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My leg is very slowly getting better. It still feels badly bruised, and even light touches hurt a lot, but it doesn't look bruised. When I hurt my ankle, back in May, it also felt (and still does now) bruised but never showed it. I have no idea what's going on with it all.

I can see some swelling but not a lot. I've been using an Ace bandage, off and on. That helps, off and on. My main conclusion is that knees are awkward. I can't wrap the knee proper or anything above it because that will just slide down the moment I stand up. I have this problem with braces/wraps intended for knees, too. I bought some with the idea that they'd help with stairs, and they kind of do, but I have to reposition them about three times for a single trip to the basement. At least, I do if I want them to be useful.

Scott has done the laundry this weekend because neither of us want me to try the stairs yet.

Meanderings about library books and story structure )
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I never ended up testing positive for Covid. Scott has recovered just fine.

We're starting to get used to Scott's new schedule. He's finding it a little weird to be a supervisor, but he's also finding that he likes it because he's confident in his knowledge of how the equipment works and in his general problem solving. He's also got decent people skills which is not a given for those with the other job requirements.

Plumbing issues )

We're still not sure what we're doing for Thanksgiving. The main confusion is that, while Scott's family is discussing times and dishes, nobody has said where the gathering will be. Scott's sister's place is more centrally located and has the space for her to host, but if it's there, I can't go (her son brought a cat or two with him when he moved home after graduation). Scott's parents also have space, and they often host such things, but I don't know if they're up to it this year. They're a longer drive for us than Scott's sister's place is, about twice as far.

I had a three day migraine last week and lost track of my Ingress portal maintenance. That mostly means that the portal I had held for more than three years decayed and no longer belongs to anyone. I'm not heartbroken by this, but I had been maintaining it because I was curious about how long I could keep it. I held it for 1167 days. That achievement no longer earns badges because, in the early days of the game, deliberately hunting people's long held portals for spite was a Thing on both sides. There used to be a badge for holding a portal for a set number of days with levels at 3 days, 10 days, 20 days, 90 days, and 150 days. I never managed the 150 before the badge was retired, but I did get past 90 more than once.

I'm not managing as much writing this month as I'd hoped to. I'm reviewing canon for my Yuletide assignment and trying to finish a couple of fics that are fighting with me. The exchange for which they're treats keeps extending the deadline, so I keep plugging away at them. If the deadline had passed, I'd probably have moved to other things by now. I have a lot of WIP, after all.

Stuff about Cordelia )
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I went for a 30 minute walk Thursday evening. That was the third time I'd taken the walker out for a real walk. I discovered a bit of pavement along one of the better walking routes that the walker can't handle; it's asphalt rather than concrete and is, I believe, owned by the city. The wheels of my walker got jarringly stuck more than once (and I dropped my phone, cracking the screen protector); I came back on the other side of the street which has normal sidewalk, and that was fine.

There were a lot more mosquitoes out than I really expected. I should have considered the fact that I was walking by a wooded area and prepared with insect repellant.

The phone thing is frustrating since part of going for walks is being able to play Ingress.

Scott has looked into replacing the wheels of the walker. He says it's prohibitively expensive. If we hadn't had to shop online, that might have come up as a feature, but, as it was, this was the only walker with a seat that I found that was up to my weight. (Also, Scott saw it on my wishlist and didn't realize that I meant it as a 'save for later' and had put it on the wrong list. He bought it for my birthday).

The first time I took the walker out was with [personal profile] evalerie in mid-July. We walked over to the park by the school and sat outside and talked. I sat on my walker. She sat on the ground because none of the benches have shade.

She gave me some peaches from her tree. I ended up cooking them in a skillet with margarine honey. They were excellent that way. I've been cooking Imperfect Foods peaches and nectarines that way since. Sadly, they don't reheat well. I mean, they're fine reheated, but they're actually amazing when they're first heated.

A couple of days later, I walked more than that distance after an appointment so that I could meet Scott in an area with less traffic than the main entrance to the hospital.

The walk with [personal profile] evalerie required rest stops for me to catch my breath which I think is entirely down to me having talked while we walked because I had no such trouble on the walk two days later even though I moved faster and went farther.

Wearing my bright pink thumb splints helps a lot with the vibration pain from the walker. I have to keep them tighter than is comfortable, but they help enough to outweigh that.

Discussion of different thumb splints, including links )

Cordelia has become more comfortable with her job. She doesn't love it by any means, but it's no longer new and scary. She's added a shift so that she's working five evenings a week across two locations, but she no longer shares a shift with her friend.

I've hired that friend to come over to do some house cleaning. I need the help, and she lives within walking distance. It's not easy walking distance by any means, but I could probably manage the walk (though part of the shortest route is dirt road, and I'd be unenthusiastic about moving the walker over it). I told her that I'd match her hourly rate at Jimmy John's. Hopefully, I can go better than $11.25.

She came over Wednesday, and she and Cordelia did some basic cleaning. We need to replace our mop because, although they mopped in the kitchen, the condition of the floor doesn't reflect that work.

I've written twelve fics for We Die Like Fen so far, and I'd like to do more. The archive won't reveal for a while, and it'll be even longer before author reveals, so I can't really talk about what I've written except to note that I picked up a pinch hit for myself (assignments and pinch hits are kind of random. Ish).

I've got 500 words toward my Crossworks assignment, but that's only the first scene. I think the story will run considerably longer than the minimum word count. I've been doing canon review in order to get the characters right.
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I've managed to give away both of the Christmas cacti. The local niece took one, and her older brother wanted the other. Scott's sister said she was willing to look after the plant while her daughter is away at school. It's a little weird seeing the shelf by the back window completely bare, but it's also a huge relief to know that I'm never going to have to water the dratted things again.

Our niece came down Monday evening to discuss character creation and setting. The niece in Seattle was in a text chat with us. I don't think we'll do that again because the local niece kept talking out loud and not bothering to include the Seattle niece.

The Seattle niece has a strong preference for a secondary world fantasy setting (which, to be honest, I kind of expected). We compromised by letting the local niece keep her character idea but saying that he'll fall through a gate into the fantasy setting.

Character generation will be a PITA, but I run dice-lite and tend not to take character sheet numbers as absolute. The Seattle niece is having a bit of trouble with that idea because character creation is full of a gazillion fiddly details. RuneQuest has more of that than Call of Cthulhu does. I've asked her to write me some backstory for the character she wants to play; we'll meet on Discord again, and I'll work through a skill list with her. I'm not planning to run in Glorantha (I don't have the sourcebooks and am not interested in acquiring them), so some of the skills on the character sheet will be irrelevant, and some things not there will need to be added.

I currently have four open exchange fic assignments. I need to do a little organizing so that I remember my priorities and due dates. We Die Like Fen is a flash exchange that's doing four rounds this month. Defaulting on that wouldn't be terrible, but I matched with someone I've wanted to treat in several exchanges past.

I'm doing a pinch hit for Crossworks, also for someone I've wanted to write for before. I have assignments for Exchange no Jutsu and for Battleship. That last isn't a standard exchange. It's a two team challenge to play Battleship by writing fics with specific tags attached. I'm on Team Void. The other team is Team Abyss.

I've started writing the least urgent of these four fics. I suspect that I'll end out throwing out all of what I've written so far because it's me groping for world building details.

I'm still working on the medical edition of What's Been Going On In My Life, but it's very tangled. It's like a three dimensional maze with randomly occurring chutes and ladders and no actual exit.
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I have three exchange fics due by the end of the month and one due early in February. I'm a little concerned that I've over-committed, but they're all things I want to write. I've only started one of the stories. For the other three, I'm still dithering about which prompt I want to go with.

Because I'm trying to keep part of my brain busy while I consider story options (this is often a thing I need to push back and under for a while before I'm ready to write), I've been reading a lot of Project Gutenberg poetry and pulling out fragments for potential titles. There's a sweet spot in terms of what I can parse well enough to find phrases I like while still not being so caught up that I can't let the rest of my brain run. This is generally not actually good poetry; sometimes, it's actively bad poetry. There's just also a level of bad that I can't handle, and yesterday I bounced off of four different books in a row which is kind of discouraging.

Project Gutenberg books also have the problem that I can't easily tell how long a book is. I can compare the size of the files, but I don't have a good feel for what those numbers mean, especially when I can't tell if there are illustrations. I prefer shorter books because I end up feeling glutted if I read the same author for too long. I also really want to finish books once I start them because it's easy to lose track of where I was and of which ones I'm working on.

The difficulty is that, when I find an author I can read, I want to be sure I don't lose track of them but know I will.

Years ago, I used to play solitaire for the mental effect I'm getting from the PG poetry (when it works), but my hands aren't up to even computer solitaire now. I can still type; I just can't handle shuffling or clicking the trackpad (a mouse would be much worse).
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Title: Also in the Act of Reaching
Fandom: Teixcalaan Series - Arkady Martine
Rating: T
Length: 2166 words
Characters/Pairings: Mahit Dzmare, Three Seagrass, Yskander Aghavn
Tags: Friendship, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Reunions, Travel, Fish Out of Water

Notes: Written for Yuletide 2020.

Summary: When Three Seagrass arrived at Lsel Station, she was, officially at least, traveling as a private personage. She had missed Mahit and the possibilities they'd both chosen to turn away from. She also had-- would always have-- a gaping hole in her life where Petal had once been.

It was simply that, left on her own, Three Seagrass wouldn't have let either absence drag her to the ass-end of beyond.

Story on AO3.



Fics posted in 2020 (no links or summaries) )

Year total words: 115404
35 stories

I didn't track words written this year, so my word count might be higher. Then again, I counted words written before the start of 2020 if I didn't post them before that.
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Life has been fairly uneventful during the last few months. I'm in a lot of pain and very much need PT/OT for half a dozen different things. I think it will be six months, best case, before that's an option.

I'm also still having issues with vertigo. Moving my head enough to look at a shelf above eye level or to kiss Scott (he's a foot taller than I am) is enough to make me light headed. Turning over in bed provokes a strong reaction which isn't out and out unpleasant only because there's no risk that I'll fall.

I'm just being very careful. I can walk around okay and even go up and down the basement stairs safely (I just keep a hand on the rail and don't carry anything I can't drop).

Cordelia is strongly leaning toward going to Michigan State next year (or the year after if things are still locked down). The main questions relate to paying for it.

We've been doing very laid back Christmas preparations. We'll be staying home, but there will be Zoom calls. (We do weekly Zoom calls with Scott's parents and his siblings and their families.)

I kind of vaguely want to write and post another three fics by the end of the year so that I finish with 200 stories on AO3. I don't know that I'll find the focus for it, though. I've written that many stories in that sort of window before, but I don't feel motivated right now (possibly because it's 2 a.m.).
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So it's been a while since I last posted. I don't have any good reasons for that. Mostly it's that my attention span is kind of shot. I've half-written a lot of posts and then forgotten to finish or to post.

I've done a fair amount of writing, mostly things either as yet unrevealed or still in the anonymous period. I've got one story to finish by the end of the month and another due in the first week of December. Yuletide will be due not long after that, and while I have a solid idea, I haven't started writing yet.

I would like to write and post more than that by the end of the year, but I don't know that it will happen.

I'm still trying to figure out the right sleep/wake schedule for me so that I don't interfere with Cordelia's classes and choir rehearsals and so that I actually eat more than dried fruit, cheese, and almonds. The only good place for Cordelia to work is the dining room table, and me being in the kitchen is sometimes a problem for her since they're effectively the same room.

My hands, particularly the right hand, have been worse. My left knee has some weird thing going on, too, but that's only an issue if I kneel or otherwise put pressure around the kneecap. Then it feels a lot like a really deep rug-burn on top of a not quite healed burn.

Two weeks ago, we spent a day in the ER because I had bad vertigo. The triage nurse I talked to wanted me checked for a stroke. Nine hours later, they sent me home with instructions to keep doing the Epley maneuver and a warning that that might make things seem worse for a while but was still necessary.

I'm still having issues any time I tilt my head forward or back or to either side. Rolling over in bed is an issue, but at least there's no risk that will make me drop anything or fall.

My sister spent a lot of time telling me that it must be POTS. I pointed out that inner ear issues make more sense for the current acute symptoms.

She also maintains that I don't have anxiety. I just have physiological issues with my body being hair-trigger about adrenaline and such. In her opinion, that's not anxiety because it's not disordered thinking or PTSD. I told her that I don't see a functional difference between my body triggering my brain to panic and my brain triggering my body to panic. The external symptoms are the same. The situations that cause issues are the same.

I can't get useful treatment on either side, and I rather think that anxiety is more like headache or gas or nausea. It's a symptom that can be caused by many things and that can cause other problems. My sister thinks that 'anxiety' is like the flu or a broken bone, a condition with definite boundaries and meaning. It's not.

My sister's trying to say that I'm not mentally ill in a way that comes across to me as a judgment about physical illness being more acceptable. I'm pretty sure that she doesn't even realize that she's doing it. Her physiological explanation fits my symptoms, but that doesn't mean that I don't have anxiety.

I don't think she understood why I was angry with her about it. Why I'm still angry about it.

I've taken a couple of long walks in the last couple of months and a couple of shorter ones. I don't know that I'll be going out much in the next few months because I'm feeling the cold much more this year than in the last few years. This is about how I always used to feel normally in the winter, so I'm assuming that my body's settling toward full menopause. It's a little annoying to have the perimenopause overheating stop in October/November rather than, say, March or April or any time in the summer.

Cordelia has been accepted at all three schools to which she applied. At this point, we're waiting to find out about financial aid offers and about what her best friend plans to do. Her best friend is waiting to hear from the University of Michigan; if she goes there, Cordelia may choose to go to Eastern (which will, I suspect, offer the best aid package). If the friend doesn't get into U of M, they may both go to Michigan State since they've both been accepted there.

From Cordelia's point of view, the three schools she's looking at are about equal. She's interested in teaching or possibly being a school counselor or other educational support type. She's not clear on what all of the options are, and she needs a chance to explore the different options for it. Eastern, Western, and State all have decent education programs.

UCon was last weekend and entirely online. Scott was busy throughout. He ran several games, played in others, and did some ops shifts. I ran a game on Saturday that went well. The game I'd offered on Friday got no players, so I'll offer it again next year. I didn't play anything because I was fairly sure that I'd find figuring it all out too stressful to be fun.

I can't handle too many new things all at once, and I gave priority to being able to run events because I enjoy that more and have less opportunity to do it.

Scott's sister is putting heavy pressure on us to do an in person Thanksgiving. She says they'll do it 'however you need in order to be comfortable' but isn't accepting 'Zoom call' as our answer. We're not bending on this, though.

Scott's father helped him build a ramp off of the back porch. The steps that were back there had started crumbling from the inside and were prone to breaking under anyone who put weight in the wrong place. Scott thinks that a ramp will be easier for me, long term, and easier to keep ice-free once we have snow.

The library has closed again. I'm not sure how long it will be closed this time. Right now, they're saying at least until November 30th, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's longer. I have several books that I haven't touched, and having more time is a relief (especially in light of writing deadlines), but there are several holds waiting for me that I had been really looking forward to reading. Getting those via Overdrive will take at least two months and, in some cases, longer.
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I've been getting more migraines the last four months than I consider normal for me. I suspect that most of them are perimenopause related. During the years when I took oral contraceptives, I had vastly more migraines with one pretty much any time I got less than eight hours of sleep (I didn't realize that the contraceptives were a problem until after Cordelia was born when I went back on them and suddenly had migraines again). I've also had issues with menstrual migraines for about 35 years; those generally hit the first or second day of my period but will occasionally ambush me the day before.

The big series of migraines in August were all in the week before a period (which lasted 18 days). The period before that was in April. The one before that was in October. I'm definitely hoping for August's being the last one forever.

Cordelia auditioned for Skyline Blues, her school's competitive choir. We don't know that they'll have any face to face rehearsals or performances at all this school year, but it's pretty clear that they won't have any in 2020. The director would like to, I think, but she also understands that it would be irresponsible and dangerous.

Cordelia, testing, and college applications )

I had a bunch of blood tests done last Wednesday. Scott was going in for a fasting blood draw and a couple of vaccinations, so I went with him and did my own fasting blood draw. I wasn't in time to schedule a flu shot, though.

My A1c is down a little bit. It's gone from 6.3 to 6.1. I have no explanation for that change except that I slept better when Cordelia stopped needing to get up for school. My diet has gotten more restricted in terms of vegetable intake (there's almost nothing I can digest safely) but hasn't otherwise altered. I'm exercising less.

Starting the 2020/2021 school year )

Scott is kind of buried in cider season overtime at present. He had to call in to take Cordelia to the ACT on Saturday as he (and everyone else) was scheduled to work both Saturday and Sunday. He might get a day this upcoming weekend, but he also might not. If he hadn't called in, by Friday, he'd have worked twelve days straight. They worked Labor Day and the Saturday of Labor Day weekend.

Scott found out from the guy who took over the scheduler job that they actually did set up some guidelines for prioritizing orders and for which customers merit upsetting previously locked in scheduling and which don't. Unfortunately, the parent company's requests are always allowed to do it, and those folks seem to think that bottles materialize instantly, upon request. Scott's company doesn't have any way to store product, so they can't stockpile anything. That means that a Friday order for Monday delivery requires weekend work.

Writing projects and such )
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I'm still not reading here regularly. I'm reading more library books, both ebooks and paper, and finding other ways to fill my time. I get a bit overwhelmed when I think about trying to catch up.

I'm also still having a lot of hand/wrist issues. I've figured out how to minimize the pain and numbness, but I'm still prone to misjudging how long I can afford to keep typing. It doesn't usually hit me until hours later, sometimes, even a day later. The problems accumulate.

Cordelia took part two of drivers' training last week. It was several hours of lecture followed by a test. The class was held in the parking lot with each student bringing their own chair. They skipped the films they'd normally have shown.

We haven't tried to schedule the actual licensing test. Cordelia wants more time to practice parallel parking since she's not comfortable with that yet.

I've written a couple of exchange stories that haven't yet been revealed, and I'm working on three different writing projects and trying to figure out how I want to deal with UCon. That last requires some experimentation with platforms and with what our WiFi can handle in terms of me and Scott running games at the same time. I've asked Scott for help, but this is the worst time of year for scheduling anything that needs his participation.

The two probable options are him running in BlueJeans while I run in Discord or both of us running in BlueJeans. He's spending a lot of time working on investigating other platforms so that UCon can give their potential GMs some solid information about their options. I could probably get by with audio only and maybe some stuff on Gdocs, but I'd like to have video, too.

My body has reset the clock on menopause again. This period has been going for two weeks now.

Stuff about writing )

Cut for COVID discussion and risk taking relatives )

I'm having trouble managing my library holds. The decontamination delays and low staffing levels make it difficult to judge how long something will take. I've been trying to request only things that are actually on the shelf at the branch where we pick up holds, but it still sometimes takes two weeks for those to be available. I don't think there are good options in that direction in terms of predictability.

I want 4-8 CDs, 1-3 DVDs, and about 10 books (counting comics/graphic novels) a week. I'll only ever finish about half of those books, but it's usually not due to running out of time as much as there being a lot of things that I get a little way into and just don't want to finish.
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I lost Tuesday and yesterday to migraines. I suspect that, while I'm okay with stevia in my coffee, I can't deal with the amount in a can of Zevia. Or it might be entirely coincidence. I'm just suspicious. I could explain Tuesday's migraine with me having messed up my medication and meal schedule, but yesterday doesn't have that.

I've signed up for two exchanges, one for Dreaming of Sunshine and one multifandom for 10K+ fics (due date at the end of January and so doable). The Dreaming of Sunshine exchange is still doing sign ups. The multifandom one closes sign ups some time later today.

I also signed up for an exchange of writing encouragement. I'll be matched to encourage someone, and a third person will be matched to encourage me. I have no idea how well it will work, but I want to work on Rheotaxis (I'm not asking whoever matches with me to read it because 190K is a lot of words, even without the content warnings).

I've been having issues with iBooks crashing. Sometimes, I get an error message about it not finding a necessary helper program; other times, it just goes out. Just in case it's because I've overloaded it, I'm archiving some of my epub files by deleting them from iBooks without removing them from my hard drive. I had more than 4000 epubs in iBooks (mostly short fics), and a lot of them are things I don't expect to want to read or reread soon. As long as I still have my spreadsheet and know where I've stashed them, I can always open them up in iBooks again.

Our niece will be living in a dorm when the fall semester starts. There is some family friction over that decision because she and her parents think it will be fine, but the rest of us are concerned about the risk. She's going to Northern Michigan University, so trying to move up there in January would be pretty difficult. I think she also really wants to get out of the house because she's 18.

Cordelia's starting to work on college applications. There are bits of information that she needs from my parents, but she's reluctant to ask. Mostly, it's that she has grandparents who got degrees from these schools, and they ask about the exact degree and the year. She's also having issues because the applications want to know exactly what classes she's taking in her last year of high school and what her SAT or ACT scores are. She doesn't have either of those yet.

We need to fill out the forms to select Cordelia's options for the upcoming school year. Not the class selection but the methodology. The district is offering three approaches for high school students, and we're waiting to hear from the choir director as to how that class will work. She set the online meeting about that for Monday afternoon, so we'll wait until then. Supposedly, all classes will be available with the first two options while the third is more limited. The third option is the long standing program of online instruction which only offers some classes and is almost entirely independent study.

Cordelia has been experimenting with different sizes of crochet hooks. Like me, she has an easier time with the smaller hooks. Her biggest issue is that she can't figure out how to ease up and not pull everything tight. She also hasn't tried anything beyond single crochet. I can't demonstrate anything for her, so she's mostly looking at videos.
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Cut for NSFW tags )


I'm considering signing up for a couple of exchanges currently running. I haven't decided yet, though. I'm waiting to see if there are requests I'd be happy writing. There's often a mismatch between what I can write for a fandom and what people want from it.

I've also got several completed but unrevealed stories that I've written as treats for exchanges still in progress. I'm not sure when I'll be able to claim those.
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I like the lighter weight of the new laptop a lot. I feel less like I'm constantly about to drop it. I also like the fact that I can put it to sleep with Chrome open and not have it crash when I try to wake it up.

I am a little sad that I no longer have a functional version of Scrivener. I never really found it useful for writing, but earlier this year (right around when my hands got bad), I had an idea for using it to organize my saved fic prompts and plot bunnies. The recipe template looked promising. I just have no idea how feasible it would be in terms of my own workflow and preferences. The upfront conversion time investment would be massive, and I might never do it because of that.

Shelling out for a Scrivener upgrade simply in order to find out whether or not it'll work better than my current practice (dumping prompts into documents with confusing names and occasionally reorganizing and/or culling them) seems kind of silly right now. Maybe in a year or three.

I let myself get distracted yesterday and didn't finish an Overdrive ebook that I was enjoying. It expired about an hour after I got up today, and I was only 68% through it. Getting the ebook again will take a long time, so I've put a hold on the paper version. There are copies of that on the shelf, so getting one shouldn't take more than two weeks.

Death of a neighbor. Few details )

UCon has announced that they'll be online this year rather than face to face. I'd been expecting that because the convention is in November. I'm pretty sure that they needed to let the venue know at a good distance out from the date.

We know some of the organizers, and Scott will be helping some of them test a couple of different platforms for running boardgames. They were supposed to play Flash Point last night, but the other person was ill, so it's delayed until tonight. Hopefully, it will happen.

I'm not sure if I'll participate in the convention this year. I'm not sure that I want to fight the technological challenges involved. I would like to run some role playing scenarios, but I'm not convinced that a virtual convention will be as welcoming for that.

I had been thinking to experiment with GMing online, but I put the idea on hold when I started having issues with my hands. The new laptop handles audio and video better than the old one did, though, so it may be time to look at that again.
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This whole thing is kind of one long anxiety meltdown )

Scott's sister insisted on a socially distanced gathering to celebrate our niece's high school graduation. We sat in their backyard in four clumps, one for each household involved. I found it very uncomfortable, but I was also feeling exhausted from having not slept the last couple of night while trying to finish an exchange fic before the posting deadline. I want to tweak the story further before reveals because some bits don't flow the way I wanted them to, but that may or may not happen.

I think that I'm going to have to drop out of the WIP Big Bang. I want to write the story, but my brain isn't focusing right for it just now.

I'm trying to get larger pill organizer boxes. The multivitamins and calcium supplements I've got won't fit in the current ones. The bigger boxes won't fit so nicely in a pocket, but they will help me make sure I take those supplements. Right now, I'm prone to forgetting. Sadly, I've only been able to get six of them because the only place I can find that's selling them is capping how many a single person can buy (I got three, and Scott got three). I think they assume that nobody has a reasonable use for more than one of these at a time, but I use one for each day of the week. Right now, I take meds at six different times every day, so a seven box organizer isn't a 7-day thing for me.

I'm probably going to ask my SIL to order me another two organizers. That way, I have an extra if I lose one or break one. I don't want to try to get buy with only six of them because that will throw off my routine for when I fill them and will make it harder for me to track when I need to request renewals (this is mainly an issue for prescriptions that need renewing since I need more lead time on them. It's bad to discover that I'm out and can't refill on a Friday night or a Saturday morning or even a Sunday. There's a reason I fill my organizers on Thursdays).

I'm trying to figure out some good ways to help myself calm down (especially when I don't realize that I'm starting to freak out). I don't really have any ideas since most things that other people seem to find helpful have negative effects on me, either increasing my stress or increasing my pain (and therefore increasing my stress).

Writing isn't happening. Reading is just kind of masking the problem. I don't know. It's hard to reach out when everything in here feels like it's on fire.
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I'm at 1500 words for a 5000 word minimum story that's due this weekend (Fandom 5K). I've got the characters in the same place and am ready for Plot to happen. I just don't yet have hook for it. I'm confident that I can finish the story, but there may be some marathon writing sessions at the end.

I'm in the middle of a long Overdrive audiobook with two more checked out and needing my attention. One of those isn't quite as long and is a thing I should be able to get again without much delay. The second is long and has a waitlist as long as my arm. I can listen to some things while I write, but I tend to miss parts of the story. I think I won't mind that so much with the current book, but I would mind with the other two.

We're still in that unfortunate part of the year when I'm too warm to do without the ceiling fan but get very cold with all that wind blowing on me. The fan in the living room is adjustable via dial, but some lower speeds make grinding noises as the fan spins. The fan in the bedroom has three or four different speeds, but changing requires pulling on a cord that's a bit difficult for me to reach, enough so that I don't bother even when I'm uncomfortable. (We haven't lengthened it reasons that make sense to us but are likely to confuse other people. Mainly, that it's one of two cords right there and the one I'm less likely to need to reach easily and quickly.)

I still haven't adjusted to Scott's new schedule. I'm not sure how long it will take. This morning, I fell back to sleep after he left and woke less than an hour later with reflux. I have no idea why reflux at that point since it had been at least seven hours since I'd had anything but water and my normal medications. I had to take my before breakfast meds, wait half an hour, and then eat something in order to settle it. I went for bread as easy and likely to work. It did, but I still had a hard time getting back to sleep, so I think I only had about five hours of sleep during the ten hours I was in bed.

I'd probably have slept later, but I had something I needed to do at 1:00. That's when Imperfect Foods lets us look at what they're planning to send us and allows for alterations. Going online even ten minutes late can mean that half of the goods they were offering are sold out. If I'm fast, there will still be some things completely gone, but I have better odds, generally.

I would prefer that Scott and Cordelia have input on the order, too, but Cordelia's unwilling, and Scott's now unavailable until around 4:00. This leaves me trying to figure out whether or not he actually wants, say, celery (I can't eat it, not even in small amounts). They don't have the same things every time, so it's hard to make a get-this-every-time list. I've also mentioned to Scott that we should compare prices on a few things that we can also get at Kroger.

Naturally, we both forget by Saturday. Then it comes up again on Monday. I think we're kind of bad at this planning thing. In a different time, I'd look at the online prices on the Kroger website, but those no longer reliably track with in-store prices.

I suspect that Imperfect Foods would inspire more expensive impulse buys from us if Scott didn't have the alpha-galactose allergy. They've often got sausages, bacon, and various cuts of beef. They've also usually got vegan alternatives, but those tend to be priced high enough not to be in our budget. Also, a lot of them add celery and/or rosemary for flavor and so will make me quite sick. (And, yes, buying boxed or canned broth has become vastly more exciting in also sorts of risky ways).
the_rck: (Default)
I'm fighting a migraine today. I had it all day yesterday. I took Amerge twice and naproxen and Tylenol at different times. I also showered and applied cold packs. The cold helped most. Pressure on specific parts of my neck and skull helped, too.

I took extra halcion when I went to bed, and I slept pretty solidly for ten hours. I still had the headache when I woke, though. It's not quite as bad today, but it's not good. I also slept okay Sunday night into Monday morning, not great but not horribly.

Food and caffeine haven't reliably helped. I still feel like my brain is bashing itself against the inside of my skull, trying to get out.

Cordelia and I ordered delivery from Red Robin this evening because I hoped that a burger would help. It did help for about forty five minutes. Sadly, it's not a thing I can repeat at that sort of interval.

I'm about three quarters of the way to the minimum word count for one of my exchange stories. I'm fighting with it because parts of it want to be in present tense and others in past. I also don't have a plot yet. I would really like to write more today, but I don't think this migraine will help me along at all.

I'm thinking to sign up for the WIP Big Bang. I've narrowed it down to four options. All of them seem possible but also have down sides. I'm pretty sure which of the four would win the poll here if I made one, but it's the one that would be the most difficult to complete. Having narrowed things down to four options is an achievement since the list started with twenty WIP that I was confident would run longer than the 7500 word minimum.

I'm also considering Into a Bar, but I don't know that I have the mental energy to commit to anything of the sort. I still have an incomplete assignment from a previous year of the challenge. Maybe I'll just see if I can write that by the deadline.
the_rck: (Default)
I've had trouble sleeping the last few nights. Sometimes, it's joint pain. Sometimes, it's reflux. Sometimes, it's congestion. Sometimes, it's all of the above, either all at once or in sequence.

I've been reading a lot of long WIP stories on AO3 or FFnet. Most of them are things I've seen recommended on various Discords. The long part is mostly because I don't want to have to figure out what to read next. The WIP part doesn't so much have a reason; they're just what I've seen linked.

I need to start writing two exchange fics. One's due in about three weeks. The main barrier to that one is picking a prompt to write as I matched on more than one. The other exchange has a later due date and mostly needs canon review and some fact checking.

Today's household chore is cleaning out the fridge. There's a lot of stuff that's well past being edible, and tomorrow is trash pick up. I'm just currently putting the chore off because it's going to be nasty.

My hands have been very bad the last week or so. There are things I could do last month that I can't do today. I suspect that things will get better again, but it won't be permanent.
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We actually got our Imperfect Foods box this week. Given that we didn't get a box last week, we weren't sure we would.

I've almost finished a draft of one of my lingering WIP. It's kind of skeletal in terms of sense of place and of anchoring sensory details, but it's more than 11000 words so far. I may edit for description, but I also may not. I think there are only about a dozen people who'll read this one because it's a crossover of two of my previous long series (the two Sky High series) and won't make any sense without those. It's a fairly self-indulgent thing but also fun for me to write.

I'm thinking that I might make a list of my WIP again and ask you all if any of the stories are of particular interest. I think that knowing that a specific person was interested in a specific story might help me finish it. Maybe I'll just stick with the stories that I think will be short(ish) standalones. I'd like to feel like I'm finishing things rather than starting and abandoning dozens more things.

Today will be a day for cooking, I think. Well, some cooking. We haven't finished last week's pot pie yet, so making more has to wait for the dish to be empty and clean. I can bake the squash today, though, and get Scott and Cordelia to chop up the other ingredients. I also want to change our sheets and run 2-3 loads of laundry.

I've been trying to read some of the fics and ebooks that I've previously downloaded for later reading. I've got nearly 600 things that I either haven't read or am not sure whether or not I've read. Some of them are relatively short while others really aren't. I made a bad indexing choice when I created my spreadsheet of ebooks, however, so I can't sort by length right now.

Basically, I appended 'words' or 'pages' to all entries in my length field so that I could distinguish what metric I was using. Ordering things by that field doesn't treat the numbers as numbers, so '197 words' indexes after '18444444 words.' (The fields are author, title, fandom (using Gutenberg as a fandom), length, series, read (y/n/?), and notes.)
the_rck: (Default)
My sinuses have calmed down considerably. I got about ten hours of sleep last night. I feel quite a lot better.

I missed the sign up window for Fandom 5K because it ended last night. I simply wasn't up to making choices Friday or Saturday. I'm eying pinch hit and treat options there. Maybe something will work out that way.

I've started working on a sign up for Exchange no Jutsu (for Naruto and adjacent fandoms). That's going to take a bit of work to narrow down requests and offers, so I'm being ruthless in culling the character/grouping lists. If I've got the slightest doubt about my ability to write something or my likely enjoyment of writing it, I take it off the list entirely.

Imperfect Foods failed to send us a box this week. Friday is our normal delivery day. They sent Scott a mid-afternoon email that said the box would arrive a day late, on Saturday. Nothing came yesterday. Scott emailed them today and got a response that said they'd just deliver everything on our next normal delivery day. That's awkward and annoying since we count on them for root vegetables and greens.

If we'd known yesterday, Scott could have looked for some of that stuff while he was getting our other groceries. I don't know what he'd have been able to find, but he'd probably have found something.

We're currently planning to make a chicken pot pie for dinner. I cooked the chicken earlier this week. Now I just need to persuade Scott and Cordelia to do the physically intensive parts. My hands aren't up to stirring a pot or to mixing the dough for the topping.

We've got about four hours to cook and eat before the family Zoom gathering.
the_rck: (Default)
Saturday afternoon, Scott and I tried to play Spirit Island. We found the rules confusing because the game has many, many moving parts. Scott's been watching play throughs since then, so that he'll have a better idea how things are supposed to flow the next time we try (maybe next weekend). I'm hoping that we can get to the point where I'm used to the complicated bits because right now they frustrate me.

Scott's sister has decided that there will be a family Zoom chat every Sunday evening from now on. She had us play Pictionary but did not try to get me or Cordelia to draw anything. Even if I had wanted to, my hands wouldn't have allowed it.

I have a bus draft of my Wayback Exchange story. I plan to post it tomorrow and then do more editing. There's a flash exchange going on that I think I could still write treats for and a couple of other things that I also wanted to treat but may not get to.

I'm considering signing up for Fandom 5K, but I'm not really feeling enthusiastic about most things I could request. I just want to write. Maybe there will be a good pinch hit for it. Signing up for exchanges is a vast amount of work, and I feel like a bad potential recipient when I can't manage more than a tepid yeah-these-are-good.

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