Warhead On Legs

So, I did a thing today. It's not a complete thing, but I did a thing. It's getting easier to do the thing! Less scary.

By which I mean I set up Sandborn to be published on Kindle. Hardcopy will come as soon as I figure out what on earth got widowed or orphaned to create a random blank page in the middle of my book (tomorrow, most likely) and hard copy for Black Ice will come as soon as Editrix determines nothing's been widowed or orphaned there. I was toying around with the idea of making the font smaller and thus the page size and cost less but I am so tired of going through the proof process for that one.

I took my Heartskull Hat off the head I'd blocked it on and oh boy howdy did it loosen up. (Zara Merino Superwash for the record, if anyone wants to know.) So when I get home I'm going to stick it on the boy's head and see if I do need to go up a needle size or not, because it's almost loose on my head now. Which, granted, part of this might be me doing it in a 1/1 rib rather than a 2/2 rib and adding extra stitches (the fuck was I even doing. who knows.) but still.

So. Ooogh. But Sandborn is done! Well, almost done. Cue all the performance anxiety ever now that it's pretty much done and starting to be talked about, but that's how it goes. And tonight or tomorrow I will get out Queen and Parliament, and after that probably a number of shorts will go up on my website having to do with Blasted Lands stuff in order to somewhat publicize Sandborn. Apart from that I have no idea what I'm doing. Does anyone else have any idea what I should be doing?

Watching Luke Cage. This is what I should be doing. And making cupcakes. The cupcakes will have to happen a little later in the week, though; the watching Luke Cage can happen tonight and over the weekend. Yes.

I finished the colorwork portion of the heartskull hat! And. And not only that, but I also managed to drop a stitch in the solid color rows following that and then to ladder it back up again four rows or so. And. AND. As if that weren't enough fiber art brilliance, I am learning to crochet! Take that, Bembridge Scholars!

(Look, I'm easily amused, the US is going to hell in a handbasket, and I take my pleasures where I can find them.)

I don't have much for you guys today, thankfully because I just don't have much and not because I'm down in a deep hole of ugh. I didn't manage to finish the anthology of African Folk Tales before I have to bring it back, but it'll be there if I need to take it out again and it might be worth investing in. When I have money, because right now is the last aftermath of post Dragon*Con short paychecks and I'm trying not to spend anything so I can dump it all either at my credit card or into savings for next year's tax bill yay. Maybe I should just pre-pay that. Maybe I should dig around and find where I pre-pay that.

Pokemon is going weirdly better, the 'mons aer starting to migrate up to my house, which is not a thing that has happened before. And thanks to people I've gotten better at pinpointing where things are so if there's a lull in work I really can just run out and grab something.

I do need to get back on track with writing stuff. I'm having the usual issues with getting to bed on time and getting adequate sleep for winter, which results in things like sitting and getting a bunch of writing done not happening as much as I'd like. Still. I think Sandborn may even come out on time, dear god, and then Turing Shrugged and other things are coming along to completion, so. Bit by bit. ... I think Sandborn was the only fast-approaching deadline I'd set myself anyway. Well then! That's... not so bad. I can work with this. I still need to contact the damn artist aarrrrgh. And post Queen and Parliament. That's what it is, it's the fiddly things falling through the cracks in my poor broken brain. Poop.

Oh well. Getting back up and trying again. Only in this case it's less because I've been knocked down and more because i've been distracted by knitting.

I'm thinking seriously about taking a social media hiatus until the end of time. Or at least the end of the election. If it wasn't the shooting in Tulsa (is there sexism at play in the indictment of the officer? of course! she was also indicted because she fucking murdered someone for probably racist assumptions!) it was the possibility of President Trump. If it wasn't the possibility of President Trump it was the sexist uphill battle Hillary Clinton has to fight. If it wasn't Hillary Clinton it was Chelsea Manning and all that poor woman has to fight just to stay alive right now. If it wasn't Chelsea Manning it was Voya's absolutely awful screening out of bisexual characters? I think it was. Apparently non-straight sexualities and gender identities are "adult material" and to be hidden from delicate growing teen eyes or some bullshit like that. If it wasn't that it was young women being assaulted for having a hard time in public (Britany Spears) and then coming out of it pretty all right or for simply existing in public (Gigi Hadid) and then assaulted verbally for defending herself. And on. And on. And on.

And then there was another thing that I'm sure didn't mean to come off this way but I've been yelled at either directly or tacitly by a person yelling at a group so many times this week because no good faith is ever assumed, because everyone on the internet is either fighting The Hardest Battle or having The Easiest Life and there is no middle ground, and at this point I've already had ... and I'm just tired. And feeling stupid and cowardly and sad and sorry, but I need to not be on social media anymore. Or for a while.

Apart from that? If I reduce my tiny corner of the world to what's happening in my house and in my town, it's not too bad. Capoeira will have red velvet cupcakes. I made some damn fine red velvet cupcakes, I had one last night that was one of the rejects, made of the side batter that didn't quite finish mixing, and it tasted really damn good. So that's happening. Icing to follow on Sunday right before I haul them over.

Progress is being made on writings, despite that also being one of the areas that makes me want to crawl into a corner and say I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt anyone, I'll go away and not be right now so I don't bother anyone (yes, this instinct is strong, and I entirely attribute it to the screaming outrage. Which, I understand why, life is outrageous right now, I just.... everything up top). But writing continues anyway, because if I don't write my mental state deteriorates even more.

(I also was up too late last night because of both cupcakes and boy coming home late and not texting me to let me know he was okay, he was just in an endless line, so.)

(Also now I have what I think are debt collectors trying to call work for a friend of the family who hasn't worked here in literally twenty years plus? And I am going to scream.)

I'm very, very tired. My state is going to hell in a handbasket, apparently according to our state congresscritter black people are outraged because white people are more successful. Yes, you read that right. It couldn't be because, I don't know, white cops are murdering black people? Bah, murder schmurder, it's the money, stupid. I just. And McCrory's utter asinine bullshit, all of it, defending a law no one wanted that fixed a non problem by creating twenty other horrific problems, and then using state money that is desperately needed by schools and other state facilities to defend it. And I can't wait to vote all these fuckers out in November but until then I have to put up with six weeks of this shit. (It's funny, though, because Asheville is over here with its "Y'all means All" signs and an underlying attitude of WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS HAPPY HORESESHIT YOU DO NOT SPEAK FOR US.)

And. I don't know. I'm tired. I'm sad. I'm defaulting to rolling and showing belly, which is bad because not everyone is attacking you, I promise, even if it feels that way. I'm crying at work. I think I'm going to spend the weekend either writing/working on world building, which is some heavy lifting but if I do it alone at least I can recover some that way, and cleaning the house. Because nothing says I need to exert some control and ability to fix things in my environment like frantically cleaning the house.

And I promise not to eat all 28 red velvet cupcakes that are left. Even if I kind of want to. Those are some damn tasty cupcakes.

ETA: Oh right. Now I remembered that I was going to take social media hiatuses anyway over the weekend. This is not convincing me not to, but on the plus side I was probably right to.

As if in contrast to yesterday at work, which started dead and eventually ramped up, today everything started happening around 10 and did not stop happening until 11.30, at which point i could then process the non-immediate things. Oy.

Brain patches still seem to be holding! I don't think the frustration at my slow progress in Pokemon Go is going to go away anytime soon, but now it's properly directed at what the fuck with your XP levels and why is there no tracking system yet Niantic why you let us get used to it and then take it away. Rather than spilling all over the place and splashing on the braintwin with the issues using the stupid game as a fig leaf. I see you there, issues. You're not hiding very much are you.

(No but seriously Niantic what the fuck with your XP increases and your tracking system and where the hell did my gym go. Boo. I think I know where my gym went, but boo on the rest.)

Oogh. After this morning I'm tired and I really don't want to go to capoeira, but I've run out of reasons and even excuses not to. Plus I'm reasonably sure that being tired is more a matter of too many things happening at once and less physically tired, which means capoeira is probably ideal since it's a lot of focus and effort directed at ONE thing rather than split among several.

Mostly I just want to go home and sleep and read and knit. I'm tired of things requiring brain capacity today. I will reboot and try again tomorrow.

(No I won't, I'll get my writings done and my editings done, day job permitting, and I'll go to capoeira and I'll come home and eat cupcakes and crash. Because that's what I do. I'll just complain about being tired a lot at least for the next hour or so.)

My head feels like a cracked eggshell this morning. I have half an idea what the fuck's going on but I really, really miss being stable. Ever. At all.

This weekend was spent getting some apparently much needed rest except that I also ended up sleeping through a lot of what I wanted to do, which is absolutely not helping the cracked eggshell feeling. I... well, mostly I feel like hammered shit. Less so physically and mostly emotionally, but wow I haven't felt this bad in a long time. I'm not sure even what to do.

So it goes.

I did manage to get proof copies ordered, Queen and Parliament is waiting on cover art and confirmation of final edits, I got some edits done in Turing Shrugged, so progress was made on that front. The house is slightly better than a pigsty although the dishes in the sink are piling up again. This is what happens when I spend a chunk of the weekend asleep and then the boy has three twelve-hour shifts in a row. But the rest of it... slowly getting picked up? Maybe? If he ever decides to actually follow through on cleaning the office, getting rid of one desk. And at some point we should probably either fix his wireless situation or run a cable into the office so he's not perched in the middle of the living room collecting a mess.

I don't know you guys. I'm not doing well. I don't have much cheerful for you today. Our cat has not taken any turns for the worse, I can't actually tell if his eye is scabbing over properly or not, but he's taking the medicine fine. He is the easiest cat to pill until and unless you put him in the kitchen, indicate that there will be food, and then say "not until you've had your medicine." Then he is an unholy terror. Because priorities.

Ow. Ow ow. Ow ow ow. Yep, capoeira first day back was fun, I did more than I expected, and fucking ow jesus. Everything from the waist down hurts. Everything. And while I got the minimum amount of sleep to be function, I apparently did not get enough sleep to keep things from nibbling on the wires. Fuck off brainweedles. Your arguments are as old and tired as I feel.

This morning's absurd amount of stress did not help at all. Mostly store stuff, a whole lot of chaos that had to be untangled quickly in a very short time, but also we're taking the cat in to surgery tomorrow morning before work, and that always makes me nervous. Yes, it's a simple surgery, but something could go wrong and that means a freaked out edgy me for a while. Till whenever poor Mikey cat gets out of surgery. They're just de-bulking the fatty tumor over his eye, so likely nothing horrible's going to happen, but. Ugh.

I need a nap. Fortunately not much is going on at work now that the chaos is over with. I have writing and editing to do that the pain is distracting me from, but the day jobligations aren't much. And then I have decided that when I get home I'm going to make s'mores cupcakes, since I have most of the ingredients for that. There's only a couple things I'm missing and I can get that at the store when we stop on the way tonight.

(I'm so tired. Every time I sit down I know I'm stiffening up and it'll hurt when I get up, and then when I'm up all I want to do is sit or lay down. And this is me on painkillers.)

Actually now I kind of want to go home and knit. And mostly what I want to do is go home and sleep, and that's not going to happen either. So I guess I keep on trudging. Many writing tasks to do. Many other things to do. Many things. Just want nap. Maybe nap later. Fall down go boom tomorrow. Always a boom tomorrow.

Two Imitrexes and a choked down bowl of teriyaki chicken later...

(That's a lie, I'd had just enough of the imitrex to be able to eat the chicken and find it tasty, I just then collapsed for another three hours or so, woke up with a massive case of dromehead, and went back to sleep for seven more hours.)

No one died at the Trump rally down the street. I'm not being hyperbolic here, there were fistfights, a guy put his hand around the throat of another guy, and there was punching and slapping, and the police took a gun off of someone, that one I don't know if it was a Trump supporter or someone who felt threatened. Which I can't blame the person! I felt threatened too! I also feel that openly carrying a gun escalates the threat level to a ridiculous and un-useful point, but that's me. Anyway, but no one died, is the main point. And hopefully he will never come back to this area again, the disorganized useless fucker.

So, somewhat less stressed today, somewhat less fussed about money, would still like my paycheck so I can stop fussing about bills but that's in two days, it's not awful. I'm just fussing. And both the Trump rally and my flu shot are over, I don't have another doctor's appointment until January? February? I have a dentist appointment coming up ish but I think that's in October. Which ugh, okay, means I'd better put in some overtime for that but also means I don't have dental stress until October. I can work with this. And I have endless, endless amusements to keep me occupied so as long as I don't impulse-splurge on makeup or clothes or drawing supplies, I should be good.

What I should really do is get back to knitting at least somewhat. It's going to be winter soon and I should really finish some of the superwash warm things I started in April Starts so I have things with which to bundle up and go FUCK IT'S COLD WHY IS IT SO COLD. Superwash in case I spill cocoa on it, or the cat barfs.

And, you know, I have writing work I need to get done. Oh so much writing work I have to do. I managed to accidentally maybe add to it while on a migraine and drugs, that was special. Oops. (Sorry, A.)

Dragon*Con report, hanging with friends edition

I'm not sure what to say about this so much except that hanging with friends happened, and it was glorious. bethany_lauren's brother is an adorable mess of curly hair and randomness. viridian introduced me to another friend who is a total riot in the best way, and also to a trad-published writer friend, which was deeply appreciated both in the trad-published way and in the writerly way. Shenanigans happened. Lessee.

Shenanigans like hanging out in the AmSciFiMedia room with Bethany and her brother making up even cruder, lewder, and less socially acceptable fill-in answers to their cards against humanity game. Seriously, those answers were weak. Weak weak weaksauce.

Shenanigans like descending upon High Velocity every chance we got for cheese sticks with viridian. Look, if you're going to suggest we hit up a restaurant for cheese sticks every chance we get, I am not going to turn this down. This practice is also what led us to be sitting next to the Dark Matter crew, so clearly we made good life choices.

We had a couple Pokeballs, which was apparently a High Velocity special that was a candy shell over ice cream? I think, and then you poured some kind of hot milk or sweetened hot milk over it and it melted and maybe there was a pokemon inside. And then a brownie underneath. It was really good and very pretty and fun to pour it over the pokeball. We didn't get any pokemon, but eh.

Bethany took me into the art show and we ended up meeting with an artist she knows who might be a potential cover artist! We shall see. I need to contact him after I recover a few more brain cells.

I hauled her brother to the Walk of Fame, too, and took him around to meet Reggie Lee and Siddig and that was also fun because both of us are fairly cultured and definitely multilingual and that entertained everybody. We had a number of meals together too, and at some point there was a truly awful joke about me minioning for Bethany on one of her panels and then me commenting "I can't minyan, I'm only one Jew." Seriously, broke the table for at least a minute.

I got to meet the Wablet! The Wablet is terribly adorable and very well behaved for a child of his age. Sweet boy. Messy boy but really what else does one expect from a one year old. I comment here because it was fucking funny watching him get his food everywhere. Pregnancy may terrify me but small children will always amuse me.

Um. I'm sure there will be more stories here as I think of them fondly, but mostly it was a lot of hanging out with friends and making trains of wandering from place to place amidst packs of people, eating way too much cheese in various forms and other things that are bad for me, and ... well, generally having fun. It was a damn good con.

Day One of DragonCon accomplished? Having crashed yesterday at some nebulous and random point after 9.30 in the middle of a Fast and Furious movie (I have no idea which one, Vin Diesel was in it and so was Jason Statham) I woke up at 6 in the fucking morning. Ended up getting in line for pre-reg before it opened because why not, which meant of course standing in a long-ass line till 10. If I'd been smart I would have waited because at around 10.30 it started zipping. Then stood in a long-ass line for a lanyard and a membership to next year's con. THEN stood in a long-ass line... I don't even remember what was after that. So far the only long-ass line I haven't stood oh, Blood Drive. That was the other long-ass line I stood in. And the only ones I haven't stood in are for the bathroom and to eat. Miraculously, that eating one.

Let's see, what was it. Pre-reg line. Lanyard line. Back to hotel room to relax for a few minutes, then it ended up being okay, sure, I'll do the blood drive and then meet up with everyone ever, because I got in before everyone. So blood drive, Thursday, should be quick ish, right? WRONG. But I did get to stand in line beside a nice couple and we all played Pokemon, took advantage of the lures that everyone seemed to be dropping, and caught endless fucking zubats. End. Less. In the blood drive. That was hilarious.

After that it was going and dropping off a keycard for Kiki, going and meeting viridian and her husband and wablet, running into Kevin Hearne after that and him recognizing me and confirming our dinner date! for today!! Friday!!! (date is misleading, dinner appointment? something) and that it was after his panel and I'd meet him there!!!! and now I am feeling all kinds of unworthy and oh god I am the least charismatic ever why did I open my big fat twitter mouth. But hey. That's what con is FOR, isn't it? And then after that it was meeting bethany_lauren and her coterie for dinner part one at a pub, and then meeting up with people again for all the fried cheese you can stuff in your mouth, and then I decided enough was enough and I was going back to my damn hotel room. With a ridiculously large slice of cake because they have the diner here that sells those.

And that was the first day. And today I have panels and meetups and more panels and maybe a Labyrinth sing-along to which I will wear my butterfly dress because dammit I will wear that damn thing and show it off and it is goddamn gorgeous. So there.

(My phone thinks I walked 12k steps yesterday. Oh god. And today is going to be busier. Oh god. Oh god oh god.)

And we're down to the wire, so my brain is of course tossing things at me that I should have done/haven't yet done/oh my god oh my god you suck why isn't this a thing/etc. I swear, I get about an hour of peace, maybe more if I'm doing something that requires more concentration, and then there's this high pitched "eeeeeeee" of worry that starts again. Fucksake. Anxiety. Fucking quit it. I don't even know if this could be counted as clinical anxiety or nerves, I don't care, go awaaaaaay.

Ugh. What do I have though. I have my two nifty PinupGirl tops and my pairs of pants for Peggy Carter, and my red Peggy Carter blouse, and a hat, and her sunglasses. And Abby's stuff. And America Chavez's stuff. I haven't packed underwear or everyday clothes because I'm wearing them but I'll probably toss in a load of laundry tonight and pack those because then I'll just have to have the clothes I'm wearing Tuesday. And a trash bag in the suitcase for dirty laundry, come to think of it. Maybe a handful of them. I have all my postcards and may order proof copies tonight to have at DragonCon. I have all my notes printed up for all my panels, my Deli Counter books, I have basically everything except the food in the fridge and the clothes printed up so, yeah. And I'm about as prepped as I'm going to get for panels. So screaming fire engine in my head can suck it. Seriously, the only thing I'm doing last minute this time is sewing. Well, and I need to get up a Helix post tonight so I can get 1x04 on Monday and be vaguely on time for the rest of them. But eh.

And trim my nails. I definitely need to trim my nails.

Oof. Maybe the thing of the day is to just work on cleaning off my workstation, do exercises every so often, and work on the next projects to do writingwise. Naturally, now that I've taken the time to do things properly and find a tutorial and all, the books look better as a result, which means I'm much more exciting about finishing a thing and putting it out there. I think at this point, well, ugh, okay, I know why I do this. It doesn't irritate me any less that I have to go through this process? Fear fear fear EXTRA fear because there's a new thing, so much fear that I can't stand it, I have to do the bare minimum and fling it away from me as hard as possible. And then wait for six months to a year before I can try again, or try fixing it so it's not the bare minimum. Repeat.

Although at least as far as the structure of the book goes, I might be done with new things and that cycle of fear for now. As far as promoting things go, that'll always be hard and if I end up doing some other new avenue of promotion I'll do THAT whole cycle of fear but the rest of it should be good. Maybe? I hope? I hope.

Summation: have figured out self-publishing like a grown-up. Have already figured out the write-a-novel part of it with as big leaps as I'm going to get, now it's just the improving slowly over time part, which lasts from now till I drop dead hopefully at a ripe triple digit age while out in my garden or something. Elsewise, have no idea what I'm doing. Also, DragonCon is making my brain into wet moldy apple mush. I'mma go do the thing.

(Is anyone else on my flist coming to DragonCon? Other than the ones I already know I mean. What up, folks?)