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Coming soon: more work from someone creative, ambitious, and determined - often called a variant of insane/crazy. Notes: Genderfluid. Preferred pronouns (they/them) [& denotes married couples] Immediate Family: soon-to-be-ex-Dilbert, Tempest, Dogbert My Extended Family: (s)Dad, cousins (K, D, G, J, F, N) I guess it's good to be on speaking terms with someone. Voluntarily. AuntS Dilbert's Extended Family: SIL (+5 kids)& BIL, FIL's gf (only for holidays, mostly) Important People I Don't See Enough: Owl + Partner, Paradise ICON crew (which owl is a part of) People I've Known a Long Time/Long Distance: Doc & [husband], Sheer & DocSheer, Mrs. Light & [husband], Trillium & Diego (not married but close enough), Steph Local People: MotherDroid, Owl&Partner ... There are about to be new people on this list, because, well, I'm evolving. And it hurts. DnD: used letters, S (DM), D(doctor), Y(because I like him!), K(old RPGer friend who also attends church), P(church guy who does game night and is local and our families are also friends), A (went to church but moved back to Chicago, moved back locally then i moved) Tempest's friends: I don't know very many of her local friends. She's got an internet buddy who also talks to CousinK's younger daughter. the younger daughter is DRAMA. Dogbert's friends: Has a new group of friends based on a Pokemon thing and they have a DnD club at school and outside of school. Lucky kid! |
| SInce the chiro, Dilbert has been better as far as attitude. He even made breakfast that 3 of us would eat this morning and cleaned up with kitchen with minimal complaining about his pain. Still told me I needed to start wrapping gifts so i have more room in my office and i found myself doing this a bit, but also ... yeah. Why did i do that? Oh. Right- it does actually need to be done. One of his shoulders is noticeably lower than the other one and he still seems shorter than me somehow. He might go to the meet but he's definitely not helping with setup like I am. He forgot his muscle relaxers last night so I suppose he's doing pretty well considering. I will take Dogbert with me if that's the only option. Dogbert wants to go cheer Tempest on with me and see her do her things. I'll take it. I applied to two jobs successfully in the last 18 hours. Considering other options. I've never gotten this far. |
| But it's the longest week. Why is it in English we measure time by length versus like Greek who used to measure time by volume? It's another one of those questions when I asked someone how they were doing in my ninja class, and they got weird looks on their faces when I asked why we say Pretty bad and not ugly bad - and is ugly bad worse than pretty bad? Don't worry about them too much - we have a lot of fun in class. Last week I got my copy of Don't Tell Your Mother - yesterday I ordered a carton. Emend (from my writer's group in Davenport, but also just a great friend) asked me how I celebrated this - she inferred about champagne and getting drunk, but when I thought about it I told her I'm celebrating by standing up for myself. (That was yesterday...) 1. Dilbert has been in pain for a couple weeks with what seems to be a pulled muscle in his back. Rather than doing anything about it, he has been doing that Dilbert thing of "resting" (Translation is sitting on the recliner in front of the TV) He spends his waking and sleeping hours down there, for the most part. 2. on Sunday he went to the store, he bought me flowers (mini yellow roses - regular sized yellow roses are mom's favorite flower). for the rest of the day he was a pain in the ass, wanting the table clean, wanting the counters clean, wanting my bedroom clean (by clean he means tidy and not necessarily a hygenic sort of scrubbing). He pesters the kids so hard about things and Tempest pretty much just hides in her room and the money doesn't faze her. He asks me "Why do I always have to be the mean one?" Clearly he doesn't realize A- nobody has to be the mean parent and B- I do plenty of 'mean' things to my kids in order to help them be better people but he never witnesses any of that. He fell asleep on the bed waiting for me - and I helped Tempest fold her clothes and put them all away, which included carting out an armload of clothes that don't fit or aren't her style. I also dumped them in the main room on level 2 but i haven't heard shit about that yet. I also had a cold and sore throat, and when I went to bed early, dilbert happened to awaken and then proceed to attempt to have conversations with me. OR try. I told him repeatedly I was tired, and I had a cold, and that was why I went to bed early. Doesn't seem to matter to him. He'd be quiet a minute, and then say something else. I snapped at 15 minutes of me lying in bed in the dark just to get him to be quiet. 3. He broke one of my favorite mugs Monday morning, cleaning the kitchen. He blamed me because I didn't put it in the sink, which was probably full when I put the mug over there. He never apologized for blaming me. He hasn't even admitted he was such a pain on Sunday. He did go to the doc on Monday and got muscle relaxants, which he mostly doesn't use because he can't drive and he sometimes needs to drive Tempest to gymnastics. I did get him to also take painkillers. 4. At some point on Tuesday I realize I am taller than he is, which is weird because he's usually an inch taller. The back thing must be pretty severe. He is doing his thing and I'm doing mine. I ask him if he wants to go to the chiro because I will make him an appointment and drive him. I can see he's messed up, and I know that is contributing to his awful attitude, but other than that I don't really engage. He takes muscle relaxants. He agrees to see the chiro, and admits he is in 'the worst pain of his life'. Considering most of the time i've known him he considers chiropractors voodoo, I am shocked. I make the appointment, and plan to drive him the next morning. 5. Wednesday he goes to the chiropractor. He's also in the room when I'm getting dressed. He says, "Sure, you wear fun underwear when I'm hurt." I snap back at him, they're my underwear. I wear them for me. He has nothing to do with it, and if he's going to continue I'll wear nothing but huge boring underwear. He proceeds to talk about toys and how I don't want to be intimate with him. While I mostly don't - that has less to do with underwear and toys and everything to do with him, his attitude, and his lack of care of himself. He admitted that around Owl's wedding he had diarrhea and he let his diet go. That diet - no exercise, no lifestyle habit changes - had taken him down thirty pounds, but he has gained much back. Of course, right? When you eat a lot and you sit on the recliner or behind a desk, you can expect to be more potato shaped. (Her wedding was in October.) He also said he doesn't want to get the fun furniture he dragged me out in the cold to go see because of the sale since he likes his recliner and he wants an arm rest on both sides. He could have an arm rest on both sides, but he also doesn't want to pay for that many pieces. Whatever, dude. You want intimacy? Try not being so far away from everyone, down in the basement with your recliner during your waking and sleeping hours and all the rest of the time that you're not being a fucking asshole. I told him the problem with confirmation bias in what humans perceive, as if he had never heard it before, which he probably hasn't. I don't think he got that point. He did apologize about the underwear thing after I took him to task, then he said he was teasing, and I said it felt horrible and I never wanted to hear that again. I have heard that before, in other years, at other times, and I'm done. He apologized, then, and said he won't. Except he also admitted when he went to the doctor that his blood pressure was high. He checks it at home, at night, and it can be up to 130/100ish. I told him that people are more like my father - a walking time bomb that went off in the morning first thing after he woke up. He thought it was also because he was in pain and had two cups of coffee. I'm really worried one day I'm going to find him dead because he just hasn't taken care of himself, which I asked him to do last February. (Yes, all of these numbers are WITH his blood pressure medications.) I can tell you from experience all of my low blood pressure issues have been in mid-afternoon to evening. So it brings me back to February: Go to the GP (he did), get his colonoscopy (he didn't), go to the eye doctor (he did), go to the dentist (he didn't), take care of himself (nope), and go to therapy (He pretty much noped this right away). Which brings me to job searching and apartment searching and asking my boss for more hours at the gym and figuring out how I'm going to juggle all of that and two kids. It's scary to say it out loud but I'm so lucky my boss is a friend and she's supportive. So supportive. Like I don't know how to handle such support in a relationship, but I'm working on it. I've had to talk to my therapist about it. Every time I go above and beyond she gives me a gift card to a restaurant (Panera, Subway). I'm wondering if I need to stack these to have on hand for that first time getting the hell out of here. Every time i do choose to go downstairs into the darkness of the theater room- i turn the lights up a little bit to a lot. I don't need to sit in the dark. It bothers my eyes. People who have only known me a short time are seeing changes in me. I like myself enough to stand up for myself. And this is what is giving me the words for the big, big feelings that happened when I got the sample copy of Don't Tell Your Mother: I don't have to be the kid who chafes under someone else's rules anymore. I'm an adult. I make my rules. And flexibility with all kinds of rules is one of the ideas I embody. I am who I am, and I am enough. My step-dad and my husband have too much in common. My therapist doesn't understand how I can even maintain the minimialist relationship I do with my step-dad. And now I'm working on this with Dilbert, too. |
| Is it so much to ask for that everyone gets on the bus or in their car and just LEAVES THE HOUSE TO ME on weekdays? Maybe I just need too much alone time to handle all the demands they place on me. Like my son is upset that I'm taking my daughter to get her pictures for gymnastics done from when she had COVID. She missed the date, and she was given the opportunity to make it up. So I won't be home when he gets home. Damn he's spoiled. Husband hurt his neck. He has no idea how. But he doesn't believe in chiropractice- so he's taking a personal day to rest on the couch.  Whatever. He probably wanted to spend more time with me yesterday, but I was busy. As I often am on weekdays. Plus, writing. But this idea that they make so many demands on me all the time- and that's why I just want to be by myself... Ugh, that's one of those things that's gonna make me turn over other reasons I do things. I just need stuff for me, and yet no one in the house considers what I want when they're making these demands. Dogbert had some kind of nightmare. He screamed. Woke both Tempest and me but wouldn't talk about it. I got him settled again, and then he was insanely hard to wake up this morning. |
| Fell asleep between my kids in my bed. Not sure why they both needed to cuddle. Dilbert came in before 2. Kicked them out of bed. Woke me up. I couldn't go back to sleep. So i got up, read, wrote, and somehow he thinks its' my fault I'm not getting enough sleep. He often wakes me by coming to bed late (between 1 and 5ish) and then snores and I can't get back to sleep. I do need to sleep. Sleep is nice. Struggling with feeling really alone this week. I knew my step-dad would forget my birthday again. Tempest has covid, out of quarantine and masking as of tomorrowish. *Sighs* Shopping is okay, but mostly I'm not very invested in things. Yet I know I also have to get the things for others. It's a thing. I passed 100k yesterday. At least NaNo is going fairly well. tried a bit of autocrit and prowritingaid, because i've never worked with such things, and I had to laugh that one pass it decided I needed to get rid of my character names as overused (18 of 18 in sample suggested). This is why humans are still needed. Among other reasons. |
| First Facebook reel created today. Short videos are ok. I'm learning the process. It's a tiktok style, but that shouldn't matter so much. The thing is to create, and to allow it to be shared. I passed 80k. I don't know what to do with that. Well, I do. I switched this into the projects that it fits in, and I have just about 50k in book 2, not quite 30k in book 1.5, and like 6k in AofS2. Shows what I've been thinking about forever, I suppose, but I need to do some other stuff. Like publish DTYM finally. And Don't forget my Patreon people, because they need cool stuff if they're supporting me! But really. I'm writing about 2 hours a day and I am able to make great strides. I have been planning other projects. I've been reading a bunch, esp about marketing and research within writing niches and using other tools. So if I try something that gets my name out there, it might not be overt marketing but it is gaining popularity. My Facebook Page is so happy for me that I'm actually posting to Ransom Noble the Author that it keeps encouraging me. I'll take it. Marketing has always been one of the hardest things for me to do. Admit it and keep moving to the place where I am marketing and selling my works. That's really all I can do. I am using this time to become a career author. Thank you, November. |
| I'm reading a marketing book. The author professes to make about 10k a month from her books, and the things she did in the beginning that stymied her progress and what she changed on her way to being more successful. It's a three book series for writing, and it's the third book. The first one was about writing a book a week, and the second about writing to market (compared to writing to trend, and I can work with these ideas). One of the difficult parts is writing enough to make the marketing matter. But marketing matters whether I have one book out or fifty. The thing is to create time for both writing and marketing. Ha, if I had all that time I'd have done it already, right? I also logged into goodreads for the first time in like a decade. Oops. So the first thing I'm attempting is a round-up of the places I am as a writer and the places I am as a non-writer. Often this is a struggle because I simply forget stuff over time. Like one pen name had a twitter account, and I need to deactive the crap out of that. Twitter is no more; the loss is mourned. Another struggle is passwords. Every time I think I get a handle on them they slip away into something weird and very forgettable. The only thing to do is try, try again. One of my favorite parts so far of this marketing book is the author has replaced games on her phone with marketing ideas, keeping track of what's happening, how to do it better, interactions that come from good releases. This is definitely something I'd like to emulate, and just finding a good way to put it all together will be good for me. Another fun barrier to progress - sometimes my tablet that i do 90% of my stuff on - doesn't want to connect through the power supply. And it just dies with no warning at 40% battery or so, refusing to reboot until I actually get the power supply connected (replaced from the original due to loss). Dilb has been mentioning how I need to clean the entire house since Oct 1, since we have guests coming Nov 10. It's annoying as hell, and then he doesn't notice when things do improve, which only aggravates me further. He doesn't help, either, except to offer to throw stuff away for me (anything that isn't his) or lately he has a slightly different tactic to tell me that I can store things downstairs while simultaneously telling me that I have stuff stored downstairs that I need to go through (which he usually put there to clear up for a visitor). Vicious circle, and it also explains why I often am just lost without some stuff that used to be there. He is also in the middle of setting up a new tablet (internal batter on his old one started expanding out of control, and he wants my desk cleared. But then he forgets to use it, or he falls asleep, so I've had to have my desk cleared off for more than a week while I'm trying to finish Space Western Bk 1 without my notes sprawled on my workspace. It really is a struggle. Dogbert has issues getting off his digital devices and we have to crack down on it. Dilb also told Dogbert that he needed to hand out candy with me rather than trick or treating? WTF. Go have fun kiddo, as long as you can. It's only 6th grade, and Tempest will probably still go out with her buddies in 9th grade. Ugh. I can hand out candy or find an adult friend to hang out with to do so. It's fine with me. Time for more reading and planning and generally getting this writing career on the proper track. |
| Remind me of my new list, and I'm feeling better that I changed the dramatis personae. There are new people I'm going to add to the list pretty soon. I'm excited to see what happens there. Tonight Tempest and I are doing concessions for the UW Football game as a fundraiser for her gymnastics (high school) team. She's really great at getting tips - in her last two games she's earned $800 for her team alone. Just in TIPS. Plus we get a % of the sales. It's pretty awesome how much we earn from this. I took a free month of kindle unlimited, and I'm spending a bunch of time  . Some of it is writing books and other publishing style helpfulness, while the rest is fiction with an eye to market and publishability. That might be one mistake i made for A of S and DTYM with the covers - they're maybe not exactly what they ought to be for their target market. I'm not going to change that for the moment, but I am soon going to start that marketing game and see what I can create from that. I don't have a lot of experience with this, and that's only going to lead me to more research and development of the skills I need to use for these. In other news, I'm exhausted. If I lie down too long (without stimuli) I fall asleep. I might just be pushing too hard between trying to finish a book (space western #1), tidying/cleaning my office for guests, and ferrying Dogbert and Tempest to places they need to be. I may also be staying up too late reading. Not sorry. Plus language learning is going well. Therapy is difficult. Anyone who thinks otherwise isn't giving it a fair shake. I have a boss at gymnastics who is supportive. I literally do not know what to do with this. I've never had one like that before (who wasn't a dear friend like Brandiwynš¶  or my yoga mentor at her studio before we started working together). The amount of times this boss chats with me and I panic beforehand because I think I'm wrong is insanity. It's really hard to accept this as how things are supposed to be, even though I like the way I'm treated and valued within the whole. (Therapist has already linked it back to several things in the past that I suppose I still need to deal with. Sigh. Here comes more work.)But I did put out two books this month, and I have one more for next month, and I may be writing a sequel to Art of Science next month to come out in Dec/Jan if I can work that out. |
| Immediate Family: Dilbert, Tempest, Dogbert My Extended Family: Mom (RIP2022), (s)Dad, cousin Dilbert's Extended Family: SIL (+5 kids)& BIL, FIL (RIP2019), FIL's gf Important People I Don't See Enough: [HuHot Guy, Smiles & Bibliophile] I should archive that, but Smiles' best friend Owl is locally close to me now, and we get along well. People I've Known a Long Time/Long Distance: [Jori & Lion], Doc & [husband], Sheer & DocSheer, Mrs. Light & [husband], Trillium & Diego (not married but close enough), [Swedes, Persia], Steph Local People: MotherDroid, Owl&Partner No Longer Local People: R&D=Rascal & Daisy (never speak to them anymore, but it's on them), Islander (will be local again but currently backpacking through Europe-not close anymore), Photogirl (still close), Have to search names if I put them in here ,but I've got some really decent girlfriends at the moment. DnD: used letters, S (DM), D(doctor), Y(because I like him!), K(old RPGer friend who also attends church), P(church guy who does game night and is local and our families are also friends), A (went to church but moved back to Chicago, moved back locally then i moved) Tempest's friends: G(switched to Catholic school - aka the nice friend with the bitch mom) I lost touch except for FB, J(bitch friend with the nice mom) actually she's turned out to be a better friend as she got older, [Mari from school], Firefly from church, Oli from church, a couple new school friends I don't know well. Dogbert's friends: [Kaikai- Mari's younger brother], Davila from school, and [Porter from school] He has a new bunch of friends, 3 in the core group around him, from school that he really enjoys.  That's how it used to read. But we've been in Madison two years, and it's a fucking struggle. I like Madison. So here's an update.(S)Dad is a narcissist. Dilbert is a narcissist. They like to drive each other up the wall, but each of them tells me privately that they're perfectly fine they know what the other one is doing. So, the kids and I are the only ones suffering. Great, guys. Real good job there. They don't like each other for all the terrible things they have in common that they cannot see in themselves. I work with MotherDroid at Gymnastics, along with Tempest. I'm making friends a little here, though it's not too deep. The Boy's Head Coach is someone I want to work with more, and I enjoy the boy's classes. General Manager is cool, and I'm working to learn from her. My manager is british, blunt, and really supportive. I realized I panic when it seems like it could be trouble, but they never think I'm the problem. And that's probably good- because I'm doing my best for these kids and they've seen that. So I'm working on the somatic portion of the panic with my therapist. Gotta start somewhere. More and more my manager is befriending me - today she had a rough conversation with a parent and without giving away details just texted me (started with another thing, but it segued). My DnD people are still close, except Y went to join the Navy. We haven't heard from him in a while, but I hope all is well. Owl and her Partner got married this weekend. Owl is surrounded by wonderful people that I enjoy. Went out to a small shindig Friday, then out to the bachelorette party Saturday, and then I was bartender at their wedding on Sunday. I didn't know exactly what to expect as a bartender, but I made a cool new friend who is local to me. His wife may get along great with Dilbert. And Dilbert thought that sounded sexual, so we laughed. Dilbert didn't make it to the wedding because of illness. But at the end, I lost control of some of these edges I've been struggling with - to one of the bride's sisters and a lovely NB i met. Why did I feel so much more comfortable even though most of my close friends had gone but there were some beautiful people who understood that NB part of me and didn't judge me lacking for it? And this got me thinking I need a queer space and queer friends and to be understood better by those closest to me. So I talked to the Doc this morning about how I was feeling about my raw edges, and she understood. I know which friends I can reach to with that, even if they don't get it exactly. Doc is one. I should find Tiff a place in the new list, but I'm not sure where she fits. She is supportive of my queerness, though, and generally ADHD madness. Also forgot my writer's group people, so I suppose it can be a work in progress like the rest of everything. ICON is this weekend. I miss Mom. I'm not sure my anthology will be done. |
| I don't know why I wait so long on things. So... Art of Science? Originally written in 2003, I think, at least that's when the project started? That's 20 years ago. But it's still a good story. It's relatable. Don't Tell Your Mother? Originally written 2010. Finally going to push that one out, too. I check out these half-abandoned and mostly unintendionally forgotten drafts, and I think, Oh yeah, I was going to fix that. But when? Which one? I think that's why I want a reader to tell me that something is worth pursuing. But I can be that reader, if I just go through it. And I need priorities. First priority: Freeborn (1 Art Dealer, 2 Creature Path, 3 Great Race) Somehow it got mixed in with those other two, but I'm not currently writing them. They're in a state of I'm done with them, which could easily be permanent. On the Freeborn, I haven't ever stuck that in a drawer for five years even though I started the project back in 2006. I knew I wasn't a good enough writer back then, but I just might be now. Then I look at Night at Blowfish, starring Silk. And the Machine Book, which has issues but many interesting things about it. And Trafficking, which may or may not have run away with my brain and I have struggles running back to it (which takes it farther down the list but George the Dragon has now coopted two short stories, one published and one not yet, so it isn't out of the running completely). And Misfits. Now and again I think about Beyond Dreams, too. Like now. When I'm polishing up those other two. Because- the short story had a good hook, and I wonder how the book is. So, i ought to read it, right? I suppose it ought to get in line behind all the rest. Or maybe in front of a couple. Plus there's that anthology I'm working on. As if the rest weren't enough to keep a writer busy for a decade or so. |
| Thinking hard. I never came out to my mother. Would she still have loved me? I'd like to think she'd have come around, but that's not an option anymore. A friend wrote out her traumas, and it's been an odd thing that I've been looking at mine. It's maybe something I shouldn't tackle all at once, especially when reading a memoir book where the author tackles her own demons. At least my kid trusts me enough to talk to me about her sexuality. Neither seems to have questioned their gender status. Puberty is really tough, though. All those ant metaphors about it's the issue with whomever shakes them up? We put all the ants in middle school and it's the hormones shaking them up. Survival is not a given. |
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