gurdymonkey | Reading

Another good speech therapy session for Kate. She showed off her new phrases, and the therapist was very pleased with her progress. We discussed doing an official reassessment in January, since that will be about 6 months from when she was enrolled, and if she's caught up, then she could be taken out of the program. Huzzah!

M had a meeting during the second half of the session, and when he was finished had some annoying news - his one-day trip to Dallas for work has turned into a 2-day trip. So, we had to reschedule the sonogram for the following week, and I'm going to have to finagle a couple more hours of time so I can take the day off, which means coming in early for a couple days to accrue some flex time. ~sigh~ Annoying, but what can you do. Hopefully they don't give him any more travel assignments before I have some PTO saved up again, because after this trip, I'll be completely out.

Dinner was a frozen cheese pizza, which I shared with Kate, who was not satisfied with her own plate of food and just kept coming over to mine and stealing bites from it. So, she just ended up with her own slice.

Bedtime was a struggle because she kept taking off her clothes and crawling under her mattress. -_- She finally went down at around 9:30, at which point I was so exhausted from getting up so early (Kate had woken up at 6AM, which means I was up, too, after having fallen asleep too late) and having many nights recently of not being able to sleep well. I was nearly in tears I was so tired, but she finally got to sleep, I had myself an ice cream sandwich, and once I was sure she was asleep, I crawled into bed myself.

Slept like the dead, hit snooze too many times this morning, slightly behind on everything, but c'est la vie.

M's flight is at 9pm tonight, and he has a friend taking him to the airport. I'm hoping to squeeze in a grocery run this afternoon before he goes so we're stocked up and I don't have to shop while he's away.

Looking very forward to being able to put Kate to bed in her own room for the rest of the week so I can enjoy my own bedroom without tiptoeing through the dark! I'm going to try and get her into a more set routine, not letting her sleep in as late (M lets her sleep in until she wakes up on her own, which is usually around 9:30! The luxury!) so she doesn't stay up as late. She seems to have a pretty set 12-hour schedule - whenever she wakes up in the morning, she'll go to bed at the opposite hour in the evening - so if I can get her up by 7:30 or 8, then she should go to bed at the same evening time. Hopefully we can both stick to that. XP

hrj

There's a delicate balance to putting one's life in a lot of different online spaces. I don't want to simply duplicate content across them all. But periodically I want to indicate what I'm writing about where. So here's a brief guide:

Alpennia.com blog -- This is where the content of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project goes (including podcast transcripts). It's also where I talk about my writing and publishing projects in detail. (Like today's blog about getting back to working on Mistress of Shadows: https://alpennia.com/blog/fish-markets-19th-century-marseille) I haven't been doing that as much in the last couple years, but if you want to know details, that's where to follow me. There's an RSS feed of that blog that has a feed here on Dreamwidth, but it sometimes gets weird when I've set up posts in advance. And also, I don't get notified of comments on the RSS posts, so if you actually want to engage in conversation about the blog, you have to do it at alpennia.com.

Dreamwidth -- This tends to be long-form info about my everyday life, but also thoughts about books and writing that I don't necessarily want to tie directly to my professional site. (For example, I've moved book reviews--such as they are--to Dreamwidth.) The exception is that it's hard to post images in Dreamwidth so if I ever want to do anything will illustrations (like trip reports), those go to alpennia.

Facebook -- The only real profession posts there are links to the alpennia blog. Otherwise, it's for chatting with friends and family and nattering on about everyday stuff. Posts about the garden and wildlife get distributed randomly across fb and bsky. Before I retired, I friends-locked everything that wasn't a blog link, so that I could keep professional separation. Now I don't really lock anything there.

Bluesky -- This is much more for interacting with my bookish/fannish/etc. friends. I'm more likely to be posting about professional topics, though it also gets everyday stuff that I think might amuse/entertain people. I don't do memes much, but I'm more likely to engage in comments/conversations on writing topics. Bluesky is my professional network space.

Mastodon -- I have a mastodon account and cross-post the links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project stuff there, but not really much else. I do engage with comments or stuff I'm tagged in, but don't read the feed.

Discord -- I have a Discord "fan club" (it's labelled Alpennia, but is for all my writing) which is open to anyone who asks. It's relatively low-volume. The Discord gets some sneak peaks at projects and advance information that I'm not ready to post publicly. We occasionally get lively discussions, especially on gender/sexuality topics. Members of the Discord are also free/encouraged to post about their own writing, etc. (I'm also a member of a number of other Discords, though there are relatively few where I read most of the posts.)

Newsletter -- I have an email newsletter that I keep trying to get back on schedule with. Currently, it's primarily news about my publications and convention appearances. Sometimes I include "bonus content" about my books, but that was becoming daunting to keep up with.

The big thing I'm always hoping to find is interaction. Conversation. Sharing of ideas and feedback. My biggest disappointment about the alpennia.com blog is how very little direct interaction I get from it. (Hampered by the need to manually approve comments, due to comment-spam.) I wish I could figure out how to be more interesting.

m_of_disguise

Marriage license has been acquired! It was a very quick and easy in-and-out at the Clerk's office, now we just need to wait until next week (technically 72 hours, but by that time M will be in Chicago) for an officiant to sign the bottom and we'll be officially hitched. I spoke to the county Chaplain, and he's more than happy to be our officiant, now it's just a matter of finding some time next week to do it.

Since we only have the one car right now, I had to pick up M at lunch, then he had to drive home, work some, and then pick me back up after work. He always complains that I take too long to get home in the afternoons, but after picking me up today and seeing just how stupid the drivers are downtown and how bad traffic is, he has said he now gets it. XP

Dinner for the adults was cheap burgers from McDonald's, Katie had some potstickers. We played together a bit, and she picked up the word "blue". She's added a few phrases to her vocabulary, namely "I don't know", "I did it", and "I'M NAKED!" which she now proudly declares whenever she takes off her clothes.

Speech therapy today during my lunch break, then the rest of the day should be quiet. M has taken tomorrow off even though his flight isn't until the late evening, so I might get a reprieve from running back and forth to the house, which would be nice because damn my hips hurt all the time now. He has a friend taking him to the airport since it's so late that Kate would definitely need to be in bed.

Looking forward to the long weekend. Have the vague idea of working on some sewing project during that time, but we'll see how things shake out. If nothing else, I'd like to prep a coif that I can embroider during my hospital stay. It was very dull just lying in bed last time and not being able to do anything.

m_of_disguise

Friday's plans went a bit sideways, in that the marriage license did not happen. I started having a pain in my right side and my feet were a bit swollen, both of which can be signs of preeclampsia, so when I went home for lunch to pick up M, he instead told me that we should go get me checked out. Turned out my blood pressure and all my other numbers were just fine, so crisis averted. Just pregnancy stuff, I guess.

Saturday was Katie's 2nd birthday! We drove out to Weatherford and hit up a pumpkin patch/petting zoo, where she had a great time. There was a big slide that she enjoyed a lot, and she got to see chickens and bunnies and goats for the first time. We had lunch in town afterward, and then headed home because it was HOT and we were all tired.

Sunday was a low-key day for all of us. Katie was pretty subdued, just happy to watch her shows and snack on fruit all day. I think Saturday wore her out a bit, because she was content to just lounge in her chair or cuddle with me on the couch. Which was good, because I was completely wiped out, and so was M. Guess we all got a little too warm at the farm.

Plans for this week are to attempt to get our marriage license today over lunch. Tomorrow is Katie's speech therapy session, then M flies out to Chicago on Wednesday. My sister wants to have lunch on Friday, then the rest of the weekend is quiet until I have to go pick up M on Sunday night.

51 spiders today!

hrj

Oh, I could post about all sorts of things. Like Wednesday's adventures with the refrigerator/water-leak/street-full-of-police-and-ambulances. But I thought I'd talk about my experiments with productivity.

So at the start of retirement, I was thinking about how I tend to hyperfocus on things and was worried about making progress on ALL my projects and activities. So I set up this spreadsheet with a dozen categories of activities and checked off how many I "touched" each day.

It was a bit fun, in a gamification way. Problem is, gamification doesn't really work for me as an incentive. It just became a chore to remember to record. And I didn't feel like I was necessarily pushing all the projects forward. Touching is not pushing.

So now I'm trying to leverage my tendency toward hyperfocus. I'm giving myself one project to really drill down on for a week. Then I move on to another project. So last week was getting two months of podcasts lined up. This week was making significant process on the write-up for my analysis of the Best Related Work Hugo category. Next week I think needs to be household projects. But the week after should be fiction.

Of course, that's not *all* I'm doing. I'm still biking or going to the gym every day. I'm posting pre-written history blog posts. And I'm dealing with immediate crises. (See comment about refrigerator/water-leak/street-full-of-police-and-ambulances.) And I've been feeling a bit in a rut, so I've integrated a few non-routine things like going into Berkeley for book shopping.

I picked up a facsimile of an 1828 guide to Paris, which may be useful for Mistress of Shadows, which takes place in 1826. Of course, the book is in French...but the other thing I was shopping for was materials for starting to work on my reading French. Did you know that Berkeley has a specialty French language bookstore? Did you know they don't really have anything aimed at someone who wants to learn to read the language but doesn't care about speaking it? Ah well, I have some reference works and it's not like I have any lack of texts I'd be interested in reading.

m_of_disguise

The kitchen at work has partially implemented a new menu, and yesterday's lunch was Frito pie. It's hard to mess up a pack of Fritos and canned chili, so it was a pretty good, nostalgic lunch. But apparently it's not something people eat anymore? I overheard a coworker in the dining room educating a bunch of Gen Zers about how to construct a Frito pie, apparently they were just eating the chili on its own and had no clue that it all went together.

It was a mostly quiet day, with a frustrating drive home because the traffic lights were out and everyone suddenly forgets how to drive when that happens. -_-

Kate took a late nap again last night, from 6-7:30, and woke up again in a sad mood. We had many couch cuddles and I turned on her favorite songs, and she was soon better. She went back to bed around 9pm, then M got us a cheap McDonald's dinner and we finished the rest of The Shining before turning in for bed.

Today has already started out busy, and the rest of the day is poised to follow suit. Kate was up at 6:30 because the kitten managed to somehow open the bedroom door and was chasing a hair tie across the room. We brushed our teeth, she ate breakfast, watched a little bit of Ms. Rachel, and then it was back to bed before I had to leave for work. M has a very important, though blessedly short, meeting at 11, and once that is over he's going to drive with me back to work, we're going to do the whole marriage license thing, and then he'll head back home and me back to work. Since he'll have the car, he'll have to pick me up in the afternoon, too.

The next two weeks are going to be stuffed full of appointments and travel. Next week Katie has a speech therapy appointment, then it's M's Chicago trip, then the week after he has his Dallas trip on the same day as another speech therapy appointment (so it'll just be me and Kate that day), an OB appointment/sonogram on Thursday, and Katie's 2-year checkup on Friday. Yeesh!

Tomorrow is Katie's 2nd birthday! We've managed to keep her alive for 2 years, so good job, us. We're planning to take her to a pumpkin patch or petting zoo, then out for dinner at La Madeleine where they have the cheesy pasta she likes. Should be a good day.

47 spiders today!

m_of_disguise

Got a call from M just as I was walking to the car for lunch. He had a major set of meetings and we needed to coordinate our scheduling. We decided that I would skip my normal lunch time and leave work early instead so I could be there to watch Kate during his 3:30 meeting.

Got home at 3pm, which gave M enough time to change clothes and make himself presentable for the meeting. He was quite displeased about being pulled into so many meetings so soon - it's only his second week on the job and he's already meeting with clients and being assigned work travel, which he was initially told wouldn't happen for a few months.

Meeting went well, but long, and he didn't leave the office until 5, so it was me trying to keep Kate entertained and yet also quiet for that time. We had a good time together, mostly sitting in the master bedroom and playing games since it was very, very warm in the living room.

Katie hadn't napped all day, which was surprising since it would have freed up some of M's afternoon for the other meetings he had to attend. By 6 she was very silly and overstimulated, so I made her lie down, and while she protested at first, she also immediately passed out once she laid down in the dark. After she was down, M and I tried to have a discussion about what we're doing about the childcare situation since his work has ramped up so much, so quickly, which did not go well, and after nearly two hours of discussion, we ended up right back where we started, with the answer of "well, we'll see." -_-

Kate woke up from what we suspect was a bad dream around the time we'd finished our discussion/argument, so we had many cuddles on the couch and pets with kitties. She asked for TV, so I put on some of her favorite songs, she had a cheese snack, and then she pulled off all her clothes and crawled into the bathtub, so I gave her a bath since that's clearly what she wanted. The kitten sat on the counter the entire time and watched with wide eyes as Kate splashed around, very much a "you got into water voluntarily?!" sort of look on her face the whole time.

She was sleepy enough around 9pm that I could get her back down for the rest of the night, and she went to sleep right away. M had gone out and gotten us some sandwiches for dinner, so we ate on the couch and watched half of The Shining. We had to stop when M remembered that he still hadn't booked his flight for his trip next week, so he finally got that taken care of. He's heading to Chicago for a friend's wedding. It's been planned for over a year, so long before the goddamned military was deployed there, but damn, I am not thrilled about him being up there right now. At least it's only four days.

The week after he gets back, he has his first work trip. It's thankfully just a day trip to Dallas, so I'll only have to take one day off work to cover it. He was not thrilled about being assigned an in-person client meeting so quickly, but apparently his team serves at the whim of the Product team, and they get to pick and choose who they send where when something needs doing. Since M is the closest person to Dallas, he got picked. Thankfully, he is not going solo, it will be a team of about 4 people, and he was told he'll mostly be going to take notes and gain experience.

This week has felt very long, and I'm ready for the weekend. Wish today was Friday.

m_of_disguise

Kate's speech therapy session yesterday went very well. She was chatty and happy, and showed off her new vocabulary, and greatly impressed the therapist with her progress. At age 2 they're supposed to have 50+ words, and Kate is currently at around 30-35, so we're closing that gap.

Kate was in A MOOD when I got home from work, though, just generally fussy and upset. M left to go take a nap because "she'd been running him ragged." I made her dinner, and her mood improved greatly. I, too, become fussy and grumpy when I'm hangry.

The rest of the evening went smoothly, except for a massive allergy attack just before bed. I showered, and that helped enough that I could get to sleep without my face melting off.

Things got off to a rough start this morning. Kate was up just after my alarm went off. M had zero patience, and stomped around like an elephant while he tried to get her back to sleep, which just upset her more. I shooed him away and took over, and did all the things that usually work - some cuddles, check on all the kitties, then a gentle song, and bam, back to sleep in under 20.

M was grumpy after that and kept complaining that he had 5 hours of meetings today and just needed another 30 minutes of sleep. Maybe don't come to bed at 3AM? Just a suggestion.

Got halfway to work before I realized that I'd forgotten my badge. Doh.

Hopefully the rest of the day is a bit less rocky.

m_of_disguise

A blessedly normal day yesterday, no craziness or tantrums or meltdowns from anyone.

Had to swing by Sam's on my lunch break to pick up our grocery order that we missed on Sunday. It wasn't huge, so we were able to unload and file everything fairly quickly once I was home. Kate had slept late, so I didn't bother trying to get her down for a nap. She cried a bit when I tried to leave for work because she thought we were going out for a walk, which is her favorite thing right now.

Work was unremarkable. The weather is WARM, getting up to 95 yesterday. Yuck.

Once I was home and the temperature had cooled down a bit, I finally took Kate on her much anticipated walk. We walked through the center of the complex this time instead of the perimeter, and it really brought to light how empty our complex has become. The new owners (yes, we were sold again) are hammering down with the evictions, and for the past two weeks it's been a parade of furniture on lawns and uhaul trucks. As we took our walk, you could hear the beeps of battery depleted smoke detectors in the vacant units, which coupled with how completely deserted the place was - no kids playing after school, no one coming home from work, no one out grilling, or smoking on their porch - was somewhat eerie. Lots of newly boarded up windows.

M suggested that we keep the porch light on at night now, since our local homeless population might try to get into the vacant units and he didn't want anyone thinking that our place was empty. A happy thought indeed.

I was craving cheap enchiladas, so M headed out to pick up some Taco Cabana for dinner. Kate had no clue how to eat her taco, so I had to tear it up for her. We had to lock the kitten in the office during dinner because she is a food snuffler and she WILL get in your face and steal your food as you're trying to eat it.

Bedtime was uneventful, except that when we went to move the sleeping girl from her pack-n-play to her actual crib, we discovered she was completely naked. She'd stealthily undressed and then cocooned herself in her blankets, sneaky creature.

After Kate was down, M and I spent a nice quiet evening on the couch, chatting and eating tacos, and it was very enjoyable. Went to bed a little bit too late, but oh well.

Spider count is up to 42 today! Truly a population explosion. Two of those spiders were purple, but I'm counting them because they were identical to the others in every other way. XD

m_of_disguise

Friday morning, got a text from the apartment complex that they were about to start repainting the lines in the parking lots, and we needed to move our cars or we'd be towed away. So, M moved the Toyota, and when I went home for lunch, I had to park on the street, on the other side of the planet from our unit because of course. Took me three years to walk to the house from the car.

Kate's speech therapist ended up calling us and saying she was sick, so we rescheduled for next week. It was a bit of a welcomed break, because THIS WEEK Y'ALL.

M said that after driving the Toyota, he sees what I was talking about with the steering locking up. He told me to keep driving the Jeep, and he's going to check a few things, but if this is too big of a problem then this is it for the Toyota. I am okay with getting rid of it, it's become more of a pain than it's worth, seems there's a new problem every week with that car.

Been researching what all M and I need to get officially married (we've been "informally married" according to the State for 11 years now) so I can get on M's new insurance. Yeesh, what a hassle. Waiting periods and couples counseling (to avoid fees, thankfully it's not a requirement) and other nonsense. I'm ordained through the Universal Life Church, can I just do my own ceremony and be done with it? Guess not.

The rest of the weekend was basically low-key. We didn't manage to get the kitten to the vet for her vaccinations in time since M overslept, but it's not pressing so we'll try again later. I attempted to get chores done on Saturday, but while I felt energetic and motivated, my body was not cooperating at all, so nothing actually got done. -_- Had a little emotional breakdown over my inability to do literally anything right now, so that was fun.

Tried a newly opened Cajun place in town, which we'd been excited about because they claimed to have Natchitoches style meat pies (sort of a Cajun cousin to the empanada), which we both love. Unfortunately, we found the food a bit underwhelming and bland. There were good elements - the pie crust was very good (even though the filling was super bland), the po-boy was good (except it cost nearly $20!), etc. Expensive and underwhelming means it's not a repeat.

Sunday was even quieter than Saturday. Baby and I both slept in until 9:30, the morning was pretty quiet, then she napped for 3 entire hours, which was fantastic because I was exhausted from staying up far too late falling into a TikTok hole. Decided to make a strudel for our Sunday treat, which was delicious and cleared up a little space in the freezer. M took Kate out for her walk after she was up from her nap, then we all ate strudel, M went back to playing games and missed the pickup window for our grocery order, oops. The evening was pleasant, Kate was very happy and silly, the kitten was snuggly, and all was well. Took a bit of effort to get Katie to go to bed since she was so happy playing and she kept taking off her clothes in protest whenever I tried to put her to bed.

Made a late-night run to McDonald's for some cheap dinner, and M was asleep by the time I got home, so I had a bit of alone time, which was very welcome. Went to bed a bit too late again, but am feeling pretty alright this morning.

No big plans for the week, so hopefully that means we get a break from how hectic things were last week.

Inflatable spider population exploded over the weekend, and we are up to 34 spiders!

m_of_disguise

So, so glad it's Friday and this infernal week is nearly finished.

Left work yesterday at noon and headed home. Fed Kate lunch and got her down for her nap before I had to leave for my OB appointment. I was the only one there, so they got me in right away, and the appointment went smoothly and quickly. We talked about scheduling my C-section, which we will do at my next app since I'm going to be switching to M's new insurance, so that will all need to be taken care of beforehand. I'm at the point in the pregnancy where I'll be going every two weeks now instead of every month, and the next app is a finally a sonogram instead of just a tape measure on the belly and a quick listen to the heartbeat.

After the appointment, I headed home, and since I was done so early I had a bit of time before the kitten's appointment. Excavated the cat carrier from the back of the closet, and good lord is the closet in a state. I'm going to have to address that because yeesh. Scooped up kitten, headed to vet, only to be told I was a half-hour early, and even though no one else was there, the doctor couldn't see me until appointment time. -_- Annoying, but whatever.

Still nameless kitten was given a clean bill of health and license to be unleased into the household population. She still needs her vaccinations, which we will hopefully do on Saturday since that's their walk-in day. Came home and let the kitten loose into the living room, where many sniffs and explores were done.

Took Kate out for a little walk around the apartment complex, then came back and sauteed a up some more chicken to add to the stew, since M requested more meat. Kate's 5AM wakeup and only 1hr nap caught up to her, and she went to bed without fussing or fighting, hooray! I took a shower, ate some ice cream, and then crawled into bed myself.

Of course, Kate was up at 5AM again today, very concerned about the kitty, so we did a round of the living room so she could see they were all okay. She wanted to brush her teeth, so we did. The kitten was completely rambunctious, bouncing off the walls, the furniture, the other cats, all to the great delight of Katie, who just sat on the couch giggling and saying "so silly!" After a few false starts, I managed to get her back into bed, and she finally was down about an hour later. I managed maybe half an hour of more sleep before my alarm went off. Feeling very spacy and exhausted today.

I've fallen catastrophically behind on Dracula Daily. I got hung up on a particularly Van Helsing heavy chapter, the dude just annoys me to no end. And every character in the book loves him, it almost makes me think he's an author insert.

Inflatable Green Spiders are once again popping up in the fancy neighborhood for the Halloween season! There were 11 of them yesterday, and 16 of them today. I enjoyed the daily spider count last year, and I'm looking forward to seeing how many there are this year. :D

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gurdymonkey

Wodeford Hall

March 2024

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Contemplations of a Closet Curmudgeon

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