thewhitelily | Entries tagged with real life

Well, it’s been a year, all right. We made it! Congratulations to everyone!!!

My family and I are still doing well—healthy, happy, and so grateful for Australia’s active response to minor outbreaks, which has generally kept our lockdowns regional, short, and manageable and the cases near us occasional and isolated.

For the last couple of years, since I moved on from writing so much, I’ve been putting my energy into gardening and self-sufficiency. While this year has certainly been a good one for that for most people, it’s actually made it more difficult for me to make progress on that front. In the end, I’ve managed somewhat despite Covid and the associated wipeout home learning with my quirky kids imposed on me for any kind of additional activity at the end of the school day.

Pre-Covid I had put in a chicken coop and set them up to process compost on our very steep block. They have four levels to roam over, including their henhouse at the top, the coop floor level with our back patio and deck where I dump scraps, leaves, and garden debris, and then I’ve enclosed the area under the deck as their run, with a long switchback path to one side and then back to underneath the coop at the bottom of the hill. The chickens scratch through the scraps looking for interesting stuff, then scratch through looking for sprouted seeds or grubs, worms, and insect life that come to chow down on what they didn’t eat in the first round, and continue to scratch it all the way down the switch back path to the door underneath the coop—where I can take out essentially finished compost that they’ve turned for me and de-seeded and manured for my garden. They get food and entertainment, I get fresh, organic, happy eggs and rich compost, and the kids get pets and fun projects like...

We’ve set up an egg money jar for the boys to run as a business: they roam the streets and hawk excess eggs to relatives and neighbors for $5 per dozen; I take feed money out of the jar when I need to buy a new bag, and they divide any money left in the jar after that between them. And we’ve got a hen who likes to go broody, so she's helped us two separate batches of chicks. We’ve got fancy chickens so we should be able to sell any young ladies we hatch and raise for around $50-75 each. With only the sale of excess eggs (and with me taking eggs for our family needs as my cut for having absorbed the setup costs) the jar doesn’t usually tend to produce a profit—but we have five young hens in the coop approaching suitable age right now, only two of whom we want to keep. So we’ll see how the theory translates to practice soon! Once we've raised a couple to point of lay age and have photos of how the particular pairings in our coop turn out, we should be able to sell them younger, as well. It's been a fun project in genetics, tracing the origin of various traits and predicting the outcomes! Sadly, our first hatch (using purchased eggs) gave us only two chicks, both roosters. One young gentlemen we fitted with a no-crow collar and kept to father future generations, the other one we sold to a friendly farm where he would find some lady friends all of his own. Our second hatch (with our own eggs) was much more successful; some young gentlemen whom we could identify as such straight away became food for my niece’s snake, and the other two young gentlemen whom we had had to raise to find out, I processed a couple of days ago to become tonight’s dinner. Circle of life—I don’t tend to eat much meat, but I firmly believe that if we are eating meat, we should be willing to look it in the eye first. The process was less awful than I was expecting and the boys were saddened but not truly upset. Having done it once now, I don’t feel a need to deliberately raise birds for slaughter, but I feel that the responsibility of respecting a cockerel’s life by processing them for the table was a reasonable price to pay for the joy that hatching chicks has given us and the opportunity to make the boys' egg jar business an experience that turns a profit.

My garden has been getting more lush and fertile as I put more effort into building the soil, and although I had the setback of mostly missing chance for a winter garden (which is the productive time of year in our climate) due to the emotional energy sink that was home learning, I still got a surprising amount of food out of it. Our mango tree gave us 50kg of orange gold in January, which was pretty epic, although sadly, it’s looking like this year’s harvest going to be comparatively lean. Oh well. We got two bunches of bananas, which were incredibly sweet and delicious, and a peach which was okay, but dropped before it was fully ripe and I’m lucky I got to eat at all. I’ve had a handful of strawberries and raspberries and loganberries, I’ve got some blackberries almost ripe, although I haven’t managed to follow a panama berry all the way to ripe without it being snaffled by some opportunistic critter—I might need to net my tree so I can discover whether panama berries are indeed as delicious as I’ve been told and the local wildlife seems to agree. My lemon tree has finally decided to bear fruit, and what a crop it’s giving me! The first couple of lemons are nearly ripe, and it looks like I’m going to get about thirty lemons of a tree barely a metre and a half round. Can never have too many lemons! I’ve had cut flowers from the garden on my bench for pretty much the last six months, which has been a real source of joy and pride to me. I managed to crack growing snake beans and brazillian spinach which have been providing all our greens over the past couple of months, and we got a few whopper tomatoes and a couple of half-decent crops of potatoes despite mainly missing the season for them. Sweet potatoes and yam have done well, too—I’ve planted more of both of those to mature over our hot, wet summer. Sweet corn hasn’t been as successful—I’m pretty sure I haven’t been feeding them enough, but the main problem is timing—I find it incredibly difficult to both spot the exact moment to pick the mature cobs and even when I do, they tend to go without being picked at all because I know that for maximum taste, they should be picked moments before consumption, so I leave them out in the garden and don’t think of them when I’m staring into my veggie drawer looking for dinner. I’m having another go over the summer season: fingers crossed I can find a system that works for me.

I’ve also succeeded a whole lot in greening our environment and inviting in more of the local wildlife—we now have a decent population of dwarf tree frogs living and raising young in the ponds where I also grow duckweed to supplement the chicken’s diet. They hang out and croak and eat bugs and generally are just adorable—the adults are the size of a thumbnail, the baby frogs after metamorphosis are a little smaller than my pinkie. Sadly the tadpoles are excellent at hiding, so we haven’t yet managed to get a good look at the development of legs etc—I’m considering getting a small fish tank to catch some tadpoles and monitor the process a bit more closely. I got a native stingless bee hive for my birthday in 2019, and in 2020 I managed to divide it into two hives and also (which was a surprise, but meant my bees were incredibly happy) collect some of the most amazing, complex honey that I’ve ever tasted. Native “sugarbag” honey is kind of sweet-and-sour, with a slightly eucalyptus, maybe, note? In any case, yum. The general population of caterpillars and grasshoppers that prey on my plants are pretty much kept under control by the frogs, the blue-tongue lizard who lives in our yard, various predatory insects who are regular visitors to the buffet—and when all else fails, picked off and hand-fed to the voraciously grateful chickens. Keeping the chickens have actually turned out to be an amazing motivation in keeping up with weed and pest control—it’s much more fun weeding, hand-picking caterpillars, or brushing down spiderwebs when you know the product is going to be so appreciated and clucked over.

I’ve been trying to approach zero waste by utilising more and more of my waste for other purposes before they even make it to the compost—I’ve been making broth from vegetable peelings and bones, I’ve been making vinegar from fruit scraps and apple cores, and all our organic waste (including the remains of broth and vinegar) goes either through the chickens or the in-ground soldier fly farms I have scattered through my garden. I’ve been focussing hard in 2020 on reducing my single-use-plastic load by doing things like making my own bread and pasta, home-baking all our museli bars and cookies and crackers for kids lunches and snacks, shopping at the bulk food store, etc. I’ve been wondering lately, however, if my dedication to the project is more trouble than its worth. I assiduously recycle the vast majority of our single use plastic in any case, at through kerbside collection and dropping it to various collection points, and most of the stuff that doesn’t recycle isn’t something that I can make instead anyway. So while it’s obviously better to avoid the single use plastic, I wonder if it would be a better use of my time and energy to do less of the more arduous of those workarounds, and invest that time and energy in other things that might comparatively make a bigger impact on the planet.

Then again, as an additional impact of making stuff myself, our diet has become a little slower. We’ve never had problems with food allergies or similar in our family, however, I’m a great believer in the impact of gut bacteria on physical and mental health, and certainly plenty of people seem to notice an affect of food additives on the behavioural aspects of ADHD, OCD and autism. Improving our gut flora is a way to improve our lives… and gut flora starts with diet. We’ve been eating a lot less additives, preservatives and pesticides, and a lot more fresh vegetables and whole grains, the vast majority of which are either soured or sprouted. Has the change in diet had an impact on our mental health? Who knows.

Speaking of which, my mental health is still travelling well, and surprisingly much so also with my autistic eldest who has been doing extremely well particularly in the last month. We had 10 days holiday on the coast at the beginning of December, and he went the entire time without one single meltdown, which is just… a gamechanger. It was the best, most relaxed holiday with children that I’ve ever had. Our youngest has received the expected diagnosis of ADHD, but has unfortunately reacted badly to the first two medications he trialled towards the end of the last term. We are looking forward to following up with his paediatrician about in the hopes we can help make his life little easier for him to manage. Hubby has successfully completed two years as a master of alcohol, rather than feeling he was its slave—he now comfortably has a couple of drinks socially when appropriate, but doesn’t feel the need to drink regularly nor to excess. We would have been happy to teetotal as a family if it had been necessary—but we’re very pleased to have found a healthy balance.

For 2021, my resolution is to put more effort into following improvement projects all the way to conclusion, rather than leaving things half done around the place, or finished but without having put the debris away. I’ve increasingly been observing “Free-up Friday”, with the idea that it’s a day to finish and clear up and clean down and enter the weekend (including Slacker Saturday) with a reduced mental load of half-finished things or mess. I need to be more consistent about that—but also make it a habit to actually finish and tidy up a project all in one consecutive bout to keep that mental load down all the time. When a project breaks because I strike a problem that I need to think on how to solve, I need to tidy it away in the meantime while I think or gather extra materials. I really notice what a huge difference it makes to my and Hubby’s mental health when I do, so let’s try to do it more!

Wishing everyone a safe, peaceful and productive 2021!

Just letting online friends know that I’m safe and well away from danger zones. My area was mildly menaced earlier, but we are into the wet season now so fires are unlikely to take hold again the way they’re doing down south.

These bushfires are crazy, unprecedented things, and all the more horrifying for the fact that two of my Facebook acquaintances (whom I retain in my feed primarily to avoid the echo chamber effect) are utterly convinced that it’s all the fault of the greens policies to prevent hazard reduction burns and posting continual angry rants about how climate change is a hoax and “sheeple” who’ve been taken in by it are causing the fires. Which. What. No.

One of my school friends is facing the decision as to whether to stay and defend her property when the fire which has been threatening all week, and which has now broken containment lines, reaches it mid tomorrow, or to evacuate. (Please, please, just go.)

I’ve been having a bit of a meltdown over the past few days about the whole disaster. The horrifying reality that our politicians still don’t intend to take any climate action, and the fact that in a couple of weeks we’re scheduled to spend a long weekend away at the house of one of the aforementioned climate change skeptics and I don’t think I can cope if conversation turns to the fires or “however much he’s a dick, you can’t deny what Trump’s done for their country!” OMG

In general though, in my home life, things have been good. Calm. Productive without being frenetic. My medication still makes a huge difference for me. I feel like I’m making progress with the kids: youngest about to start school, a new diagnosis of autism for the eldest, considering pursuing a similar diagnosis with my psychiatrist for myself. And I have been taking out my climate angst in making our sububan block as damn near self sufficient & zero waste as possible. Still a way to go: we produce about half our energy with solar, my 32 varieties of fruit trees are still too young to produce much, we’re at maybe one rubbish bag per week, and I’m still working hard on building the soil in our annual veggie patch, and Hubby remains dubious about the utility of chickens, but I’m getting there, and the boys are loving all the food we’re harvesting so far out of the garden.

All I can really do is work on changing the things I can control, and chipping away at things I can influence. The rest, all I can do is hope that once the fire passes over and the smoke clears, more people will be able to see clearly.

Update: my friend has been given a compulsory evacuation order: two major fires are expected to merge over her property and the firefighters will make no attempt to defend. She and her family are out with the possessions and animals they could stuff into two vehicles, but have had to leave their property, livelihood, and the vast majority of their beloved animals to perish. :’( At least they are safe.

Further update: As it turned out, the fire turned back just before it reached my friends' property--so their animals and buildings were unharmed, although I believe some of their fields were burned. Also, the social visit I was worrying about didn't end up happening, as it turned out they'd ended up double-booked and we bowed out. Plenty to be grateful for.

Look, it's me! *resurrects momentarily*

Life has been... pretty darn good recently.

So the first medication I tried had intolerable side-effects, the second one had nasty side effects for a while, which became manageable after a few weeks and have since essentially cleared up. I am on a moderate dose of Zoloft (sertraline) and apparently (in combination with zinc supplementation, long story) it fucking works.

O. M. F. G. I feel... clear, for the first time in a very very long time, like my brain is working with me rather than against me.

I have, among my memories, two shining moments of peace and calm. One is when I was a small girl, perhaps three, maybe even five, playing in the shade in our backyard with a large piece of fabric draped over my arms, spinning around being a butterfly--and for a moment the breeze caught the fabric just right. And one when I was perhaps twenty-five, on a summer night when everything was going right and the water in our pool had reached 28 degrees, breathing out and sinking down through the water to lie on the bottom of the pool and stare up through the wavering reflections at the stars. (This second, by the way, is the inspiration for my journal theme.) These have been, throughout my life, the only two times I have felt like that. Oh, I've been happy, I've been excited, I've been exuberant, I've been proud, I've been overwhelmed by love and joy and wonder. But that state of... calm contentment... only twice, ever, and only momentary even then.

And now... well, I won't say every moment feels like that all the time, because that would be frightening. I've got stuff to do with my life, and a whole range of emotions to feel. But that state feels... attainable. It's something I'm reaching regularly. It's there every night when I'm sitting next to one of my children reading a story, feeling my arm around them, and it is perfect. No fidgeting or frantically spinning stories in my head to keep myself still, or time-checking or trying to scrub bad thoughts out of my brain or twitching towards my phone for something to drown it all out. Just... being there.

This, then, is why my psychologist said to me, in resignation, when I had explained the horrible things that meditation was doing to me: you have no idea what calm feels like, do you? Because no. No, outside those two fleeting moments in my memory, I didn't. Now, it's just there.

Going to sleep! Oh my GOD! I get tired and I can just... put down what I'm doing--I can always keep going tomorrow after all--lie down, and... feel warm and comfortable in my bed. And after a few minutes, fall asleep. What the FUCK!?! Is this what sleep is supposed to be like?! This is literally the first time in my life that it's not been actively traumatic, the very worst part of the day. I'm averaging like an hour more sleep a night than I was.

I'm not losing my temper all the time anymore, either. I was at a positive education seminar the other night, and it occurred to me that I actually couldn't remember the last time I'd yelled at my kids. Which is interesting for two reasons: both that it's obviously far less frequent, but also that it's not waiting there as a panic-inducing failure that needs to be erased by ritual self-flagellation. I'm not so rigid on making sure everyone follows exactly the way I want things to be done. I'm not holding onto my sanity by the bare edges of my fingernails, constantly waiting for the latest straw that breaks my back. Sometimes we're late, or forget things, and you know that's not a tremendously big deal. And you know, we're probably late less, forget less, than back when I was in a panic over it all the time.

Getting stuff done! Yeah. I can do some things, not in a frantic panic of efficiency, following my coolly calculated plan to run from place to place all day and tick the top 5% of things off my extensive to do list (VERY extensive, because unless I write EVERYTHING down in minute detail I'm too overwhelmed to focus on anything), and do nothing at all else for weeks or months until the to do list is done for fear of never starting again? No, now I can do a few jobs I feel like doing, enjoy doing them, spend a couple of hours later on relaxing, get up and do a few more jobs later, occasionally list out and reorganise a couple of things to be more efficient but not be tied to the results if something else comes up... and the next day, not have to force myself up and onto the hamster wheel, just... feel like doing some more! Awesome.

The obsessional thoughts... are not gone, but they are dramatically, dramatically reduced. I still get maybe 3-5 incidents per day that make me react physically, but not the hundreds and hundreds it was. Even those aren't as intense. I don't get caught up in a loop on them. I don't drive myself to tears of despair with the inability to break that loop, it's more of a two second... ah, crap, that one got me, moving on. And for the most part, they don't feel as viceral and tactile and disturbing, they're just fluctuations in my thoughts that pass straight through to the other side without making me terrified that I might be a terrible person.

I feel... stable. I've been stable in that stability for about two months now. I feel like I'm actually in my body, actually living my life, rather than waiting for the opportunity to do so. I feel like I never realised how bad it was, how all-consuming, how much of a serious impact it was all having on my entire life until it just... doesn't have to be that way. Wow. I am never, ever going off these meds.

I've not been writing. At all. I don't know whether I got a bit burned out, whether I just don't need that as an outlet for/distraction from my brain right now, whether I'm afraid to find out for sure whether it's got any easier without the obsessionality, whether once I missed the first fan-flashworks deadline I lost my impetus to do something specific right at this moment, whether losing the midnight oh-god-I-don't-want-to-sleep hours that I've always had means I don't have the time, whether I'm just enjoying sucking the marrow out of all the things I've been missing in my real life at the moment too much to want to immerse myself in another world... or a bit of all of the above.

I'm sure I'll be back in time. But for now, I'm busy living, and I'm happy with that. :)

So, holidays are over and we're into a new school year. Kind of. Term started with Monday and Tuesday pupil free, and Friday was is a public holiday. So, two days. Not so much of a first week, but still.

Eldest is having the expected anxiety spasms over the whole thing. We had a special meet and greet with the teacher the day before, just him and another boy in his class who also tends to be anxious, and that all went extremely well. It was nice to see him make a connection with the teacher, and for her to meet him in the context of understanding how driven he is by that anxiety that rarely breaks the surface blankness. I tried to hug him goodbye on his first day and he headbutted me in the midst of an anxious don't-touch-me freakout. But I think he's still been... if not less volatile, then at least more able to calm himself down from it after five or ten minutes, rather than writing off the rest of the day. He seems to be able to separate himself more easily from negative thoughts that used to get stuck in his head for days and weeks. When I talk to him in a calm moment about what might have been a better way to manage a situation, he can actually discuss it with me rationally rather than going straight back into that hours-of-tantrum headspace. He's not been eating at school, this week, which is not unexpected. He's always been too distracted by the chaos around him during breaks to eat--and now, a side-effect of his medication is appetite suppression. I know my sister sends along cakes and treats, anything she can, with her son to get him to eat something in the middle of the day... we will have to see how it goes. Given how psycho he is by the afternoon when I pick him up (I literally approach him by holding a snack out at the end of a carefully extended arm and refuse to respond to any attempts to start an argument until he's eaten it) it will be a continuing mission to get something into him.

Mr Five is taking to school like a duck to water. Sat down at his desk and read through all the parents' instructions on how to manage the drop-off. His teacher (who'd previously taught Eldest) drew me aside after the first day. "Oh my stars!" she said. "He's so clever! His vocabulary! His reading!!! Give me a couple of weeks to get everyone settled, and we'll have to see what we can organise for him." And I'm like, "I know, right?" (Secretly thinking: you just wait until you work out how nice he is, too: how empathetic and creative and thoughtful, how genuinely delighted to help others and to work hard on improving himself. You just wait till you really see what he's capable of. This boy is going to shine.)

I am getting ORGANISED. Mr Three is our last child, and I have sorted through all our baby clothes and sent the ones that were not actively held together by the mould stains on to people who can use them. I have plans for the toys. The books. The cupboards. The back of the grown-ups' wardrobe. I've been working my way around the flat surfaces in the house which have accumulated drifts of things which don't have an obvious place to live, and I've been sorting through them. Latest casualty is a menu plan. I have broken down all my faithful recipes into how long I have to put them on before they are ready, so that I can refer to the list when I am in the supermarket looking at this week's specials and increase the variety of my idea cycle, as well as getting an appropriate balance to (depending on after school sport) slot them in on the weekly whiteboard calendar. Of course my menu book also has school lunch and snack ideas and plans to put them in place, so hopefully that will help with getting Eldest some appetising variety at school as well as getting me some nutritionally-rich shields to thrust at him in the afternoon.

Probably the most important thing I've been getting organised is the boys' responsibilities. They've always had things they are meant to do, but it's been more ad-hoc than consistent, which is NEVER going to be very effective. With Eldest's executive function, organisational, and transition difficulties, it's been too easy to let things fall by the wayside--but it's in fact one of the most important things for us to practice, appropriately scaffolded so he can succeed. Since the turn of the new year, they now have a checklist chart of tasks that are their responsibility to take care of, assigned across three categories, mostly under 'looking after myself'. Things like, being responsible for finding and bringing their own shoes and bags when they go out to the car. Taking their plates to the sink, not just every now and then but every meal. Putting their dirty clothes in the laundry. Staying in their own bedroom until it is wakeup time. They have a morning routine list pinned on the whiteboard.

Then each afternoon, at 4:45 (if they haven't done it already) it is time for 'helping our family' and 'skills', while I am putting dinner on and tidying up. Which means each of the boys gets assigned a common area to tidy up, and also does work on a couple their identified self-improvement areas. Like, doing the therapy exercises they've been assigned. Or homework. Or instrument practice. Over the holidays, it was writing a sentence, touch-typing lessons, and penguin walking. If they get done early enough (and without my physical help, because my hands are self-evidently super busy doing my own work), we can all go down to the pool for a swim before dinner. They want that swim, and so the big boys even help Mr Three with cleaning his area. We are still working on our positive thinking and speaking nicely during this time--but I only really mind the moaning if it stops them from actually doing the job--or in as much as it rubs off on Mr Five who is so naturally positive, and it hurts to see him copying that negative language and negative approaches. But we have management strategies in place, both for guiding the kids and for managing my emotional reactions to their negativity, and it is fundamentally working.

So here's the really great thing: I sneakily got the homework routine in place BEFORE the start of the school term, and it has passed into school night routine with nary a murmur. (Well, nary a murmur MORE than the background level.) I am motivated to keep this thing going: it's not just an esoteric goal to have a tidy, responsible household at some point, it is a concrete necessity for Eldest's development to practice both the explicit tasks he finds difficult and the organisational structure necessary to make them happen. I hope I do not speak too soon, but I am stoked at how well it's been going.

And speaking of speaking too soon--my mum's just had a fall and broken her arm. She's got bruising on her face from where her head hit the ground, but apparently that's not serious. The arm is: both the radius and the ulnar snapped right through and displaced, overlapping by an inch. She's in hospital, slated for orthopedic surgery next Friday. She may come to live with me briefly while she's awaiting surgery, but I suspect probably not. They're understandably reluctant to discharge fall-prone, more than half-blind people with brittle bones, low-blood pressure and dizzy spells, not to mention a disturbing-looking tremor. I expect we're probably looking at at least two weeks in hospital, possibly three to five--and the most irritating thing about that is that her appointment to discuss the cataract surgery is in two weeks, so it'll probably delay that, when she'd already delayed to the point where it is absolutely critical. This will be the third serious surgery she's had in three years, and we haven't even reached the cataracts yet. She's getting old, and fragile, which is really hard to see because Mum's such a superhero. :(

On the plus side, it's a fairly convenient time for her to live with me for a while, given I'm already pretty organised... and maybe A Study in Rehabilitation will wind up getting a sequel. :P

So, what a year!

I wrote. Not a lot, but I didn't stop, and I haven't broken my fan flashworks streak, even though sometimes it's been... difficult. I've been writing more original poetry, which is, if not high in literary merit, then at least something non-fanfic, and a way of getting out things that mean something to me. And one actual fictional original story, which, woah. :D I've claimed all my waiting badges: I've earned six new badges in the last six months since I last claimed them: for maintaining my streak, posting more stuff, and for doing more of the things I'm good at: backstory, filling out canon scenes, and finagling a whole lot of prompts into one--and for continuing to write poetry in varied forms.

( Badge goodness )

I've posted 82,832 words of fiction on AO3 all up.  Half of that in January and February for the Season 4 premiere, another 14,000 in July for JWP. The rest of the time I've been pretty much ticking along on a few thousand words a month. Which is good for the goal of not giving up on something entirely just because it's not my prime focus right now, but has definitely come as a result of dropping my write-every-day habit. I've got two more substantial Sherlock WIPs ticking along: The Blue Car Bungle's sitting at 8,388 words, heading towards at least 20,000, while the Spiritual Healing fic is at 3,572 heading for at least 6,000.  Futureproof finished the year where it started, at 71,342. That's probably about all the WIPs I care about at the moment.

I've been working back through the unanswered comments on my stories--some of which have been left for a VERY long time, which is less to do with a lack of gratitude and more to do with god I don't know why something that gives me so much pleasure like reader comments can seem so difficult to respond to--but I'm hoping to start the new year in a state of grace. Maybe even keep up as people comment!  *crosses fingers*

I've signed up for Get Your Words Out for 2018. I decided not to this last year, because I have discovered that focussing on the word count does bad, bad things for my genuine productivity, enjoyment, and satisfaction with the results. However, this year GYWO has 'days writing' goals, which I think may suit me much better in reinstituting the write-every-day habit. The actual word count comes naturally as a result of me committing to spend more time in that headspace. I've been tossing up between signing up for 240 writing days, which means essentially four to five writing days per week, or 350, which is essentially one non-writing day per month. Reality is, if I'm doing a challenge, I'll probably end up doing 365 writing days. But given my goal these days is achieving moderation and life balance in all things, 240 is a better goal for me as a whole person. Wow, that's a very mature decision from me. :)

This year I've reached tipping point of not frantically running from place to place whenever the kids were out of my face for a few minutes when Mr Three started three year old kindy. I now get a few hours to myself more days than not, and while there's still jobs enough to fill out three full time employees, I... feel that the tension has eased somewhat. The kids are old enough to make their own fun together, to wait for a bit if I and they mostly get along. And they're old enough to be actually helpful some of the time. Hubby and I had our first holiday away without them, for the 20th anniversary of when we met. Later in the year we had our first holiday at a place that had a kids club, so we could not only spend the family time together but recharge from the full-on don't-touch-that-omg-has-anyone-seen-mr-three-hang-on-have-we-got-towels-what-do-you-mean-you-need-a-poo-right-now?!-okay-everyone-hold-hands-nice-cafe-manners-please-not-in-your-mouth!... when we needed to.  It was great. It all adds up to me having more time and mental space now to... delight in the positive moments with them, to play with them and listen to them, and to nurture and discipline them positively and thoughtfully when they need it--and of course engage in the consideration and follow-through of the increasingly complex and individually targeted support they need--rather than just running from crisis to crisis to task that needs doing.

I've been a good friend this year, mostly, to the people I love, and I've sorted through the shoulds and coulds of the social circle of mums and cut the fat of those that I actually can't be bothered interacting with any more than manners says I need to (which is, to be honest, everyone outside my family, online, and one other real life friend), and thus I've avoided adult-focussed gatherings and kept my own social circle lean and keen. I think I'm significantly happier for being able to spread myself thicker on the people who are important to me and still have some reserve for my own brain. I've learned more about how I think and what works for me, and I've tried to stop beating myself up about the stuff I don't do. I'm at least becoming more aware of when I'm donig that and have been trying to make the choice between actually doing the thing or reconciling it that the thing is not something I've put high on my prioirity list and thus it may not get done at all. I've even cracked a couple of mindfulness things that work for me which is big, because I hatehatehate meditation and mindfulness, it always makes me feel awful which is precisely beside the point.

I have taken some big long-term jobs I've been putting off by the scruff of the neck and shaken them into shape. One of which was my wardrobe: I'd been feeling awful in my everyday clothes for years, and now for all the compliments and requests for where I got my dresses that I get, I'm considering carrying cards for the brand I wear so I can just give them out. I've found and taken up a physical activity again, which has needed doing since I got depressed about the way I kept getting injured at Taekwondo. I'm pleased to have found tap dancing works really well with both my brain and my body. I've organised our wills, powers of attorney, and advance health directives, and they're all ready to sign on 2nd of January when we have ready access to some independent witnesses at Hubby's work. That will be a long-term niggling weight off the back of my mind. I've set up an appropriate financial investment structure for our growing savings to rest in and have researched appropriate investments for it to make. We've replaced our 15 year old TV despite the fact that it was still working, and my six year old phone because it was not. We've set to sorting out our garden, which has been falling to rack and ruin over the last many years, and piled up three loads of garden waste in Hubby's parents' trailer and taken them to the tip. And we managed not to escalate to divorce in the midst of this last one, although things got perhaps closer than they should have.

I've dodged a few bullets: there was the asbestos scare, the benign cyst in my breast, and our cat who misjudged a jump and needed a $6000 ligament repair operation which looked like it might have failed and we might need to have her put down anyway, but who is going to be JUST FINE thank fucking god, even if she doesn't like her physio exercises one little bit. And just my luck, our other cat developed a psychosomatic limp and a hissy attitude towards her injured sister, whom she used to sleep curled up with... (Seriously, we took her to the vet over the leg going omg please tell me its not both of them and he's like... yeah she's fine, there's nothing here.) She's less freaked out now the cast is off, and hopefully once they've finished working through their feelings over the whole Reichenbach thing, they'll get on again and live happily ever after.

Eldest has been in Year 1, and has had a very big year as far as getting to the bottom of what's going on in his head is concerned. We've been working hard on following the psychologist's targeted advice to start with, but have decided that we're not making positive progress with that alone and have an appointment on Jan 2nd to get started with medication to assist him. Aside from his troubles, he's been going along really well: he's reading encyclopedias for pleasure, did an amazing oral presentation, wrote two beautiful books, performed several times with his choir and at dancing, learned how to do a flip in the air (onto a mattress), advanced his skills in tennis to the point where the little backyard tennis net our family got for Christmas proves he's on a level with me (not hard, but he's seven!), and is currently working on putting together a challenging mechanical excavator out of Lego Technic. Hopefully next year will be another great year for him!

Mr Five learned to read! Pretty much all by himself, at least as far as we were concerned. He's reading Grade 2-3 level chapter books already, all ready to start Prep next year... :| He's going to be the best of all of us, I think. He's bright as a button, his glass is always at least two-thirds full, his emotional intelligence is through the roof, he's helpful and enthusiastic and eager to see others do well, and he's got an extraordinary work ethic. He loves to try, and it doesn't matter to him if he's failing, he just keeps on trying and trying until he starts to get it. I tossed tennis balls for him to hit for literally for hours every day since Christmas, and he wanted to keep going long after his shoulders were aching. He's significantly less hopeless than when he started. He wants to be either a doctor or a cleaner. And to go skiing. And tap dancing. And to play the cello. And... you know what, I think he's going to achieve everything he sets out to do.

Mr Three is our little cutie. He's had a really big year, too. He's an adrenaline junkie: two visits to A&E and countless attempts to hurl himself down stairs or ride his bike off cliffs, countless bumps and bruises and black eyes, but he's a sturdy little guy and is always back up and running full-tilt at the next obstacle within a minute or two. And, of course, the Nosebleeds Of Doom! Wow. He's still completely obsessed by vehicles of all kinds, but he's moved on to imaginative play with his train track, building it and pushing the engines around and having little conversations between them all as they create and solve problems. I don't think any of the others ever did that: Eldest just focussed on building super long tracks, whereas Mr Five's imaginative play tends to be with toy animals or play homemaking. His language is really great; I think he'll eventually be another advanced reader, or at least he will if he ever sits still for long enough to learn how. AND he's completely day-time toilet trained now, which is just... epic, to have everyone in our family responsible for all of their own toileting. \o/ He's been out of nappies since he was 18 months old and took off his nappy to take himself to the toilet for the first time, but it's been a very long hard road between then and now, filled with a very great deal of washing and wiping. He loves his dummy and his blankie, and despite his high energy during the day, absolutely adores sleeping. Never has any child been as happy to be put to bed as this one!

Hubby has taken on a big load at work this year, officially stepping up to be managing director of one of the two family companies, and stepping into a role doing more and more of the client meetings and relationship management. Not something he enjoys and a huge source of stress which he has been... more or less coping with. He's said no to clients he didn't want, and yes to clients he knew he needed even though he didn't want. He organised and won a big important contract which was super stressful. His parents have arranged to share the profits of the company group 50:50 with us, which is (at least at the moment) very very nice and rewards Hubby in a language he speaks for his courage in fighting his instinct to stay in his shell and say no to everyone. It was, however, interesting on our recent beach holiday to see that his resting heart rate according to Fitbit fell by 5 beats per minute and then bounced straight back up to its previous location when he went back to work. He is stressed, and drinking more than he feels comfortable with, but his priorities are firmly fixed as far as our family and his relationships with me and the children are concerned, as well as taking on a huge load of the practical home duties. And he's maintaining his daily jogging circuit and we are mostly managing to make sure he gets some brainspace each day to be an actual person as well as prioritising getting some adult time together, so... work in progress.

My mum had brain surgery to correct her tremor, which has been there since she was a little girl, but which has been getting steadily worse over time until she was what most people would consider disabled by it, but was managing to cope in her own inimitable style. ("No, of course I don't have trouble dressing myself. Can I do buttons? Of course not, I haven't bought anything except loose dresses that slip over my head for twenty years!") I think she hadn't realised how much it was affecting her quality of life until they asked specific questions about things she didn't do anymore because of the tremor; she just hadn't thought about how many of the things she loved she had stopped doing because they were too hard, because she's not one to dwell on things like that. So, they went ahead and implanted electrodes deep inside her brain which stimulate the area which was was causing the tremor to a consistent level, with wires running down to a control embedded in her chest, a bit like a pacemaker. The surgery has succeeded and her tremor is dramatically reduced, if not entirely absent. They're still working on fine tuning voltages and amplitudes and frequencies and pulse widths and which of the tiny electrodes on the end of the probes are in use, because her speech has been slightly affected (the speech centre of the brain is right next to the tremor spot), making her voice a little softer and slurry, but the payoff for her increased ability to do everything else has been worth it. Next year she's looking at having cataract surgery. Her vision has been getting extremely bad in recent years but for various reasons she's been ineligible for the surgery. But now her eye doctor has changed his mind and it looks like that's going to go ahead, which is also likely to significantly improve her quality of life, assuming it succeeds.

We've had a great Christmas, all in all, first with Hubby's family, then with with one of my sisters visiting from out of town, and another one who's from the same city, and of course my mum. We gave, we received, we ate and laughed and played and enjoyed one another's company. And given we were at Hubby's parents' house, then my sister's this year, we didn't even have to deal with the cleanup! :) Merry Christmas to us!

All in all, 2017's been a fantastic year. Roll on, 2018!

Last night was... a night.

Was snuggled up with Hubby after all the jobs were done, watching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (my new favourite Netflix show, highly recommended, awesome female-led cast, and YES a thirties murder mystery set in Australia is every bit as weird for us as it is for anyone international), when I decided to check that the incessantly crying child from next door was not, in fact, our child.

No, of course it's not one of ours, said Hubby. It's dogs howling down the street.

Hmmm, I said, and went out to check. No, turns out it's Mr Three screaming like he's dying. So, what's wrong, Mr Three? Omg. HUBBY!!! (pause) HUBBY, I REALLY NEED YOU RIGHT NOW!

Here is the photo I took to show A&E. Warning for gore. Yes, he is fine.

( Read more... )

YES, he is fine. After about ten minutes of panicked attempts to get him to tell us if anything was hurting (he was extremely distressed) and determine the source, we worked out it was a nosebleed. It had slowed down by the time we found him and was mostly over by the time we'd put him through the bath and changed his clothes. We didn't end up making Mr Three's third trip to A&E this year.

Which was a good thing, because once we'd finished putting him back to bed and waving our arms at each other in shocked commiseration and watching the end of our murder mystery because the horror show in our house wasn't the best bedtime viewing, and I was doing a final check before bed... Eldest started throwing up all over the floor.

Fortunately no blood. What a night, eh?

The test results have come back: our eaves are asbestos, as we knew, but the unknown identical looking material the boys were playing with from the neighbor's yard is NOT.

Hoorah hoorah HOORAY!!!! What a complete fucking relief.

Breaking News: the Victorian police are going ahead with charging Cardinal George Pell with numerous serious sex offense against up to ten minors, including rape.

Pell is Australia's most senior Catholic and, being in charge of the church's finances, is considered the world's third most senior. He did not return home from the Vatican last year to provide evidence to the Royal Commission on his knowledge of and involvement in the systematic cover-up of sex offences within the Australian Catholic church, citing ill health. Given my father flew from Los Angeles to Australia on a commercial 747 flight while in an actual coma, I find this reasoning personally uncompelling. There is no extradition treaty with the Vatican, although Pell states that, pending approval from his doctors, he intends to return to defend himself from these charges.

Tim Minchin said it best last year, and as always makes me proud to be Australian.

Watch on YouTube

(If the tone seems strong, by the way, consider that Pell has been been implicated in shuffling repeat offending priests from parish to parish to escape accusations, and in bribing and silencing victims, a shocking number of whom have suicided. In his 2014 testimony regarding the institutional response to abuse allegations, he claimed that the church bore no more legal responsibility for its priests' unconscionable actions than a trucking company would if one of its drivers had picked up 'some woman' off the side of the road and assaulted her. He's also on the record as saying that abortion is a far worse moral crime than priests abusing children. He deserves his day in court, and a fair trial--but even without being personally implicated as a perpetrator, a many very angry Australians feel that 'scum' is putting it mildly.)

So.

Late last night I worked out what this is really about. It's not about the stupid thing I was overreacting to at all; that's just the straw that broke my back.

About six months, maybe a year ago, our neighbors from up the hill dumped some rubbish in the corner of their yard at the top of the retaining wall which separates their property from ours. And a stack of torn out plasterboard sheets fell down from this into our yard, into a rock garden near the washing line where my boys play. Given some of those boys are given to destructive impulses that damage our house and car if not channeled appropriately, I do try to give them free reign to destroy things that are okay for destruction. And these torn out sheets of plasterboard tumbled down among a set of handy rocks... well, lets just say they've spent the last six months joyfully reducing them to fine powder and I have been more than happy for them to do that rather than attacking things inside the house.

A couple of days ago one of the builders we had around, fixing up a corner of our house where the eaves are falling down, asked me: What're all these asbestos sheeting fragments doing in your garden?

Me:

...

...

... oh no.

Um. That would be, that would be the asbestos my very young children have been deliberately grinding up and whacking with rocks to make clouds of dust to play in?

Yeah, I kind of preferred it when they were cutting through power cords and car seatbelts with scissors.

They haven't exactly been doing lines of the stuff, but they've basically been doing the worst thing possible apart from that.

A sample's gone off for testing to confirm what it is, but they're pretty certain. Next week the removal company comes to look at what they need to do to make it safe (for our eaves as well, which turned out to be asbestos, which is how the whole discussion got started and I want those eaves so fucking far away from my family right now). I need to write a letter to our neighbors up the hill, who have young grandchildren who play in their yard, too, and I have to work out what the tone of that letter will be, which ranges anywhere from 'Hey just wanted to let you know and ask if you wanted our guy to quote on the removal from your garden while he's here' to 'YOU DUMPED ACTUAL FUCKING TOXIC WASTE IN MY KIDS PLAYGROUND YOU BASTARDS'. I could go and visit them instead, but. I've been having enough trouble finding words for a letter, without facing the additional difficulty of actually making those words come out of my mouth. I want to know, if they knew. Surely, surely, they can't have known. Surely.

And you know what? Feeling like this about the asbestos? Yeah. That's, actually... actually reasonable. I'm allowed to sit here and cuddle my cat and cry about that, cause it sucks and it is fucked up and it is really probably not actually a big deal--plenty of kids have been exposed without complication far more than mine for the very many years when no-one knew it was harmful--but my mother-in-law is a world-renowned lung pathologist, and so I'm probably more informed than many about the precise nature of future complications. Asbestos isn't just a scary word to me, the results of exposure are something that's been discussed across the dinner table. A lot.

It is still reasonable to be afraid that in ten or twenty years, one of my children--whom I was supposed to be protecting--will develop complications as a direct result of this exposure, and I will outlive them. And it's still reasonable to look that fear in the face and tell it that it has no need to take over my brain and suck away all my processing power and emotional energy to deal with feeling bad over something that will very most likely never matter; to tell it to save that energy for something that's actually real and can be changed right now.

Because it will most likely never matter. And it wasn't anything I could have helped, because I didn't know any more than they did, any more than my parents did when they let my four sisters play in the cutting dust while they worked together up on the rooves building houses--none of whom, by the way dear Brain, have asbestos complications, which has to say something for the statistics no one one can give on exposure risks and the perspective you get from the dinner-table stories of a lung pathologist at the very far end of the causal chain. And for the moment I'm doing everything I can to minimise the risk going forward.

But for now it's still entirely logical to feel bloody awful anyway. And in that light, also to overreact to stupid things.

(FYI I didn't get the original story I'd been hoping to submitted. We're not talking about that. I'm not in a good place about it. I am still writing fiction, which is a success. MOVING ON.)

So, I'm in one of those odd periods where my focus has gone away from writing/reading/fantasy onto actually doing a whole stack of little things that I normally let slide because real life ugh. I've been going around the house with a can of WD-40 fixing all the seized or squeaking mechanisms, ordering replacement ceiling fans for the ones that are broken, getting the locksmith in to look at the side door we haven't been able to use for five years, clearing out the piles of artwork that have built up on every surface, culling and sorting them into specific kids' folders. That kind of thing.

( Wardrobe )
( Mending )

( Health )

Yes, by the way, my credit card always gets a hammering when I'm manic like this; shoes, clothes (this time they're even for me!), mending supplies, tradespeople, medical appointments. But that's okay because this is a blue moon occurrence; our bank accounts don't get used for anything except groceries and utilities and things the kids urgently need the other 98% of the time. Hubby will freak out in a month's time (despite knowing what's going on) that our mortgage offset amount has gone down and we are LOSING MONEY OHNOES and I'll remind him to measure the account balance not from last month, but from the previous time I went mad and got all the jobs done, three years ago, and that if we actually managed to make more money in a month than I spend in a Jobs Month, that would be truly frightening. (If in a way we all dream of. :) )

There's one more thing, but I'm going to make it a different post when I get to it, because it doesn't deserve to be lumped in with the rest of the stuff. Not trying to be a tease, just. It's so much at the root of everything on my mind that it would feel like tiptoeing around the elephant in the room not to at least mention that there's more I'm not saying. Nothing bad, just thinky-thoughts about thinky-things.

I've made it to the other end! All the crazy Christmas creative projects and gatherings and frantic packing kids in the car to take them to visit family every day and staying up late every night for parades and to see christmas lights or for family gatherings and then staying up even later after I'd got them in bed to work on food or digitally mastering audio, and setting off the fire alarms at 2am on Christmas morning by cleaning the oven.

I'm alive.

I was awesome.

I even managed to have a pretty relaxing Christmas Day all told despite the lack of sleep. Hubby loved his song (although I'm still going to tweak a line or two before I upload it). Visiting family are gone. I had 9 hours sleep last night. Hubby's taken the kids out to the coffee shop, and I'm blissfully alone for the morning.

( Pics or it didn't happen )

(In the photo at the table, I (in the purple shirt) and my three children, my mum, and my four sisters are sitting closest to the camera. The rest are two of my brothers-in-law, my nine nieces and four nephews, and one nephew's girlfriend. Oh, and Hubby's in there too hidden away at the middle-back. He's the strikingly handsome one in the white shirt sitting at the left of the second photo.)

Always a pleasure to drink white wine in the sun with these fine people.

Now, I'm going to sit down with a cup of tea and do some writing. :)

Am a headless chicken at the moment. Too many projects, as is usual for me at this time of year.

1) Writing (well, re-lyricing) and recording a song for a Christmas present for Hubby. (No soppy stuff, he wouldn't like that anyway.) Stay tuned, I'll post it for the fan flashworks amnesty at the end of the month, it's gonna be awesome. :D But of course this means that I'm fiddling around with:
    a) writing lyrics (I've got three out of four verses written, a couple of concepts/lines for a fourth, and there's a few dodgy lines throughout that could do with improvement--but I'm so distractable by process-orientated stuff that I'm having difficulty focussing past the smorgasboard of distractions available),
  b) learning my way around the software and post-production filters I'll need to get the sound right and blending in with my backing track (Audacity, which I've used before many years ago, third party high-pass, de-essing, compression, autotune and reverb filters, which I haven't; it's a song for programming to, so I want to do my best to make something that'll sound all right in with the rest of his playlist),
c) pulling together and learning my way around the hardware and setup I need for recording (an at least forty year old microphone from the cupboard which I hope will work better than my phone microphone solely because it will have a decent size diaphragm (although the phone mic I've been testing on sounds pretty decent for the style already, so I can fall back if it's no better (ETA: Hubby asleep, the old school mic is working and I think it does sound like it's got a rounder tone even if I don't want to try singing too loudly with the house asleep, and look I'm still not writing)), pop-filter made from a coat-hanger and a stocking, account created for Unspecified Purposes on Hubby's computer (which has an audio card with an actual microphone jack, what a blast from the past)),
    d) finding time with no one in the house to actually record it (Saturday morning, I've got a couple of hours and I'll need to get everything recorded in the one session, which I KNOW will be aggravating because I don't know what the hell I'm doing with a microphone, so the chances of recording anything clean are almost nil and I'll only really find the dodgy parts in post-production when it'll be difficult to do more takes--also I really really need to have my lyrics finalised and given some time to cook before then),
    e) explaining to my four year old what the word "bitch" means after he's heard me singing along with the original song one too many times in the car, and
    f) repeatedly thwacking on the head the idea that, given I will be an enthusiastic participant in two Kinect dance parties in the next week with my large tribe of awesome dance-loving nieces and nephews while they are all in town, and I have access to the dance game that covers the song I'm covering, and wouldn't it would be super super awesome to go all out and make a music video to go with it (What the hell, brain? It's hard enough overcoming the self-consciousness to sing all out without thinking about actually dancing! Plan: first, write lyrics! Then, do other jobs! Then and only then, if there's time, think about taking over the world with DANCE!!!)
So, yeah. I always promise myself I'm not going to get obsessed with some kind of creative endeavour for a gift for someone this year. And I ALWAYS go back on my promise. Always. Sigh.

2) Not getting too caught up in the above project (ha!) because the prompt at fan_flashworks this week is "Naked", for which the very very obvious fill means another chapter in the Were-John verse (he loses his clothes when he transforms, thus the nakedness), which I soooo want to write. But I always find sequels are sooooo much harder than pulling something out of the air, so who knows if I'll need to pinch-hit for myself.

3) Also Psycho!Jim is on my mind, of which I want to write more of but is getting too big for its britches. Much like the protagonist. *forcibly removes Jim from brain with crowbar* And The Wrong Kind Of Snow is still living in my brain wanting to be cleaned up and cross-posted, but now is NOT the time.

4) I'm also cleaning up and crossposting "Five ways to confess to your flatmate". After the first chapter, everyone seems so excited about where it's going that I've been driven into a kind of anxious despair that where it's going isn't good enough, and I don't want to disappoint so I've got in a vicious editing loop that I have not the time to break myself out of. *puts aside for now, people will have to wait for the next chapter*

5) I have a whole stack of wonderful new comments on Living Conditions, which I still think is the best thing I've ever written, and I always want to get right into the meat of replying to, but it is an all-consuming universe when I go there, so I'm just going to leave that until the new year.

6) Christmas. Apparently I have children? And all sorts of responsibilities for thinking of/buying/wrapping presents for other people as well? *headdesk* I think I'm only missing one christmas present, assuming everything I've ordered online on the last possible posting day arrives, plus a visit to the cheap shop to get stocking fillers. Late night shopping tonight; maybe I can do it then and it will be off the stack.

7) Speaking of which, Christmas holidays. All the kids (who I love very dearly) in my face, all the time. Aaaaaghh!

8) We've got some christmas craft projects. Decorations, and presents. At some point in the next week, I'll have to make time to do that with the kids.

9) All four of my sisters and all of their families are in town at the same time for the first time since before I had children. Obviously I want to see as much as I can of them. I'm hosting two lots of Christmas parties, one of which will have 27 people, the one on Christmas day only 21. I have to feed people. And keep the house clean. And organise enough tables for everyone to sit down together, which hasn't happened since we grew too big for that, but I am keen to do. Our pool is safe to swim in (it's 35 degrees out at Christmas in Brisbane), but the water is still a little hazy--only to be expected because we had to replace the filter earlier this year, and they don't clarify the water as well until they're properly dirty--but I'm babying it in the hopes that it will start properly sparkling before everyone comes around, and that is So. Much. Work.

Right, so that's my brain dump. I always laugh when people wish me "peace" at this time of year. No time to lose, stuff to be done. In the last thirty-six hours, according to my fitbit, I've done 34,000 steps and got 4 hours and 3 minutes sleep. See you on the other side. Or not. Because I may well be unconscious.

1) I am now officially up to date in MCU. YAAAAAY! It's been a long time coming
( Spoilers! Because now I'm the one with the spoilers HAHA! ) Anyway, I'm up to date now, so I can safely read the shoobies' snippets without my head exploding.

2) I have finally, finally managed to open Futureproof to resume my second draft editing. Chapter 3 and I have been having an epic mexican standoff in my brain for... wow, is it only four weeks? It seems longer! ... which has in any case at last, like in the last few hours, spilled into shots fired in an actual word processor. I'm officially done with listening to its excuses, and this afternoon I made a first edit through to the end of the chapter. I'm going to stop trying to cram in things that don't go there. If I'm having this much trouble, now is clearly not the time for those revelations. I'm drawing a line. Moving on. It'll be off to Pear for review tomorrow night, and the next stop is editing Chapter 4. In which Gary is woobie and put upon, and we're back to the other plot arcs with the character who doesn't drive me nuts, so that should be easier, right? Right?

3) Also, we have no milk. I think Sherlock's done something to it. My only other theory is that the kids drank it all, and that just doesn't seem plausible. I have, however, discovered that cream is not half bad in tea. Much better than powdered milk. And substantially better for the putting-on-weight campaign, because if I have a couple of spoons of cream in every cup of tea throughout the day, that adds up to quite a bit of cream--surely eventually some of it will stick to my bones. I might keep up the cream even when we have milk again.

Speaking of Sherlock: My fanvid. Which I am pimping all over the place because I am so damn proud of it, but it's my livejournal and I'll pimp if I want to. :)

Watch on YouTube

So I've just got to the end of the crazy business that has been the last couple of months of my life.

There was July Writing Prompts, of course, and the associated burned-out mental exhaustion. Mr. Two Years Old's birthday party. And then today was Mr. Four Years Old's birthday party. Attempt two, because as our first date approached it became clear that our house and our family were a biological contamination hazard, and we would all require worming tablets and a week's worth of conjunctivitis medication before we were fit to recieve company. Yeuch. In any case, all better now, so that's a relief. And we got to have a Zoo Party! I did an amazing cake, as usual, and also carved a watermelon to look like a hippopotomus, which I've never tried anything similar before, and went down a treat.

In the meantime, I had to do a whole lot of terrible, horrible, parent homework in videoing and editing Mr. Nearly Six's oral presentation for school about the construction of his house. It took a long time, but apparently went down well with the class. He was the only kid in school who did part of his video from on the roof of his house, which earned him lots of cred in school (and coincidentally made him forget to be a grumpy teenager-before-his-time for long enough to make at least *some* eye contact with the camera for that part). So yay.

Same child went a bit scissor mad a month or two ago and cut 1) some bedsheets (actually, that was a while previously), 2) an electrical cable, and 3) one of the seatbelts in the car. Not happy, Jan. Consequences have had to happen, which has been making him very grumpy, but we are now we are out the other side of that and he's got his scissor privileges and his iPad priveileges and his lap-sash belt privileges back again, the car is roadworthy again, and things are more settled with him. Then of course I discovered Mr. Two Years Old running through the house while attempting to give himself a haircut with some pilfered scissors ("Nip! Nip! Nip!" "OMG GIVE ME THOSE!!!") so.... Scissors are good for development of fine motor control. Yes, yes they are.

I've made a couple of new online friends I've been getting to know, which has proved interesting, as it always is. I think the thing I love most about online friendships is the way they go deep so quickly. You don't know how the other person looks, but you know how they feel about the things that matter to them the very most, in words they've had time to consider. It's cool to make that connection with something real rather than, you know, just mums in the schoolyard commiserating about how tough life is with kids and day to day trivialities, oh I know, etc. Which, yeah, but it's different online. Maybe that's just for me.

I've been keeping up with fan_flashworks, and now I've done eight challenges in a row. Loving the way the urge to keep my streak going is forcing me to keep up the flashwork momentum, making writing and finishing little things just another part of life rather than a Big Deal. Thinking of trying something a bit different for this one, an idea I've had niggling for a while, so an amnesty's perfect to actually do it.

And I've partnered up with Wild Pear to work on Futureproof. She's both acting as my arbitrary deadline to get chapters finished, and looking at chapters as I send them to her, reflecting back what she gets from my characters, telling me where it gets a little bogged down or confused... and omg, it's so good. So reassuring. So affirming. And so inspirational to hear those little edges of things she doesn't see in the characters and the things that resonated with her that she does. *loves* If I'm actually going to get this thing done by my self-imposed deadline, I really need to focus on drawing lines and getting it out the door. But there's so many distractions and other things I can just get done first, there's always a good reason not to do anything on it today. New rule: my ten minutes writing per day isn't ten minutes in general, I know I can do that: it's ten minutes of Futureproof.

Speaking of Futureproof, I've spent the last week battling brain weasels again. I've been alternately super busy or super exhausted by it, and I guess I've been caught up in my own brain researching... stuff. Things I'm questioning about myself that don't really matter in the scheme of things, but that have activated the must-research-and-question-absolutely-everything mode, so I haven't managed to get the downtime I need to keep a lid on my anxiety and I haven't been sleeping well, and it's all just been snowballing.

I managed to write it out with the last flashwork--despite the fact that my writer's brain insisted the story should go a different direction to what I felt would be truthful and real. It was an interesting conflict to deal with, usually the only battle I have to fight is 'this is wonderful, but am I really comfortable revealing that?' rather than 'this is something that I want to explore, but it is narratively unsatisfying'. It made the final few lines very difficult for me, that battle between true and right, because unlike anxious wibbling which must be crushed, both of them are good reasons in their own right. If the story doesn't... come full circle, to a satisfying ending, then is it really a story? How can I stop writing it if it doesn't end? But if it doesn't tell the story I want to tell... is it really doing its job? And I was super busy with party preparation and just needed to post it and stop obsessing, which I did. *pats self on back* Apart from a couple of nods to narrative causality, I ended up making it the story I needed to write for me, even though the ending felt weak. I'm pretty sure the catharsis it made me feel doesn't come across in the same way to a reader who doesn't live in my brain, but ambiguity is part of the joy of an unreliable narrator anyway. It reminds me a little of On Becoming an Axiom, which people seemed to think was a sad story, when to me it was a shiningly glorious truth. I might end up tweaking the end a little when I crosspost, if I can think of something that unites the trueness and the rightness a little better. And I've also left it open for a sequel if I need to do any more soulsearching along the same lines, so... good enough is good enough. Out the door and posted, and out of my brain, for now at least.

I've got a couple of emails and a couple of comment replies still waiting on my to do list, which I need to just do rather than continuing to find them daunting. Someone asked an insightful question on one of my stories which I am trying to to write an epic essay in response to the fact that I'm intrigued and not really sure of the answer myself. The comments on my stories that give me most joy are always the hardest to respond to, but I'm working on just doing it without trying to do it justice. And hopefully with a few of the real-life jobs out of the way, and with Pear backing me up, I can get things back under control and focus properly on Futureproof again.

That is all I have to say, apart from do not have children.

Worms. Apparently, they crawl out and wave at you.

There's not enough disinfectant in the world.

My masterlist of the stories I've written for

watsons_woes July Writing Prompts. I'm amazingly pleased with most of these given they all ran the gamut from idea to completion within 24 hours, but I've bolded my top favourites. All are in the BBC Sherlock fandom.

The Stratford Stabber - a single, prompt-guided story, where each chapter is semi-standalone [drama, action, (b)romance, h/c]
1. Just Winded (’Tis But a Scratch) [100w]
2. It's how you get your kicks (Roll The Dice) [100w]
3. One deduction too late (A cardboard box) [221w]
3b. Physician Heal Thyself (A cardboard box) [221w]
4. The Surgeon's Knife (Horsemen of the Apocalypse) [442w]
5. Oh Better Far to Live and Die (A False Moustache) [728w]
6. The Least of These My Bretheren (Food, Glorious Food) [559w]
7. Penicillin for a Crime Wave (Epidemic) [887w]
8. The Wonder of Our Age (The Wonder of the Age) [500w]
9. Rationality and Rationalisation ("Please stop petting the test subjects.") [394w]
10. Turning in their Foxholes (A higher power) [337w]

And on to the individual stories:
11. There's Three of Us (Threesome) [drama, angst, h/c 1114w]
12. Pirates of the Faroe Islands (Image) [humour, (b)romance, 221w]
13. The Science of Decomposition (Nature is red in tooth and claw) [humour, 622w]
14. Five ways to look after your injured flatmate (Rehabilitation/Recovery) [friendship, humour, h/c 2650w]
15. The Boxing Builder from Islington (Make a literary reference) [humour, casefic, 1290w]
16. Faithful Companions and Tellers of Tales (Include another great British character) [character, friendship, 1019w]
17. Coordinated Action (Teamwork) [friendship, 473w]
18. Love Letters for the 21st Century (Handwritten) [character, (b)romance, angst, 1842w]
19. Predators and Prey (Great Minds Think Alike: AU with Creatures of the Night) [friendship, action, 2303w]
20. Trouble in Paradise (There are tides in the affairs of men.) [character, casefic, 1548w]
21. Conduct Me a Rainbow (21 song salute: Make Me Rainbows) [character, casefic, 372w]
22. How to Win Friends and Influence Goldfish (Child POV) [drama, 1020w]
23. The Game is Afoot! (Use a pun) [humour, 1089w]
24. And Baby Makes Four ("Nothing shocks me, I'm a scientist.") [drama, 1151w]
25. Finding an Anchor (Trope Trainwreck) [drama, friendship, 3213w]
26. To Do: Strangle Flatmate, Buy Glass Kettle (Elementally, my dear Watson) [humour, 83w]
27. We're all fine here, how are you? (Thx 4 Nothing) [drama, action, 617w]
28. Midnight Sunlight (In July the sun is hot. Is it shining? No, it's not.) [character, 444w]
29. Storming the Ship (Arr!) [action, 1811w]
30. The Adventure of the Cloth Covered Face ("Why exactly do you need chloroform at 2am?") [casefic, 1350w]
31. Playing at Detection (Once more with feeling) [casefic, character, 1233w]
Bonus: That's a Crack Shot You're Looking For Written for fan_flashworks, but mostly written on day 9 and partially inspired by prompt 5 (A False Moustache) [character, friendship, action, (b)romance, 3815w]

( Statistics and Discussion )

So, I haven't posted for a while.

A few things:
1) I am writing like the blazing blazes, doing

watsons_woes July Writing Prompts month, one fill for every day. Seriously. I don't think I've ever written like this, and I won NaNoWriMo one year. It's not so much word count output I mean, but idea-execution output. Not saying I'm posting Shakespeare every day, but completing, writing things good enough to be happy with them without skipping over some bits and obsessing over others, and some things have been surprisingly good. This is working. It's awesome. Writing 90% decent stuff is getting faster--and easier--and while I'm still working on the not-obsessing over it part, I'm hoping that'll get easier too. There's only so much it's possible to obsess when you're posting every day. Isn't it? Please? In some ways it actually makes it harder to let go, because I know that last line or that title could be better, but time limitations meant I didn't have the time to think of what it should be instead. Of course I'm obsessing over making them better. At least I've only really got room for one obsession at a time, so once I've completed the next 24 hrs story, I move on to obsessing over that one.

I might have to go fanfiction cold turkey at the end of this month, though, if I'm going to get Futureproof done in the following couple of months, which I am determined to do. It is not going to make it a full ten years without completing the final draft. And hopefully, all my practice in drawing lines, saying 'good e-freaking-nough' and letting things go will come into play there, and let me draw some lines and say 'good e-freaking-nough' to the good old albatross around my neck.

2) I've been getting involved in the Holmes fandoms, over at JWP month. It's been cool, meeting people, getting to know a few different people's writing styles, reading ten or so different responses to the same prompt with the same characters and it's... just intriguing. Too see how different all the ideas are, and the executions. How many wonderful interpretations there can be. Because when I've had eight different ideas and discarded seven of them for being too obvious, you'd think one of those 'obvious' ones would have been done by someone else, right? One? Apparently not.

3) I have lost too much weight again. I weighed in the other morning at 47.5kg, which is the lightest I've been I think since... ooh, actually, I do think I hit that when I was wasted with morning sickness on my third child! But before that it was probably pre-adulthood. My current BMI 16.2, which is way, way underweight. I generally try to stay above 50kg, which is still technically underweight but is about all I can manage to keep on no matter what I do. I knew I was down to 48kg for most of this year, because I never really put it back on after writing Living Conditions--and I was thinking I'd bottomed out, but apparently if I keep writing I can keep losing more weight, and another 500g is enough to make me worried. I don't want to stop writing. We're only talking 2.5kg under my goal, but... when you're on the pointy end of the scales, that's the difference between acceptably thin and skeletal. Time to do something about it anyway.

Perhaps I should move away from writing in a fandom where the character I personally identify with doesn't eat when he's working. :P I'd say I should get some more exercise to try to stimulate appetite, but my fitbit says I'm doing 10K+ steps per day just running around after the children, so it's not exactly like I'm sedentary. More likely, if I'm trying to dedicate some time to doing something about my weight every day, I should dedicate it to eating. Instead of, you know, skipping breakfast because I'm in a rush and skipping lunch because kids nap/TV time is the only time each day I get to spend by myself and who wants to waste that time eating?!

I've never had a big appetite. And hunger's never been a strong motivator, particularly when I'm busy or stressed. Unless there's incredibly delicious food right in front of me, I'd just rather do other things. But we're getting to the point where I either have to start making myself eat things, or start putting weights in my undies when I get on the scales. At the moment, my solution is stocking my writing chair with museli bars, and also making a conscious effort to get myself something to eat whenever I get the kids something. That should make a difference, hopefully. But I'll keep the weights in the undies in mind.

4) I was going to do a minor arsehole update, but this is an unlocked post. So, I'll just say things are stable and looking like they're heading in the right direction, and I am stable and managing to keep the boundaries in my head in the right places. Yay.

So my eldest said to me last night: I can't believe you're actually a writer of stories, mummy! I told him anyone could write a story, maybe he would like to write one. What would it be called? He said he needed to think about it, and then told me, that's the title! I need to think about it! And then he wandered off to do something else, so...

Well, flash fic happened on the whiteboard, for him to see next time he passed. Reading primer is quite a restrictive style, but I think I rocked it. :D

photo 13434690_10208362006680410_7877530915834426806_n_zpss3vahjbr.jpg

So, I had a few March goals for Futureproof, but... well, I didn't quite get there for several reasons.

I mostly mucked around with character charts and trying a single crucial scene a few different ways, to sort out a particular character relationship issue which has a huge impact on the plot. I still wrote about 5K words on it this month, but... yeah, I'm still trying to work out how much to change it to improve things down the line--and what to change, because it's all a complex thing where I pull one string and the whole thing warps in one direction or the other. I feel like if I find the right string or set thereof, it should just all fall into place, but... to be honest, I probably just need to force it through. I'm not very good at doing that. But I'm giving it a rest for the moment because...

I'm currently working on the BBC Sherlock Rehabilitation fic, which I've written 6K on in the last couple of weeks. I'm still expecting to end up around 10k total by the time I'm finished fiddling with it, and I reckon I should be able to finish it and get it off to beta before the end of this week, because I'm really not that far off complete framework. I've only got a few bits to fill in left, really, and my aim is to get *that* done by the end of today, finish the framework, and then spend the rest of the week polishing and bouncing it off my beta. Possibly not realistic to have it posted by the end of the week, but hopefully no more than another week after that - then I want to get back onto my March goals for Futureproof.

The other distraction, in addition to what's going on with my mum, who has about until the end of the month before she's allowed to weight bear on her leg again, Hubby and I are having Big Serious Discussions about the Future. Or mainly, Hubby stressed out of his mind and hiding under a big rock pretending it isn't happening while I draw up charts on the whiteboard and try to analyse the unanalysable. There's a... decision coming up, a fork in the road. And one way means a lot of stress on him and probably less time to write for me and basically taking the risk on our family of wiping out everything we've built--but seems to really be the better decision financially and with family politics, and it's mainly the fear holding us back. And the other way means disappointing a lot of people, and... isn't necessarily safer or lower stress, but... it does mean we wouldn't have to take on the weight of a very, very large loan.

Do we want to buy out the family business when Hubby's parents retire, that is the question? Which is two parts, really: do we want the business at all or should they sell it to a third party, and if so... do we want to buy it for lots and lots of money. Being as it's a family business, we could possibly also officially take over without the very, very large loan. But taking the very, very large loan has major financial advantages for tax minimisation for the family clan as a whole, and leaves us at an excellent tax advantage for the future, no matter how the business tracks long term. But... all the risk is on us. And, it's not like it's a big risk, because we know the business is sound and long-term viable, but... we're talking big, big dollar figures here, figures that dwarf all the equity we've worked hard to build up over the last fifteen years since back when I was working five jobs at once while I was at uni. At least, for the first time, it's being presented as a decision we need to make, rather than an assumption that we will. Did I mention that the loan would be large? *sigh*

Okay, back to writing proper. This is my least favourite stage of writing any story, but if I can get my head into gear and complete the framework today, it'll be done. And done with it will be a good place to be

"No, no, you haven't seen the system. I put the plate--"
"But look, then it interferes with this plate here!"
"You haven't seen the system!"
"Oh, I've seen the system, many times, and had to deal with the consequences!
"I put the plate here, and the chopping board here, and then the next plate goes here."
"And look, none of these get water on them, and you can't fit plates on the other side and it takes twice as long to sort the all out when you unload it."
"But look! If you have a saucepan like, say, oh look, a saucepan! You can fit it right here!"
"But not all the dinner plates."
"Minor detail."

"What is this? Where is the box?! It's like you and the oil bottle! I mean, how hard is it, you use the oil, you put the cap back on, then we never have this problem!"

"But that section is always full by the end of the day! The only thing loading the bread and butter plates like that in the morning means, is that I can't grab a stack of plates and load them with one hand going (machine gun sound)."
"Well, I never do that, I just put them in one by one."
"I know."
"Otherwise, you couldn't thoroughly rinse each one before you--"
"I know!"
"Look, I'm not saying we don't end up at the same place, I'm just denying it's--"
"You're dragging me down to your level!"
"Well, it gives us something in common!"
"... what, like, Breakfast at Tiffany's? *singing*
Well, I said, what about, loading-the-dishwasher-incredibly-slowly?
She said, I think I, remember-how-annoying-that-was!
Well, I dunno, I said, I always kinda liked it,
She said, well that's why, we ended here!!!""That is why we ended up here!"

"I don't like to complain, is all I'm saying. I'd rather you put plates in the dishwasher at all, despite--"
"Well, there's no danger of that stopping."
"--so don't hold back is what you're saying?--despite your completely insane packing system!"

"You know, if it weren't for this physical metaphor of our entire relationship, people might imagine we were alarmingly compatible."
"Crazy, isn't it?"

NB: I don't think either of us stopped laughing about how much it really didn't matter the whole time. The fact is, we have a kickarse dishwasher that will wash things pretty much any way. But there's ways and ways, okay? Right ways. And wrong ways. Guess which way is Hubby's.

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The White Lily

January 2021

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Lily's Pond of Fictional Reflections

General ramblings of a fic-aholic insomniac

Entries tagged with real life

Goodbye, 2020, and good riddance

Still alive

Going well

Start of the School Year

2017 In Summary

Hell's Bells and Buckets of Blood

Not asbestos!

Come home, Cardinal Pell

The problem behind the problem

Braindump TL;DR

And... I'm out the other side!

Aaaaaaaaaaah!

Watching, writing, drinking

I'm doing Science, and I'm still alive

Worms.

Watson's Woes JWP16 Masterlist and Musings

Update

Flash Fic For a Five Year Old

May Goals

Two obsessive compulsives start loading a dishwasher...