Category Archives: LJ

Albuterol and coffee make me dizzy

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I just cannot get a handle on my stupid physiology. I discovered that Albuterol and caffeine in close tandem make me dizzy and lightheaded. Fun? Sort of. A helpful programming aid? Not at all! Grumf.

Have much Fantasm stuff to do. Need to sew the Ms. Fantasm sash ends together and get the Q&A questions compiled, and the entry and judging forms printed out, and I need to pick out what I’m going to wear. Again, Fantasm has snuck up on me and I’m all flustered at how many things I have yet to do for it.

Wait, do I have all the judges lined up? No?? AGH!! Okay, must send emails tonight. Damn, I totally lost track of time.

dude_the is here. He flew in this afternoon and then zipped up on the MARTA. The house is messy, but the skunk is bathed. Trade-offs.

Writing stats:
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A Bath for Hobkin, Albuterol, Writing

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Gave Hobkin a bath yesterday. It was actually not as traumatic and wetly destructive as previous bathing experiences have been. Not only did I avoid a sudsy tail to the face, but the bathroom does not look like a shampoo elemental threw a temper tantrum there. He flopped over on me immediately afterward, and I ended up with a damp skunk in my lap for several hours. His fur takes forever to dry even with finger combing and brushing. But he’s all fluffy and shiny and sweet smelling now.

This Thursday will be his second birthday. The fuzzwit will be two years old. He’s all growed up *sniffle*. There will be cake.

Discovered something rather odd. When I first started having breathing problems, I found that Albuterol didn’t do squat to help it, so I stuck my inhaler away in a bathroom drawer. But yesterday I was feeling a bit desperate, so I rummaged it out and used it. I started breathing easier very quickly. Took my inhaler with me to work this morning and used it this afternoon. Decided improvement again. That seems to indicate that there’s bronchial spasming at work, which I didn’t think was the case. Something I should bring up with my pulmonary doctor, I suspect.

Writing stats:

I keep pulling up the cover artwork of “Ascendancy of Blood” to admire. I’ve had illustrations/artwork done for several of my stories now, but this is my favorite. It’s just so totally how I envisioned it when I wrote it, and so beautifully executed. I keep looking at it going “PRETTY! Ooo” and grinning like a fool. Maybe I’ll make it the wallpaper on my PC desktop for a while, although that feels terribly narcissistic.

Still no new words, but I did do a couple good rewrite passes on the novella, enough so that I actually printed the whole thing out. (It does all fit into a Priority Mail Flat Rate envelope. Hurray.) When I make subsequent changes, I can just reprint individual chapters or pages as need be, maybe save a tree or so that way. I’m not expecting any major rewrites to happen now, depending on the last few RFDR critiques that may still come in. I’m aiming to mail it by the end of this week so I can avoid the post office insanity of tax day next week.

Trapped by skunk

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So Hobkin woke me up this morning at 6am, stomping and running around the house like a crazed furry cannonball. As it turns out, because of daylight savings (ffft), it’s actually 7am, but since I fell asleep after midnight, the difference is purely academic.

Played with frisky skunk. Fed hungry skunk. Contented skunk climbs into my lap and flops. Skunk is now asleep. I am awake and bleary-eyed, and pinned at the computer. Typical.

Been getting some excellent feedback on my novella. Enough to prod me to do some research which made me go “ooooo” (and do some rewriting).

I’ve wondered for a while what color spectrum non-primate mammals, specifically Hobkin, can see. People say dogs and suchlike are “colorblind” inferring that they can only see a monochromatic range of colors, but from my experience with our ferrets and Hobkin, they can perceive other colors than black, white, and shades of gray.

For e.g.: We have a bright blue acrylic fur mitt that we used when Hobkin was a baby to play various skunk games. Now that he’s all growed up, Matthew and I have noticed a proclivity for Hobkin to want to wrestle with blue things. He’ll go after non-blue things, but I’ve noticed especially that my turquoise turtleneck has teethmarks in the sleeve, as does the pair of light blue socks I own. He prefers to shake and maul into submission blue things.

So I did some surfing and discovered that non-primate mammals are normally considered to have “dichromatic” vision (versus primate vision which is “trichromatic”). That is, they only have the (S) and (M/L) type cones in their retinas, so they can see blues and yellows, but not reds or greens. This is the same as (or very similar to) the visual ability that people with red/green colorblindness have.

Which explains why Hobkin can differentiate blues, and yet can still be considered “colorblind.” Neat!

I’ve rewritten the sections where color is viewed through my protagonist’s eyes to make his vision dichromatic. He now only sees things in muted shades of blue and yellow, as well as black, white, and grays.

Well, I’m excited by it . . .

Hobkin is still sick, so am I

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Hobkin has decided to have another relapse of his bout of sick tummy. He refused to eat either his breakfast or his lunch yesterday.

We called the vet. Since we’d just recently taken him off his anti-nausea drug, we thought there might have been a relationship to his lack of interest in eating, so the vet called in a refill of that to our nearby pharmacy.

I fidgeted at work, worried about the little fuzzwit, and then at the end of the day when I walk in the door, what is the first thing Hobkin does? He meanders out from under his hutch, and starts eating his lunch.

He didn’t act sick for the rest of the evening. He ate his dinner, with appetite, and was playful and affectionate. And everything stayed down and processed normally through his little body. Silly, exasperating critter.

Me, I’m still queasy. ‘Nuff said.

I’m also having emotional pendulum issues. The beast of procrastination has me in its teeth and is dragging me through the mud, and I don’t care. Except I do care that I don’t care, which is a little maddening.

Motivation is down. Mood is blue. Generally feeling rather unhappy with the world. Coffee is not helping.

Writing stats:

0 new words. Zero. Dammit.

Received my contrib. copy of Tales of the Paranormal. Egads it’s HUGE. It’s a trade paperback that has the same dimensions as a standard hardbound. Big.

Vestal Review sent me a “Dear Writer” rejection.

Up to 33 critiques of the current story I have in the Critters queue. The comments are still high on the positive spectrum, which is nice. But I’m still having problems processing my @#!@# MPC for this week to bump my novella up. Technical difficulties suck.

Also trying to figure out the best way to mail 100+ pages of manuscript. I think the Priority Mail Flat Rate envelope is the way to go, but I’m not sure if the whole thing’ll fit. Only one way to find out, I guess . . . *stuff stuff stuff*

Imuran is not fun, Hobkin is petulant, not writing

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And the Imuran side-effects have begun: hot and cold flashes, a decided feeling of queasiness, and lightheadedness. Medicine should not make one feel worse than the disease it’s supposed to treat. Yuck.

I keep an oversized cardigan sweater at work for the ubiquitous temperature fluctuations that plague all places of business. I think I took off and put back on the damn thing every twenty minutes today. Rolled up my sleeves, rolled them down, tied back my hair, let it back down again. Repeat ad nauseaum. Just could not get to a comfortable temperature.

And I’m still having pronounced breathing issues.

In short, I feel like crap. I’m also in a pretty foul mood, exacerbated or brought about by my various and sundry health issues.

I think Hobkin’s picking up on my mood and it’s affecting him. He’s been downright surly these last couple days, either sulking under his hutch and not wanting to cuddle, or stomping and running amok like a furry cannonball through the house. I do worry about him when he does that. He keeps careening off pieces of furniture and yesterday he ran full tilt into my foot. I know skunks are near-sighted, but I worry that his eyes are getting worse. Then again, I don’t know how much of a problem that is since we had several ferrets who were blind and it didn’t particularly impact their behavior. Still, bashing his silly little head into things can’t be good for him. It can’t be beneficial for the wee brains he’s got to be rattled about like that.

Writing stats:

*snort* I think I totally blew my wad on the novella. Can’t get new words out to save my life. Going to try to use this productivity lull to catch up on rewrites.

But good news! Got an email from Carina, the first reader of Realms of Fantasy and my story is being sent on to Shawna for consideration! Woohoo!

My novella chapters are now in the waiting queue at critters, but every time I try to apply my MPC to it, I get a “that manuscript isn’t in the queue” error message. Dammit. I’ve fired off a note to Andrew, the critter herder. Hope that gets resolved soon.

Also been lurking at the Here & Now blog. The editor/publisher says she’s getting ready to get back on track and issue 4 will be going out shortly. Coolness.

Eugie = Walking Undead

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Went to the pulmonary doctor yesterday. They took another chest x-ray, scheduled a full oxygen capacity test thingy, and gave me a referral to schedule a CAT scan. They have a little device to measure oxygen in the blood that bounces light waves off your finger, restrained in a clip thingy. Being able to detect a pulse is rather essential in this device functioning properly. Having MCTD, the capillaries in my fingers are prone to spasming shut when it’s cold, and the doctor’s office was a bit on the chilly side. The doctor had a hard time getting any input, and for a while there, I was registering a total 0. Yep, I was dead. Made me think of far too many zombie movies.

So I’m waiting for all the tests to happen and then the test results to come in before they can diagnose why I’m having problems breathing.

While I was there, I filled my prescription for Imuran. Decided I should probably be taking it. Took my first one yesterday. Scary.

Writing stats:

ARGH. My muse is a flighty strumpet!! Did maybe 750 new words. This new story doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, but part of that is I’m nor sure what audience I want to be writing for with this. I think the plot I’ve envisioned is too mature for middle-grade children. Wondering about trying for a YA audience instead, but suddenly I’m out of novella range with that and back into the dreaded novel size. Still intimidated by that.

Still no BFoD from Carina on a submission read 3/15. Dare I hope that she’s holding it with intent to send on to Shawna? Ooo.

Post-novella depression

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I think I’m experiencing a sort of post-novella depression. Yikes, I can’t imagine how bad it’d be after a full-length novel. But I feel kind of sad that I’m not pumping out new words on it anymore. I miss the outpouring of creativity. I miss the characters I created. I achieved a more in-depth understanding of their personalities, their motivations than I have with characters in my short stories.

Want to start on another major project, see if I can’t keep the “longer work” momentum up. Riffled through my research notes yesterday, and nothing sparked my muse. Think I’ll spend some time this weekend researching various mythologies to see if any of them can kick-start my flagging inspiration.

Up to twenty-four critiques of the current offering on Critters. I’ve noticed something. Female readers tend to like it significantly more than males. There’s a few curve breakers, but it’s turning out to be a pretty consistent trend. I think I might want to try hitting the female editors first with this one.