Life, Miscellaneous

Hurt, Beautiful

This is the empty container for the antibacterial soap we found worked best for Odd Trundles’s yeasty paws. I…couldn’t toss it just yet. So it sits in the windowsill, where I see it while I do dishes and I think about that little fellow and how much I love him still.

The cracks in my heart make it bigger, make it easier for that beast to expand. But oh, sometimes…they ache.

And this is Sir Boxnoggin, Lord van der Sploot, who has put on several pounds and a layer of gloss to his coat and is hoping very much that you are bringing pets or a treat for a Very Good Boy. He has lost his shyness and become the goofball I suspected he was under all the trembling uncertainty.

So many things hurt. So many things are beautiful, too. Some days I can’t tell the two apart. I would not trade the pain to make the beauty more, or trade the beauty to make the pain less. It’s not the ache I dread, but going numb.

It’s been a long week, chickadees. Let’s all have a bit of a reward for getting through it in still-breathing fashion. Be kind to yourselves this weekend, please.

Over and out.

Going Gets Tough

I’ve been blogging for a long while now. There are dry periods, where I have nothing much to say except for the minutiae of daily life–how the book-sausage gets made, what the dogs have done now, how publishing is changing. Oh, and the weather. Of course the weather is a constant concern.

I partly blame reading military history; weather is always the third general upon the field, and one who can’t be ignored. Today the rain has washed away everything except a few sheltered snow holdouts. The streets are awash, the roof kissed over and over by falling drops. The dogs aren’t going to like our outing, at least not when the initial oh boy we’re outside WITH MUM wears off.

That takes about ninety seconds in a downpour. They must love me a lot.

This morning I woke up with Jack T. Colton from Romancing the Stone yelling “Oh, man, the Doobie Brothers broke up!” Which meant I had to go listen to What a Fool Believes and then onto a Twitter rant about how much I love that damn movie and how it’s probably responsible for my current career.1

Now you know who to blame, I guess? When the going gets tough…

Copyedits continue apace. I spent some serious time yesterday looking into Ingram Spark and mass-market paperback trim sizes. If I get the whole PDF cover template thing done, the first experiment is Steelflower in mass-market size.

It’s a great time to be self-publishing, IF one knows what one’s doing. If one doesn’t, the options available might boggle one into inaction or worse, signing away one’s rights without proper compensation. Or one might think that because of a crying fit brought on by frustration (I fucking hate PDF cover templates, let me sing you a whole song about how I hate them) the entire thing isn’t worth doing, and toss it all out the door.

Yes, I was tempted yesterday. But today’s a whole new day, I’ve got my spark back and the heat set to the wick. Today is for more copyedits, and when I can’t do that anymore because my head will explode if I look at one more comma placement question, I might put together a soundtrack for HOOD and poke a bit more at cover templates.

But for right now, it’s raining and the dogs need a walk. See you around, chickadees.

Read ’em and weep. I always do.

Flood Watch

The Keepers

The snow is worn away by waves of rain, and yesterday I went looking through my old notes for avatar. I left Michael crucified in midair, and maybe he’s hung there enough. I really never liked him, but maybe I was a wee bit vengeful…

…nah, probably not. Maybe he needs to stay there a bit longer.

Anyway, I’ve got to get out and move. The snow was nice, but I’ve got to run, and Sir Boxnoggin needs his edges worn off. Today is all copyedits all the time the instant I settle to real work, and that’s going to quite make my mood. Of course I have to make a few changes to the map of a fictional country, and that will quite make my mood as well.

The dogs don’t care that it’s raining–yet. They care only that they haven’t been run and I managed to get my hair into a ponytail, which means WALKIES ARE ALMOST UPON US. I suppose nothing is really harmed by running them in the rain; it’ll just make the house smell like wet dog.

…just as I typed that, my phone beeped. There’s a flood watch–all the snow, now all the rain washing it away. Great.

Well, the water will only rise from here. Might as well get out while it’s still a trickle instead of a flood. That way when I come home, everyone can dry off, warm up, and be glad to be inside for the rest of the day.

And I’ll leave Constantius hanging for some while longer. I have to edge up onto this book, which means thinking about its habits and feeding while I’m neck-deep in six other projects, including Dolls. That one’s going to be fun.

Every once in a while, thinking about my own mortality, I say I can’t die yet, I have edits to finish. It’s my own personal wall against misfortune; I cannot be killed until I have finished my work, and plenty is left undone. I know, realistically, it doesn’t matter–Death does not play favorites, nor does she care for unfinished business–but it makes me feel better and more productive during the time I have, so I aim to continue.

Off we go into curtains of rain. Boxnoggin will be ecstatic for roughly the first four minutes, before it penetrates his thick skull that we’re not going back inside to shake off anytime soon. Miss B, of course, will only care about getting done so we can go inside to shake off. This is the great division between them, and instructive to watch.

Happy Monday, hoopy froods. May your toad-swallowing for the day be performed quickly, cleanly, and with a minimum of fuss, as I hope my own will be.

*laces shoes, nods, and takes off into the rain*

C Is For…

…when I surface from a post-dinner writing jag, blinking and disoriented, and the Princess hands me a freshly baked cookie and says, “I wanted dessert. Here.”

Yes. Like that.

It’s good to be loved, and to be given tasty things. May you know both this weekend, concurrently or consecutively, as it pleases you.

Chilly Days

I prefer the cold. Summer means sweat, sweat means rashes no matter how careful one is, and who needs that? Winter is my time, despite dry-cracking skin and the persistent shivers.

Even so, it was a bit ridiculous this morning. I had to leave the warm nest of the bed and engage on another shivery day, and I would have loved to roll out of the covers and into some proper layers, but Sir Boxnoggin decided he would be Helpful and Aid Me in My Dressing. The way he chose to do this, of course, was by…sitting on everything I reached for.

I love this dog. His idea of help, though, often treads the edge of “no help at all, thanks.”

The small birds have found the finch feeder; it seems to be the only type of seed the squirrels won’t steal, probably because they have the sunflower-seed holder to pillage pretty much at will. They’re stocking up for the snow supposedly coming down the pike. There is much singing, twittering, hopping, and expressions both of delight and of menace. (“STAY AWAY FROM MY SEEDS, PHIL, OR I SWEAR I WILL END YOU.”)

Miss B, of course, as an Elderly Gentlecanine, prefers to spend very chilly days sprawled on her Fancy Dog Bed in my office, conveniently located near the heater. Some days she will even nudge me with her snout and sigh until I get the idea and turn said heater on. Boxnoggin is on the loveseat in the living room, snuggling into several knitted lap robes and watching the street with much interest. The next time a car (or, God forbid, a person walking dogs) appears, he will ALERT THE WHOLE HOUSE AT HIGH VOLUME BORK BORK BORK.

In all of this I have to work, and also have to get French toast shopping (milk, bread, eggs, in case we’re snowed in) done today before the forecasted precipitation breaks and you can’t pay me to step outside. Plus there’s copyedits to turn around by the fifteenth.

Seven. Hundred. Fifty. Pages. Of copyedits. 8.5”X11” pages, too, not book pages. Gods have mercy upon me, for publishing has none.

…and there goes Boxnoggin, screaming that someone is upon his street and I am required to come witness whatever has his dog-knickers in a twist, not to mention tuck him back into all the lap robes when he is soothed. See you around, folks.

A Dusting to Halt

This is the amount of snow it takes to close down school for the day. Mostly because the buses have to get out before dawn and the roads were ice-coated; who needs parents breathing down their nape because a bus went a little wonky? Of course, there are lots of transplants screaming “this ain’t snow, why, back home we have to dig our way out of the garage on the regular,” as if the Pacific Northwest is somehow the same as Minnesota. *eyeroll*

It’s supposed to be subzero tonight, which means the road will be another icy hellscape early tomorrow. But for today, we have a lot of hot cocoa, a lot of reading, and a lot of chunky sweaters and lap-blankets, not to mention dogs who have suddenly rediscovered humans have body heat too.

Poor Boxnoggin; this appears to be the first time he’s seen this White Coat of Death on everything, and he keeps giving me looks like Mum, make this stop, why are you doing this? He picks up each paw EXTRA high and gives it a shake when he’s forced to walk outside, and outright refuses to get near the gate because that means walkies and walkies mean OMG COLD ON MY WIDDLE FEETSIES.

Miss B, of course, is built for all weathers, but she’s old now, and quite content to stay inside where it’s warm and soft. Just because she can doesn’t mean she will wander outside more than the bare necessary. Currently she has moved from behind my chair to the Big Spacious Fancy Dogge Bedde near the heater, and is likely to remain there for as long as possible.

I wish you warmth and relaxation today, my friends. Sadly, I cannot take a day off, for my office is just down the hall from my bedroom, and going into work does not require anything more dangerous than tripping over a few dog toys and my own pre-caffeinated feet. There’s a short story to revise and the initial go-through on CEs for The Maiden’s Blade to cross off my list today. No rest for the weary or the wicked, but if I get those things done I might settle on the couch with tea and both dogs, and just watch the hill freeze solid.

Over and out.

Weekend Fyre Viewing

Polar bear
© Sailorr | Dreamstime Stock Photos

They’re saying snow, but so far there’s nothing but a restless, half-frozen rain going on. I’m hopeful we’ll avoid a layer of ice on everything; since we live near the mouth of the Columbia Gorge the wind often gives us a final fillip of freezing that makes tires refuse to grip and shoes refuse to stick.

This weekend I watched both the Netflix and Hulu documentaries about the Fyre Festival. The Netflix one was structured like a morality play and had access to footage shot for what was going to be an adulatory documentary (if the thing came off); the Hulu one was structured like a true-crime documentary and had an interview with McFarland, the grifter who put the whole show on (and, incidentally, spent the money). I do recommend seeing both, for different reasons. McFarland, in the Hulu documentary, has pupils the size of saucers and a complete lack of remorse; if you want to see what a con man looks like when he’s high off his gourd and visibly remembering what his lawyers have told him not to comment on, there it is.

All during both shows, I just kept hearing my grandfather’s voice inside my head, saying “y’all can’t cheat an honest man.” My ex-husband used to say something similar–that grifts work because of people who want something for nothing or something too good to be true. I won’t deny a bit of schadenfreude watching “influencers” with more money than sense end up in a waterless, Lord of the Flies-esque FEMA-tent village, but the locals who weren’t paid–and the people working hard on the Fyre app whose paychecks stopped coming regularly but who were seduced into keeping on through a sick system using their best qualities against them–didn’t deserve this bullshit, and the Netflix app goes in much more detail about the effects McFarland’s con had on them.

For those who did watch the documentaries, there’s a “where are they now” article.

One of the things that struck me watching both documentaries was how images of scantily clad women were used to sell “the dream.” More than once, a man on either documentary says “on a drug island surrounded by beautiful women? Who wouldn’t want that?” The models used for the now-famous promotional video had no idea they were part of a con and were presumably paid for their work; after the reality set in, plenty of people got shirty with the models and the “influencers” instead of with McFarland, who stayed out of prison much longer than anyone non-white or non-male could ever believe possible.

Another strange thing: at least once during each documentary, someone who was being interviewed got a call from McFarland, and answered it on screen. There are still people who pick up the phone when that fellow calls.

Just…wow. Being a rich white boy–or even looking like one–is a helluva drug.

I’m also surprised that, with our “justice” system the way it is, Ja Rule didn’t get into more trouble. He must have clearly and unequivocally been innocent of wrongdoing and had super high-powered lawyers, since the usual thing in these cases is to harass the bit players (especially if they’re people of color) endlessly and let the head of the pyramid scheme go with a slap on the wrist.

Anyway, I spent the weekend watching that while a houseful of teenage boys pillaged my kitchen, since the Little Prince wanted a Smash Bros. sleepover. I put on a Burrito Night to end all Burrito Nights and, once they were full to the gills with beans, rice, chicken, and tortilla, promptly banished them downstairs with mountains of crisps and sodas. A few odd smells and bursts of deep, loud laughter drifted up the stairs, but other than that, it was a reasonably quiet event, and I remember feeling quite grateful. After all, I’d been watching event planning go horribly, terribly wrong all weekend.

That was my weekend. I hope yours was peaceful, dear Reader, and remember: never trust a blinking con artist, especially one who calls you “bro” all the time.

Too good to be true inevitably is.