Lilith Saintcrow

No worries, I’m just tired. Managing pain after wisdom teeth extraction is, if you will pardon the language, a bitch. Every six hours–at twelve and six, basically–it’s time for another dose of ibuprofen for the swelling plus pain meds. I almost feel the pain myself at this point.

The hardest thing in the world is seeing a kid suffer and wishing you could do it for them. I console myself with the thought that it will be over soon, he’s already over the hump. The surgery was the rough part, recovery is a piece of cake.

Thanks to Jess and djonn yesterday, who let me know Dr. McCoy’s song, titled Bones, is off a Leslie Fish album. Which I will be burning up the road buying, because that song is stuck in my head so often, they should charge me royalties.

No, really, they shouldn’t. I can’t pay. I’ve got kids. And a Muse to feed.

Speaking of Muses, there’s an excellent piece about abusing the Muse over at RTB today. Thanks to the Selkie for sending that alone, I about peed myself laughing. TMI, I know.

I am working on the coffee mugs from the Valentine Slogan Contest. Life has interfered, just like life has interfered with me writing more on the Jill book. But the fifth Valentine book is in copyedits, and I have a week to come up with supplementary materials and tweak the glossary, since there are a few demon terms that need to be slipped in and Kgembe’s Laws to be defined. Argh. Maybe I’ll just spend the weekend staring at the ceiling and trying to think.

Last but not least, thank you, gods and critters, for creating portable air conditioning units. I don’t even care about the venting-outside-thing and the needing duct tape to jury rig the whole thing together. (Where does the term “jury rig” and “jerry rig” come from, anyway? Must go find out…) The current spate of eighty-degree days, shading into ninety-degree days, would be hellish if not for my quick trip to Target to pick up three hundred dollars worth of cool summer goodness. I’m calling it a necessary expense, since I don’t want the kids to faint of heatstroke and if I have to deal with sweating through one more day I might get cranky and Hurt Someone.

And nobody wants that.

There’s this filk song I hum when things get sticky.

Oh I could have worked on a research ship
I could have been stationed on the sea
Or dug a cozy niche
In diseases of the rich
But that wasn’t good enough for me, oh no,
I was tired of the land
And diseases that were bland
And some troubles that I didn’t care to face
Now I wake each morning to the intercom’s warning
And I wonder why I ever went to space!

It’s Dr. McCoy’s song, and it’s a real kicker. Only I can’t find it on CD anywhere. So…if you know, dear flisters, please enlighten me. I’ve googled until I’m raw.

Speaking of raw, the Sullen One is doing much better. He’s taking down smoothies and pudding like it’s going out of style. The pain meds aren’t coming fast enough, though. They never do.

In any case, between caring for him and getting the house run otherwise, I’m busy as an egg juggler in Spring. Sorry about that. I’ll be my regular self again soon, I promise.

Just as soon as I can figure out who that self is.

The Sullen One is home safe and resting after the wisdom-teeth extraction. We got some ibuprofen in him to help with the swelling, and he’s recovering from the sedation quite nicely. Updates will be spotty over the next couple days as we nurse him back to his regular self.

It’s a lovely day, sunny and windy. Hope you had a less stressful morning than mine, dear Readers. Even when something like this goes smoothly, it’s still a pain in the rear. But hopefully now the Sullen One’s jaw will quit hurting, and once he heals up he will feel tons better.

Au revoir for now!

Today is the Festival of Soft Foods, for lo tomorrow my gosling the Sullen One will be getting his wisdom teeth taken out. While this momentous event will stop a good many plaints (his mouth and jaw hurt, poor thing) it will also be a Huge Experience, because we’re looking at general anaesthetic and a whole bunch of nursing and fussing afterward.

I have decided that the Sullen One is my gosling, for he is so tall. And the Princess is my duck, for she is so cute and swims her own way. The Little Prince is my chickadee since he never slows down and never. Shuts. Up.

Some time ago, they tried to tell me the Little Prince had a speech impediment, because he wasn’t talking yet. They were right to be concerned, and I was right to refuse to consider the notion. It was just simply that with the Princess around, my chickadee couldn’t get a word in edgewise. And he had her translating for him a lot, so he could just point and grunt and my duckling, bless her eager little heart, would inform us all loudly and repeatedly of what he wanted. Why should he talk?

Of course, once his wants got a little more complex and he figured out that the Princess wasn’t above asking for something other than what he wanted–so of course, she could share in something SHE wanted–he had a reason to start talking. And boy howdy, has he ever. Babbling the whole day long.

It’s like a little woodland brook, between him and the Princess. Bibble-babble all day. Only woodland brooks don’t fight with their sisters, causing their mothers to say firmly and loudly, “Get along. Or go fight where I can’t hear you.” while she’s crouched over her laptop.

Heh.

Every once in a while, when the Little Prince climbs up behind me in the chair, puts his feet against my kidneys, and regales me with stories of his day while I’m working on a book, I gaze blankly at whatever thing I was doing before he started with the rabbit-punches to the kidneys and say softly to myself, “Speech impediment, my ass.”

If the DHM is present he’ll laugh, because he was with me on the whole thing. In his immortal words: “The kid doesn’t need a speech therapist. He just needs some spare airwaves.”

Many thanks for all the birthday-lovin’! For my birthday last week I got several lovely cards, some wonderful fan letters, some Blue Nile silver, a hardback Modern Library The Count of Monte Cristo, a small leather satchel from one of my favorite leather people, a couple Wong Kar-Wai movies, and (from the incomparable Mooncrab) a copy of Tangerine Dream’s soundtrack to Near Dark, one of the better vampire movies around in that:

a) It has Lance Henriksen. As a vampire from the Civil War.
b) Vampires in the Midwest in RVs with foil on the windows to block out the sun? Sign me up.
c) Bill Paxton as Severen. Mmmmh.

Even though it has a HEA which doesn’t quite fit the movie, I still love it. I still think May should have gone off with Severen, but that’s just me. No, I will not be writing fanfic. Though I might read it…

Anyway, another of my birthday presents was four hours of yardwork from the Sullen Gosling. He’s a real trouper, and scolds me when he thinks I’m lifting anything too heavy. When I took a hacksaw to something that Really Needed To Be Cut Back, he hovered until I handed it over to him. At which point it burst out of him, “This is a metal saw!” and he trundled off to get the correct one. I suppose that’s teenage tact, in that he didn’t tell me I was using the wrong tool while I was bent halfway over using it. I dunno. To me, a saw’s a saw, dangit.

Except that today my back is reminding me I Really Should Not Have Done That. Ah well. I’ll go take some ibuprofen and settle down. Since my wireless router pooped out on me I might actually get some work done today.

Heh. Just kiddin’. Happy Monday, everyone!

My weekly post is up at the Midnight Hour. It’s all about beating up your characters (again.) I even reference Dawson’s Creek.

Man, I’m a geek.

Anyway, I got on the subject because Jill Kismet is just about to get into a hell of a fight in an alley. She’s going to bleed plenty before this is done. *evil laugh*

This week I celebrated my birthday by buying and rewatching Harold and Maude, finishing A. Lee Martinez’s Gil’s All Fright Diner (given to me by the incomparable Martian Mooncrab), and taking a day off after finishing the revisions on To Hell and Back. Today it’s cloudy and cool with a breeze, which is just about perfect weather for what I plan on doing–writing until I get through the alley scene and set up the second big plot twist, then maybe going and lying down in the back yard with The Count of Monte Cristo, hardback, which the DHM got me for my birthday. Of course, he doesn’t know he got it for me, but I’ll thank him all the same. It just works out better that way.

I really, really love Harold and Maude. I want to be just like Maude when I grow up–if I ever do. I want to be eighty years old and capable of living fully, posing nude, loving sunflowers, and feeding birds. Not to mention driving like a bat out of hell.

Heh. It’s nice to have goals. Happy weekend, dear Reader.