First Hit

Woke up with P!nk’s True Love playing in my head. I am puzzled–I barely know the song, it’s my daughter who’s the hardcore P!nk fan around here. But the radio inside my skull picks tracks on its own schedule, never mine, so I guess I just roll with it until something else burrows in. At least my habit of listening to music most of the day means I’ll get another earworm in short order, if not while doing the morning work then while running. I should rearrange my running soundtracks to keep everything fresh, too…but maybe not this week.

There’s a dense fog advisory on, but our particular tiny biome–a couple of blocks on the side of a hill–is clear. The dogs were incredibly eager to get outside this morning, then both turned their noses up at breakfast and are now engaged upon their first nap of the day while I am forced to remain upright and (presumably) conscious. Sometimes I envy the damn canines. On the other hand, I’m not fond of chasing squirrels or licking my own paws, so I guess it works out.

I spent the weekend attempting to do something like resting, but it didn’t quite happen. Consequently I’ve a severe case of Monday exhaustion and my nerves are only half-wrapped. The sparks are pretty, though, and I’ve a baseball bat right by the desk.

The week’s first punch just maddened me. You know that trope where someone hits a fighter and said fighter just regards the opponent with a blood-grimed grin, very happy they’ve finally been given the chance to unleash their temper? Yeah. Like that. Each mouthful of coffee is another weapon in my arsenal.

I’m also looking forward to the upcoming launch of the third and last Hostage to Empire book. My goodness, the series had a rocky road, and the final book was written during lockdown so whenever I read passages I remember the uncertainty, and shiver a little. I’m glad to be moving on to new things, and very thankful for the production crew.

I unboxed my author’s copies of said book on last Friday’s Tea With Lili, which will stay live for about two weeks before being replaced. I’m going to give the streaming another month to see if the performance anxiety goes down. Each time I do one of those things I end up shaking with stress and anxiety, though I’m told I appear very calm; maybe it’s my habit of slowing down when things get weird that does it. Holding the appearance of calm is necessary when one has dogs or small children, since they largely take their cues from the adult in the room. If I start losing my shit they start ramping up, and that’s not good for anyone.

I might throw caution to the winds, get some correspondence and administrivia out of the way today, then spend the rest of the day doing an initial polish on the werewolf story before making some decisions about whether or not I want to serialize it. If I put the Carnivale soundtrack on repeat I might even shake every other earworm out of my head, and maybe the brainweasels will stop yelling too. There are a lot of them crowding my bone headpan.

Brainweasels. Earworms. Sleeping dogs. Sun burning through fog, and I keep looking around my office thinking I should clean this place up. There are several things I’ve just stuck in corners or on top of the cabinets because I don’t have any bloody time to deal with them during a pandemic, and they’ve now been sitting, solidifying, for years. Might as well rearrange things and give them a permanent home…

after I get some toast, walk the dogs, run my corpse, spend two hours getting paperwork to the accountant, and do everything else on the list today. No rest for the weary or the wicked, and these days I’m both to the very hilt.

Happy Monday, my friends. I hope you have a baseball bat handy too, and that the first hit only makes you mad. One way or another, we’ll get this week sorted.

See you around.