Of This and Other Worlds

I am feeling rather sad and sorry for myself today. A combination of gloomy weather, a cold that won't leave, an exceptionally busy week, a toddler who has suddenly decided to stop napping, and several other biological and circumstantial factors have converged upon me in a heap of Disproportionate Gloom. And much as I love Eeyore (yes, he really is my favorite A.A. Milne character), I don't actually want to be him.

So you have anything particularly happy-making to share -- pics, videos, articles, stories, whatever -- would you mind sharing in comments?

Thank you.

*goes back to munching thistles*

TRAPPED AT HOME WITH SNOWBOUND CHILDREN FOR SECOND DAY IN A ROW STOP
SEND HELP STOP

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

EVERYTHING IS GOING WRONG THIS WEEKEND.

First, I have a cold and feel kind of achy and tired and stuffy-headed and generally crappy. But wait! That is as NOTHING compared to what I have just found out.

The flight to New York I booked through Air Miles last week, with the nice helpful lady on the phone? The return flight is booked FOR THE WRONG DAY. Instead of returning on the afternoon of Sunday, Feb. 10th as I requested, she has me returning on the MONDAY afternoon, the 11th. What's really scary is that I just assumed she had it right -- I wouldn't even have noticed the mistake if I hadn't been sorting out plans to meet my roommate and decided to look at my flight schedule.

MA TIKKET

I've put in a panicked e-mail to Air Miles, and will call them tomorrow, but I am woefully non-optimistic about the whole thing, what with my tickets being non-refundable and all. In which case, what on earth am I going to do? I can't afford to stay at the same hotel another night (it's expensive enough even with a roommate). And I don't know my way around New York AT ALL.

*meebles in a panicked fashion*

Then my husband brought in some very soggy mail from our overstuffed mailbox, and in the midst of it I found a note from the courier who had visited our house on Friday, bringing with him a large parcel CONTAINING MY REVISIONS, which I have been DYING to look at, but apparently this courier either didn't ring the doorbell or decided to ring my parents' bell (which doesn't work) instead of ours, so I never heard him and he went away again.

MA REVISIONS

I know, I know, I'm overreacting. At least with the package, I know they will try again tomorrow, and if I can get the notice to stick to our ice-covered front door, they will even leave the package without me signing for it. But still. Wah!

And now I will take my tired, overwrought, sickly self to bed.

ETA: I just got this response from the Air Miles folks:

"Thanks for your e-mail. A personalized reply will be on its way within 7-8 business days. Have a nice day!"

7-8 DAYS?!

Oh, I am SO calling them tomorrow.

For some reason, I feel completely brain-dead today. Tired, gloomy, unable to concentrate. I've done a few things, but they don't seem to add up to much. And, of course, this was going to be my Really Productive Day.

My big thrill of today will be when registration for the SCBWI Winter Conference opens at 5 p.m. Pacific Time. I'm looking forward to seeing what speakers and sessions will be offered this year (or at least, I hope they'll have that information up) and starting to think seriously about setting aside that weekend in February to go to New York. I have all these Air Miles sitting around, and I went to all the trouble of getting a passport -- might as well put them both to good use.

Meanwhile, I have a Very Thinky Post on my laptop about the age of protagonists in MG and YA literature, but it's taking me a remarkably long time to distill it into a form that makes any sense. Still, I hope to get it up within the next few days.

Wow, that was a pointless post, wasn't it?

*skulks away*

Usually I write from 11:30 to 2:00 pm. or thereabouts, when my toddler is napping. Today, however, said toddler refused to nap, nohow, contrariwise. I was having trouble getting my head together anyway, thanks to it being a certain time of the month* but that really put gum in my mental works. Now I have to write at least 1,400 words tonight to make quota, but even with my detailed outline I seem to have lost my grasp on the book and no longer know what I am doing or why.

*cries*

--
*No, not that one, the OTHER one -- my brain goes on the fritz every two weeks these days. Feh.

Where you're on your third day of the flu and you've got acute bronchitis and there's all this imitation-vanilla-pudding-colored goo in your lungs and you've coughed up all the stuff that was at the top of your lungs and now it's coming up from, like, the very bottom? And you have to keep swallowing or you're gonna choke, but then all the gooey stuff ends up sitting in your stomach and making you feel horribly nauseated and there's this nasty metallic taste in your mouth even though you've just eaten two pieces of toast with jam to try and get rid of it?

I hate that.

I am sick. Quite, quite sick. Aches, pains, feverishness, headache, shallow cough. I am about to go back to bed.

Last night's House was lame and contrived. Alas.

Despite all the lovely prompts I've been given, I still haven't been able to get my brain to cooperate when it comes to writing new stuff, sorry. However, I found some unpublished House and Wilson banter on my HD and posted it here in response to mistraltoes's prompt. It's something, I guess.

Now back to bed. With nothing to read. Woe!

Overheard from my spotty four-year-old, this morning: "I think my chicken pox needs some distracting."

This is going to be a bit of a lame LJ post, I'm afraid -- I lack the mental energy to be clever or interesting. I have sixteen books to wrap (some of which, sadly, I have not had time to pre-read), a house to clean, Christmas dinner to plan and prepare, and two itchy, fretful kids.

I made snickerdoodles yesterday, however, and they turned out to be the best batch I've ever made. kizmet_42, I think I have to disagree with you about them being best warm from the oven; I find them a little acidic-tasting that way. Once they've cooled and had a day to mellow, however, they're sublime.

Meanwhile, back at the stove, the carrot pudding is steaming merrily. I think it will probably turn out well, too.

I am still waiting for my number to come up on Miss Snark's Crapometer, which will likely happen tomorrow. I expect to be eviscerated for vagueness, cliches, and lack of narrative voice, and probably not asked to send pages. However, on a happier note, I've received confirmations from all but one of the folks to whom I submitted Knife, so at least I know those packages arrived safely. They both said they were "looking forward" to reading the book even though it might take them a few weeks to get to it, so that was heartening.

Finally, it is a remarkably lonely lot, creatively speaking, to be an evangelical Christian with no interest in the religious publishing industry, a fantasy/SF author with conservative views, a Canadian with primarily English sensibilities trying to capture the interest of American editors and agents, and someone whose creative background and connections are mostly in fandom. I keep looking at various writing discussion boards like a kid with her nose pressed to the window, not knowing where to begin to introduce myself. I feel like I don't fit in anywhere. And even though I have all this fannish background, I am no longer active in any fandom now, so even those ties are increasingly tenuous. If it weren't for you I think I might fall off the edge of the virtual earth.

Some days I really miss the old FidoNet WRITING echo. Sigh.

ETA: What kind of title is that? I think from now on I'm going to refer to Book Seven as "Harry Potter... FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE!!!"

So a couple of days ago I started giving Knife one last edit before printing it out and mailing it off, like a Responsible Author ought to do. I wrote myself a nice little checklist of Things To Watch Out For and Things To Be Done based on the comments I'd received from various beta readers, and certainly enough time had elapsed since I read the opening chapters that I ought to be able to look at them objectively (or so I told myself).

And indeed, all seemed to be going along swimmingly, with a bit of tweaking here and a name change there and some trimming of overused phrases and cliches, but nothing really devastating... until I hit Chapter Four. At which point I started tearing out my hair and wailing ZOMG I HATE MY PROSE SO MUCH AND MY CHARACTERS HAVE NO EMOTIONAL RESONANCE AND MY PACING SUCKS and spent about two hours trying without success to rewrite the entire beginning of the chapter, until I stopped and told myself that I was probably just being hormonal.

No doubt, said I to myself, this happens to every author after she has spent several months rewriting a novel; she's spent so much time looking at the nuts and bolts that the machine no longer works for her the way it would for a reader. Therefore, I ought to stop obsessively line-editing every sentence, just make the changes that I know have to be made, and get the book out the door before I am tempted to spend the rest of my life trying to get it absolutely perfectly right.

Either that, or the book really does need a lot more work, but I'm just being lazy and making excuses so I can get it out of the door.

I DON'T KNOW ANYMORE.

*tears hair*

*facedesks*

*cries*

I've just been through about 48 hours of not being able to post or even comment, and Blogger wouldn't let me post either, so I am feeling a wee bit vulnerable just now.

If it was a virus or a trojan as cesario suggested, I ran several scans and never found it. But this morning it got so bad that I couldn't connect to the Internet at all, so I restarted my modem and router, and now it seems... okay.

There is, however, an odd mushroomy smell coming from somewhere. *sniffs air suspiciously*