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And that's enough said about that.
Never did get the habitrail groove on. A few weeks ago I made it to the treadmill every morning, first thing. Wasn't so bad getting on the TM, but I HATEd the commute home. And I was struggling. Stick with the flex time thing? Meaning, 9 hour workdays and not getting home till 6:30 pm.
Then I got sick. And was wretchedly sick for a long time. Still suffering some of the after effects, but mostly back to norm now. Needless to say, I never made it back to the TM.
Yes. You read that right. I got in a whole week of TM work. One. Whole. Week.
I will try it again. I'm aiming to start tomorrow, since it's my flex day and I won't have to get up too early to do it. Though I am meeting a friend for lunch and whatnot, so I need to hit the TM by 9:00.
I can do it. I can!
Then there's the celebration of my femininity -- which has turned into a 2-week party. And enough said about that as well. Though if it doesn't stop soon, you can bet you'll be hearing more.
Also, I haven't done my taxes yet.
Also, my eldest daughter turns 29 on the 9th. MY birthdays don't bother me much, but theirs make me feel ancient.
- Mood:
exhausted
I'm writing on a fairly regular basis these days. Not a lot, and not every day, but the WIP has 165 pages right now (aka 34,780 words). My FABulous critique group has a lot to do with my steady accumulation of progress. They rock and I am grateful.
So there's that.
The day job is still secure. Even though a recent article talked about how the NYT could send every one of its subscribers a free Amazon Kindle for less than half of what it costs to print the paper for a year. I do not work for the NYT, just to be clear. But I do work in print and we print peeps are on the edge of something. Abyss or bliss or SOMEthing. I've got my eyes on bliss.
So there's that.
Scott and I spent the weekend unhappily engaged in conflict. Buzzing round the house like a couple of wasps, battling it out. All swoop and sting. Luckily, neither of us WON. And even more luckily, all has been forgiven and both have moved on. No really, I HAVE! So okay, there was a span of time where he was crawling all over the roof, using an inadequate ladder, against my strongly-voiced objections. And, okay, when he says, "I survived and the gutter is once again attached to the house, why are you still yelling at me? No harm, no foul, right?" It only makes me yell again. And possibly MORE. But it's still true: he survived. And for that I rejoice.
So there's THAT.
And I weighed myself (I weighed myself on New Year's but I've managed to lose all record of it and I honestly can't remember how much over 200 it was, nor, do I think, I want to) Sunday morning. 207.8.
Now, I'm no mathematician. But that's FAT. And I don't feel well. I don't feel horrible, just to be clear. But I don't feel great. And I'm pretty sure this general malaise has everything to do with this general FAT. (Plus lack of movement and minus anything resembling vegetation.)
Sigh.
So I am once again trying to get back into the habitrail routine.
I'll work on the food next but lets not get cRaZy up in here, yo . . .
Anyay. I'm still out here, internets. Still doing my thing and hoping for better.
Just thought you should know.
- Mood:
hopeful
I'm going to get on the scale at Midnight. (After kissing Scott, of course.)
Then I'm going to take a shower -- wash the dust of this year off my feet, and dive headlong into 2009 . . .
More to come . . .
- Mood:
peaceful
Downright ecstatic to be here.
- Mood:
ecstatic
And now, I'm not giving up . . . I'm just going to bed . . .
- Mood:
sleepy
Might get a few more words tonight. But I've been hacking away at this on and off all day and it's hitting the point where it feels weird.
My brain's too clouded to elaborate on that. Only that at a certain point, when you're writing stuff that you're pretty sure won't stay in the editing, and you're doing it to the exclusion of pretty much anything else. It feels weird. And useless.
Or, that's just your average close-of-scene blues talking, putting off having to go back to the file and figure out where to go next . . .
One or the other.
- Mood:
drained
Words! I have words!
I have something to send my long-suffering critique group!
Words!
In spite of the cold that took me down, hard, yesterday, I am heading into tomorrow in a Very Hopeful State.
- Mood:
accomplished
I blame the black panth*rs.
- Mood:
sick
- Mood:
hyper
But I'm going to try.
- Mood: accomplished
Hello November!
I parked my substantial ass at Panera with my friend Deborah. I set up my laptop and in spite of all the nonproductive sessions I've logged recently, I decided to try and write.
And I got 1825 words written! WaHoo!
The nano site is overloaded so I couldn't log that officially. But hey, what is this if not official?!
I promptly came home (7 hours later) and now it's 1:09 and I'm still up.
Which is means what?
Which is means I will sleep in and wake groggy and the changes of me getting at least 1667 words tomorrow grow and worse and worse as every minute passes . . .
- Mood:
bouncy
Right now I'm letting the food digest a little bit, then I'll try for some activity. The consort made it Christmas in September ("Look outside, do you see the snow?") when he happened across the last Wii at the local B*st B*y on a Sunday and snapped it up.
Now I have DDR and Guitar hero and Fit and what have you. We'll see if video games are magic.
I weigh in tomorrow, I think. Right now I feel FAT as FAT can be. But that's sort of where my mood is at these days.
I DID accomplish one thing I needed to (I mean, other than the usual day-to-day slave-to-the-grind crap that I routinely have to do). I finished judging the contest entries I needed to do. Tomorrow I'll make a copy of the score sheets, then pop them in the mail and that will be off my shoulders!
Yeah.
- Mood:
full
But it's a 3 day weekend for me again. My flex day, this round, is on Monday because I can't take next Friday for work reasons.
I'm kicking around the idea of getting up on Monday (though maybe not at 5:20 am) and going to the local Panera with the laptop. Get out of the house, away from my toxic friend the TV, and away from easy internet surfing. (My exp with Panera's wifi is not great, so signing on isn't much of a temptation).
Today was an all-day workshop at WRW. The speaker was Trish Milburn (FABulous!!!) and in the afternoon she focused on finding the time to write.
Oh how this cut me. Sliced me to ribbons. It's not that I don't have time. Hell. I don't have kids, don't have a demanding spouse. I'm not a suzy homemaker so it's not like I spend all my time cleaning and cooking. I sleep 7 hours a night, work 8.5 hours a day, with a 45 minute commute each way, so that's another 1.5. And that's pretty much it for what I HAVE to do. It would be nice to get 8 hours of sleep a night, but I have a hard time getting to bed before 10:00, and the alarm (did I mention?) goes off at 5:20 every morning.
She told us to make a list of 5 things we could let go of, to make time to write and I had to fill in all 5 things with TV.
TV TV TV TV TV.
I am stupid with the TV. The TV doesn't make me feel like I only write crap, it doesn't make me feel like I'm not making the grade, it doesn't make me feel, period. It absorbs me, more or less, entertains me or informs me. It acts on me, instead of me having to act on it and I get sucked right in.
She then told us to rate, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you want to be a published writer.
In my mind, I'm a 10, right? My goal since I started seriously pursing writing, all the way back in the early 90s, was to get published.
But how seriously have been pursuring it, really? When I take a hard clear cold look at it, I'm only a 3. I don't write every day. I don't even write every week. She said we should honestly assess our commitment and then ACCEPT it. Because otherwise it's one more way we beat ourselves up.
But seriously. Seriously.
So I'm thinking,
I'm thinking.
- Mood:
distressed
Hmm well so. I did indeed work on the bedroom yesterday, and a little bit today. So yaye!!! Not finished, not by a long shot, but a load of work done. I've thrown out a lot of crap. Also sorted out a lot of books. Which to keep, which to get rid of. I have a TON and I do mean a TON of self-improvement books. It is somehow comforting for me to just have them around, near the bed, preferrably. I don't know if my unconscious actually believes they can help me, just by being close to me, or what. All I know is that when I went to move a stack of them to the spare bedroom, something made me decide not to. And so they are now stacked neatly on the table by my bed. Which is a little bit better than the floor, though only technically., Also sorted through the clothing, boxed up some of the stuff that's too small. Sorted out stuff that I don't ever want to wear again but is still in good shape to give away. Threw out stuff that wasn't good enough to pass on (which makes me wonder why I was keeping it in the first place but there you go).
I even made inroads into the The Closet. Wow.
So I'm feeling fairly accomplished, as far as that goal goes.
Lets see. Oh, I did send the next piece out to the critique group last night. It could have used more editing, but I wanted to send something out and I did so good.
And I tried to go get the new Chelsea Cain book but feh, I'd messed up the days in my head and it doesn't actually come out until today.
I thought about hitting the bookstore already but then realized that if I did, I'd only come home and start reading and get nothing more done. So I haven't.
Right now I mean to sit down with my story and try to figure some things out before I try to write any more. I'm at 66 pages and this is where books tend to go sideways on me.
I think I need some guideposts along the way. A few targets to hit between where I am now and where I think I want to be. Because yes, I do have an idea of how I think this book should end, but I'm not completely confident that that's where it will go.
My brain is unruly.
Like that's a surprise . . .
- Mood: accomplished
I'm not sure what that means, in Mulder's case, and I do believe that obsession/addiction with anything, in a way that messes with your life, is bad. But I'm guessing that there are worse things to be addicted to. (e.g., Meth Mouth.)
Just saying.
Aaaaanyway. The thing I'm still marveling at is the whole Not Tracking thing! All I'm doing is sticking as close as I can to the stuff on the Kore list, and minimizing as much as I can the things that are not. Because realistically, it's impossible to eat 100% Kore. And I think, as long as the scale trends down, I'm going to stick with that philosophy.
Here's the scary part -- I've got Tuesday off. Weigh day. Off.
Now, as I mentioned before, I haven't been weighing at home. So that little once-a-week dose of affirmation -- even if it's only 0.4 of a pound -- really helps. Will I be able to get through the next week without pulling out the scale here at home?
Stay tuned.
In other news, I'm planning to clean my bedroom tomorrow. There are just stacks and stacks of books and magazines and papers and clothes in 3 different size ranges. It's a mess, and that's just MY side of the damn room. My consort has his own problems with books/magazines/and papers, but I know that as soon as I clean up my act, he'll swoop in and make his disappear as well.
I wonder if that would work the other way around? If he cleaned up his side of the room, would that then provoke me into cleaning up mine?
Doubtful!
In other other news, I read the best book yesterday. Seriously, the first couldnt-put-it-down book I've read in AGES. It was Heartsick, by Chelsea Cain. Set in Portland, OR, where the youngest ungrateful little harpy resides, and guess what it's about?
Yes, that's right. Serial killers.
Because apparently -- and believe you me, I didn't know this before she moved there -- that's where ALL the serial killers live.
Who knew?
Cain's next book comes out in hardcover tomorrow (or today, since it's after midnight) so I'll be picking that up.
And that's my To Do list for Labor Day:
Clean bedroom
Buy book
Send piece out to critique group
Totally doable.
Wish me luck, internets . . .
- Mood:
productive
I imagine there must come a time when you -- and when I say "you" here, I clearly mean "me" -- can set your sights on entering the golden heart contest again without bundling together every other attempt you've made over the years and beating yourself over the head and shoulders with it.
Right?
I imagine that could happen. Some year.
Just not this year.
And along with all the "Again?!?" thoughts running through my head, I can almost always add -- and you're not even writing a romance so WHAT'S THE POINT?
Which isn't strictly true. The new book, like every other book or short story or paragraph I've written, has a romance in it.
Along with some fantasy elements and some other things that probably won't please hard core romance readers. And will probably screw it up in the GH.
But it's such a great deadline! That's why I do it. That's why it works for me. Two first drafts done over the years and this will be my third book written with the GH deadline in mind.
And speaking of deadlines, here are the major ones:
November 17, 2008
Entry forms and fees must be received by the RWA Office.
December 2, 2008
Entered works must be received in the RWA Office. Failure to meet this deadline shall result in disqualification and forfeiture of the entry fee.
March 25, 2009
Notification will be sent to finalists by two-day guaranteed, registered delivery. Phone calls to notify finalists shall also commence. Release of official finalist list on RWA Web site by 2:00 p.m. Central Time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Food Note: The eldest Ungrateful Little Harpy told me about this thing she'd heard, that dieters who ate 2 eggs for breakfast lost 65% more weight than dieters who ate a bagel. So of course I've been eating 2 eggs every morning! Come Tuesday will be my second full week of eggs. So far, so good. It seems like I'm less "munchy" in the morning. I usedta could graze from the time I got to the office until lunch. But I haven't been doing that. Will that show on the scale? That remains to be seen. I lost 0.4 pounds last week which doesn't seem like much but I was experiencing the Full Femininity, so that number is suspect. Of course, that might also have something to do with me being less hungry . . .
Still, it will be interesting to see how it goes on Tuesday.
Also note: Not Tracking feels weird. What kind of diet is this? I like it, but it makes me nervous.
- Mood:
happy
Am in an unaccountably Good Mood tonight. No idea where it came from, but I'll take it.
Here's what's going on. They're doing a third round of WW at my office. I missed the first two meetings while away at RWA, but after I got home, I did eventually go back.
Found out that I'd gained back almost all of the 25 pounds I'd lost in the first round. No surprise there. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm either eating to lose or eating to gain. I don't know how to maintain. And, again, as soon as I went back to my more healthful ways, I started losing again. 6.8 the first week. 0.4 this week. Trending down. Yaye.
I am doing some different things this round. I'm still doing the kore program, but last time I did kore I still "tracked" everything I ate. You don't have to do that on kore. On kore you only have to "count" the foods that aren't on the kore list. But I did it anyway, thinking . . . oh hell, I don't care anymore what I was thinking. Something about -- if I have a great week, and I know what I ate that week, I could go back and recreate it.
::eyeroll::
Anyway. I haven't been tracking anything this time 'round. Also, I haven't pulled out the home scale and I'm not weighing myself every morning.
I suspect that only works right now because I'm still trending down. When that stops, I'll probably start obsessing again.
In any case, it's all immaterial. I've got my eyes on a prize right now and that's all I can see. I desperately want to get back under 200 pounds again. I weighed in this afternoon at 203.4.
So 3.6 pounds are as far as I can think right now.
- Mood:
chipper
Turns out that nine hour days are a breeze.
I'd gotten in the habit, over the last coupla years, of grabbing whatever food and eating at my desk, often working between bites. So when I decided to try the flex time thing, I knew I was going to have to work on making myself take an actual lunch hour. Monday and Tuesday that was easy enough, but today I sorta missed. Still, traffic isn't that much worse when I leave at 4:30 than when I leave at 3:30.
I'm liking it!
They'll probably discontinue it, come September, so I only got to try one 2-week cycle, but if they were open to continuing it, I'd definitely do it.
In other news, I caught this song: Come Over Here, by Sarah Bettens on an episode of "In Plain Sight" and it is now stuck in my head. My New Favorite!
I get all of my music, these days, from my friend the TV.
And did I mention, last night I slept?! Slept!! Like an actual human being who closes their eyes and stops being conscious.
More!!! I want more . . .
- Mood:
cheerful
Then my head started whirling and I haven't slept since. It's 3:05 Tuesday morning as I type this. I finally gave up and just got out of bed, rather than keep waking Scott up, and I've been up for an hour.
I am going back to bed, but I don't know how I'm going to make it through the day and I had planned to catch some dinner and a movie with my friend Mick, but now I just don't know.
Brain, you defeat me! But know what? If I can't keep up at the day job, you're going to be out on the streets along with the rest of us. Just so you know . . .
- Mood: sleepy
I have been out of sync with the internets. They took away the email at work -- prompting my hasty purchase of an iphone --which Apple immediately updated and a newer faster model comes out next month and WOE. Woe is me because I refuse to buy it though I may very likely change my mind come August. July being RWA month, I will save the money to blow on that, then as soon as the plane touches down again in Virginia, convince myself that I deserve the new phone.
Or, you know, not. Lets hope not, okay?
Nevertheless, I am limited to using email on my phone during the day. And even though there's the clever little keyboard on the iphone, it is still much easier to READ email than it is to RESPOND, so I find myself on the other side of the window. I used to be connected, baby. I LIVED in email. Now I mostly just LOOK at it, like a pretty pair of shoes through a pane of glass.
Or that guy from Coldplay. How did I never notice what a fine looking man he was?
Earth to Yvonne -- Hello?
So yeah. I'm working on a new project and when I say working I mean I've got files of notes and jotted thoughts and about 34 pages written. Yes, a new project. I am the queen of new projects. I've "finished" <--- the quote marks there should be bigger than the actual word because it is soooooooo inappropriate -- two books and if I've learned one thing, it's that I need a map. Not an outline, I don't think, but a map. An idea of what landmarks to aim for. I mean, why not? I've tried it twice now flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants and even though I have ENORMOUS pants and a HUGE SEAT I still ended up where I wasn't going. And I am now so AFRAID of the HORRIBLE GOING OFFCOURSE that I have started several New Projects and then abandoned them because I couldn't find a map.
I have not yet given up on the map for this new project. It helps that I know the end, sort of. And that I know the feeling that I'm aiming for. But there are key points that I am missing and so, the map remains unfinished.
I aim to plot a couple of points on said map this weekend but with or without them, I also plan to write some more pages.
And edging even further out on that there limb -- I plan to post an update here, detailing my success . . .
Happy Weekend, Internets. I know I've been out of touch but it's not because of you, I swear.
- Mood: hopeful
