Song of the day: “Marry you” by Bruno Mars. Such a cute little song, right? Not at all appropriate for the present situation, but what the hey, maybe my head needs a counterpoint, or something. I mean, seriously. Yesterday I had Paolo Nutini with Pencil full of lead in my head. Hah.
Right. What all has been happening of late. Well, work is taking a lot of my time, naturally, but you’ll be curious to know about if I have heard anything from the publisher yet…I haven’t, so you’ll just have to be patient, like me. *snort* Dontcha just hate the waiting game? I can’t stand it. Sometimes it gets so that it seems as if I’m always waiting, ya know. Ah well, I don’t like complaining (not too much anyway) so let’s move it along. I’ll let you know how it works out with the book as soon as I know.
The biggest event these past couple of weeks was that Julia, Cousin Ed’s dog, got grabbed by mine. Yep. The first consequence of cramped living space and fences that have to be shared by unsociable dogs…added to that, the present situation, with big brother and me being away for work so much, is heavy on grandpa, who catches a lot of slack with our dogs. He had just walked his small pack and brought them back so he could let mine out into the yard, when a lot of noise alerted him that he had somehow missed Julia in the head count. My Sitabah, Knight and Dax were right on top of her, apparently (I heard later), and the lot of them toppled off the high rock wall in the fight that left poor Julia with several cracked ribs and a hole in her lungs. It earned her almost week and a half at the vet hospital where they took good care of her. Poor little girl. She was such a brave trooper throughout the ordeal.
The whole thing has told us that we should hurry a bit getting her and Sammie (Tenant’s dog) to their new home ASAP. If all goes as planned a friend of ours is flying them out of the country by the end of February, so that’ll give us a little time to get them used to the traveling box while Julia heals.
The whole fight thing left Sitabah with a badly swollen paw. For a while I feared that she might have broken it, but then the skin broke and the swelling slowly subsided. By now she’s almost herself again, thankfully.
Cooking wise I’ve been doing very little lately. Time is a big issue there. On the most part it is necessity feeding, meaning a bunch of veggies in the pain, some sort of staple food with it, and shoveling it in. Have, however, managed a wonderful strawberry cream tart, which worked out splendidly. And just today I have experimented with buckwheat. A little while ago a friend sent me a basic recipe for buckwheat burgers, because buckwheat would be really helpful to me with my deficiencies. The bad part is, I hate the smell and taste of buckwheat, the good part is, the recipe allowed me to start at a basis, where I came up with a paste that worked rather well if I may say so myself. Just ate one (gave a couple to middle sister while I was at it. She liked it too) and though the buckwheat taste was still there, deeply underneath the spices, herbs and other ingredients, but not in a way that I disliked it. Yay! I can eat buckwheat!...I know, I’m a whiner and an incredibly picky eater. It is regretfully a side effect of always trying to sort out tastes and scents. You do it automatically at some point. *sigh*
But anyway, tonight’s supper will be buckwheat burgers, with brown rice and satay sauce on the side. Should work splendidly. Now all I have to figure out is what veggie to serve with it. Might go for baked cauliflower.
The foot has been behaving, despite the fact that the past week’s activities have stretched my newly earned “painlessness”. 8 to 10 hours is still too much, but I can easily do 7 now, so, yay for me. Also, due to sales, I managed to get those good sneakers I got this summer again, but this time almost half the price. Bought two pairs, so I should be fine for a while. Thankfully these aren’t fluorescent yellow, but a very bright turquoise instead. Still very bright, but not as bad, at least.
Made several potions these past two weeks, and am frequently drinking infusions, which also appears to help with most ailments. So far I don’t have the flu yet, despite having met more than five people in my circle of acquaintances who had it. Keeping my fingers crossed.
My poor doggies have been feeling terribly neglected, which is not surprised what with me spending so much time away from home. Poor darlings. Can’t be helped, though. I try to spend as much time with them as possible, like now, on my free day, I’m doing most in our small kitchen and in my room, so they can stay with me. I have to keep reminding myself that they are not alone, or anything. They’ve got each other, and grandpa is here, too, so it’s not as if they’re in solitary, or anything. I better wrap this up and take ‘m out for a bit. The weather is too fine at the moment to spend the day inside.
At the moment big brother and I are getting a little too little sleep because we’re getting up an hour earlier. Since in the evening we’re often too tired to do much edits, we’re trying to do it in the mornings instead. It’s not perfect, but we’re one third into A.T.O.L. Regretfully we’re less than three weeks away from the competition, so better keep your fingers crossed that we can get it done in time to enroll. I am happy with how it turned out. There is some serious good stuff in the PNR, and the characters…I love them.
I am, however, looking forward to writing something new again. I might pick up on Earth Drawn again, seeing as that was the one I was working on prior to the revision of Chicago Hope, but “Gun” (I know, silly working title, but I haven’t figured an actual one out yet) has been playing on my mind a lot too. It’s so very different from the other stuff, and writing in 1st person again would definitely be an interesting challenge. We’ll see.
Only one workout these past couple of weeks. Like I said, time is short and I’m constantly prioritizing. Regretfully that means that exercise gets pushed aside.
Had a small job in the city, by the way. Hauling furniture. Of course there were two guys to help. One was a rather nice fella, from York, apparently, while the other, a French dude, was a down and dirty sexist. My first real confrontation with it, actually. Big brother and I arrived and this guy literally sneered at me from top to bottom, and mumbled in a mixture of French and Spanish, what he had done wrong to get a woman to help him, but that it wasn’t my fault, I was just “a woman”. I almost laughed in his face…in particular since we had to move this humongous mirror that weighed in at at least 200 pounds, if not more. Big brother, the nice dude and I were already in the midst of lifting it, when Frenchy practically elbowed me out of the way and “took over”. He was about to drop his side of the mirror to when I decided to have pity on him and hooked my hand under the edge to keep it from slamming down. So there we went, the two men moaning and groaning, in the middle and on my side, while big brother met my gaze over the mirror, with a questioning look of “what are they making this so difficult, we could do this way much faster just with the two of us” but what can you do? On the most part, I was just there to keep Frenchy from pulling his back, but okay, I got paid for it. Like some sort of impaired beast with eight legs we maneuvered through the building. We got the mirror to the street, the two fella’s cheering that we’d managed the feat, and Frenchy patting my shoulder and muttering something about “respect”, having realized that I saved his behind twice during our trek through the building. While big brother went out to get the van, I did a quick repair job on the back of the mirror. It was coming loose, since some smarty pants had used nails to keep it in place. (aaargh) Didn’t have any tools with me, but the wood was old enough for me to be able to do it by hand, or in some cases fist, which had Frenchy jump with shock when he saw me slam the wood back in place. Hah. Gawd, I should have had a camera. I would have thought that I would be insulted by the guy’s behavior, but basically it just amused me. He can’t help being sexist, and he did finally forget I was a mere woman, so, whatever.
Anyways, we got the mirror loaded, then the rest of the furniture, and were back on location four hours after departure. Of course that was at eleven in the evening, but what the hey.
Lastly, we had press at the door again the other day, did I mention that already? Well, luckily they didn’t make too much of a nuisance of themselves again. One visit, and that was it. What on earth they want now, I’ve no clue, but I’ve decided not to care anymore. The life we had, one big family by choice is over now anyway. Sad, but such is life. Better to flow with it, than regret what’s no longer there.
Well, more has happened naturally, but my brain isn’t working properly because this is all I can think of so far. Hah.
Gotta go.
