the wife

Five things for a Friday

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1) Time for a yay! I’ll be doing another Big Idea essay at the end of August, this time for GAME OF CAGES. Yay! This time I’m going to write a little bit about pets and pet-owners. You guys know how I feel about pets, right? I’m sure many of the people who read it are going to suspect I’m an alien infiltrator, but I swear it ain’t true.

2) I have a huge disorganized jumble of odd books at home. Why, you ask? Because I’m going to be giving them away. They’re all out of my father-in-law’s collection (with his blessing), and they range from ethnic joke books with blank spaces where the ethnicity would go (“You supply the ethnic!”), to stacks of old Archie comics, to old-time erotic photography (now with more bodystockings!), to other, odder books. As the big event, I’ll be giving away this puppy. That’s right, folks. Watch this space.

One question: should I bother with contests? Or just pretend to choose people at random?

Anyway, those books shouldn’t be in a jumble, but they are, because…

3) I spent a good portion of last night tidying my desk so the new printer will fit. My laser printer has stopped working since my Qwest troubles caused me to reinstall my operating system. The Australian print drivers I’d installed seem to have been wiped, and I wasted a bunch of time looking for working replacements. Grr. Way to not support Mac OS, Samsung! I hate you now. Add to that a phone conference about the book trailer for Man Bites World, and I find that…

4) I have a lot of housework to do tonight. Vacuuming, dishes, tidying, recycling, not to mention a quick shopping run for my wife and son’s comfort foods because…

5) Tonight my wife and son come home. They will both need a lot of attention, and I have to say I’m excited to see them. I don’t do very well when my family isn’t around.

My mother-in-law just passed away

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She was a good person and I liked her. I’m not going to talk much more about it than that.

I just put my wife and son on a bus

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They’re headed downtown to connect with the Link light rail and then on to the airport. My mother-in-law had a medical emergency today. I’m not going to give details because it’s not my place, but my wife threw a bunch of stuff into a rolly backpack, grabbed the kid by the ear and lit off for upstate NY. I’m not sure where things stand, but I hope it all turns out all right.

Me, I’ll probably be following on Saturday morning, if the state of emergency is still ongoing. Until then, I’ll be doing what needs doing to leave this place for a full week, namely: paying bills, cleaning, drinking heavily.

It’s a plan.

Today is my wife’s birthday

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I won’t be online very much, I expect. Have a great day.

That dream I had last night?

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Not a dream. I thought I dreamed that muscle cramps in my leg woke me screaming in the middle of the night. Apparently, either my wife had a similar dream (in which she woke up terrified and worked on my leg until it was better) or it really did happen.

Shit. Drinking water now. Will have a banana soon. Have already apologized to her.

Weird.

In honor of the day

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Happy Mother’s Day.

Five Things for a Friday

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1. After weeks of trying to figure out how to fit exercise into my schedule (“What do I give up?” and “When would I have the energy?” being the most important considerations) I suddenly realized that I could squeeze a long walk into my schedule after I finish my shift at my day job, but before I come home. This week I’ve been walking the bus route toward home for 30-40 minutes, and it’s working well. Soon I’ll bump that up to an hour. It means giving up some reading time at the bus stop, but it’s worth it.

2. My feet and leg pain is back. See number one above. I haven’t told my wife about it because it freaks her out, but it’ll soon be obvious because…

3. Our Mothers Day jaunt will be a trip to the park. Lots of walking. Lots of greenery. She loves long walks outside and considers them an essential part of her spiritual self-care. Unfortunately, our son only ventures outdoors after an hour of whining and misery. But we’re doing it, for her. I expect to be in a lot of pain, and to be stuck in the middle.

4. Also this weekend, a very good, very old friend will be in a nearby town. Will he be able to visit? Will I be able to go visit him? No clue.

5. I’m pretty much committed to making a book trailer for book three. Nothing much is going to happen to it at least until the fall, after Game of Cages (aka book 2) comes out. No rush. I will, however, be watching a ton of trailers in the meantime to see what I like and don’t like.

Surprising 6th item: The pre-writing for The Buried King is at the absolute worst part–I have all the characters set and what they want. I know how they’re going to try to get what they want. What I don’t have is a clear idea of how all the conflicts are going to play out.

Truthfully, I don’t need to know this exactly, but I have to have enough information to be sure that the protagonist is going to have conflict with each of the antagonists, and I need to know that each conflict is going to be different. I’m not there yet, which means I’m ready to start writing chapter one but I’m also not ready. Frustrating.

There was supposed to be a surprising seventh thing, too, but I can’t remember what.

Weird day

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Not ten seconds ago, heavy winds out of the south have started shaking the trees on my block. It’s like a dance party out there.

A few hours ago, my back went out for no reason I can see. I’m hobbling around the apartment, trying to straighten up the place and straighten up my posture, using ice, isometrics, dishwasher, stretching, but not the vacuum. Ow. Also, ow.

My wife flies to the east coast tonight. I need to load up her iPod with TED talks before she goes In fact, I’m going to do that now, then get down on the floor and work on my core muscles.

I love my wife.

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Really, I love her like crazy.

But she uses a pencil to mark her place in books. Hardbacks. Right up close to the spine.

At this point, I’ve gotten in the habit replacing the pencil with a combination of one actual bookmark and a little nagging. But I love her anyway.

Yesterday was supposed to be a day off.

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I was supposed to take all of your advice and spend the day hanging out with my son, playing the new used Wii games I bought (verdict: De Blob=awesome. The Incredible Hulk=WTF were they thinking?) and general relaxing fun.

Instead I received my second round of notes from my agent on Man Bites World and spent about an hour and 15 reviewing the galleys for the last corrections to Game of Cages.

As I mentioned in my picture post yesterday, All the notes (there are only eight) are tweaks to bring out the stakes, fix pacing, or establish context. No prob. The plot and characters are solid (afaict). There’s still one important scene that isn’t quite pulling its weight, but it’s meant to be an oddball. If I can finesse it, I will. Otherwise I’ll just do what my agent suggests and shorten it.

And the Game of Cages galleys just needed straightforward correcting. After the copyedits are entered, a pair of proofreaders will read it, and I’ll have additional fixes to go over. I should have taken some notes about some of the errors they caught; I could have done another self-Thogging post. (For instance, trucks do not “skid on their brakes” omg no, not unless the brakes drop out of the bottom of the vehicle and get wedged beneath the tires.)

Anyway, my agent takes a little vacay starting tomorrow. I have a week to finish the revisions and prep the pages for Key/Egg/Remark. I suspect K/E/R has stalled out because I went off the rails. I’ll need to come up with a way to skim over the unpleasant scenes I’ve been trying to write to get to the fun stuff.

In unrelated news, my wife brought home her CPAP machine last night. I fully expect her to say it was too uncomfortable to sleep in, but I hold out hope that she had a good night.

Off to start the day.