. Here is a quote tonight that made me smile:

From an early age [Auberon]'d insisted on having two pillows, though he only rested his head on one. He liked the rich luxury of them: inviting. (page 399)

Also, I have progressed to page five of AEFB in terms of revisions--not huge progress, but progress, at least. I meant to do more tonight but felt too awful and then got distracted.

More later.