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Today: Last of the present assemblage (hopefully); mailed stuff (late, but better than never); Cal saw Rod for therapy and proved (amazement of amazements) that he can actually read…Rod wrote a series of single words on cue cards, showed them to him cold, and God damn if he didn’t get them 99% right on first sight (with the one percent mainly due to distraction). Rod thinks more and more that it’s literally easier for Cal to interpret words through reading them than it is for him to process them aurally; I’ve often thought myself that Cal treats words and phrases the same way he treats songs, parroting them more for/according to sound rather than using them for sense. So—can I eventually look forward to a future where we use reading (and writing) to communicate directly with Cal, instead of the hit-or-miss contortions we currently go through? Exciting. Scary.;)
OTOH, it ain’t all breakthroughs and giggles: He also got pissed off at me for telling him “no” one time too many early in the afternoon and threw shoes at me, hard enough to bruise—so when he wouldn’t stop after I told him not to, I just threw them right back at him. When the second one hit his chest, he got a look on his face like: Hmm, that DOES hurt—okay, enough of that, and wandered off. I spent a moment worrying whether this was too much like my Dad deciding to “cure” me of biting him by biting me with his grown man-sized teeth—I think I was five—but you know what? Very different intent/execution, I’d say. (And then he took two solid hours to fall asleep, shrieking “Frosty the Snowman” throughout…but that’s a whole ‘nother story. One far too familiar, sadly, to be worth recounting here.;))
Meanwhile, I’ve been taking stock of 2008—a surprisingly “good” year overall, though sections of it really did suck fucking hard—and trying to figure out what my resolutions for 2009 should be. Luckily, I’m entering the year with some deadlines already established, but I’d still like to do the impossible and make this the year I crack that long-form narrative ceiling at last…again, it certainly seems that every story I write is either getting physically longer (how well I remember when 15,000 words was my prose cut-off point; now I’m finally entering the phase where I trust both that I can write 25,000 or 30,000 words at a pop, and know that doing that four times in quick succession is a damn novel) or spawning a raft of sequels. I guess the key to that paricular new development is the undeniable fact that I just don’t seem to be killing off my main characters the way that I used to—odd, I know. It’s almost like I’m not even writing horror anymore.;)
One way or the other, I’d really like to keep this brave new bag of tricks of mine reasonably intact: Treat writing as my “job”, hammer out 750 to 1000 words minimum on something per day, do it in and around everything else rather than sacrificing it for everything else (Cal included). If his name suddenly shoots up to the top of that fabled Surrey Place list, then excellent; I’ll have all the more “free” time to play with, as long as I always make sure he gets to school in the mornings. But if not, too bad—I still want to keep on going. I need to.
OTOH, I know I also need to start making far more time for myself in a physical way than I have been—shower, dress, eat regular meals, work out whether or not I feel I can/deserve to. I’m already taking what seems like a shit-load of supplements, and going (mainly) wheat-free was a smart move, but I’m still spending upwards of fifty bucks a week on over-the-counter drugs on top of the stuff I’m supposed to be taking for my degenerated disk, and I’ve frankly never managed to schedule that follow-up x-ray (or the PT which was supposed to result from it, either)…because it’s about me, so it doesn’t really matter, right? Not that that stops Mom from ragging me out every five minutes for not having done it yet, of course…
Ugh, tired. I think I’ve reached my saturation point for tonight. Tomorrow: The To Do List, part forever.
OTOH, it ain’t all breakthroughs and giggles: He also got pissed off at me for telling him “no” one time too many early in the afternoon and threw shoes at me, hard enough to bruise—so when he wouldn’t stop after I told him not to, I just threw them right back at him. When the second one hit his chest, he got a look on his face like: Hmm, that DOES hurt—okay, enough of that, and wandered off. I spent a moment worrying whether this was too much like my Dad deciding to “cure” me of biting him by biting me with his grown man-sized teeth—I think I was five—but you know what? Very different intent/execution, I’d say. (And then he took two solid hours to fall asleep, shrieking “Frosty the Snowman” throughout…but that’s a whole ‘nother story. One far too familiar, sadly, to be worth recounting here.;))
Meanwhile, I’ve been taking stock of 2008—a surprisingly “good” year overall, though sections of it really did suck fucking hard—and trying to figure out what my resolutions for 2009 should be. Luckily, I’m entering the year with some deadlines already established, but I’d still like to do the impossible and make this the year I crack that long-form narrative ceiling at last…again, it certainly seems that every story I write is either getting physically longer (how well I remember when 15,000 words was my prose cut-off point; now I’m finally entering the phase where I trust both that I can write 25,000 or 30,000 words at a pop, and know that doing that four times in quick succession is a damn novel) or spawning a raft of sequels. I guess the key to that paricular new development is the undeniable fact that I just don’t seem to be killing off my main characters the way that I used to—odd, I know. It’s almost like I’m not even writing horror anymore.;)
One way or the other, I’d really like to keep this brave new bag of tricks of mine reasonably intact: Treat writing as my “job”, hammer out 750 to 1000 words minimum on something per day, do it in and around everything else rather than sacrificing it for everything else (Cal included). If his name suddenly shoots up to the top of that fabled Surrey Place list, then excellent; I’ll have all the more “free” time to play with, as long as I always make sure he gets to school in the mornings. But if not, too bad—I still want to keep on going. I need to.
OTOH, I know I also need to start making far more time for myself in a physical way than I have been—shower, dress, eat regular meals, work out whether or not I feel I can/deserve to. I’m already taking what seems like a shit-load of supplements, and going (mainly) wheat-free was a smart move, but I’m still spending upwards of fifty bucks a week on over-the-counter drugs on top of the stuff I’m supposed to be taking for my degenerated disk, and I’ve frankly never managed to schedule that follow-up x-ray (or the PT which was supposed to result from it, either)…because it’s about me, so it doesn’t really matter, right? Not that that stops Mom from ragging me out every five minutes for not having done it yet, of course…
Ugh, tired. I think I’ve reached my saturation point for tonight. Tomorrow: The To Do List, part forever.
