Tag: journal

About Me

January 2024

Autumn

I’ve referenced this before, but the reason I was all but absent for most of 2023 was because there was a lot going on. I got my kids started on a new online school program, and while we’ve been very happy with it, we still had to adjust and figure out what the heck we were doing. It’s taken up an enormous amount of mental energy.

There was also a big 5000-mile road trip across the US with all of our kids. It went pretty well for the most part, with only one heart-stopping moment of our van dying at a gas station near the SC/NC border — but it turned out that the battery terminal had wiggled lose, so it was a quick and easy fix. Phew.

And my 16-year-old cat died. Two days afterwards I came down with one of the worst sinus infections that I’ve ever had in my entire life, and my sinuses still aren’t 100% recovered from it.

The cherry on top was that with everything going on, I forgot to hydrate adequately and got a small kidney stone. Such adventures!

Anyway, that’s enough of that. I could say a lot more, but I don’t want to sound all complain-y and negative. Let’s just say that if one of my future novels includes a wasp attack, it is 100% based on real life.

On the brighter side, I have put in a lot of effort to expand my culinary experiences, and have even tried my hand at sous vide!

I suppose that one of the perks about being a writer is that I tend to view the events of my life with a sort of detached amusement after all is said and done. Don’t get me wrong, I struggle through like any other person would, but eventually it comes to an end and I think to myself, “I could put that in a story.”

Unfortunately, I seem to be quite rusty with creating graphics for my blog. Like, wow, I used to do this all the time, and now it’s a little weird and confusing. Heck, I even looked at Canva to see if I could simplify the process (I currently use GIMP), but that site wanted me to pay to use anything remotely appealing, and I’m WAY too cheap for that. I’ll stick with open source, thank-you-very-much!

With so much of my energy going into my kids’ online school, I’m not anticipating being able to update more than once a week. However, I will announce that I currently have 25,000 words written for a new novel, so pretty soon here I’ll start posting that. You know, when I get my graphics figured out, lol.

Always let something petty stop you from following through! It’s called procrastination. 🤣

About Me

Journal

Autumn

In terms of my personal life, we’ve been stuck in a streak of bad luck for awhile. The water heater broke and had to be replaced, we went on a hike and got attacked by wasps, car trouble to spare … plenty of big stuff mixed in with tiny tragedies. Enough that there hasn’t been a moment to stop and breathe.

This year I decided to sign my kids up for an online charter school, and we’re making the adjustment. It’s got more structure than what we were doing with our homeschooling before, but it’s still self-paced and interest-driven, and shouldn’t be confused with “school at home” that a number of parents participated in during the pandemic (hur hur).

My five-year-old’s kindergarten class is basically playing on an app for 30 minutes a day to learn reading, math, and science. It’s pretty easy.

Anyway, my biggest reason for making the change is that it opened up a lot of resources to us for no cost; for example, my 7-year-old received a STEM circuitry kit for one of his classes, and so far it’s his absolute favorite subject.

And apparently, there’s a Minecraft Education Edition.

Hopefully once we get settled into our new routine, we won’t have any more time to deal with bad luck. Right? HA HA!

At the very least, a lot of the plumbing was updated, the cars have been given an enormous amount of TLC, and we know to stay away from logs while out in nature. It’s been a season of personal growth, that’s for sure.

Stable Diffusion XL
About Me

Snow and more snow

Autumn

This is the winter than never ends …

So, I’ve become even more of a space cadet now that I’ve taken to spending each day waiting for the snow to stop falling. Is there such a thing as sunlight and warmth? I don’t know. Maybe it was all a dream …

Returning to seriousness, I’m beginning to suffer from a sense of guilt. I enjoy my Spring Cleaning routine of opening windows and chasing the stuffy winter air out of the house, yet here we are in April and I have yet to scrub down anything. The rugs need to be shampooed. The car could use a thorough vacuuming. I feel so lazy.

But I can’t exactly drag the shopvac out into the snow, now can I.

Don’t mind me while I wilt over here. I’m sure that Spring will come eventually.

Or the world is in for a lot of trouble.

XD

About Me

Online

Autumn

Technical difficulties left us without internet for a few days. Naturally the kids complained, and I was all, “When I was your age, we didn’t have the internet at all.”

Cue feeling old.

I think my family got online around ’98 when I was 10, with dial up over the phone lines so no one could make or receive any calls while it was connected, which severely limited how much time we spent on the internet. Kind of crazy thinking back to how much the world has changed since then.

Anyway, it was kind of a spontaneous vacation. Got pancakes at IHOP, went to a craft store in person, spent time at our local indoor swimming pool, and roasted coffee beans over charcoal briquettes to see how it would taste, despite there still being snow on the ground.

Now here I am, not doing anything particularly useful because the internet is back. I question everything.

Sorry about not updating The Scions on Monday, but I didn’t get it set up before the technical difficulties started. With everything as it is, I figure that I can resume next week.

About Me

Cat update

Autumn

The 16-year-old dying cat is peeing on everything.

I’m resigned to simply dealing with it until the inevitable. I’ve told the children many times over that they need to keep the doors to their bedrooms shut to prevent the cat from peeing on their things as well. Naturally, they didn’t listen, and I’ve had to do some extra laundry loads as a result.

I’ve been keeping old towels on the floor in the kitchen, to encourage the cat to pee on them instead of anything else. Easier to manage. Somewhat works. We already have an easily accessible low-profile litter box for the three-legged cat, and at least he’s doing his other business in there.

Death is such a tricky subject, particularly with these slow moving conditions. We know the cat’s kidneys are failing, he occasionally throws up uric acid, but he’s on a (ridiculously expensive) specialized low-protein diet, and he does seem to be holding steady. I could be cleaning up cat pee and vomit for awhile.

Better than ‘died suddenly’. Please excuse the smell, we’re all coping with something over here. It’s still too wintery to bust out the spring cleaning supplies. Heavy snowstorms and all that. Maybe in March.

art

Turtles

Autumn

After I inflamed the tendons in my foot with sloppy treadling, I decided that I should mix up my yarn spinning by using a drop spindle every now and then. Eventually, I got a turkish drop spindle set.

Naturally I made a quick reference of video tutorials to ensure that I was winding the yarn on correctly to create a center-pull ball. I very quickly noticed that everyone was neatly lining up their yarn to make very neat “turtles” that visually look very neat. (Turtles are what they call the yarn balls that are woven around the cross sticks)

Context:

I’m an INTP. When I saw this video by Frank James about how the different personality types kill their relationships, my initial reaction was, “I would never go out in public wearing pajamas … but yeah, he’s spot on.” I’m not all that big on social presentation. I can’t remember the last time I wore makeup, and while I do clean house every day, I’m terrible at organization. I figure that I don’t have any room in my life for people who are going to be pissy about my house being full of children. There are toys everywhere. Deal with it.

So, when it comes to spending extra time making a temporary ball of yarn look pretty, I’m skeptical.

If there’s some other purpose, then I’m open to the idea. Does it tangle less when being unwound? Fits more yarn? I’m genuinely curious. I don’t mind spending the extra time if it somehow benefits me later — I’m just not going to do it purely for aesthetic. I’m waaay too INTP for that.

I almost asked about possible other benefits on one of the youtube tutorials, but was overcome with anxiety instead. Would my question be taken as an insult, and get me attacked and ridiculed? I daren’t say anything.

Which paints a depressing picture of how I’ve experienced socializing with other women.

Personality wise, I strongly prefer spinning wheels anyway. I’m only doing this to avoid aggravating the tendons in my foot again.

So I’ll just quietly do my own thing, and stay far away from those pretty little “turtles”.

About Writing

TBM remake

Autumn

The other night I had an absolutely hilarious dream about The Black Magus, where the two main characters were bad stereotypes.

Lily was recast as a socially awkward red-head, desperately trying to get the Black Magus’s attention through not-so-subtle means. At one point, she had her phone in hand and was fretting about whether or not she should call him, talking to herself, “I didn’t steal his phone number; I borrowed it.”

Ainmire had short black hair, and dressed all in black. He was too caught up in his own self-importance to actually care about anyone else, but for his own amusement he decided to throw that awkward red-head a bone — because, c’mon, she was being ridiculously obvious about wanting him.

Even as I was dreaming it, I kept thinking about how ridiculous it was.

But it would make for a fun spoof.

And yes, I dream about my own novels and characters.#WeirdoWriter

Does anyone else miss calling them pound signs?

About Writing

Writing in 2022

Autumn

I had made it my goal to publish a book every year, but at this point I can definitely say that it’s not going to happen in 2022.

It’s been a chaotic year.

At the very least, I can say that this year was dedicated to fairly big events, like having baby #6, and saving our cat’s life at the cost of her leg — there was never a point where I could have been writing, but just didn’t. So hey, good enough for me.

Dear master sergeant Hartmann, one day you will grasp the object of your desires. But probably not this month.

And CR1515 will have to wait until next year to continue his steamy philosophical rants. You have no idea how much I enjoy writing a cynical cyborg.

On that note, I’ve had this particular quote by CR1515 echoing in my head of late.

Humans have become the worst combination of lazy and entitled. They don’t want me to be relatable – they want to hate me because they know that I am superior to their celebrations of mediocrity and failure. They don’t want to achieve anything great, or even to manage their own basic survival, and they will attack anything that reflects their own pathetic state back to them.

This speech is promptly followed with lots and lots of delicious arguing, lol. Gosh I miss the bickering and ranting in that story.

Maybe (and this is a big MAYBE) I’ll get away with publishing both The Scion Suit Multiverse and CR1515 next year … provided no one loses any more limbs.

About Me

Strength

Autumn

During the time I spent on Facebook, one of the things I really hated was when people posted photos of various ouchies.

So I’m not going to do that.

The face of strength and courage.

About Me

Continued

Autumn

We ended up deciding to transfer our cat over to our regular vet for some extra care, so she didn’t come home until today.

She’s eating well, but with the broken front leg and the cone around her head, I’ve been helping with holding the food up so she can reach it more easily (I can’t figure out how to get the cone off for her to eat, and I’m scared to handle her at this point).

The kids are being really well behaved about all this. I’ve told them that they can keep her company sitting by the kennel, but they have to stay quiet and not touch her, and so far they’ve been perfectly obedient about it. Of course, she’s a pretty pathetic sight at the moment, and they’re probably just as scared of accidentally hurting her as I am.

Tired.

At this point, all that’s left to do is to keep an eye on our cat and keep up with her medications.

Probably time to catch up on some sleep.