Calissa

Spring is in full swing. The fruit trees everywhere are in flower and I've managed more than a few photos of bee butts. The peregrines are back nesting on the window ledges of Melbourne skyscrapers. The days have been warming up and I was able to go out for a walk in a t-shirt yesterday (carefully avoiding the routes guarded by nesting magpies). The weather is shifting, though, and we should get some rain tonight.

I've not really done any writing for a long time (perhaps a year or two now?), but I have felt some occasional stirs of creativity. Kathleen Jennings' posts on her observation journal have been a source of great delight. The current state of my health prevents me from keeping one by hand, so I have been experimenting with an electronic version. It's not nearly as satisfying, but it has produced some lovely turns of phrase.

There were no observations today, however. This morning I managed to step on my glasses. No lasting damage, thankfully, just popped out one of the lenses and needed to take them in to the shop. By the time I arranged for transport and had run the errand, most of the day had disappeared. I'm so very glad it was an easy fix. I fished out my old pair, but the prescription is a little different and even wearing them for just a few hours had me feeling the strain.

Apparently there’s such a thing as too much reading.

Last week I had some trouble with my eyesight. Both the doctor and the optometrist agreed it was eye strain. I had to drastically reduce the amount of time I spent reading and using the computer. As a consequence, there will be no posts this week.

At this stage, blogging should resume as normal next week. However, my recovery has been slow and I may need some extra time. I’ll be sure to let you know if that turns out to be the case.

In the meantime, I’m keeping myself entertained by listening to the archives of the Reading the End podcast. The Demographically-Similar Jennys are utterly charming and make podcasting seem like a lot of fun. They review books across a range of genres (though tending towards the literary), play games and discuss their thoughts on common tropes. I highly recommend them.

Hope to see you all next week.

Mirrored from Earl Grey Editing.

(New growth on a Callistemon 'Little John')

What are you doing/thinking/wondering/making/reading/etc. that you don't normally post about? It has been a while since I have done one of these and I thought it would be a good way to post about non-holiday stuff

Doing: I recently acquired six boxes of second-hand books from an acquaintance who was otherwise going to throw them away. Such books would normally be donated to the local crisis-counselling telephone service for their bi-annual fundraising book fair. However, my acquaintance tells me they're no longer accepting paperbacks. I'll be seeking to confirm this once my friends, family and writing groups have had a chance to pick through them. My sweetheart very kindly waded his way through the boxes to my computer and spent a morning helping me to catalogue what was there. My acquaintance is threatening to send another four boxes. I don't mind rescuing the books but I didn't properly consider the imposition on my time, energy and space this would take.

Watching: While down with a cold late last month, I started rewatching the TV show Castle featuring Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic. It has long been comfort viewing for me. I've also got the fifth of "Richard Castle's" Nikki Heat books to read and so I have been rereading the series in conjunction with rewatching the show. I've just finished Season 3 and have therefore just started on the third book.

Thinking: I'm still processing my thoughts on the return of Doctor Who but it left me prickly. I'm not entirely sure the new doctor was behaving any differently from the last two doctors but the way it came across definitely had resonances of dementia (at least to begin with). Considering how ham-handed they were with Clara (and with Madam Vastra) I'm not sure I can bring myself to think it clever.

Reading: As mentioned above, I just started reading the third of the Nikki Heat books, Heat Rises. I had a review to write for the second book, but have managed to misplace my notes. Suffice to say it doesn't hang together well as a series, since they seem to use a different ghostwriter for each book. I find that makes it hard to settle into the story to start with.

Wondering: September is known around here as "cake month" thanks to all the birthdays. It is truly a month of madness for me and the most stressful part of my year. A couple of years ago I began the practice of not accepting any social engagements other than birthday parties during September. I'll admit that I'm not always very good at sticking to that. I also tend to turn down any editing jobs taking place in September. This year, I'm wondering if there are any other self-care practices I should be engaging in to help make my life a bit easier. I suspect making sure I get enough sleep should be on there. I've not been getting quite enough lately and as a consequence am not quite at my sharpest.

Writing: Still working on Heartwood. Slow and steady wins the race, right? But only if you really are working steadily.

Drinking: I'm currently drinking the Jane Austen blend from Gillards of Bath. A very thoughtful friend brought it back from England as a gift several months ago and it is quite possibly the nicest tea I've ever had the pleasure of drinking.

What are you doing/thinking/wondering/making/reading/etc. that you don't normally post about? It has been a while since I have done one of these and I thought it would be a good way to post about non-holiday stuff

Doing: I'm back to swimming after a break of about a month. It wasn't intentional--a few different things were conspiring against me. My shoulder had started playing up again during the break, so I'm glad to be back to it (though I overdid things a little on the first time back).

Watching: On the anime front, I've been watching Sailor Moon Crystal on Crunchyroll. I was never into the original when it aired during my years at high school, but I have become a lot more interested in anime since then.

I am also watching a new anime called Glasslip. It is produced by P.A. Works who turn out the most gorgeous-looking animes and I have enjoyed most of the stuff they have released. This particular show is about the daughter of a family of glass artisans. When she stares into glass she has visions of the future. It is also about the changing relationships between her group of friends in their last year of high school.

On more of a RPG theme, RollPlay have just started up a sci-fi campaign called Swan Song. Utilising the Stars Are Infinite system, the campaign is being run by Adam Koebel. I totally have a new GM crush. He co-wrote the Dungeon World system and his style of game-running clearly speaks of intelligence, passion and long experience.

He and my other major GM crush, Steve Lumpkin, have also just started posting up a segment on GMing they're calling Playing Everyone Else. If you're interested in tabletop RPGs at all--as player or GM--it is well worth checking out.

Thinking: An acquaintance of mine has been getting on my nerves a lot lately. Ze does a lot of complaining about suffering from writer's block but seems to feel that in order to be published, ze needs to write in certain kinds of ways and in certain formats. This single-minded focus on publication seems to press a button of mine. I recently came across this wonderful article from Australian horror writer Peter Ball on why you don't really want to be published--it is simply shorthand for another goal. I'm wondering whether this person's reason for wanting to be published is fundamentally different from mine or whether it is simply our manner of getting there. Or perhaps we have different levels of patience with the process.

Reading: I'm in a weird in-between place with my reading at the moment. I'm slowly making my way through a gardening book put out by the local horticultural society and have been for months. However, I don't have a primary book that I'm reading because I can't decide on what I want to read. My sweetheart has made off with my Kindle in order to read some out-of-print Warhammer books and everything I kind of want to read is on that. Which is ridiculous--I have a zillion print books on Mt TBR, surely I should be able to find something I want to read. If anyone wants to make suggestions, you can check Mt TBR and my 2014 acquisitions list for what I have currently available.

Wondering: A while back, I began studying the AODA Candidate curriculum. I am almost finished--just some loose, time-consuming ends to tie up--but I have been pondering whether this is something I really want to do. While I think their curriculum is great, I'm not sure their philosophy and cosmology is really something that works for me.

Writing: Still going on Heartwood. I originally started writing the story a year or two ago and then shelved it for some unremembered reason. I'd only written two scenes and a bit. When I came back to it this year, I felt it needed rewriting and I bashed my head repeatedly against the first scene, trying different things. I finally got something to work and have been concentrating on getting the words for this new version down on the page without worrying too much about what still needs fixing. I have now caught up to where I was when I first shelved the story and am looking forward to breaking new territory.

Drinking: My mother-almost-in-law recently gifted me with some rose-scented tea that she wasn't fond of. I have zero problem with this because I absolutely adore rose-scented teas.

Earl Grey is generally my default tea (unless it is Twinings which I find way too harsh). I've been drinking much less of it over the last few months but I find myself starting to come back to it.

There are some impressive looking clouds turning the sky pink in the setting sun. They promise rain but any precipitation that falls is likely to evaporate long before it hits the ground. Southeast Australia is in the middle of a heatwave. Temperatures locally have been hovering around 40C/104F since Sunday and are likely to remain that way until at least the weekend. I count that quite a feat, considering I live in one of Australia's very few subalpine regions. Thank goodness for air conditioning.

The heatwave is not really the reason I have been quiet here lately. Edits for the Gold Coast anthology need to be finalised by the end of the month. I think I'll be done with them all in time but am not quite sure. While I generally enjoy editing, juggling so many stories at once is a bit of a struggle. For the record, I am editing twelve stories and fielding queries from my co-editor on nine more. I really don't remember how I handled Winds of Change all on my own--perhaps I had a longer time frame. I expect that things here on my journal will remain quiet until I'm done.

To make matters just that little bit more interesting, I have come down with a mild cold. Thankfully, it's just enough to be annoying and not enough to make me truly miserable. It has meant that I've had to skip swimming this week, though. Disappointing when the weather is so perfect for it.

I'm feeling a bit exhausted at the moment. The last week has not been kind. Editing and Christmas preparations have been keeping me busy, as I have mentioned before, but it is the pain levels and sleep deprivation that has been doing me in.

Summer has properly kicked into gear. Blackbirds sing outside my window in the hours before dawn. The daytime temperatures have been hovering around 37 Celsius/99 Fahrenheit. I spend every second evening watering the garden in the narrow window between the sun setting and the mosquitoes emerging, when the sky turns the most glorious shades of pink and gold. I've been drinking unsweetened iced tea by the jug. There don't seem to be many cicadas around my house, but there are droves at the university.

( cicada shell )

I'd had plans to celebrate the solstice but they had to be shelved when I discovered it was a high pain day. I spent it reading on the couch, instead--not a bad way to spend the day, just not the way I had hoped. There have been quite a few high pain days lately... and, more importantly, high pain nights. Combined with the increased daylight, I haven't been getting enough sleep. It's been enough to get by but it has had a bit of an effect on my mood and I am tiring out more quickly than I should.

Tomorrow is still theoretically business as usual for me, though my SO has finished work for the year and I may be seeing my grandma who is in town for Christmas. With some luck, I may yet get through some more editing before family takes over.

It has been somewhat of a difficult week. I have been dealing with what feels like some inflammation in my arms and pain levels have been high. It flared up on Sunday night and I spent most of Monday in utter frustration at my inability to do anything useful. Perhaps one thing I achieved was a renewed appreciation of the spoons analogy. I was completely exhausted by the end of Monday just from dealing with the pain.

Fortunately, the inflammation seems to have eased a bit every day and yesterday I was almost back to normal. It still tends to flare up a bit at night and whenever I shower, though, so I am doing my best to be careful.

The truth is that I've never been very good at taking care of my body; I tend to prefer living in my head. I guess that on some level I feel like I deserve the pain for not doing a better job of looking after myself. Healing--on all levels--seems like an overwhelming and long-term task.

It has now been over a week since I came down with this virus and I'm still feeling dreadful. Every time I start feeling better I take a turn for the worse. I was almost better by Wednesday evening, but then spent most of the night awake and coughing, setting the pattern for the next few nights. I managed a good night's sleep last night and thought I might have broken through. Then I made the mistake of going to obedience class with the dogs. I came home with swollen glands and a fever. I am intensely frustrated by my inability to get better but it seems I need to learn some patience or risk making myself sick yet again. I have already seen the doctor twice this week (Tuesday then Thursday) who told me that all I can do is drink lots of water and rest. I very much hope not to have to visit him again.

There have been good things. I've had enough energy and brain power to read and nap and not much else. This means that Mt TBR is looking decidedly smaller than it was last week (although I don't kid myself; I still have a long way to go). My sister was kind enough to return my copy of Naamah's Blessing and I managed to finish all 600 pages in somewhere around 14 hours. Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Cherie Priest took me somewhat longer, despite being a third of the size, since there was no way I was reading that one after dark. It's an awesomely atmospheric Southern gothic horror that sent my imagination into overdrive--one reason why I rarely read horror or thrillers.

I have since turned my attention to The Count of Monte Cristo, which my Kindle tells me I'm now a quarter of the way through. Hopefully, by the time I finish this quintessential tale of revenge the virus will have finished its revenge on me!