Post-Christmas funk

It happens. Christmas comes and goes and you’re left with a void that you don’t quite know what to do about. You may have to go back to work, or do chores, or return something that someone got you, but after that, what is there?

For me, I’m thankful that I have my sequel to work on. Sure, I’ve got other projects aplenty, but this morning, at oh-dark-thirty, I cranked out almost two thousand words… And that’s not taking into account the words I deleted. I was on a roll!

Of course right before I got to the good part, I had to leave for work. The office beckons, and I must answer. At least until, say, three o’clock or so. Then it’s off to the household twelfth night party. Tomorrow’s a full day of lasers, Friday through Sunday I’m off, and next week, aside from having New Year’s Day off, it’s back to life as usual.

So I’m excited over the progress in my next book, not so much over the working. And yes, I am aware that I have nearly two full Persian outfits to make and a set of cuffs to embroider and two hems and….

Ugh. Can another holiday be added in here?

Aww, who am I kidding? I need the money from the day job, need the sanity from the writing, and need the sewing projects for when the words fail me.

It’s all over when the fat man sings

So maybe it’s not “over” quite yet. I mean, it’s barely 2:00 PM. But the presents have been presented, the family ate breakfast with us, and all-in-all, aside from Christmas dinner at my parents’ house, Christmas is pretty much over. I haven’t even had a full day off from sewing and stuff–my husband just asked how far along I am on the Persian garb. I need to stop being so wicked; no rest, man, no rest at all.

I keep trying to tell myself that after Estrella things will calm down. I’ll have fewer sewing projects, I’ll be able to back away and take a break from SCA events, and I’ll have (theoretically) more time to write. That’s still two months away, though, and I have a crapton of things to do in those two months.

Did I enjoy my Christmas morning? Sure. It was nice having the family over, everyone seemed to love their gifts, and breakfast was tasty. But now, it seems, I don’t know what to do with myself. I could write, sure, but that’s work. So is sewing. And embroidery. I wanted a day off…but it’s not gonna happen. I can see that now.

I’ve been doing a lot of whining as of late. I need to quit that…along with quitting junk food and overeating, and quitting volunteering for all the things, and quitting not going to exercise (though that one will perhaps be the toughest, because I hate exercising in public and the group of friends I work out with now goes to a public gym).

Maybe I can be lazy for another week and save the above paragraph for New Year’s resolutions. Have a big ol’ list of stuff that I’m going to quit or give up or start or start back up. Who knows. I kinda hate resolutions, too. I tend to not get them done if they’re anything associated with me losing weight or getting healthier. The writing ones? Yeah, I can do those. Cosplay goals? If I can lose the weight, I can usually manage. It’s kind of a matter of how hard I want it, or how hard Thing X is. If Thing X is writing, I got this. If Thing X is getting on a treadmill to have half the town watch my fat jiggle, well, Thing X might not be a resolution I’d keep.

What will 2019 bring me? It’ll bring me age 40, hopefully around the time Escaping the Light hits shelves. That would be an awesome birthday present. Forty years old and a three-time published novelist, with two of them traditionally/indie published and one self-published. Yeah. A published sequel will be great for the midlife crisis. Maybe I can become a shut-in when I’m not at work and just churn out novels for the next, say, twenty to twenty-five years. Hit the Golden Years with a bunch of series and standalones.

It’s nice to dream, anyway…

‘Twas the night before Tuesday

Yeah, I know, that’s not how the line goes. But sometimes, even the day before Christmas, it’s hard to get into the spirit of the holiday.

Let me set a few things straight: I’m not Christian. So really, by “the spirit of the holiday” I mean “the spirit of giving gifts in appreciation of others.” December 25th is just a convenient, easy-to-remember day to give gifts that just happens to coincide with a day when a good portion of humanity is also giving gifts. Birthdays? Sure, I can give gifts on birthdays–if I can manage to remember them. Problem is, I tend to not remember. Facebook is about the only way I remember any birthdays, and that’s kinda cheating. Jesus’s birthday (let’s not argue the validity of the December birthdate just now) is a set date, a fixed point in time. The same every year, for everyone. Easy peasy.

I’ve got all the presents that need to be wrapped wrapped. Am I expecting much for myself? Not really–and that’s okay. It isn’t about what you get. I know people say that, but I mean it. I want to see my dad smile when he gets his gift; I want to see Mom smile. My sister, brother–I want people to be happy with what they get. What I get is inconsequential.

This is going to be a busy week–after Christmas comes a day of working on charts, then a Twelfth Night party with our household, then a full day of lasers, then a day off (whew!), then a weekend where I’m going to bow out of doing much of anything other than the craft projects that have backed up on me. I’ve got one and two-thirds Persian outfits to get done, a crapton of embroidery, and not a lot of time in which to get them finished. So I think I’m going to stay home for the majority of the Twelfth Night parties my husband has planned for us to go to. I just don’t have the time.

Speaking of which, I have a pirihan to finish.

Going on an adventure isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

It’s was supposed to be just a three hour tour–er, I mean drive. I had gotten off work early, we left town right away… Easy peasy.

Except we didn’t calculate for some idiot running over the median into oncoming traffic on the interstate at about the halfway point. We didn’t calculate for the four fatalities, or for the Dept of Corrections van that got hit in the accident. We didn’t calculate for the interstate being backed up and shut down.

We followed the GPS instructions for getting around the tie-up for a little while, but then we tried our own route… and ended up getting turned in the other direction by the cops directing traffic.

By that point, our three hour drive had lasted four hours, and we weren’t even halfway there.

Thank the Gods for SCA friends with crash space.

Hopefully by now (more than twelve hours after the accident that blocked us occurred) the roads are more friendly. Hopefully we can get to my in-laws’ house and enjoy pre-Christmas with my husband’s family.

I don’t think I can handle another adventure like that.

All Wrapped Up

The holidays are upon us, and even though we’re mostly giving out Mason jars of salsa or apple butter (made by my husband–I am NOT a cook-y wife) to a lot of people, there are still some presents that needed wrapping, which is usually my job.

I did a shit job this year. Lol

In my defense, I was pretty achy last night. Long day at work, and my back was having none of my shenanigans. Still, I got about a dozen presents wrapped, more or less, so that’s an accomplishment of sorts.

My project of making little gift bags for all the apple butter and salsa flopped, mainly because the apple-butter-jar-sized bags I was making ended up being too small for the Mason jars my husband is going to end up using, and I never got around to even making a mockup of the salsa-jar-sized bags. Oh well. So much for contributing to the gift-making this year.

There’s still lots to do to keep me occupied though–I just have to find the motivation to do it. I wasted time on bags (since the ones I made were too small, I have four that aren’t even finished yet), and I still have many many sewing projects to get done in a rapidly-shrinking time frame.

Persian garb. Embroidery. More embroidery. Hemming. All that combined with work and visiting family and SCA twelfth night parties and work and …. sheesh!

I’ll get it done. I have a terrible procrastination problem, especially when I’m achy like I have been lately, but I also tend to pick up the pace in the crunch and eventually get all the things done.

Speaking of that pesky work thing, though….I gotta go get ready!

‘Tis the Season for Last-Minute Purchases

It’s the 18th of December. Even for Amazon purchases, time is ticking down to buy those last-minute gifts for your friends and loved ones.

Have no fear, though! Abnormal is still available for pre-Christmas shipping (for Prime members)! Don’t believe me? Check it out…

What’s that? It’s also on sale?!?! Well, can’t beat that. And with December 20th delivery, it give you a few days to dig that wrapping paper out of the back of your closet/garage/attic, dust off the Scotch tape, and get to wrapping. Hell, if you’re speedy about it, you might get it wrapped, boxed, and shipped in time. Oh, unless you want to use Amazon’s gift wrapping service and have it shipped, wrapped all nice and pretty, directly to your book-loving recipient. That’s available too.

Am I being a little pushy? Maybe–but an author’s gotta do what an author’s gotta do. Besides, searching my own name on Amazon gives me something to do when I can’t sleep at night. In the morning. Whatever.

Think it over, though. You’ve got a couple of days, but time’s only ticking down. At least as far as I know, from a subjective viewpoint time is rather linear. I think we all know what time is from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint.

A big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff. 😉

Merry Christmas to you all! I’ll be popping in of course, on a semi-daily basis, but I wanted to let you know that you’ve still got time to buy Abnormal for that special someone. 🙂

A case of noncompliance

It’s been a strange few weeks. Yule prep and Christmas, work and sewing and events and insomnia and Goddess knows what else I’m forgetting. I haven’t felt “bad,” per se, but I’ve been feeling…off.
Could it be my crazy schedule? Possibly…or possibly it’s the fact that I haven’t been the most compliant patient in the world lately. Yeah, I know, for the meds to work you have to keep taking them. I just haven’t felt like it. Stupid, lame excuse, I know, but there you have it. I just don’t feel like taking my pills half the time.
Granted, sometimes I get home late from an event or outing and am too tired to take my nighttime pills, but I have no real excuse for missing the morning doses (which are when the majority of my bipolar meds are taken). I just don’t feel like it. Did I say that already? Yeah, well, it bears repeating. My routine has been thrown off course, and I need to get it back.
The early mornings? Still there, but they’ve been chock full of cramming for Yule and Christmas deadlines. With those two things out of the way now I should soon have my quiet time to myself again. I do have another deadline (revisions due to the publisher), but it’s not one that has me panicked like the others did. I have sewing that needs to be done, too, but it’s nothing too terribly pressing. Maybe a month, month and a half before the next project is needed.
Maybe once I get back to my routine my “off” feeling will go away. Or once I get back to routinely taking my pills. Either way, hopefully I’ll be back to my blogging, tweeting, sewing, writing self.
I guess I can get back to it. I can start behaving again. It’s not like things are going to be crazy forever. I just have to be good and take my meds like I’m supposed to.
I just don’t feel like it.

Passing aggression

The visit was sweet
Until it went sour
Bitterness brewed
And cut the binds
Life handed lemons
We offered to share
Not from the tree
But from our own
Words became twisted
Like the proverbial knife
Ties that bound
Sliced dangerously thin
To salvage what’s left
Away we must go
Before the tightrope snaps
Insults hurled
Shots fired
That can’t be taken back
So we leave
Guests un-welcomed
Perhaps time can heal
The passing aggression
Until then
We will let aggression pass
As we drive through the night

'Tis the season

Just a few more days until Christmas! Not that I’m Christian, but I like to celebrate the spirit of gift giving this time of year. I think that giving presents to friends and family to show your appreciation of them is something I can totally get on board with, regardless of the religious reason for said gift giving.
I’m a little disappointed that I’m not going to get done sewing one present in time to mail it out, and that I wasn’t able to get to the post office to mail out another one. Then there’s the one I ordered last-minute the wasn’t on the Prime program, so it won’t arrive before Christmas. And it took me forever to figure out what I was getting my husband–so that will be late, too. Boo. None of the recipients mind that their gifts will be late, but I still feel guilty that I didn’t get everything in on time.
Despite the fact that I create an Amazon wish list every year of stuff I’d like to get, I’m not really concerned with what I end up getting. Its the spirit of the season, those friends and family that I mentioned before, that really matter. Seeing how happy they are with their gift(s) (or pretend-happy, depending on how good a job I did of selecting/making said gift) is what makes me happy, not necessarily what kind of haul I end up getting. To be honest, I don’t know if I’d even be disappointed in the slightest if I got no presents–so long as I still was able to buy/make for those I care about.
As the year draws to a close, I think back on my one “resolution”/goal for the new year: to get the first draft of my WIP in finished. I blew past that goal and even finished the first draft of the sequel, plus got a publishing deal. I’m still amazed that I accomplished that much.
This isn’t where I usually post my goals for the next year, but since I mentioned it let’s just get that post out of the way, shall we? Here goes:

  • I want to continue working out with my husband and my friends to gain strength and endurance (and hopefully lose a bit of weight)
  • don’t want to break my motherfucking foot again…or any other bones
  • I want to continue to learn and grow in my rapier practice–maybe win a small tournament? We’ll see
  • I want to get Book 2 finished enough to send it to my publisher for consideration
  • Oh yeah, I want Book 1 to be published. I want to see it in print in a bookstore. Maybe some book signings? We’ll see on that one, too. Oh, and to get at least started on Book 3 🙂
  • I want to make it through my current sewing project list and then some (that one might take up the entire year lol)
  • I want to do my hardest to push back some of this social anxiety to the point where I can enjoy SCA events more and not get overwhelmed by the number of people I don’t know that are around me
  • I want to learn a new art/craft. I’ve already started trying to embroider something, but that might be my “new” thing seeing as how I’ve only just barely started
  • I want to stand up for myself more. On those occasions where my social anxiety is not under control or for events/meetings that I don’t want to go to, I want to be able to say “Hey, honey, I don’t want to do Thing X; can I stay home/in the tent for it or maybe do Thing Y instead?”
  • I want to move into our own home and out of this freakin’ apartment

This probably isn’t a comprehensive list of goals for the coming year, but I think they’re all reasonable. Attainable.
I used to grab a 3×5 index card and jot all these goals down, sticking the card on the fridge for “motivation,” but I don’t think I’ll do that this year. I can keep a running tally in my head of things I’ve accomplished that I set out to do.
Speaking of things to do, I had better get cracking on the gift I’m currently working on. It’s taking a lot of hand sewing because I can’t figure out a good way to use the sewing machine on the weird angles without screwing it up.
Until next time!

It feels good to be a Lady

Last night was my husband’s first SCA feast as Feast Steward, and it went amazingly well! The food turned out great, and everyone enjoyed it.
I spent a majority of the time sitting at the table because of das boot. I did get up a few times, though, most notably for the Order of Precedence procession and *drum roll please* my Award of Arms! My husband got his as well, so now we are Lord and Lady. 🙂 I gotta admit, I teared up a little when Her Majesty was going over her speech about why she was giving me the award.
My husband and I are apparently unusually active in the Society for as new as we are, so our AoA was presented fairly early on, for our kingdom at least. Some people play for years and years before getting their AoA, but we’ve only been playing since March. We have taken on a lot in that short time though, such as our Baronial officer positions, the Queen’s Guard, and of course his feast stewarding.
I never thought I’d be so happy with such a seemingly little thing. “Lady.” It’s kinda cool. It feels good to be recognized for the hard work I’ve done. Sure, I get thanks all the time, but this is something I can take and frame and look at as a reminder when I start feeling like I’m not appreciated or recognized.
Our scrolls turned out pretty cool too; they’re even coordinated. Check it out:

Those birds are freaking cute!
The next big thing for us will be Estrella War. It’s the biggest war in our kingdom and I think one of the biggest in the SCA. My husband has been to a couple of Estrella Wars, but this will be my first. It should be interesting. I’ll be getting my Oleander, another award (one that’s given to all female fighters their first time on the Estrella battlefield) there. I’ve been making the belt favors for it to help out.
The other highlight of the event last night (for me at least) was the response to the garb I worked so hard on. Everyone loved the gown I wore and apparently they loved my husband’s garb as well. I didn’t get a picture of him in his outfit, but here’s my dress:

I had a lot of help, but I’m still proud of how it turned out. It was pretty comfortable. I still have tweaks I want to do to it, like making detachable sleeves, but it was completed and that’s what matters.
Now we’re off to Star Wars! A good treat after all that hard work.