That was certainly a week.
Hey, world, here I am cluttering up my little corner of the interwebs with the chronicles of My Doings. The days have slipped through my fingers once again, so it is Wednesday night, not Friday night when I originally and dutifully intended to write this post, only I fell asleep on the couch with the laptop AND the cat in my lap. This was as much a surprise to me as it was to the cat. (The laptop had no opinions, AI hype notwithstanding.)
It is also not Sunday night, when I watched a movie with Spouseman instead of writing blog, or Monday, when I had my biweekly watch Leverage with my buddy night, or Tuesday night, when I chatted with people online and then did the fall-asleep-on-the-couch thing again after work. So this has reached Monty Python castle sinking into the swamp levels of ridiculous, and I am determined to post TONIGHT.
Things I did this past week included:
A marvelously productive and enjoyable plotting call with my Ghost Town co-author. He’s the final arbiter of Historical Details, and I wanted his go-ahead before I went any further into the Actual Writing Process. We nailed down the historical timeframe for book 2 as much as we need to (circa 1840) hammered out the details of the story-behind-the mystery—Gridley’s local legend of the Lost Mormon Gold—and got permission to turn a personal anecdote into Book 2’s lighter B-plot. We both simultaneously almost immediately realized it would dovetail PERFECTLY into the A-plot about 30 seconds after we folded the real-world story into a shape that would fit into imaginary Gridley. So I’m hashing out the first few chapters now. Progress!
A long-long postponed trip to IKEA, a destination that for some people is a vital source of fast furniture, but which we mostly patronize for its huge collection of inexpensive but durable household items. I am now the owner of a big-ass metal pizza peel, the better to remove pizzas from the hot oven without handling the mondo-heavy cast iron pizza stone. I also have proper-sized, nice colorful sheets for my napping nook, a full set of squishy pillows that aren’t old enough to be agitating for their own drivers licenses, and cover for the nook mattress.
The laundry. The grocery shopping. All the usual errands. And chores. And cleaning. The only exciting part of that was finding some trellising for the veggie boxes just in time to prevent the cucumber plants from taking over the lawn. They’re supposed to be “bush” plants suitable for patio containers or small spaces. They aren’t. They really aren’t.
Harvested some greens, a bowlful of basil, more tomatoes and the season’s first cucumber.
Sunday we had a festive evening meal of many good things. It was the kind of food that actually requires prep time spent in the kitchen, and there were BAKED GOODS, because the weather on Sunday was unexpectedly cool enough to do baking.
Tuesday I had a dentist visit that did not involve stress, bank-breaking discoveries of tooth rot, or any anxiety. My anti-clench mouthguard has pretty much sucked since I got it 4 years ago (still better than the headaches from jaw-clenching, but only barely) And now, after one refitting/adjustment session with new dentist and it is MUCH better.
Pretty sure I’ve forgotten something, but that’s the drawback of not recording things more frequently. I forget things.
ANYway. Outside my deliberately unexciting life, the world continues its march forward in time and backward in human progress, most egregiously and obviously in the United States, but not exactly only there. One final thing I’ve done this week is add to the non-linked blog devoted to my opinions and observations about all the ongoing fascist coups, genocides and slow-motion disasters I wish I hadn’t been watching for decades now.
(I wrote my first anti-dystopian Restoration novel, aka “adventures two generations after we broke the world” in the late 1980’s, long ago that nuclear winter was still in the news, although global warming had finally overtaken it. I wrote that kind of future because I was tired of the published chasm between “Gritty Life But Mostly Death After The Utter Annihilation” stories and “Hey, let’s skip forward to the post-scarcity era” space opera future without questioning how we got there” stories.
BUT I DIGRESS. I only mention all that depressing drek because sometimes I feel the need to remind the world (and myself) that I am neither oblivious nor complacent. That it’s possible to be NOT allied with the forces of evil, but also not in the front lines of the fight against it. That’s where most of the world is, when you think about it. And I think about it rather a lot. Obviously.
ANyway. Happier things. Here’s a classic pair of “How it started/how it’s going” pics of the garden boxes. (Before I got the new little trellises for the cucumbers)
Hard to believe those pics were taken only a month apart, huh? The tomato vines have totally created shade behind the far trellis. At least something’s enjoying the hot weather.
And one last pic to wrap up the week. Pippin, of course.
This week’s edition of “my cat is a fluid, not a solid.” He is not actually melting into that giant beanbag, no matter how it looks.
Until later!