Sarah Wynde's Blog, page 75

Hepatocellular vacuolar disease

Scary name, isn’t it? But as far as I can tell — as far as my google-fu can take me anyway — it means “something’s wrong with your dog but we’re not sure what.” Ironically — and really oddly — one of the possibilities is an over-abundance of copper in the liver. (Ironic, because that was a major plot point in A Lonely Magic. It will be very sad and extremely weird if my dog dies the way Fen’s mother did.) However, since B is behaving normally, eats like a cheerful piglet, enjoys walks and swimming, and in no way acts like a sick dog, I’ve decided not to worry about it. Well, after several hours spent worrying about it and trying to decipher vet materials that are extremely way far over my head I’ve decided not to worry about it.

Given that I’m writing about it, I’m actually probably still worrying about it.

But I’m going to stop. I’m going to use the ACT technique and every time I start to dwell on it, I will remind myself that I’m worrying and try to identify the emotion that goes with the worry. It’s an easy call on the emotion — fear. I dread the thought of losing either dog.

Last night, I hung out with a friend who is a believer in the law of attraction. I … well, sort of think it’s a silly concept. I don’t think thoughts have energy. But as we talked about it, I could see ways that it’s worked for me in my life, even though I didn’t know I was using it. Especially with parenting — I think it’s enormously more powerful as a parent to notice and appreciate the behavior that you like and dismiss the behavior that you don’t. You get the behavior you focus on. I’m not actually convinced that it works, but I intend to start thinking of Bartleby as a healthy dog who’s overcome lots of problems instead of dwelling on all of his issues. He’s a terrific little guy, strong and tough and a survivor. My new mantra. I’m going to make a sign and post it on my wall and remind myself to say that every day.

Also to be said every day — writing good words is fun.

Winter

Winter has finally arrived. My neighbor was out putting blankets over his bushes, which I assume means that it might even freeze tonight. I haven’t bothered to look that up, of course, nor will I make any effort to save my bushes, but I don’t think he was doing it to dress up the house.

Given that it’s the middle of November, I suppose it’s about time, but it was really nice to get to swim so long. Summer swimming was pretty miserable this year, because it rained so much and so long. If I hadn’t swum by about 10AM, chances were that I wouldn’t get to swim at all until late August. One can, of course, swim in the rain, but in Florida, rain generally comes accompanied by thunder and lightning and swimming with possibility of lightning is a no-no. I assume if the pool gets hit by lightning while you’re in it, you basically get cooked, but I have never looked it up.

Huh. Now I have a gory fascination with the idea. Off I go to google… well, I did not find any graphic descriptions of people dead from swimming during lightning storms, but definite internet consensus that yeah, it’s stupid to swim outside during a storm and yeah, the lightning will kill you if it hits the pool.

Side note: why do we call them thunderstorms when the thunder is meaningless? Noticeable, of course, but lightning storm feels so awkward and yet the lightning is the dangerous part of the storm. Storm alone could, of course, simply mean heavy rain and wind, so I understand the need to clarify that we’re talking about electricity, but I think its strange that we think the thunder is the meaningful part.

Ahem. Moving on! B was a very good dog at the vet yesterday. He had many things done — blood drawn, his ears cleaned, an ultrasound, a biopsy of the liver — and apparently he was well-behaved throughout, even when he was getting his ears cleaned. I assume they put a… whatever their fancy name is for a muzzle… on him because he has a clear notation at the top of the file warning the tech that he may not be so nice. But he was nice. I’m proud of him, but it’s funny to try to explain to your dog that you’re proud of him for behaving well. B gets that I’m talking to him and paying attention to him and thinks that means he should try to lick my face a lot, which disrupts the glow of good behavior pretty thoroughly. Still, two years ago, he would growl and snap and try to bite, so having the vet tech tell me he was a sweetheart pleased me in the same way that parent-teacher conferences used to please me.

Words… well, didn’t do much yesterday. I did make it to some understanding of why I’m stuck, but I didn’t get unstuck and today — well, it’s 5:39 and I’m still writing my blog post. But I’m hoping to get a solid hour of writing in, so I’d best get to it. Good luck, fellow NaNo’ers. I hope you’re doing better than I am!

Mediocre dog mom

I took B to the vet this morning and dropped him off and it’s thrown off my whole schedule. Nearly forgot about writing a blog post entirely!

He’s getting his liver enzymes tested again. They were too high a few months ago and he’s been on liver pills ever since. I wish I could say that I thought he was going to be all better, but I have a sneaking suspicion that what he really needs is to lose weight and to not get any treats. I, however, lack the willpower to make him stick to a diet. He’s such a beggar and his eyes are so eager. The moment when his ridiculous fluffy tail starts to droop instead of frantically waving just gets to me every time and I succumb.

That said, he’s in such great shape compared to how he was when he came to me. His fur is gorgeous and sleek, his eyes are bright, he doesn’t hide, he lets me clean his ears and put my hands by his food… I wish I was the perfect dog mom and he got nothing but kibble and the occasional greenie — oh, and got his teeth brushed every day! — but we stumble along in our mediocrity.

Managed to get some writing done yesterday, although only a few hundred words. This morning I’ve written 103. Not NaNo numbers. But I’ll persist. I keep reminding myself to just tell the damn story, but I’m finding my current scene really difficult. I can remember, years ago, having a therapist very patiently ask me, “But what were the feelings?” and to whatever I’d answer, she’d say, “That’s not a feeling. Try again.” That’s what’s happening in my current scene. Grace is having feelings and I don’t know how to name them. Fear led to anger led to… ? Self-recriminations, I guess, but maybe my problem is that I’ve gotten there too fast. Anyway, I’m going to get back to it — I hope all my fellow November writers are doing better than me. More words!

Lost Day

I have no idea what happened to me yesterday. I didn’t feel well, but I didn’t feel like I was dying or anything either — hmm, I wonder if I ate some gluten recently without realizing? Because around 11AM, I just gave up on the day. I had so many things I wanted to do — yoga, a writer’s group meeting that I’d been planning to go to for weeks, words to write, kitchen to clean… and instead I went back to bed. I didn’t swim or even sit outside, the dogs didn’t get their second walk, I didn’t even think about NaNo. I just read and played Sudoku and napped and then did the same thing all over again.

I want to have had a migraine or something — some excuse for failing the day. But I didn’t.

Today I still feel crappy. Not sick, or not dramatically sick, but not well and definitely not motivated. Energy level: 2. I could get out of bed if I had to and obviously, I am succeeding in writing my blog post, but the dogs haven’t even gotten their first walk today and I would pull the covers over my head if I could. I suspect I will eventually, but first, I am going to at least stare at my Word file for a little while.

On Tuesday, I really wanted a sandwich and I didn’t have one, damn it. If I’m going to have a gluten reaction, I wish I’d at least gotten to enjoy the gluten.

Note to self

Note to self: Don’t read fiction before breakfast.

I got almost no writing done yesterday. Eked out maybe 200 words. At the time, I felt like I was stuck because I had no idea what came next in the story. Couldn’t picture it. Couldn’t find it. Just… total dead end.

Then this morning, when I was walking the dog, bits and pieces started to come back to me. I caught a line, which turned into a thread, and I started seeing where it was going again.

When I got back home, though, I picked up the book I was reading and … swoosh, away it all went again. It’s going to come back because I’m going to stare at the open Word file until it does, but ugh, it’s annoying.

I love fiction for the escape, but I think I’m probably better off not reading while I’m writing. I need my escape to be into my world, not someone else’s.

Story with a capital S

Checking my email first thing this morning and Amazon had sent me a link to a new Sharon Shinn book. Argh! She used to be an auto-buy for me, but I was not so fond of her last few books. This one was $13.99 for the Kindle version. I promptly checked the library but they didn’t have it, nor any sign that they would have it (based on the fact that they didn’t have the two previous books in the series). Dilemma, dilemma, dilemma… but I couldn’t resist. Mostly because I still had money on an Amazon giftcard so it was spending money that couldn’t be used for groceries or the electric bill anyway. My day is therefore starting about four hours later than it should, because I spent them pleasantly reading Jeweled Fire.

And pleasant reading it was. Also, from an aspiring writer perspective, it was interesting to analyze. If it had been written by an author unknown to me, nothing about it would have put the author onto my auto-buy list or my permanent keeper shelf. I probably wouldn’t even remember the author’s name. That happens a lot with authors — the first few books are really good and then they become, well, pleasant. The stakes are no longer high. The characters are harder to invest in. But it’s not just that the ending is guaranteed to be happy — I prefer happy endings so most of the books that I read are going to end well. It’s also that nothing along the way is going to be too unpleasant. But that should be okay, too. I like pleasant books.

But it made me realize that the books I like best are the ones where the characters are having an intense inner journey, a passionate emotional experience, regardless of the actual events of the story. Not a lot of action is not a problem for me as long as the character despairs, at least for a moment or two. This book — which, again, was a perfectly nice book — has a character who’s having a story. Scared, trapped, in love with the wrong man, her mother and sister murdered, driven to the verge of suicide, saved at the last minute, slowly making friends with strangers who may be safer for her than her family… seriously, she’s got a Story.

Unfortunately, she’s not the protagonist. The protagonist, on the other hand, is the kind of character who — pretty much the moment she realizes she has no money — receives a shipment of coins and clothes from the family she ran away from. Problem solved. She’s occasionally in danger, but she’s never remotely at risk. And sure, she’s discovering she’s in love with maybe the wrong guy, but there’s nothing much keeping them apart and he probably sorta loves her, too. Also, he’s a nice guy who any sensible person would be in love with. Pleasant, nice, readable, mildly entertaining. Not a keeper if storage is tight (although yay for ebooks, and certainly a keeper for my Kindle library.) Definitely not an auto-buy, despite the $14 spent.

There’s a scene in Grace that I haven’t been sure about. I keep circling around it. It might change my world-building somewhat. It might be out of place. It might not fit the kind of story I think I’m writing. But I think I’m going to write it anyway, because emotional intensity is interesting to read, and when it comes right down to it, I think I’d rather write interesting than pleasant. (Although I like amusing as well.)

I wonder if I will ever finish writing this book?

Yesterday’s word count was something like 1800 words — not quite the 2K I’d like to be making every day, but enough to break the 10K mark. And now it’s almost 11 and I haven’t even started my real writing yet, so it’s time to get to it!

I’ve been having bizarrely vivid dreams lately. Last nigh...

I’ve been having bizarrely vivid dreams lately. Last night’s had me trying to make peppermint tea, needing to share it with someone else, finally making it in a plastic bag that unexpectedly contained sand and salt, so that my tea tasted like ocean water in the end, not at all drinkable. I suspect it was my subconscious revealing my feelings about the book I’m writing. It feels like the ocean, too big, too salty, too sandy — but you know, if you weren’t expecting peppermint tea, the ocean is great. Not for drinking, but certainly for appreciating. Trying to make the ocean in a plastic bag, though, is not so easy. When I woke up this morning, the dream was so real to me that I had a moment of thinking I needed to go find the bag and clean up the mess I’d made.

Yesterday — not a good writing day. Maybe I set myself up for such by talking dust bunnies so early in the morning, but I wound up with a day where I did get lots of stuff done — clean kitchen, two loads of laundry, vacuuming, clean sheets on the bed — but not lots of writing done. Still, two or three months ago, I would have been perfectly happy with a day that included 400+ words, not wincing at the lack thereof, so I’m not going to be too hard on myself. But I am going to dive right into the story this morning. What I was writing yesterday wound up distracting me with worries about cultural insensitivity and lack of knowledge, so today I’m going to try to resolve those issues with some research and move on. The true NaNo-inspired writer would just move on and worry about the research on a second draft, but I’m just not that good at NaNo. Still, with any luck, I’ll hit the 10K milestone today — admittedly, a milestone that I should have reached several days ago — and that will be gratifying. Yay for milestones!

Not the writing day of my dreams

Yesterday’s writing flailed.

Well, I guess I flailed. The writing, it more sputtered and trickled and crept.

Until about 1 AM, I couldn’t figure out what the problem was. It’s that Noah is getting hit with all sorts of revelations that would be mind-blowing and I need to discover what he’s like when his mind is getting blown. Poor Noah’s been a bit of a volatile character — what’s he like when he doesn’t think he’s going crazy? The fact that I’m not quite sure seriously stalled my writing. Word count made it to 766, I think, but didn’t come anywhere close to the 2K I was hoping for.

I did, however, swim and enjoy the sunshine, so hey, that’s something. I know I keep writing this, but November 7th is definitely the latest I have ever been pleasantly swimming. This is a very weird weather year. Whenever someone comments on it around here, it’s with a wish for winter to get here, but I’m still enjoying summer, so I don’t mind.

In other news… nope, I got nothing. Yesterday was a quiet, frustrating day. I’m expecting today to be equally quiet, hopefully less frustrating. My goal for today is words, of course, but I’m also going to try to be productive around the house — clean sheets, laundry, vacuuming — so at least if I get to the end of the day and my word count is abysmal, I’ll be able to look around and see that I accomplished something. Eliminating dust bunnies is not nearly as satisfying as spawning plot bunnies, but it’s better than nothing!

Zombie dinosaurs and em dashes

Blogging every day is made much easier by doing NaNoWriMo because I always have a topic on my mind: word count and whether I made it or not. I didn’t make it yesterday. Drat! But it was a busy day and I was out of the house a lot. I hit 1200 words in the morning, which was great, but when I got back to the house and tried to settle in to writing, I couldn’t kick my brain into gear again. I decided I’d write in the evening, but instead I went to sleep at 9. Nine! I wish that meant I was back on a normal sleep pattern, but instead I was awake at 3. I finally fell back asleep around 4:30.

The most annoying thing about that was that if I’d been awake at 4:30, I could have gone outside to see Venus, Mars and the moon line up, with Jupiter in the same vicinity. I did go out at 3:30 or so, when I remembered, but it was too early. The moon was nowhere to be seen. The night sky was lovely, though, and there was a little bit of fog in the air, which made it feel spooky beautiful.

It was strange being outside so early, though. I’d been woken up by a nightmare, which was some sort of mix of Jurassic Park with the zombie apocalypse — zombie dinosaurs in a kitchen, maybe? — featuring the Vlog Brothers being mildly heroic and rescuing trapped children. I wasn’t young enough to be rescued by them so I was going to have to find my own way off the island. I woke up as I was trying to decide whether to open the walk-in freezer that might or might not have a zombie raptor trapped inside. Not a particularly fun dream, although it sounds a lot more fun in retrospect than it was while I was in it. But I didn’t stay outside in the spooky beautiful night, because hey, zombie dinosaurs. My grill made a noise — probably a mouse living inside it — and I scurried inside and locked the door behind me.

Even though I didn’t hit my word count yesterday, I had a lot of fun writing. For the first time, possibly ever, I really got into the NaNo spirit. No tinkering, no tweaking, no polishing, just one word after the next. Well, all right, that’s not quite true, but minimal polishing. In particular, I let the em dashes fly. I normally try to be careful about how I use em dashes. My instinct is to use them all the time, everywhere, but I pull myself back and try to limit them to one phrase set off in em dashes at most every several hundred words. Yesterday, it was em dashes, em dashes, and more em dashes.

Today is going to be the same, I hope. I’m still in the scene that I thought would be fun to write, and it was, so that’ll be a good starting place for today. I’m in a little bit of the murky middle at the moment, though — I know this scene, but after I finish it, I’m kind of vague on what happens next. It means I’ll probably slow down a bit. Given that I’m slow already, compared to the NaNo pace, that’s probably not good news. But that’s okay. If it weren’t NaNo, I’d be pleased with my daily word count this week, so I’m going to do my best to break my goal of 2K, but otherwise not stress about it.

Last night’s dinner: ham and a baked sweet potato. I bought these white sweet potatoes from Trader Joe’s and I’ve eaten them mashed a couple of times, which was pretty good, but yesterday was the first time I baked one. Much, much better. If it weren’t Saturday, I’d be headed back to TJ’s today to pick up some more, but the parking there is a nightmare on Saturday, so I’ll try to make it sometime next week. But it was so good that I ate every single bit, including the skin, leaving none for poor Bartleby, who adores sweet potato. Fortunately, he whimpered at me which alleviated my guilt, since one of my basic rules of parenting/dog parenting is that whiners should never be rewarded for whining.

The ham was from CostCo, purchased because it looked like an absolute bargain of a protein: I chopped it up and put it into the freezer in packages with enough for maybe three or four meals for me, and I’d guess I will be eating it for months. I’m sure it’ll average out to less than $1/meal. (With no carbs in my diet, I need plenty of protein.) Unfortunately, I realized belatedly, after I got it home and started chopping it up, that it was cured with nitrates which I’m not supposed to eat. At the moment, I can’t possibly tell if I’m reacting to nitrates — way too many other things that I’ve eaten that I’m not supposed to — but I’m hoping that once I get back on track, it doesn’t turn out to be a trigger food. I’d be very sad to have my freezer filled with protein that I shouldn’t eat.

Good luck with words today, fellow writers! I hope we all catch the current.

Time change

I used to hate the time change when R was little. It took us so long to get back on track, to get our schedules returned to something sensible, for him to not be over-tired at bedtime and awake too early in the morning. Now I’m really appreciating it. All last week I had to keep negotiating with the dog, who somehow has a really phenomenal internal clock.

I would point out the sky to her and say, “Look, it’s too dark to go for a walk now. I cannot see to clean up after you when it’s this dark outside. We have to wait until it’s light or be bad neighbors.”

And she would put her paw on me, and look at me earnestly with her deep brown eyes and try to transmit the thought, “What’s wrong with you, my beloved person? Do you not see that it is 7AM and time for us to be out sniffing other people’s garbage?”

Now it’s light at 6:30 and she’s still comfortably asleep when it’s dark. The fact that I can’t get used to the time change and am waking at up 5-something every day is but a minor burden. Although seriously annoying as I lie in bed telling myself that I should be asleep. There should be some good riddles about sleep, being one of those things that you aren’t aware of when you have but miss desperately when you don’t.

Anyway, yesterday’s word count was a lot higher than the NaNoWriMo site thinks it was, because the way they do word count is really annoying. You can’t easily post your words for the day — it always wants to know your total, as if you’re guaranteed to be working in one big file. I don’t work that way. I keep lots of separate little files. But it makes it seriously inconvenient to try to track my word count on their site if I want to count all the words I write and not just the ones that I keep. I bit the bullet yesterday and changed my total to not include the words I deleted, so it thinks I wrote something like not quite 1300 words, but I am pretty sure I wrote more like 3200. In other words, a really good word count day, even if that’s not obvious to the NaNoWriMo site.

A fairly terrible diet day, however, and oh, I am paying for that today. I don’t know why my brain, appetite, and body can’t work together to make healthier choices for me, but yesterday was not a day of healthy choices and today is a day when everything hurts. Shoulders, elbows, wrists, fingers, and on down. Ha, which I suppose is not everything, but simply every joint. I shall endeavor to be grateful for all the spaces between the joints that don’t hurt. I suspect it won’t be easy, but it’s worth a try.

Lots of plans for today and, happily for me, a pretty clear chapter destination. I feel like the section that I’m working on will be fun, interesting, and take a fair number of words, so yay, words galore. As far as the NaNo site goes, I’m already 4000 words behind so not much chance that I’ll catch up today. I’ve never had a 4K word day in my life and today has too much going on, so it’s not going to be the first time. But I am going to aim for 2K and maybe I’ll make it.

First things first, though — it’s 6:52 and the dog is stirring. A nice brisk walk to get the creative juices flowing… well, no, that’s not usually how it happens. First a slow saunter around the block, watching as B leisurely sniffs every corner of grass and waddles along. Then a nice brisk trudge with Z.

Random side note: “pick and choose” is the weirdest phrase. We’ve apparently been using it since the 1400s but how does it make any sense at all? Once you’ve picked, haven’t you by definition chosen? I wonder if it came from harvesting, like first you pick all the apples, then you choose the ones you want? But it’s redundant in modern English and yes, I wrote it yesterday, then had to waste precious writing minutes pondering it and questioning whether it made any sense at all and why I had it in my head and then looking it up to figure it out. Bad me. But I’m going to try to eliminate it from the default word choice list in my brain, because it makes no sense.

And now, really, truly, time to walk the dogs. Goal for today: words! May all your November writing goal writing flow beautifully today.