Thursday, January 29, 2009

I do not want to

I do not want to write. Or order seeds, which needs doing shortly. Or clean, though I'm starting to hate the filthiness of the house more than the act of cleaning. I want to sit, and read, and eat citrus. (Seriously, two or three pieces a day for the past what, month? except when we run out and I haven't gone to the store beforehand.) I'm starting to get over this, but slowly. As a result, baby quilt #1 is behind. Writing is way behind (though I'm rereading Shoelace, and I'm going to send in the first few pages to apply to the Penguicon writing workshop, mainly because I think critiquing other people's work would be really good for me right about now). I'm not even thinking about knitting or spinning except in fitful moments. I can't honestly say for sure whether it's pregnancy or winter doldrums.

But I do seem to be coming out of it, bit by bit. I've got a guest gardening post to write (and my garden blog to update); I've got an article to write about the National Association of Women in Construction; I've done a lot of laundry and some dishes, and pieced some quilt blocks. Next I need to call Bev, to see whether we're going to arrange a girls' weekend out this spring or if I should just invite myself over for a visit, and clear the old interview notes off my desk.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Calloo! Callay!

We have a new president!

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

New year, old news

I am tired and irritable about eating. (Only four things never sound gross: oranges, grapefruit, crackers, and toast. Of course I'm tired of those things now.) There are twelve mousetraps around the kitchen; we found a missing trap under the stove (dead mouse included) and caught another one, which I discarded, and immediately heard the scrabbling of another behind the garbage bin, which left us only the one from the Orkin man which hadn't caught any, so we cleaned everything and put out more traps. Nothing yet.

I was supposed to go on a business trip today, but the person I was going with injured her knee shoveling snow (we got about ten inches between Friday and Saturday; another three or so expected tonight) and can't drive, so it was cancelled. Probably a good thing. I'm tired and irritable, as mentioned above, and the house is a mess. And I'd like to make some apple turnovers, since I haven't made a treat for Eric in a while and it actually sounds pretty good to me too.

I'm working on my first of four baby quilts for this year. This one's a fishy theme: a kind-of-checkerboardy watery background with some large and some small fish swimming around. I love my little fish. It would make a great bigger quilt, but I'd never have the patience. This one needs to be done by February 1, so there's another reason to be glad I'm not going on the trip. I have no knitting project at the moment, which feels very weird. I'm going to have to decide on one. I'm considering making my niece some mittens, since she came by the other day (her grandmother decided to dress her up for a walk in the snow and brought her over because she looked so cute bundled up) dressed very warmly except that her tiny mittens were falling off because the cuffs were so short. I might also make myself some socks. Or start on a baby sweater. Or even work on the gloves for Eric that I've been planning to do for over a year. Decisions, decisions.

Monday, January 05, 2009

Ring in the new

Happy 2009! Other than not having done dishes since last year, things are well in my house. --Oh, and not cleaning up the mouse droppings. We caught another one and I'm hoping that was it, but we're keeping the traps out and I'll see if more droppings appear. I don't know why cleaning was so low on my list of things to do when all I had was a single party and a single article to deal with.

Except that's not true. I also had early-pregnancy nausea and tiredness (not to mention abundant food aversions) to deal with. Our IUI worked on the first try and I'm eleven weeks in. I go to the doctor to hear the heartbeat tomorrow. I'm terrified that I'll go and be told that the embryo (now a fetus) died six weeks ago, but I looked that up--it's called a missed abortion or a delayed miscarriage, depending on how scared you are of the word "abortion"--and it's accompanied by loss of pregnancy symptoms, and green vegetables are grossing me out as much as they ever have (which was not at all until a few weeks ago, when I of course had plenty of them in the fridge because up until then I'd had no food aversions and was delighted to be getting my healthy meals in), so that is probably not really likely. My fingers are crossed anyway.

My goals for 2009 are pretty much the same ones as my goals for 2008: work on nonfiction, work on fiction, have a baby, get the house in shape, don't drive myself crazy with crafts. I think I did pretty well in 2008, especially on the nonfiction side. Not as well as I would have liked, but it's probably good for me not to hit all my goals; it means I didn't set them too low.