And then, my head exploded: Exploding Head Syndrome

Actually, my head didn't explode. But I do occasionally suffer from Exploding Head Syndrome, a weird phenomenon that, since I've had it for as long as I can remember, is probably more common than anyone realizes. It's just that, who are you going to tell? And what are you going to say?
(Simulated conversation)
"Honey, someone hit the house with a car!"
"Um, no they didn't."
"Then it must have been an earthquake!"
"Um, no. No earthquake."
Googles. Sure enough, no earthquake in the news. "All the doors in the house slammed at the same time?"
"Now you're just being silly."
"Okay, okay. It must have just been my head exploding."
"What?!"

I've felt burning, prickling, and even stabbing sensations in my sleep associated with dreams, or perhaps the dreams try to 'explain' the sensation by making me suddenly walk over sharp coral or getting shot or stabbed. And no, I don't wake up with a body part that's fallen asleep when this happens. So that's pretty weird. I've had full-color (which isn't supposed to happen) full sensation, vivid dreams that border on hallucinations. These dreams, separate in experience from my other dreams, are associated with a period of time when I had severe sleep disturbance issues that they tried to treat and ended up giving me epic nightmares. Ugh. I've also had 'normal' full color, no sensation dreams that nonetheless seem so vivid and important that I remember them for years afterward, like the one where I found a newspaper article about the first centaurs created by science in someone's tower-house attic. I've done lucid dreaming (fun, btw) where I can consciously seize control of the dream environment and continue to dream. And my creativity is clearly linked in a reciprocal fashion to dreaming. If I don't write with full engagement of all my powers of Kami every day, I'll start to dream weirder and more vivid dreams, then nightmares, until finally I find a time when I can do some serious writing and then the dreaming returns to my regularly scheduled programs. And if I'm in the middle of an intense writing period, I'll get incredibly lame, super-boring dreams where I'm shopping for an item and can't find it, or I'm at work. And then I have to wake up and go to work or go shopping. Ugh. What a waste of good dream time. It's like all the creativity that poured out of me into my writing drained my lake-o-inventiveness and left behind a sludge of boring.

But this annoying thing, this exploding head syndrome thing, though it doesn't happen very often (maybe a couple of times a year) is so bad, so frightening ... and yet it's happened often enough now that when it happens and I wake up (today it woke me at a reasonable hour, 5:30 am, which is nice because now I can get an early start on my day) I can accept (almost every time–not this morning though, whoooo boy!) that no, the house wasn't whisked away in a tornado and we didn't just land in Oz with a tremendous crash that killed one of the wicked witches.

As awesome as that would be.

And I can usually go back to sleep.

Not always, though.

This morning, it's good that I'd pretty much had a full night's sleep because I could not have gone back to sleep. My heart was going a million miles an hour, I felt hungover (and no, didn't have a drop of alcohol, actually hadn't had even a nightcap since Sunday–hey, could that be my problem? :P ) and I was absolutely, positively sure that an intruder had dropped something incredibly heavy, as in, the entire house when the jacks had given way (except there was no falling sensation just before so maybe it was just the half of the house I wasn't in.) (And there were no associated rattles or glass crashing so clearly it was emptied already of all our stuff.) (And the wood framing had to be stabilized in some way because there were no snaps, crackles or pops.)

It was really unpleasant and frightening, to say the least. I was actually afraid to explore the house, I was so sure that there was a crazy, clumsy intruder downstairs.

Some doctors believe that you'll get clusters of these exploding head thingies when you're stressed. I don't know about that. I am incredibly stressed and overworked right now, but I've been incredibly stressed before and I didn't get them. There's no way for me to remember if I was stressed when this happened before. I suppose, now that I've blogged about it, I can make a little note on future blogs at the end and we can track it together.

So, if you see something about my head exploding at the end of future blogs, don't be alarmed. It's for science.

And now that my head has exploded, I can start my day. I hope you have a great one! And may your head never explode.

Blood, Sweat and Seeds

When I got home I had two M&Ms cookies with a cone of whipped cream on top, and then I went to work.  You'd think after a full day at the day job I'd want to put my feet up, or maybe at least cook some dinner and watch a movie or something.

That would be far too sensible.

We had rain in the local forecast, and I remembered I had all these old seeds I hadn't gotten around to planting.  Bags and bags of them.  And I thought, I'll just scatter them around and the rain will soak them in and what comes up, comes up.

But of course it's never that simple.

First I planted some ancient marigold seeds out in the veggie garden, and then I checked out the area I had planned for my mass old seed dumping ground.  It's about sixty feet long and ten to twenty feet wide, depending on the section.  The kids had, as instructed, dug out the majority of the blackberry roots, so I figured I'd just toss the seeds on the bare ground and go inside and have dinner.  I grabbed a rake (big mistake) and went to break the crust on the soil.

Hard as a rock.  Seriously.  I felt so betrayed!  Normally the soil under blackberries is quite soft.  They form their own sort of (evil) duff that keeps the soil moist and suppresses weeds.  And a few of the areas were like that, but way too much of it felt like baked clay so hard that I understood why even the grass hadn't started to take root there (yet.)  First I debated attacking the areas with a hoe.  Couldn't find one.  Then I considered  a shovel.  Mind you, this is after work, and I knew it would get dark soon, and breaking up rock hard dirt with a shovel is no light, quick task.

The impending darkness settled it for me.  I would get the big rototiller.

One sweaty, sore, throat-sore-from-suppressed-cussing half-hour later I had the whole section tilled.  I scattered the seeds, keeping particular kinds more or less together, raked the now (mostly) soft dirt to roughly cover at least some of the seeds in case they needed to be covered to sprout, and went home.  I had just enough time to gather eggs from the coup and close the chickens in for the night before the dark swooped in.  I had to turn on lights when I came in so that I could find my way around the house.

So now I'm thinking (I'm crazy that way) that I'd just put a whole lot of work into seeding an area that may or may not have viable seeds scattered on it.  So sometime this week I'm going to do yet another ridiculous thing.  I'm going to get a bunch of fresh seeds of something tall, bomb-proof and pretty, like cosmos or baby's breath or bachelor buttons (or maybe all of the above), and mix it with a big bag of potting soil and scatter that around the area as well.

That should fix it up real nice.

And then I'll be done.

Except for putting in the tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and other stuff.

Oh, and I have a few more discounted bulbs to put in.

But then I'll be done.

Really.

Mostly done, anyway.

Slowly Getting Weirder as Exhaustion Sets In

I have three days off in a row, so naturally I'm working hard enough that I hurt all over.  All in the name of getting the house into some sort of decent shape.  I'm so tired, though, that I'm not even sure what that means anymore.  Maybe I just want to get the walls painted (ceiling all done, yay!) and the floor put in upstairs so that I can pretend that from here on out all I have to do is write, show up at my day job, and eat bon bons.  

But of course there's always one more thing.  For example, I'm totally ignoring the fact that our deck is in dire need of maintenance.

La la la I didn't just type that I'm ignoring everything else that's languishing because of this dumb floor-replacement-turned-upstairs-remodel project.  

After tomorrow I'll start setting up to do the floors and then everything will be unicorn farts and fairy dandruff.  Yay!  I'll never have to work on the house again.  Weeee!

Return of Insomnia

Ugh.  I did everything I could to get to sleep at a decent hour tonight.  Quiet evening.  Editing.  Hot bath.  Reading.  Yet here I am at 2am again, unable to sleep.  I think I'll take my laptop to bed and hope that I'll doze off eventually.  Oddly, I seem to do better with the light on, and right around 3am I finally nod off.  

Something's haywire.  Not sure what.  I'm hoping I'll be asleep in less than an hour, but at the moment it doesn't look promising.

At least I get added writing time!

Ooo, I'll try some tea too.

I hope everyone else, especially M&E who are at the hospital following M's heart surgery, is getting quality rest tonight.  Sweet dreams.

The Chores are Marching One by One

I've been working a lot and getting a lot done in writing, around the house, finances and all that.  I've even been working out.  In the end, though, I think I've overstretched.  Today I've got a headache and sore throat, and I'm slouched.  I feel a little better now than I did a few hours ago.  Breaking my fast with a home-cooked meal (spaghetti) probably helped.  I'm hoping a good night's sleep tonight will help even more.

We've been watching Bernard Shaw plays.  They've been a lot of fun.  They're BBC productions with some really fine actors in them, and so far they've been stage productions rather than movie-like cinema, which is a nice breath of fresh air.  As much as I enjoy movies, I enjoy theater too and I miss it when I haven't seen it in a while.  Watching on a DVD isn't as good as being in an actual theater, though.

Speaking of movies and stuff, we haven't seen Watchmen yet.  We have three tickets we advance purchased a while ago--I think it's finally time to use them.

Time for me to get some rest and some reading done for Lucky Labs, a certain literary award, and the master's writing class.  Hopefully I'll be more coherent tomorrow.  I don't feel sick sick just yet.  Maybe I'll dodge this illness like I've been managing to dodge colds the rest of the winter and get by with just one afternoon and evening of feeling under the weather.

Meanwhile, outside it's hailing.

Uuuuuhhhhnnnnn

I'm not sure if I'm a zombie or a zombie ate my brains.  

Anyway, thanks to C.S. I've made it back from Radcon safe and mostly sound.  I've got a cold, so although I normally don't fear starting a long illustrated blog post and regress report at 11pm, today I think that resting is the better part of valor.  Besides, I've only had cold water to clean up with the whole weekend.  

Actually, it was lukewarm.  But when you're sick, lukewarm doesn't cut it.  I danced around in the limp drizzle (not enough pressure for an actual spray in the system!) briefly on the first morning, making little protesty noises.  The second morning I couldn't face doing that again (and the water felt even colder!) so I gave myself a lukewarm sponge bath.  Not sexy.

Yes, things were perky due to the cold, but seriously not sexy.  At all. 

Shut up!  I had a runny nose.  It was gross.

Anyway, the horrors of this year's facility woes were many, but the actual convention was very fun and I have nothing but words of gratitude for our hosts, and in particular the indefatigable Radcon Bob.  Bob, you're my hero.

Kewl pics from nucular (aka nuclear, but actually radiation--I just wanted to say nucular because it drives certain people crazy) testing facilities are forthcoming, as are reports of what panels I remember.  I'm pretty sure I was on panels, and I remember listening to some too.  Or maybe that was a fever dream.  There were penguins at Radcon, right?

A million ants

I have so much stuff to do prepping for OryCon and a fabulous homecoming that I've fallen behind on everything.  Nano.  Housework.  Exercise.  Painting (the house interior.)  Watercolor projects.  It's the attack of the million ants.  Every project is manageable, but I feel like I've been swarmed.

I made progress on some neglected stuff today, but it feels like just one or two ants got smushed out of the swarm.

Argh, ants everywhere!  Ants!

Thank goodness my kids are helpful and forgiving.  And bowling yesterday helped, weirdly.  I think the bowling ball must have taken some of the ants out.

Still fighting insomnia.  Maybe tonight will be my night to sleep more than four hours.

I knew you were going to say that (30060)

The echoes of insomnia are still bouncing around inside me.  Fortunately the kids have a Veteran's Day holiday, so I can sleep in.  I had reasonable rest last night, but it started late.  It ended up tanking my whole day, writing-wise, as I ended up taking a nap, then rushed off to work out (yay writer's constitutional!) grocery shop, and took care of some chores including vacuuming out the electric wall heaters (if you have them, do this please and don't forget to shut off the power to them!) downstairs, vacuuming the stairs, sweeping (yay!) the downstairs and transplanting a plant.  

I'm too punchy to write effectively at this point, but guess what!  I'm going to write at least a hundred words.  Maybe one hundred will turn to a thousand, and maybe I'll end up pushing past that thousand to my daily goal of 3000 words.  The prose will probably be rough, silly and repetitive, but it'll be on the page.  I'm 100% in agreement with Pullman in his emailed pep-talk to Nanoers--better teh suck words than zero words.

Soon I have to go to sleep.  I know, I know.  Break the cycle by getting up early, and don't take a nap.  Hopefully I'll be able to get back on the sleep track by Wednesday.

Zzzzzzz

Here we are in the Executive suite.  I'm really tired, but programming stuff is happening and I even may have had something to do with some of the progress we've made.  I don't have time for an extensive post.  I just wanted a little note here to remind myself that I have purpose beyond being a typemonkey.

Police line do not cross

A long but good day today.  We went to the county fair and did county fair things complete with seeing just about every animal there and eating elephant ears.  I have a bright yellow elastic bracelet that says POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS, the kind that are kind of like giant rubber bands.  I'm sure there's a specific name for that kind of bracelet but I'm not nearly kewl enough to know what it is.  Out of keeping with tradition, we put on enough sunscreen that none of us are sunburnt.

When I got home I put another 20 or so books into my library thing.  I haven't yet finished the books on my computer desk--that's all that this list is so far.  Some of them are reference, some of them are on my to-read pile, some of them are inspiration, and some of them were written by friends of mine so I like to keep those close while I'm writing.  Maybe the magic will rub off.

I'm so tired I'm rocking in my chair, not back and forth, but side to side and not focusing on anything when I'm not typing.  Time to call it a day.  No writing, no reading, but I don't feel like I've slacked off.  If anything, I bet the writing has percolated nicely in the summer sun and tomorrow will be a great writing day.  Unless I sleep through it.  A distinct possibility.

The Hours of the Sun

It's a weird day.  Not bad, just weird.  I'm floating through it.  Part of that is lack of sleep--I think I slept about 3 hours last night and then another 3 hours during a morning nap.  I sent out an agent query today, the first in a long stretch, shopped a bit with the girl, and now it's time to get some work done.  The only thing that's kept me from being in a complete fog is the fact that I walked some and got a little writing done around 7am.

I'll go wander outside for a while.  That may lead to gardening, or it may lead to some story stuff, or both.  I've talked about environmental changes helping the writing thing.  This time I'm not just highlighting the change in creative dynamic when I change my location, but how the sunlight affects my energy and mindset.  Exposure to light when I'm drowsy will help reset my messed up sleep cycle and help pull me through the rest of the day so that I can go to sleep at a reasonable hour and maybe even get a shot at waking up early.

Has anyone noticed changes in their productivity and health when they change the times that they wake up and how much time they spend outside?  Me, the earlier I wake up (within reason, near dawn or soon after seems to be ideal) the better.  If I spend at least two hours outside that really helps too.  I feel better, I sleep better, I work better.  I can also function well with a late to bed, late to rise schedule but that's all it is, functioning.  When I write until the wee hours of the morning and don't get up until 10am (or even later) I don't have as much energy as I do on an early schedule, given equal time outside.  In summer it's especially obvious--I end up experiencing a lot of heat and simultaneously miss that blissful morning coolness that's so delicious to work and play in.

Let's discuss.

My brain is full

Normally I post something pagan-ish around the solstices and equinoxes.  Aside from a late night feast and some indulgence for the kids, we didn't do much religious observance on the longest day of the year.  I often get up with the dawn during the solstice, but I didn't set my alarm.

I could theorize, but it boils down to my brain is full.  I've got too much to do in too little time.  Oh well.  Life's always been busy.  As long as I keep breathing, the family and animals stay healthy, and the house isn't falling down around our ears I guess it's okay.  I feel a little weird in my summer dress stinking of sweat from stress and muggy weather, but weird is okay too.  Dakota sighs, content to lay on the cool tile in my office.  The cats demand attention and purr like mad when they get it.  The kids laugh while watching a silly movie, and I smile in answer.  

In writing projects, I'm juggling two novels and a short short.  That's two editing projects and one naked writing.  I really need to send out another agent query for Masks too.  Habits are formed through repetition.  The habit I need to form is the submitting habit, and I've definitely fallen down on that in the past few weeks.  Yeah, yeah, blame the man of the house, but honestly I have hours, daily, to myself now and that excuse doesn't hold up.  

The sad lot of the writer is the same sad lot of a self-employed anyone--by being able to schedule your own hours, every moment can be a potential work or play.  Play can make you feel guilty for not working, and work can seem endless and without sane limits.  When my focus is on I don't feel the stress from self-scheduling.  Right now I'm very unfocused and it's bothering me.  Bother bother bother.  Fortunately I have nice escapes in all directions.  When the writing feels too heavy I try art to get away from the pressure.  It's work, and yet play.  Same with gardening.  Same with gardening as work--the overwhelming sense of endless mowing--I can escape it into writing as work/play or art.  It's still not easy.  But when my brain is full, it helps.  A lot.

I didn't get into details about the storm the other day because I was feeling so yucky.  I'm still feeling pretty yucky, but better.  I'm not looking forward to sleeping tonight as last night I woke up in a nasty sweat.  Sleep came in brief snatches after that as I shivered, sweated, shivered some more, slept fitfully, and sweated even more.  I put on a long sleeve shirt and kept a towel on hand to mop up after myself.  I'd say it's an impending chrone thing, but I'm just a tad bit too young (not by too terribly much, but not within the standard age range for my family) and also I had someone ahead of me with the same illness go through the same thing.  He sweated for four nights.  Man, I hope it doesn't take four nights for me to get done with it.

Anyway, the storm:

Dove gray skies, distant sounds of thunder

Silver boiling into black

Flashes

Standing on the deck 

Eyes reflect jagged bolts that span miles

Funnel cloud orange skies to the west

Rain, light, then pouring, then dumping

It doesn't rain here like this

But it does

Then hail comes

A step back

Heavy hail, thunder hail

The storm is overhead

Trees sway, branches snap

Leaves shred

Dogs running, whining, howling, eyes wild

A rescue is launched into the storm

Prying up deck boards

A trapped white dog scrabbles to freedom

Dogs in the house, running, trembling

Wet animal hair and the scent of a fresh clearcut

Spruce, maple, shattered flowers

Hanging baskets sway, filled with white

No birds, no life, no sound but storm

Hail spills like river rock onto skin and bone

Salvage all we can, all we think to salvage

Fill a glass again and again with hail and whiskey

The thunder and hail pound music on the world

Until, softly

The rain comes again, softly

Thunder, long thunder

Rumbles into the night, a long goodbye

The black and gold caravan rolls into the distance and is gone.

I started to make a list and it got kinda poetic on me.  Please excuse the amateur.  

Time to settle down, I think.  I hope I don't sweat for hours again tonight.

At least the camera is working

Rory gave me a clue, so now my camera is operational again.  Yay!  Just in time for serious gardening season.  It's late, but not too late, to weed like crazy in hopes to limit weed seed generation and spread.  We're high enough on the hill that the dandelions haven't turned into puffballs yet, but I noticed that lower down there's lots of yellow and white in the meadows and along the roads.  Other weeds are just getting wound up so if you have a garden, or even just a few containers, get out there and get to work.  Locally the soil is the perfect texture--not too hard and dry, not so wet that everything clumps into yucky globs.

It's too early for tomatoes, peppers, beans and other warm crops to go into the ground, though they can go into containers.  The air is the right temp but the soil isn't, yet.  But just about anything that isn't a tropical or sub-tropical dainty can get planted.  I spent the whole day on hands and knees filling the white garden beds with sweet alyssum, pansies, wave petunias and snapdragons.  When they all fill in it should look really sharp.

I've identified the mystery hummers.  There are two female rufous hummingbirds as well as the lone male we've seen so far.  They're fearless--too fearless, as I saw one humming around my hanging flower baskets sedately dodging Huntress as she leapt repeatedly for the bird.  I chased Huntress off before she got it, but the kids reported that Wizard got one a couple of weeks ago.  So we had four, and are down to three unless the captured one managed to get away.  Their numbers will probably grow as we warm up.  We're keeping the cats in most of the time, which will help, I hope.

While I was adding bird seed to one of the feeders I noticed there was a pine siskin that didn't want to fly off.  It just hopped around.  It looks like a male to me, and too bright to be an immature one.  Maybe it's sick?  The pine siskins let me get very, very close and often watch me from a couple of feet away in the tree when I fill their feeders, but I've never seen one hop around on the ground like this before.  If he's sick he's not going to make it, not with all the predators around, even if we keep the cats in continuously for the next several days.  He's so cute, it makes me sad.  But maybe he's fine.  He stayed in the area long enough for me to get my camera, come back, and take pics of him, and then I decided to stay away from him so he didn't get stressed.  Unfortunately that means I don't know if he eventually flew off, so I'll be thinking about him worried that he's suffering.  I don't know if the dirty bill means anything.  I think it's just cracked nyjer seeds.  There may be an illness going around, because I've heard others mention finding more dead birds than usual, especially pine siskins.  I've also found a towhee with no apparent cause of death visible on it, and the dogs have ended up with an unusual number of dead birds in their clutches this year.

I'm all stressed, depressed (not real bad, just gloomy) and hormonal right now.  Chocolate is helping.  Maybe I'll have some red wine tonight too.  Last glass for a while, because I'll probably need ibuprofen in the morning and I never mix alcohol and ibuprofen.  It's too hard on the liver.

Don't Want to Stop

Yum, I love the sunshine.  Yay!  I've been gardening like a madwoman.  It's one of those things where everything hurts, especially my back and my legs from trying to support my back and my hands which are no longer accustomed to pulling blackberries.  Yanking blackberries is hard, nasty work, but rewarding.  So why the rush?  Because it's time to put out some of the seed I have set aside for broadcast and I have to work tomorrow.  I have no expectation that the weather will be nice on Saturday (or ever again until June) so I'd like to get it all done now.

All is strong word.  Let's say a lot.  I'd like to get a lot now, and get the crimson clover and wildflower seeds sprinkled out there in sufficient quantities that the birds can go to town and there will still be plenty left over to sprout.  Out there, at least the part I want to seed, happens to be covered in blackberries.  So there we are.  

In the meantime, my greenhouse is set up and the seedlings have been transferred to a location where they can have sunlight in sufficient doses to keep them from getting even more straggly.  I've filled about half my hanging baskets and set them in there too, and some pots with calla lily starts (the red/orange kind) and started my tomatoes better-late-than-never.  It got cold last night, but the greenhouse kept everyone safe and warm.  Looks like it's going to be a great growing season this year.

But only if I can get enough blackberries pulled before the rains come and stay until June, like they almost always do.  I guess all I can do is keep my fingers crossed and enjoy what I've got going so far.  Not too many years ago it rained solid from February through the first week of June and nothing got planted--nothing--before June.  That was a sad kitty year for the kitty gardener.  I'll count my blessings.  But first I've got to go pull some more blackberries.

Here are some of the plants waiting for warm weather, sunshine, frost-free nights and plenty of blackberry-free zones to grow in.

I got another rejection in the mail(form) and tomorrow is my deadline for getting another query out.  My pile of things to do is starting to look like a pig pile.  Here comes Radcon, and he's six foot seven and 350 pounds.  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!

The good news with Radcon is that I've been playing with my art mats (which were poorly cut thanks to my primitive mat cutter) and I developed a technique that bevels the edges, looks sharp, and gives me lots of opportunity for expression.  If you're wondering, since I've been working at my day job too, when I get a chance to write the answer is oh, between 11pm and 2:30am when I'm not spending that same window on art.  On mornings when I have to get up with the kids at a wee tad before 6am, this doesn't allow for much sleep (she said, yawning.)  Thank the status quo that I could sleep in this morning.  I still have to work, but I got about six hours of sleep--feels like heaven--and I work a short shift so I can work out at 24 Hr Fitness (maybe soak in the hot tub too,) get home in time to fix a semblance of dinner, finish messing with my last matting projects, and then write.  Oh, and see if I can put together a query.  If I can't, well, I'd rather pay INK a dollar for missing my deadline than turn out another package that will only earn me another rejection.  From the pattern I've seen so far, query letter and synopsis, sharp, opening is torpedoing me.

Lots Ahead

I've done a lot of critiquing over the past few days.  First pages, Lucky Lab manuscripts, cowriting.  I've also done some polishing on Masks, but not nearly as much as I'd like to.  It's wild, but the dreary kind of wild like when you've been camping for ages with no one else around and all you really want is a home-cooked meal, a hot shower and your own bed.  I'm slowly crawling out from under my backlog, keeping up on the new stuff coming in, and I hope by the time Wednesday rolls around (my guesstimate for when I'll be done with all this) I can sit down and write uninterrupted.

I missed a critique meeting on Saturday.  It started to snow, and snow, and snow.  It was one of those snow storms that dumps several inches in a few hours.  If it had snowed steadily all day and night at that rate we might have seen accumulation that could be measured in feet rather than inches.  As it stood it was very off and on and had mostly stopped by 8pm.  Just a few minutes ago it started raining, which will take our three inches of slush and melt it all away in short order.  I'm surprised that we still have snow--it's about 40 degrees F out there.  The ground is really cold, though.  

Anyway, I'd already missed one Lucky Labs meeting because of work and I was really looking forward to making a meeting for once.  I find critiques so valuable, not just for the feedback but the inspiration.  I try to change locations when I write periodically.  When I write in my office I tend to write writing-in-my-office prose.  The prose freshens immensely when I hand write at work, or tap away on a laptop somewhere, etc.  I haven't had a chance to jostle myself out of this physical comfort zone for quite a while, so it makes critique groups even more valuable.  When I come back from one I feel as if I've been run through a wash and dry cycle.  My mind has had all the dingy grime washed away and the tangles have been brushed out.

Coming up, Radcon.  I've had a chance to pitch informally to coworkers (though I doubt they knew that was what I was doing) and although I'm still not very good at it, I'm starting to find my feet.  I don't think I'll be pitching Masks at Radcon, but you never know.  If an opportunity presents itself I think I'll go for it.  Chances are high that Masks will come back with a 'thanks for your sub but this doesn't fit our needs' note.  It's out of the slush pile, which is really fabulous, but now it's competing with nothing but promising novel concepts.  It feels wonderful to have gotten this far.  I have to be careful, though, not to let my subconscious settle me into a 'far enough' mode.  I'm outside my comfort zone and I'm sure all kinds of little status-quo demons will be busy at work trying to either stuff the worms back into the can or at least building a new, bigger can to keep the worms in.  Heh.  Out of the can and into the compost bin?  

There's lots ahead of me right now.  My life has turned into a page-turner.  I can't wait to see what's going to happen in the next chapter.

Gah!  Weather update.  It looks like this right now (4:36pm):

I was just getting ready to head out to the Olive Garden for a birthday party, too.  Denied!!  The temp was 40 degrees only a half hour ago, and it was raining, like I mentioned earlier in this post.  Now it's at 36 degrees and dropping.  I shouldn't have said anything about the snow melting away.  I have only myself to blame.

Still sleepy

I totally need a vacation to get over my vacation. I'm still tired all the time. Best intentions for getting stuff done go out the window. I tried napping but ended up reading and staring at the ceiling in alternate steps. Overtired, I think the term is. Too tired to rest.

At least the garden got watered, and I started sorting through my desk stuff. It's a far cry from gardening most of the day, alas. I'd probably have more energy if I pulled it off. Well, there's tomorrow. A trick I read someplace was to wait to go to bed until you're on the verge of sleep when you're having trouble sleeping. I'm on that verge now. Time to plunge in.

See all y'all in the morning.