the wife

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.

This is the kind of nice guy I am

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I’m going to give you a fantastic but easy apple gingerbread dessert for St. Paddy’s Day. Why? Because I care about you and your taste buds, that’s why.

Sherwood, you’ll want to skip right over this.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Core and peel a pound and a half of apples. Then slice them up into half-inch pieces and mix with 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp lemon juice, 1/2 tsp lemon peal and spread it out in the bottom of a greased 8X8 inch baking pan.

Sift 1 and 1/4 cups of flour, 1 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp ground cloves into a small bowl. We generally use the dry powder ginger, although if you’re a purist who can’t abide the idea, you can peel and grate a tsp and a half of whole ginger and add it to the next bit.

In a large bowl, cream 1/4 cup of butter with 1/2 cup of sugar. I use the stand mixer for this. After they’re well-mixed, add one egg and 1/2 cup molasses. Not the black strap kind. Gross. Beat until smooth.

Finally, put 1/2 cup of water on to boil. When it’s bubbling strong, toss in 1/2 tsp baking soda.

Beat the molasses mixture, alternately adding the flour mixture and the boiling water. When it’s all mixed nicely, pour it over the apples and slide it into the oven. Bake for about 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, then cut into squares and serve warm with fresh-whipped cream.

It dirties a few bowls, but it’s so very worth it. It was even worth it back before we had the stand mixer and I had to cream the butter and sugar with a wooden spoon. My wife loves it and this year, because I’ll be day-jobbing during the day, she’ll be making it herself.

But that’s dessert. The main course will be reuben sandwiches; two years ago we realized we didn’t much care for the boiled potatoes and cabbage, only the leftovers the next day. Now we skip the meal I grew up eating every March 17 and went straight to the good stuff. Thank you, modern times, for helping us treat family traditions with the contempt they deserve.

Seven followup notes on previous topics

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1) As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve finished my agent’s revisions to Man Bites World. I have, in my backpack, a printed copy of the latest version. My agent prefers to read on paper, so I’ll be (priority) mailing a copy to her over lunch.

2) With luck, she’ll declare it ready to submit sometime next week. Without luck, she’ll point out a glaring problem I failed to address sufficiently or introduced in this draft, and there will be more changes make. Hopefully, I’ll have luck.

3) Have I mentioned this book was due on September 1st?

4) I won’t be attending Norwescon after all. My application materials were never received (which is probably my fault, somehow), and although they generously offered to squeeze me into a panel or two I decided not to go at all. I’ve spent the last several weekends working all day long on MBW, which means it’s way past time to stop skimping on Family Day. My wife and son have been neglected for too long. I’m thinking we should go to the Air and Space Museum–I moved to Seattle in 1989 and I’ve still never been. My first sf convention will have to be some other event.

5) 1989? Jesus, I’ve been here a long time.

6) I voted for SFWA leadership, but I’ve thrown away my Nebula ballot. Of everything nominated, movies included, Boneshaker is the only thing I’ve read or seen. No, I haven’t seen the rebooted STAR TREK or AVATAR or DISTRICT 9 or whatever. The short fiction is largely online, but I don’t like reading fiction on my computer screen.

What’s more, it felt like an obligation that I just don’t care about. I find myself doing these things once in a while–a couple weeks ago I made a stab at spreading word that I’m eligible for a particular award, but I felt stupid during and after, and I’m not doing it anymore. I’m not condemning people who self-pimp for awards–that’s their choice and I don’t have a problem with it. I don’t read those posts or click those links, but whatever.

7) Having finished this latest version of book three, I rewarded myself by getting a full eight hours of sleep last night. Crazy, I know! Tomorrow I’ll be getting up at my usual Unbearable O’clock to work on the goof for Project Number Next. I have no contract for this one and no clue if it’s a good idea or not (only that it intrigues me and would be refreshingly different than the Twenty Palaces books).

You know what feels best about this, though? No one knows a thing about this project but me.

My wife and son are watching THE THREE STOOGES

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I’m a very lucky man.

If I’m writing a post, then by definition it’s not bragging

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The V-Day tradition around here is heart-shaped food, and I have a bunch of little kitchen tchotchkes to make that easier–forms for pancakes and special cake pans and whatever. But no one around here likes cake, and my wife is more likely to ask for pear ginger scones for breakfast than pancakes.

Yeah, this post is mostly about food. Sherwood, you probably want to skip this one.

She got her scones, then left for work. I waved goodbye and hustled into the kitchen and got started on the “real” V-Day food.

I used a french bread recipe that makes a pretty big loaf (7 cups of flour–I have a scale but my recipes are still by volume). I split the dough into thirds and rolled them out flat. Into one third I laid chopped kalamata olives and pesto, the next sun-dried tomatoes, the last fancy parmesan grated fine and diced pepperoni. Then I rolled them back into loaves, braided them together and bent them into a heart shape. That’s what was waiting for her when she got home.

Here’s a picture of her (after a particularly tough day at work): Continue reading

Here’s the Valentine I bought for my wife

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Touching, right?

What do you guys think?

The problem with giving up TV is that you don’t have TV anymore.

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So, I told my wife I needed to do some scanning tonight so I could mail back my galleys tomorrow. Fine, fine, she answered. We had dinner and the boy made me play the Lego Indiana Jones levels he created.

After that, they started putting on their jackets.

“We’re going to the pub on the corner to watch the Olympics.”

“What? You’re leaving?”

“I’m having a milkshake!”

“Well, I don’t know if they have milkshakes there–”

“Mom, they do!”

“But we’re going to watch the opening ceremonies. I don’t know how long we’ll stay.”

They put on their jackets. The boy refused–three times–to change from his shorts into long pants. My wife shrugged, apologized, and said “This will give you a chance to work.” Then they left.

So I’m sitting here in this empty apartment. It’s quiet. Jesus, it’s never quiet around here. I should be relaxing and enjoying the solitude. I love solitude. But the truth is that I already miss them.

First, a great video

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Mightygodking just posted this, saying it’s a couple years old but awesome for those who haven’t seen it before. That includes me, and maybe you:

Some strong language in there, mixed with the whoa!.

Second thing: You know those people at parties who don’t have a TV and make sure they tell as many people as possible? Well, that’s me now. I’ve mentioned this in comments once or twice, but never in an actual post: We can’t watch TV anymore.

It wasn’t planned and we didn’t renounce it in a big dramatic way. My wife rearranged the living room and suddenly the cable didn’t reach. This was… end of October? We were supposed to be upgrading to digital cable (broadcast TV in Seattle is a disaster) but I never bothered to get the box. So we didn’t have anything to watch except the occasional DVD from the library.

And it’s been better. My son falls to sleep easier at night. We all do more reading. I go to bed earlier. It’s surprising how comfortable it is to do without it. Also, I do not make sure to mention it to everyone I meet.

For now, at least. At some point I figure we’ll sign up for satellite TV or something. Until then, we have this DVD-player and Wii screen on the other side of the room, and things are much quieter around here.