In Which Our Heroine Deals With Stuff First, Then People

16 December 2003

I don't suppose this qualifies as a life lesson, but just for future reference: if you have a bottle of butterscotch schnapps in the house and wish to have butterscotch truffles, it will not help. The butterscotch flavor isn't strong enough; if you added enough to make the truffles truly butterscotchy, they wouldn't stick together and roll properly. They're not nasty, mind you. They're just not butterscotchy enough and barely rolled properly as it was.

Also: apparently driving in freezing rain is like riding a bike. I don't know if riding a bike is, since I haven't been on a bike in ages and ages. But I drove home pretty comfortably and (despite the stupidity of a few other drivers) quite safely in freezing rain yesterday afternoon. And I got up the driveway in one try, about which I am still smug. I'm not looking forward to shoveling now that snow has covered over the freezing rain. But we'll handle it as best we can and as much as we need to, and it's really not much snow. I don't think I have anywhere to go today: I went too many places yesterday so that I wouldn't have to leave the house today, supposedly. I have writing and cleaning and baking to do today. Stuff. As usual.

The chiropractor's appointment was good. Dr. Naas has similar attitudes and techniques to Dr. Bill's (Naas is her last name, not her first), and I feel better, and I'm going in again Friday before I go back to my as-needed routine every 6-8 weeks or so.

I finished Heroes Die and enjoyed it; seemed like it was poking at some of the same themes as The Secret Country and its sequels, with the creation of art that contains destructive acts in it. I'd be interested in seeing how the sequel handles that theme, because while I enjoyed the book, the resolution of that theme did not particularly impress me. I got several library books just for fun, because they caught my eye, and I'm going to start the one that made me squeal when I spotted it, Garret Freymann-Weyr's The Kings Are Already Here.

One of the radio beings read an article on the air in which the postmaster claimed yesterday would be the year's biggest mail day. And yet I still didn't get any of my forwarded mail. Yarg. Two Christmas cards and two bills. I want my rejection and/or acceptance letters. If I didn't have the matter of the missing credit card bill, I would think, "Well, maybe the editors are just being slow and didn't send me any rejections to that address between November 17 and now." And maybe that's the case. But it's a heck of a lot more likely, given that the post office is known to have one of my items from last month, that they have more. I really should just stop driving myself nuts over these things, but honestly, it's not that easy. It's doubled the usual helpless feeling of having stories out. It makes things seem like even if there is progress, I won't be allowed to know it. I am out of my own loop. It's distressing.

So. Today, writing, cleaning, a bit of baking, a bit of shoveling, wrapping, decorating...stuff. Lotsa stuff. Tomorrow there will be people here, and Thursday, and also Friday. Not nonstop, but still, people. Got that? Today, stuff; tomorrow and onwards, people.

Back to Novel Gazing.

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