On watercolor quilting

There's no picture of the Summer Sunrise quilt because I'm ashamed of it. It's mainly the sky. This was supposed to be a watercolor quilt, done in low resolution (six-inch squares), and the green in the hills looks fine because I used different patterns and tones, but for the sky I just used one type of fabric for each color (orange to yellow to tan to blue to dark blue) and it looks awful. It'll do for now because it's under another blanket, but I'm going to have to make us another summer quilt and give this one away.

James's quilt is the same technique, but done better. I used lots of different fabrics, and it looks more natural and graded and interesting. Still very color-saturated--I guess my stash tends toward that--but that's not a bad thing. This one I'm not ashamed of.

Adventures in infertility: Mr. Hyde has left the building

I started taking Clomid yesterday, per my doctor's orders. (Also, the day before that I called both my doctor and the local fertility clinic, to coordinate scheduling for getting a specimen from Eric and getting my ultrasound/Profasi/IUI set up. I much prefer the local fertility clinic's phone manner. The woman I spoke with was helpful, knowledgeable, and happy to explain each step of what I needed. The people at the doctor's office recognize my name--or the one woman does, anyway--but only give me useful information when I pull it out of them.) They're supposed to be taken the same time every day, and I decided noon sounded good.

I eyed the first one nervously before I popped it in my mouth. I'm not liking this part of the IUI prep, especially since I ovulate just fine. It feels too manipulative. Too steak-tastes-better. Also, I looked up the side effects and feared them: mood swings, uncontrollable crying, cramping, hot flashes, nausea, itchiness, headaches, exhaustion. I told Eric this list and apologized in advance. However, I took it. I waited a moment, said to myself, "No noticeable behavioral differences," and went about my day.

After a few hours I noticed that I was more aware of my female inner workings than I usually am at this time of month, but no actual pain, and it went away. Today, a slight headache that might be due to not enough to drink. Nothing else. Eric's moodier than I am. I'm still a bit wary, but feeling decently hopeful that this won't be such a big deal.

Not really a misnomer. Really!

I get defensive about this every fall. I would like to inform Midwesterners and East Coasters: Red Delicious apples really do taste good--in Washington. I've had one fresh from a tree in a local orchard here in Toledo, and it was tasteless. They're widely reviled here as lumps that don't deserve the name of apple, and given the opportunity to taste them here I can't blame these people, but it's not the poor apple's fault. It's evidently a terroir thing, made worse by the globalization of food markets and the marketable name (like 'Beautiful Rushmore Caverns' in South Dakota, I suppose). But in their proper environment the Red Delicious is a good apple. Honestly!

Snapshots

Click:

I've just left the government center, having been told that their website is totally misleading and what I want is in another castle, and decide to try walking to the Board of Elections building where I can vote early. Four blocks later I realize this isn't going to work, and I start heading back. As I'm walking, a brown car pulls alongside me, then climbs halfway up the sidewalk and paces me.

I think I see a female passenger (Eric asked me later why this was important) and it's plain daylight and there are people around, so I'm not terribly concerned; I just move out of easy reach and keep walking. The brown car gets stuck behind another car, and the light turns red, and I cross and start walking back towards my car.

I stop to read the Constitutional Amendments statue-type thing by the sidewalk. Someone hollers behind me, "I love you!!" I'm not sure whether he's talking to me or not, because I don't look back, but I turn the wrong way up a one-way street and the brown car doesn't follow.

Click:

"I want to know if the cystic fibrosis test covers a particular mutation," I tell the woman who answered the hospital's telephone.

"Okay, well, I can see if the system will tell me," she says dubiously. She looks. She finds nothing. "Sorry. But I can give you the number of the lab that does it, MLabs. --Wait. Where are you calling from?"

"My cell phone," I say, cautiously.

"I mean, are you a patient or what?"

I explain my situation. She says, "Okay. Because I'm not supposed to give you medical information if you're not a physician. Like, I can't give you this information because I'm not a physician either. There's a law that says I can't give this to you."

"But I'm not asking for advice," I say. "I just want to know a detail about the procedure."

"I'm sorry, but I can't tell you that. I can't even give you the number. It's my job, I have to obey this law."

I realize there's no use arguing, so I get her to repeat the name of the lab and tell me the city they're located in. I say sweetly, "Then I'll call them myself. Thanks for your help." I call the lab and they're perfectly helpful. I hope that the woman worries all night about whether or not she should have given me the lab's name and city.

Suddenly I'm more interested in the details of Obama's healthcare plan.

Now it's even more important that I straighten things out with the insurance company regarding my HSG. To wit: the $535 was just for my doctor to show up. The hospital's bill is $3,087. However I got no notice from Anthem about it, which suggests that the hospital didn't even try sending it to insurance. So I'm talking to them about that first. And if there's nothing I can do on that front, I'm going to talk to them about financing, because we don't have that much money. (Unless we take it out of our stocks, but that's a really bad idea right now. Putting it on a credit card would honestly be better. Yuck.)

I had my first interview today, for a real estate profile I'm doing for a local paper. I'd answered a Craigslist ad looking for local freelance writers, and this is my trial assignment. It went okay, though I did not feel polished or penetrating or anything particularly good, and the interviewee treated me like I knew something, which is the important bit, I think.

Tonight I'm writing up the article because this weekend is to be very busy with other freelance work (for the company that Jade introduced me to). This weekend Eric has no plans, so I'm hiring him to design a business card for me, because I felt foolish when my interviewee handed me his card and I had nothing to give him. I think it's time to go get a DBA. I don't know that it will help me or make me look more professional, but it'll be a nice shiny new toy for fairly cheap, and that would be a nice thing.

Close encounters

Thursday or Friday of last week, I was driving home in crawling traffic, listening to NPR, as has been my wont ever since Eric accused me of knowing too little about current events. (He was not entirely wrong.) Crawl, crawl, crawl, thunk. The car behind me had hit me. We got out; the driver, a woman a little younger than me, apologized profusely. She noticed the dent in my bumper and gasped, "Did I do that?"

"No, that was already there," I said. There was no damage to my car, just a license-plate-shaped smudge in the dirt, so I shrugged, she apologized once more, and we got back in our cars.

Today I was driving home, listening to NPR, thinking about whether we should buy stocks since everyone else was probably going to. I stopped at a light and fished out some trail mix from the Eric Hypoglycemia Emergency Stash. Chew, chew, chew, thunk. This one was a little harder. I got out and the driver, male this time, said, "Are you all right? I'm so sorry! I saw cars moving in the other lane and just started going." He looked at the dent in my bumper and said, "Did I do that?"

"No, that was from before," I said, and we examined the bumper. There were a couple of slight scratches this time, but not enough to be noticeable under the dirt or worry me, so after another apology and another "Are you sure you're all right?" we got back in our cars. It vaguely amuses me that both people thought they could be responsible for a dent in the side of the bumper when they hit me straight on. Could I have said "Yes" and gotten a free bumper repair out of it? Probably their insurance companies would be smarter than that. However, I feel sure that either I will myself get into an accident before long and be forgiven, or have a third person hit me even harder than the second one, and this third person will buy me a new bumper.

Status check

Current status: Furious at the insurance company. When I called to check whether they would cover the HSG, they said they would. Now they say they don't touch anything with the word 'infertility' on it. Dad suggests filing a complaint with the company and the insurance general (never heard of this, but I'll go find out). It was $535, so I think it's worth it to spend the time--I already submitted an informal complaint through their "Contact Us" page, but I'll check my paperwork and see what I need to do for a formal one.

Also, they don't do CF carrier testing unless a relative actually has CF, not just results indicating he's a carrier. Even though that's effectively the same situation minus the tragedy. Also, we need an official letter from Eric's new insurance company before my company will take him off of mine. $%!@*&$ bureaucracy.

Michelle was over last night while the mothers were at a seminar. She did a little spinning while I worked on my quilt templates; then she said, "I’m bored. I'd rather talk," and proceeded to tell me all about her tumultous relationship with her erstwhile best friend. I don't think she realizes that they're not best friends anymore, even though she sounded like she was describing a failing marriage, but she was doing at least a little metacognition: "I'm sorry to spill all this. But if you don't mind--it's nice to be able to talk about it."

I finished one sock of the pair intended for Mom yesterday. It's going in the wash this weekend to see if it shrinks--if not, I may have to redo it. I also need some good instructions for left-handed Kitchener stitch. Maybe I'll sit down with some easier-to-use yarn and figure it out myself.

We looked at our Ameritrade account yesterday. We really shouldn't have. We've lost almost six thousand dollars. Luckily we don't need the money; but we're definitely going to build up some savings in the bank before we do any serious investing. Though I do keep talking about upping our 401k contributions and buying some stock, since it's nice and cheap now. Eric wonders how much cheaper it will get. When the stock market starts going back up will there be a sudden upswing as everyone realizes now is the time to buy, or will most people be skittish and wary?

Slightly relatedly, I'm waiting on a small freelancing check from the company I'm scheduled to do a crazy amount of work with in two weekends. No check, no work. I'm sure my contact knows this; she's talking to the accounting person herself to make sure it gets to me. I'm also waiting on three potential nibbles on other gigs, but not very hopeful about any of them.

Status: life as usual. I want a vacation.

Turnover rate

I made apple butter and apple turnovers yesterday. The turnovers were something I'd never tried before, but I've been looking for something to replace the Fudgy Rounds Eric loves to take to work with him and I had lots of apples, so I gave them a shot. They're good. Eric loved them. "We should take some to the mothers," I said. "We could take them the recipe," he said.

Today, I made more. The original recipe only made eight, and we gave three to the mothers and sampled three more throughout the day. Eric brought one to work for after his faculty meeting and told me he was daydreaming about it halfway through the meeting. Who knew that handheld apple pies would be such a hit?

I tried out a cooked filling this time, because if it works well we're going to can a bunch of filling for later use. The first batch also had quite a few split seams and runny spots, so I took more care shaping the turnovers this time, pressing the crust together and crimping it carefully with a fork, then carefully trimming the edges away. I couldn't shake the feeling that I get once in a while since I got married, that this is something I'm going to be doing a lot in the coming years, that what I'm doing now is the foundation of a family tradition in the future. It's a strange feeling. But I like it.

Saturday, Saturday

Maybe I don't have a quilt design for James's quilt. I mean, I do, but the dragon-woven-into-the-design thing didn't work out the way I thought it would. I thought to do a test patch, for once, to test this out, and I'm glad I did. But it still means I'm not sure what I want to do. Switch entirely? Remove the dragon and keep the quilt simple? Find another way to weave the dragon in?

In other news, I met with an editor of a local business paper today to discuss doing freelance assignments. I think it mostly went well; he gave me some sample papers to read and asked me to send an e-mail with my interest in doing a trial assignment. I've got my fingers crossed.

I bought a half-bushel of apples at the farmer's market today ($10; at Andersons there were pecks for sale for $6) that I'm going to use tomorrow for apple butter, apple turnovers, and possibly apple cake. We also bought about three hundred dollars' worth of clothes for the two of us. Yikes. But we needed it (Eric especially), and we can afford it now, which I think actually makes me happier than the actual buying of things does.

Complicated

"I'm not sure what I'm planting in the garden next year," I said last night. "But I should probably act like we're going to be here an extra year."

"Yeah?"

"Well, maybe it would be a selling point--but then, if things are bad enough that a vegetable garden is a big selling point, we're probably not going to be able to sell the house."

"My mom asked me about that earlier," Eric said. "She wanted to know if we'd considered the economy regarding our plans to move. I said of course we had, we're not idiots. Only not in those words. I said yes, we've discussed it. That we've been discussing it off and on for months."

"Did she bring up her contention that we'll never move? Or that we won't come back?"

"That was the other mother," he said. "But no, she didn't mention that. She was just asking if we'd thought about it. Especially if we're going to be spending all this money to try to make sure we have a kid soon."

"Moving with a newborn would not be fun," I said. "Neither would moving while eight months pregnant."

"Right. So next year is going to be complicated."

"I think..." I said. "I think we're probably going to end up staying an extra year. But I'm not willing to give up yet."

"That's fine," Eric said. "We'll wait and see. We could always put the house on the market and see what happens. And maybe things will get better after the election."

James's Christmas quilt, launched.

James's Christmas quilt is designed. (I also have another design on tap now--I drew it first and I like it so much I think it's too nice to waste on James. Is that terrible?) It's going to be a sort of a graduated plaid design in his chosen colors, brown and purple and gold, with one-fourth of the plaid being not a color but an appliqued dragon. Did that make sense? Probably not. I'll put up pictures. First I've got to buy fabric, and draw a full-sized template for this dragon (and maybe learn how to draw), and decide whether I can cut out single patches for the applique or if I'll have to piece it and how to do the applique since it's just going to be cut up anyway.

I think it's interesting that my response to any quilting challenge is "I can do that; I just have to figure out how." I don't have that with my other skills. In knitting and cooking/baking I have faith in my ability to follow directions and perform a certain amount of improvisation, but I wouldn't try to figure out something truly unusual on my own. In writing I have faith I could do it eventually, but not necessarily now. In quilting, I have faith I can do it now, even if I don't immediately know how. I think I can call that master-level skill, even if my seams and color theory need a little work. Strange that it's this one that's come the farthest.

Now that I have a design, I need a name. I do not have master-level skill in naming things.

Muses and musings

I have finally finished that scene in Shoelace that has been blocking me for (ugh) two months now. The solution lay in doing other things to give the protagonist the motivation she needed to make an effort that would have otherwise made no sense. Temporary victory is mine!

I am eagerly looking forward to tonight's presidential debate, mainly to see whether McCain shows up. We don't even need to vote in the circuses, they come to us.

I had a fit of economy-induced anxiety last night. It's not looking good for our plan to move next summer, though I suppose you never know. But if credit gets that bad, we may not be able to buy a house out there even if we sell ours here. (We could always rent my parents' old house. James is living in it now but I've got a better history of on-time payments, so they say they'd be happy to kick him out and rent to us instead. We wouldn't really kick him out...I think...but we might sublet it to him.) And leaving a perfectly good job might be a really bad idea, unless I've got the freelance/telecommute plan going by then. (Luckily, teachers will probably always be in demand in some form or another.)

But we'll see. Chances are that the worst that will happen is we'll have to stay here an extra year...or two. I don't want to end my twenties in Ohio, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

Next you'll tell me books don't have search functions.

I never watched West Wing but I still thought this was totally awesome. I was disconcerted, though, when I wanted to post a comment or e-mail the author and couldn't. Isn't this the Internet?

Adventures in infertility: passing the buck

I was told to call the doctor's office when I started my period to get a scrip for Clomid. So yesterday I called and explained my request to the woman I spoke with--Ann--and added that I had questions about whether I was supposed to do an IUI as well and how that would work. She paused, said, "Hold on," and connected me to someone else, unnamed. The unnamed person heard my story, said, "Hold on," and connected me with Elaine. Elaine heard my story and said, "The only one who can answer your question is really the doctor. Let me have her call you back."

So I left my number and went off to phone training (not entirely useless because the icons on our new phones are not intuitive and they only have the icons on them, not, you know, labels) and of course got the call in the middle. After the session I found that the call had been from a Terry, not the doctor. Terry said to call her back, so I did. "You need to make an appointment with the doctor to discuss this," Terry said.

So I did, for Monday, which is too late for Clomid to work this month. Today I'm wondering if I should have insisted on the scrip anyway, and if I should call again today. Yesterday, since I was in the last throes of PMS, I quietly made the appointment and got off the phone quickly so that I wouldn't sound upset. But I was; I was disappointed, and they've switched stories on me without provocation. And this is not the best thing to do to a patient when you know perfectly well she has PMS because that's when you asked her to call.

Family concerns

I'm currently reading Anne Lamott's Blue Shoe. I picked this up at a thrift store in Ann Arbor while shopping for dyeing equipment. I've been meaning to read Anne Lamott's fiction since I read Bird by Bird, but hadn't until now. I'm not normally much of a mainstream fiction reader...or at least that's not what I gravitate towards, though I do have a few mainstream novels that are some of my favorites to reread. I realized this evening that I rarely read new stuff anymore. Generally I just reread what I have. I wonder if this is why when I do read something new, I tend to gulp it down.

At any rate, this kind of mainstream fiction is definitely not what I would think of as my sort of thing. It's very senses-oriented, descriptive, symbolic, where the events don't matter in and of themselves so much as in their effects on the main character. I have to slow down to read this properly. I remember doing that with the one Charles de Lint book I read, too. Unlike that book, this one is more direct in its message: acceptance, family, duty, love, that flaws are okay and the point is to be a good person, not a perfect one. I feel like I've been very close in my own mind lately, that I need to expand and breathe and relax into my own life a bit. It's an interesting phenomenon. I'm glad I'm reading this book right now.

Dad called me today to discuss James's genetic testing results. James called Monday to tell me about it, disrupting the night's plan of work. I've just now caught up to what I was planning to do then. If I understand him correctly (and he understood the doctor correctly), he's a cystic fibrosis carrier. The doctor says this may or may not be the cause of his pancreatitis; some mutations in the CF gene are codominant (most are recessive, meaning that one mutated gene is okay, but codominant means that one mutated gene will produce some effects, though not as many as having two mutated genes) and CF does involve the pancreas but he almost certainly got the gene from Dad, and Dad's family, and nobody has had James's sort of internal troubles that we know of.

"I don't really know what CF is," he said, so I told him a little about it--bodily defects, lung problems, diabetes, malnutrition, sterility, and constant pneumonia and bronchitis symptoms are what it amounts to, though I didn't go into all that--and that I planned to get myself tested. "James said his doctor said it was mostly passed down on the male side," he said, which is contrary to what I know--cystic fibrosis is an autosomal disease--so I said either he was mistaken or I had misunderstood what the results actually were.

"When is CF diagnosed?" he said, and I said usually at infancy. "Then Abby (James's daughter) probably doesn't have it," he said, in relief. Two of my cousins were already tested when a cousin on their dad's side died of CF, so it's just the last two cousins who need to know--based on current information they have a 25% chance of being carriers. James didn't specifically say to disseminate the information, but he didn't say not to, and it's a family concern.

He's going to tell Mom about it when he's there to explain it--he's on a business trip currently--and I'm going to call when he's home to tell Mom about my test results, that I have a blocked oviduct and I'll be taking medication, so that he can help explain that. I'm not that bad at explaining things but she does seem to understand quickest when Dad tells her things; the habit of thirty years of listening to him, I expect.

I was feeling very anxious and cranky about all this yesterday, which is why I didn't catch up on any work. I'm still out of sorts today, in an odd way I haven't experienced before. It's not quite like PMS (though I'm due for it), and it's not quite like the depression I had in 2004. It's more ephemeral, more trivial, more flat-affect than bad-affect, but it's still been preventing me from doing things. However, I'm hoping that's at an end starting tomorrow.

Adult 2.0

We talked this past weekend, Eric and I, about Adult 2.0. It started out talking about money: now that he's got a paycheck again (yay!) we're figuring out what to do with money. Our plan is to pay off his student loans over the next year, which leaves us approximately $400 a month for savings and $400 a month for fun, based on the premise that my salary will continue to pay all our regular bills and his is therefore available for semidisposable items. "Fun" includes travel, gifts, and clothing, so it's not the riches we first felt it was, but it's much better than our budget over the past eight months of $0. (Not that we didn’t exceed that.)

We're also discussing what to do with the savings, and whether we should buy stock since it's low right now. And then there's the planned move: where are we going? When do we start job-hunting? When do we put the house up for sale? And then there's the hope of kids: what if I get pregnant such that we move halfway through? What about medical insurance? What kind of life insurance can Eric get? When do we need wills drawn? What about household management and the chores we neglect as it is?

Adult 1.0 was when I was in grad school and (more) when I was living in Dayton: I was an adult, I had an income and monthly bills, and I managed my own household. But it was a household of one, and decisions I made affected me and only me. Money was easy: when I spent less than I made, the extra went into a savings account. A growing savings account meant I was doing well.

I'm not sure when Eric moved from 1.0 to 2.0, since he was married before but it sounds like their household wasn't very well organized, but it happened for me when (a) I got engaged to Eric and (b) I put my savings into a CD. Two simple things, but they meant that (a) my responsibilities were to someone else and therefore more complex and (b) I realized that money is more complicated than addition and subtraction. Then came household management, and dealing with emergencies, and all those other things; and I feel fully entrenched in 2.0 now. It's complicated, but I know enough now to handle it, plus all the other things that make up my life--hobbies and family and such.

I wonder if other people feel this way, even if they don't put it in software terms.I assume 3.0 comes with kids, but I won't know until we get there. Maybe it's a 2.3 patch.

Sweet tooth

My tooth is fixed, and my sense of drama happily failed me; the dentist concluded I had "plenty of tooth left" and just smoothed and filled it. It meant I was numb for our first dinner out in several months, at a local Chinese-American restaurant , but that was okay. The numbness wore off before the food actually got to the table, anyway. I don't know if my metabolism is picking up or they used the cheap stuff; normally it takes more than three hours to completely go away.

I made this pumpernickel bread over the weekend. Except for being way too salty, it was pretty good, but not better the rye recipe I tried out of Local Breads that contains no cocoa or molasses. I'll try one of those this week. Plus focaccia: semolina focaccia with tomatoes and basil. It looks like summer's drawing to a close, so I'd better enjoy it while I can.

We're stocked up on sandwich bread; I'm one or two iterations away from Eric's ideal rye sandwich loaf if he stops moving the goalposts, and I've got Harvest Wheat and Honey Wheat recipes (it was Honey Wheat Berry, but the berries are too big for my liking; cracked wheat works better) that we're happy with, so we are pretty much a bakery-independent household. I haven't made hamburger buns yet--that's one of the few holdouts--but I found some recipes and I don't see why it would be hard, not when I made some ciabatta rolls not long ago that turned out to be excellent with burgers (veggie burgers, anyway) and were pretty easy to make. Eric wants me to try making pasties, and I want to try making Pizza Bites, and if we're staying here for Thanksgiving I'm totally making this. Maybe even if we're not, if Thanksgiving isn't actually at Mom and Dad's--I could do this if we were going elsewhere, but probably not if the kitchen were full of other Thanksgiving trappings.

I've been doing a lot of crafting lately (still haven't finished the damned summer quilt, but I will, very soon, honestly) and not a lot of writing. I’m envisioning my life as a vase that I filled with pretty little bits and bobs, and now that I have something big I want to put in it, it won't fit because all the pretty knickknacks are in the way. Unfortunately I've promised to finish a few things (including a quilt for my brother for Christmas) so I can't quit entirely, but this needs fixing. I felt this way last year, as I recall. That's not good. I suggested I could publish a book of quilting patterns and Eric said it would never work because the patterns would be too intimidating, which is at least flattering.

The evil of all roots.

"Part of my tooth just fell out," I told my boss. He cringed; I went on, "I'm going to the dentist at three-thirty to get it checked out." He did not object. I would say "Woo, leaving early on Friday!" only my keen sense of drama tells me that I will shortly be told I need a root canal, principally because this exact thing--except for the boss-horrifying--happened to Eric about two months ago. Happily, we can afford it now (woohoo for a DINK household!) so aside from the hassle it's not a huge deal. I was rather hoping to spend Eric's first paycheck on something more fun, though.

Adventures in infertility: HSG

(Note: TMI.)

I had my HSG this morning. Once I found the right department (radiology) and was routed to an entirely different department (cardiology) to register--hospitals don't seem to believe that they have patients who have never been there before and don't know the procedures--it went smoothly. I was double-bagged in two hospital gowns, one opening in front, the other in back. I sat in the little radiology room while we waited for my gynecologist, and then when everything was set up, me on the table with my knees apart and a tenaculum clinging to my cervix, we waited for the radiologist. "He'll be right there," reported the nurse/technician/my best friend throughout the process.

"They always say that," said the gynecologist. "I always want to go attach a tenaculum to their scrotum. Then we'll wait as long as you like!"

At length the radiologist came and the procedure--consisting entirely of depressing the plunger, adding more dye, and depressing the plunger again--began. The radiologist completely blocked my view while it was ongoing, but once the assembly had been pulled out of me and the camera was put away, they showed me my innards as seen by X-ray. The uterus is fine, the left tube is fine, the right tube is blocked. That seems about right to me; I generally feel more activity on the left down there. "So we know we've got one to work with," the gynecologist concluded. "Next cycle we'll get you on some Clomid and go from there. Your husband had an SA, right?"

"Yes. Everything normal except a slightly low count."

"Then all the more reason to go on the Clomid. We've got to give him more to bat at."

The gynecologist left; my best friend cleaned up and told me she was on Clomid, too, and waited for me to get up. Which I did, four times; the first three I got dizzy and my ears closed, and I laid right back down. Eventually she gave me some juice and a cold compress and the fourth try took.

I was told to take the day off to rest; from what I'd read I figured that was unnecessary but wasn't going to argue. I feel both ways about it now. I'm okay, and I could certainly be sitting at my desk at work, but there's some residual weirdness and weakness (solely from my complete wussiness when it comes to medical procedures--I do the same thing when I give blood and I despise my weakness, but I don't seem to be able to do anything about it) and I'm glad to be able to stay home the rest of the day. So, I shall go bake bread and read and enjoy my sick day.

Three-Day Novel contest, first and last

10,839. I got to a late start, when I turned my computer on at 11:45 last night only to discover the hard drive was toast. Luckily I'd had signs of this and backed up my files on a CD just the night before, so I'm not concerned except for the fifty bucks or so it'll take to replace it (also that I forgot to save my custom dictionaries in Word, but that's not irreplaceable anyway, just convenient). I started this morning on one of Eric's old hard drives, on a computer he'd planned to take to school, and tooled merrily along until I realized that the portion of the story I'd decided to write was (a) coming out total crap and (b) way too short. I finished what I outlined just now, at just over 10K. I could go back and fill in, but I'm feeling discouraged by what I'm feeling are generally poor writing skills. I think I'm going to leave this as is and work on Shoelace tomorrow, but also get in other things, like spending time with Eric when he's not working on school stuff.

Maybe I'll do better another year. I'm terribly out of shape, writing-wise, I think.