Scatterbrains

I'm struggling to get my head on straight this morning.  We're about halfway through our second viewing of The Tigger Movie for the day.  I've journalled for The Artist's Way, fed us breakfast, caught up on Facebook, sent emails, and generally kept to our previous schedule.  Except now we're in Arizona, and it feels like nothing is the same.

Part of that is because our circumstances are different.  Everything happens an hour later due to the time difference.  All day yesterday, I kept feeling like I had lots of day time left, and I didn't.  Our Christmas was all over the place because the store we thought would be open to enable us to buy cardamom to make aebleskiver was not, in fact, open.  So we drove around for a long time trying to find an open grocery store, with only partial success. (Partial, because we found an open Mexican grocery store, but their spice section was about a shelf big, and cardamom was not one of the few they carried.)  It was a lovely Christmas, but I still feel like I'm missing something.

The bigger difference, though, is because I don't have free run of everything.  We only have one room we can hang out in until Jeremelon gets up for the day (his work shift is 3:30pm - midnight).  I should be figuring out what to do for lunch, but I have to wait for Jeremelon to get up for the day to find out what he wants to do, because he has opinions about food.  I can't take the berrykin for a walk yet, though I did figure out how to make that happen here (hurray!).  We can go on a short walk tomorrow, I think, and my ankle should be able to handle it.  We've got 3-4 hours until Jeremelon goes to work and we have naptime (very much looking forward to that today), then the in-laws will be home when we get up, and we'll be hanging out in the other room for the rest of the night.  And I have no clue what we're doing for dinner, or if I need to handle it myself.  And even if I decide the latter, I still don't have any idea where anything is here.  Phoenix is a much more confusing city than the little town where my mom lives.  Sure, I haven't had access to stores like BestBuy or Target for the last month, but there's a coziness and calm to simplicity like that.  At least we have money for gas if I decide to go somewhere...oh.  But I don't have a key or an access button to get in the gate.  So I can't really go anywhere, after all.

So what do I do?  I have to figure out how to BE here, and feel a lot more okay with that than I was last time.  I got pretty depressed before leaving for California.  I don't want to go back to that.  Which means, I think, that I have to set up my own space, for one, and for two, I need to make sure I'm being productive and using my time wisely.  Otherwise, I have too much time to think and grow despondent.

Then again, we're only going to be here another eight or nine days before we go to Colorado to stay with my sister.  So part of me is also wondering if it's worth it to modify our routine when we're just going to change it up again.  Of course it is, but that's the stubborn part of me, I guess. :)

And now that I've written my pseudo-whiny problem outline, I must go post a to-do list to try to start a solution going.

Happy 1st Day of Christmas!

Rest In Peace, Bedstemor

In Loving Memory,

Aase Christine H. M.

Born 1916,
Died 12/22/12

Sprained, Again

We were supposed to go back to Arizona on Thursday.  Instead, I sprained my ankle.  I was walking down to meet my mom when she got off work, pushing the Berrykin in his new umbrella stroller.  The stroller is about an inch too short for me to be comfortable while pushing it, but it's SO much better than carrying a 32-pound toddler up and down the abundant hills here.  It was about sunset, so it was still easy to see but the ground was cloaked in shadow.  I was having a good day.  We stopped to say hi to my uncle, who'd just gotten home from work, and headed down the hill.  At the bottom, a gentleman in a pickup let us a cross a small side-street ahead of him.  Whether it's a normal response others feel or it's my social anxiety, I always worry about taking too long.  I usually wave cars through first so I don't have to walk ahead of them while they watch (THAT is social anxiety).  He waved me ahead again, so I went.  Couldn't see the road.  Anxiety levels rose a little, and I walked a little faster.  Right smack in the middle, I rolled my right ankle.  It popped.  Instantaneous pain.  Had I not had the stroller in front of me, I'd have face-planted.  No doubt it kept me from having knees scraped up with bits of broken asphalt embedded in the angry wounds.  So that was a plus.  I limped my way a few feet farther - I couldn't really put weight on that side, but I managed.  By that point, I was pretty sure I was going to need to throw up, and I think that scared me more.  I NEVER throw up.  I had a seat in a cafe chair to let myself feel crappy for a minute and regroup.  I thought I might have to call my mom and have her walk home, get the car, and come pick us up.  After a few minutes, though, the nausea dissipated somewhat and I found I could gingerly hold my own weight.  Still.  It HURT.  There was no way I was getting back up the way we'd come down, so I ended up walking the long way home.  By the time we got here, my ankle felt better.  Using it didn't hurt nearly so much.  I grabbed some ice, sat down and elevated it, and waited for the nausea to go away.

Of course, once home and out of the stroller, Berrykin ran rampant.  I couldn't chase him.  Couldn't stop him.  He pulled all kinds of food out of the fridge.  At one point, he walked into the room with a shriveled old apple and a butter knife.  When I told him to bring them to me, and then to put them down when he wouldn't do that, he threw them across the room.  Thankfully, he didn't throw them AT me, because Berrykin has killer aim.  Seriously.  Most of us practice for years to be as accurate as he is at two.  It was humorous, and it would have made me feel better had I not been worried about his safety.  (Sure, he might still not talk very well, I might only be able to understand him 1% of the time, but he makes up for it physically.  Including the growth.  He's had two growth spurts in the last month!)

My ankle swelled up pretty badly.  It was bad the first night, but the second day was worse.  Looked like I was smuggling an egg in my sock!  And my foot swelled, too.  I think it would have gone done more quickly, except I had a TON of freelance work to get done, and my computer battery doesn't last very long.  My mom's house is old enough that half of the electrical outlets only have two holes, so I can't plug it in in the living room.  I had to sit in the dining room, since it's the only room from which I could keep an eye on the Berrykin at the same time.  It astounds me that I hurt it this badly.  I roll my ankles all the time, probably once or twice a month.  It has NEVER done this.  Usually it hurts, my foot bones crunch pretty audibly, and after a couple of minutes it's like nothing happened.  I've never sprained it before.  It irritates me that A) I did it while walking at no great speed, and B) it's the other ankle.  My left one STILL hurts from the overuse sprain I gave it in February.  Now I have no good side, and walking is generally a bad idea.  :(  But!  The swelling is now mostly gone, and I feel confident that it shouldn't hurt too badly to drive for half a day straight.  Especially if I wrap it.

We haven't done our Christmas shopping yet.  We don't have money to buy much, and we're only buying for each other and Berrykin, but we decided this year we get to spend a little (as opposed to the two Christmases since Berrykin's birth, when we counted him as our present and only bought him a little something).  I'm really not looking forward to shopping on Christmas Eve, but we wanted to go together.  So here we are...  If I don't post in two weeks, I've perished beneath the onslaught of last-minute Christmas horde.

Planning Ahead

I've been working on a freelance project most of the day.  It's a nice change of pace, and really good for the creative part of my brain.  My freelance work always stretches my creativity.  It's difficult, sometimes very much so, but it's also a good sort of challenge.  I have one more thing to write before I'm done for the week (unless my suggestion for Twitter additions goes through, then I'll have that, too).  

I had a break forced on me for food and naptime, and my mom "dragged" me into making Christmas pretzels.  I'm hoping we'll get the chance to make those chocolate drop cookies later tonight, but I'm having such a hard time getting back into writing mode, it might not happen.  Yeah, probably not.  Bummer.

Anyway, I procrastinated by going back through my spreadsheet trackers.  I make these periodically for a variety of things.  I made one waaay back in July to help me with school and exercise and making sure I got all my daily work done.  I only used it for about three days.  Woohoo!  But it was a good idea, and if I can get in the habit of opening it up every night before bed, it'll be an excellent tool to help me keep a routine in Arizona.  But I got into my plans for this week, and I suddenly realized - I'm going back to Arizona on Thursday.  

Now I want to cry.  I like it here, a lot.  There are family stresses I won't speak of, but they're MY family.  There are certain things that eat my time here out of inconvenience, like the lack of a tub or the way doors swell and produce loud squeaks and creaks that wake up toddlers in the middle of the night when opened and closed.  My allergies tried to knock me out last week, and that was NOT OKAY in December.  But it's pretty.  It's relaxing.  I feel at home here.  (And WHY, for the love of all, does the Christmas station here play "Christmas Shoes" EVERY DARN NIGHT??  I hate this song.  It makes me cry EVERY DARN TIME.  Ahem.)  Where was I?  Oh, yes.  I stood at the window earlier, drinking my hot chocolate and watching the fog bank roll over the mountain across the valley.  The neighbors across the street put up fun, blinky lights across their hedge fence.  My mom took Berrykin on a walk earlier with my uncle so I could work, and I didn't worry.  Berrykin even played in the yard by himself for a bit.  I don't want to lose any of that.  I could do without the perpetually wet towels and the irritatingly old wiring that left two-prong sockets in the living room so I can't plug my computer in and sit on the couch at the same time.  I miss Target and the smorgasbord of fast food options found elsewhere, but I can live without them.  I don't know how I'm going to survive in Arizona.  Even for the two weeks we'll be there until we go stay with my sister in Colorado.  Even that trip will be agony.  I don't know how I'm going to do that, either.  I dread uprooting the Berrykin that much.  I dread what I'm going to have to do in the future, but it will be for the best.

I just have to keep reminding myself of that.  It will be for the best.  It WILL be for the best.  Life will go on.  Life will get better!  We just have to make it through the crazy-hard transition period.

Sigh.  I like planning ahead, but sometimes it hurts, too.

Christmas Cookies

Today was a sad, frightening day across the US, China, and likely around the world.  I wanted to bake some chocolate drop cookies to add a little goodness back in.  They're my favorite.  My mom has been taunting me with the possibility that they will get made, but it hasn't happened yet.  We had a good mom-and-daughter talk over dinner, instead.

If it weren't just after midnight, I'd make them now.  That's how much I LOVE these cookies.

Instead, I will leave you with the previously-promised picture of our traditional holiday Danish cookies.

These are klejner.  They are cut out of dough, curled through themselves, and then fried in a pot of oil.  Sounds kind of gross, but they're fantastic.

They're all gone.

Because they were fantastic.

In totally unrelated news, I seem to have gained two pounds this month...

Procrastination, As Always

I should be writing.  I have work due today.
I should be brainstorming.  D'Onion and I have collaborative work that needs to be addressed today and finished over the weekend.

I should be writing.  My novel won't write itself.
I should be brainstorming.  My novellas won't inspire themselves (at least not until they're partially written).

Berrykin is sitting nicely next to me, coloring and being quietly focused (in between bouts of watching all his crayons roll off the table, anyway).  I should be using this time a little more constructively.

Instead, I'm obsessing over things I can't change right now.  I've updated my (messy and highly disorganized) debt ledger.  I fiddled with my FAFSA and then emailed my financial aid advisor (more on that in another post!).  I've gone over all my blogs for reading, added a couple more from last night to the rounds, and contemplated writing posts.  I've trawled Facebook.  I've done a quickie version of my daily job opening watch.  I've updated my iCal.

Granted, all this stuff is stuff that needs to get done.  It's all important, though some of it less so than the rest.  My brain is instead obsessed with the future.  Planning for it.  Making it happen the way I want it to.  Figuring out what "the way I want it" really means.  It's irritating.  Frustrating.  Fruitless.

And now I'm blogging about it, because whining is easier than writing.

So now that this post is complete, I'm going to change a diaper and find out which design I'm supposed to be making a storm in my brain over.

Projects

I have SO MANY projects swirling around in my head, and I want to do them all RIGHT NOW.

Of course, that's not possible within understood limits of human ability, so I have to choose.  I hate choosing.  What if I choose poorly and my body ages a billion times too fast and then disintegrates until all that's left of me is a pile of dust that blows away in the wind?  That would be a really bad day.

Seriously, though, I end up with a Mr. Burns-style problem.  Except instead of a billion different types of disease all fighting for a foothold but being blocked because they get 'stuck in the door,' so to speak, it's a dozen different exciting interests.  There are too many of them.  I get equally excited about all of them, and I want to use all of them.  I would love to be a sustainability engineer as much as I would a human geneticist.  Or an architect.  Or an archaeologist (or really, an archaeological technician; the actual archaeologists have pretty boring careers for a person who likes, nay, needs, to study a multitude of things).  I would be equally thrilled to be a costume designer for historical films or a nutritionist.  Pathways fall into one of two categories: 1) Ohmigosh, that would be SO COOL! and 2) Never in a million, trillion years.  Yes or no.  1 or 0.  Sometimes they will make a switch from one to the other, but there's never any in-between.  It's really annoying.

A big part of the problem is that I don't know that I have what it takes to be any of the above.  I never liked math, but I was good at it (not great, but above average).  I love science, but Physics tends to twist my brain and anything smaller than atomic particles blurs into an amorphous blob called "tiny."  I love artistic endeavors, and yet I have a really hard time thinking outside the box in visual media.  And now, because I've spent so much time without money, pursuing things that don't really make money, the financial realities of the pathway or project figure in with a lot more weight.  I know my limits and my needs, but my knowledge of my skills and capabilities is lacking.  My self-belief and confidence, too.  I believe I could push through most barriers to achieve my goals, and yet I don't actually *know,* and that seems a really wide gap.

I envy people who know what they want to do, even with half of the fibres in their being.  It drives me nuts when I see people who know what they love, who have passion enough and perseverance enough to follow through, and yet choose differently.  It's their right, of course, and I don't hold it against them. Their needs are not mine, nor are their priorities.  But they KNOW, and they still choose a different path.  I KNOW that I need to be a writer.  I had the passion.  I had the dedication.  I finished two (essentially three, given the length of the first) manuscripts and 3/4 of a third.  I shopped them all around year after year through rejection after rejection.  We made the decision, as a married couple, to be starving artists early in our marriage so that I could pursue my dream.  But after a while, it became clear I wasn't *quite* good enough yet.  Something was missing from my writing, so I took some time off.  Now, I'm pretty sure I know what was wrong and have already fixed it.  The problem now is that those years of near-poverty and debt accrual have caught up with us.  We borrowed a lot from our future selves, and now we ARE the future selves.  That sucks, but it was our choice.

My passion drove me onward without quite making anything happen.  And even if I had succeeded, it's not a living wage.  It's a thrice-pay system of lump sums across several years that don't go very far.  So now I have to choose something with which to make money, and I need to be passionate about it.  But because it's a second choice, I can't ever seem to actually choose.

Do I choose the project that will move me closer to getting this ONE job?  Do I choose the project that will take a whole lot longer but open the doors for more jobs?  Do I work on my writing?  My doula certification, even though I have no intention of taking births any time soon?  Do I write or read?  Learn or create?  I can't prioritize.

Hence, the swirl of unfinished, unstarted projects.

Also, if you're not sure what a procrastinating writer looks like, I give you this post. ;)

Tinkering

I'm tinkering with ideas today.  Not story ideas, though I really should be doing that, too.

I have a lot going on in my head.  A lot I need to get done, keep track of, remember, face-forward on.  So I've been tinkering with the notion of restarting my Journey of 1,000 Groans.  It helped me focus and plan, schedule and sort my time.  It helped me structure my priorities as well as my day.  I miss it.  The last time I tried to reboot, though, it didn't work.  The method wasn't conducive to my lifestyle, I guess.  I never remembered to update, and when I did, it was days late.

But...my blog dedicated to my (and a friend's) spiritual wellness journey is done.  We took it as far as we needed it.  Or rather, she did.  I'm not faulting her - if she doesn't need it because she succeeded in her goals, she doesn't need it.  But I can't keep it up without her.  That just feels empty and purposeless.  Our wellness blog was giving me a little structure.  Without it, I'm sort of drifting in a sea of too-much-to-do.  Which is where I was when I started 1000 Groans.  Seems logical to start it back up, right?  I'm worried that my original success had more to do with pregnancy hormones and nesting than anything I can now recreate.  But I still need focus and structure...

Ah well.

In other news, Jeremelon and I decided that the Berrykin and I shall remain here in California a couple more weeks.  There's no reason to go home when we'll see him for maybe two hours that should ideally be spent on naptime.  And when aaaaaaall the rest of my time will be spent either alone in space I can't even partially claim, or with his mega-stressed parents.  I like it here.  I can take the berrykin for walks here (when it's not raining).  Plus, with us here, my mom's not alone (she has family all over town, but it's not the same thing).

So, whether I restart my 1000 Groans blog or not, I'm going to use the next three weeks to really get stuff done.  I've got skills to learn and workbooks to work through; doula tasks to complete and mommy projects to structure; and of course, writing!

We'll see what that means for my blogs later.  For now, I'm off to stir the mac 'n cheese!

December!

How is it December already?  Ever since we moved, time has alternately stalled and zoomed ahead.  It feels like we haven't hit Halloween yet, and here we are, prepping for Christmas!

Today, my mom and are I going to make our traditional Danish holiday cookies, klejner.  I'll see if she has a cord to upload from her camera so I can show them off when we're done.   We have the Christmas station playing, her boyfriend brought her a tree complete with decorations and lights a couple days ago that I think we're going to finish decorating.  She's also going to remind me how to sew, so that I can make Berrykin a new pair of pjs for Christmas.  Woohoo!

I'm trying to decide if 70 degrees is too chilly to go to the beach.  Thoughts?  We don't have to go in the water.  Then again, do I really want to deal with the tar and all that sand in icky places to not go in the water?  Hmmmm...

Moisture

I'd forgotten how moisture affects things.  The berrykin and I are in California presently, visiting my momberry.  It's been raining off and on for three days now, and it's so *wet.*  Momberry doesn't really notice the humidity.  Part of my brain says this is nothing, because it remembers, viscerally, how thick the air was in Florida.  But that was warm humidity.  Here, it's cold.  It's nice!  Except that everything I touch feels wet when it's cold.  My sinuses and airways feel fuller and gunkier.  Because I shower at night and go to bed with wet hair in braids, my hair never feels dry.  On the other hand, it's also regained a lot of its body.  I don't know if that will stick around when we leave, but it's been nice for the visit.

I met my cousin's boys for the first time last night.  They're almost four and going on two, so nicely on either side of the berrykin.  Berrykin was too scared of all the people to play much until the end, and then he started petting them like they were cats.  Pretty adorably funny. :)

I wish I'd remembered to look for the camera before we made the drive.  It may be in my bag right now, but I don't think so.  When I was a kid, I never noticed how gorgeous the valley is.  In my head, there are houses then trees then sky on the horizon.  In reality, there are houses and trees, then an amazing layered backdrop of mountains and valleys and meadows.  They look amazing in almost any light.  Some days, a giant fog bank rolls off the ocean and pours over the mountains.  Maybe I never noticed because we were almost always here in summer, when everything's a single yellow-brown color.  This time of year (which feels a lot like Colorado October), the trees are turning and the grass is green.  GORGEOUS.  I really wish I had my camera!

It's difficult to drive here, though.  I have no sense of direction, no matter how hard I try to create one.  I simply have to drive something often enough that I know where I'm going.  Even when I've lived somewhere for years, the exact location of things often escapes me if I have to give other people directions.  Here, I have years of childhood romping memories of town and beyond.  I remember stores that haven't been around since I was in the single digits.  So rather than building a driving map from scratch, I'm building it from a smattering of remembered places.  Here's the Little Mermaid fountain, there's the church; this bakery is here, the chocolate shop is there; that used to be the bookstore where Chazberry sought out new comics practically every day one summer trip.  The candy story is somewhere new.  The shell shop is gone.  And because we only ever walked into town from one street, everything is oriented to that street, and nothing is connected.  Tricky, tricky, tricky.  But it's kind of fun figuring it all out!

Berrykin has been walking to town with me almost every day, when we meet my momberry on her break.  He does really well.  I had to buy an umbrella stroller, though, because there are WAY too many hills to carry him up when he gets tired.  My back hurt so badly for the first few days!  I was hoping to make it to the beach, too, but there's no chance with all this rain.  Maybe next week, before we leave.  It's a little chilly, though, so we'll have to wait and see.  I might take him up to the falls, instead, to see what it looks like without the yearly summer drought in play.

I was hoping to get more done while we were here, but...well, I suppose if the only things I accomplish  are resting and shifting my sleep schedule to get up with the berrykin, that will be enough. :)

Writing Challenge

Agent Nephele Tempest (she of the awesome name) has challenged writers for the month of December.  Write something every day.  Doesn't matter what it is, just a little something.  Like strength training, she challenges us to set the habit so that we keep the blood flowing.  Since December is possibly the hardest month in a year to keep up a habit with everything going on, it should be a good challenge at making time.

I have experienced myself how much better my writing becomes, and how much easier it is to begin each session, when I write every day.  Waaaay back when I was working on Bloodstones, I wrote every day.  Every day, I made progress.  The words flowed.  My brain didn't have to work hard to get into the write mindset.  I always knew what I was doing with the story.  Essentially, writing every day slots the story to a back burner that's always lit.  Even when I'm not actively thinking about the story, it's there, waiting for another look.  Working out the problems.  Coming up with nifty changes.  The story flows...most of the time.   Best yet, writing every day makes me eager to get to the keys the next day.  (An effect that's quadrupled if I'm writing the climax of a book - on GO, I managed a 9000-word day to get all the action and fun in and experienced.  That's 9-ish hours.  I really wanted to get to 10,000, but I was exhausted.  Creativity is hard work!)

I need to rebuild the habit.  I want to make time.  The berrykin and I are desperate for a set schedule, and carving out writing time is easiest with a schedule.  Handily, setting a schedule is easier when one has specific things they need to do in a day.

For the month of December, I'm going to be posting something every day.  Fun family stuff here, writing stuff on my writing blog (check Facebook if you want the address), projects and daily chore stuff over at the BP House.  For those with access, I might also be using FLOWE and SparkPeople.  At least one post every morning while I'm trying to wake up to Thomas and Friends.

In addition to blogging, I'll also be writing a little something by hand each day.  I might take the opportunity to start up The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron again.  More likely, I'll just do some jottings to clear my head or deepen an idea.

And of course, I'll work.  This Secret Project of mine won't write itself!

Nap Hell, Part 2

I think, after writing another long, agonized blog post about how much I hate naptime, I figured out what's going wrong in the whole process.  If I'm right, two very important things are making naptime impossible before we even start.  They have nothing to do with Berrykin.  They have to do with Mommy and Daddy being too tired to pay attention.  Tomorrow, I'm going to try something different.  I'll report back if it succeeds.

Nap Hell

Life has gotten so complicated, and yet simultaneously so empty.  The fear that Jeremelon's new job wouldn't end up giving him the overtime we were hoping for is gone.  He's on track to working every day between Thanksgiving and Christmas, which will be nice for paying off the debt collectors that have started swarming again.  Amazon has a warehouse in the area, so I'm looking into working there for the holidays.  They pay well.  I'm hoping to get to gift wrap all day.  That was always one of my very favorite holiday things.  I was good at it and never complained, so both of my parents often "let" me wrap up all the presents...except my own, of course.  So I got to see what everybody else was getting before they did.  And call me a weirdy Virgo if you want, but I actually enjoy wrapping gifts.  So to get paid for it would be a nice thing, indeed!  And a paycheck, even for six weeks, would be most helpful.  I'll never get to see the Jeremelon, but there's a good chance I wouldn't see him, anyway. Besides, I either get a job, or go visit my mom in California.

Today, I spent two and a half hours fighting the Berrykin over naptime.  Not fighting, really.  He's stopped fighting.  Now, he wants the alone time.  He likes it.  So he'll sit on his bed and pretend to talk on the phone that is his hand.  Or he'll make a game of throwing all the covers and pillows on the floor and then getting down and putting them back up so he can do it again.  Or he jumps off the bed.  Or he sits in front of the mirrored closet door but under the blanket we have hanging over it, talking at himself.  Or he'll sit in there and read.  Anything except nap.  So I do nothing for two and a half hours but tell him to get back in bed.  And listen for when he's out of bed.  And heft him back there when he won't go for himself.  It doesn't sound exhausting, and yet it so is.  Some days he doesn't nap.  Today, I finally got him to sleep.  And now I'm so braindead, I don't want to do anything.  Add to that my problem with going to bed myself at a decent hour because I finally have the apartment to myself and I can just sit and enjoy the calm, and I feel like I never wake up.

I decided to watch Grey's Anatomy over from the beginning again.  Jeremelon keeps saying, "I think it's strange you like that show so much."  Except I don't.  Not really.  It's silly.  But it reminds me of my sister, and I miss her.  I miss the hours we spent while I was pregnant when she finally got me to watch it with her.  Except it's also a really tense show.  Stressful, especially if you stop for the night in the middle of a multi-episode story arc.  I also watched it in the hospital while suffering from my post-cesarean uterine infection.  I didn't realize how much it was triggering my PTSD stress until just now, but I can't listen to the intro song without freaking out on a visceral level.  I'm thinking it must be combining with the household stress plus the financial worries plus the future uncertainties plus the braindeadedness plus the lack of good sleep in a very bad way.  I had a panic attack the night before last that was worse than any I have had since before Berrykin.  Since I had to take drugs to get over them.  It was bad.  They feed on themselves, too.  So I had the initial horror time wherein I was convinced I was having a heart attack and on my way to dying (literally, without sarcasm, because that's what true medical panic attacks do).  Then, knowing that I had a panic attack, part of my brain is always on the lookout for symptoms that might signal a panic attack is imminent.  Except that watching for symptoms will often *cause* symptoms.  I had them for long enough and got good enough (with Jeremelon's help) to know how to deal with them now, thankfully.  Last night was better.  I didn't have to wake Jeremelon up to rub my back for an hour until I could fall back asleep so I could be sure I wouldn't die since he was there to pay attention.  It wasn't easy falling asleep last night, but it happened without major incident.

Ah, the stress.  Really, the best way to manage panic attacks is to either reduce the causative stress or increase positive processing/release.  Since most of my causative stress is outside my control, that leaves me with improving my release and processing mechanisms.  I spent some of my writing money for the first time.  (I love being able to say I have money made from writing to spend!)  It's a secret what I spent it on, at least for now, and I'm hoping I get to use it soon.  It's something I can do outside the house, on my own, and get back in my body, out of my head, and hopefully burn off some of the stress.  (And pounds.  I would love to burn off the pounds, too...)  I've also officially banned myself from caffeine until I'm in a better place emotionally.  Caffeine is killer for panic attacks.  Once I start using what I bought, I will also be swearing off sugar again until the end of the year.  I'd do it now, but the hormones are making everything so much worse!  I think my thyroid might be going through a stress cycle right now (also adds to panic attacks), whether it's growing new lumps or swelling or what - I don't know what it's doing, but I know it's sore, and I know I'm extra cranky, hot, and my heart rate is up, all of which can be caused by a hyperthyroid phase.  Which hopefully means that if I exercise now, I can take advantage of a crappy situation to burn more calories doing the same amount of work...hopefully...

Anybody have good comedies or fun, less-tense dramatic shows they enjoy?  Things I can watch a lot of on Netflix.  I have a LOT of time to kill, and not a lot of brain cells to use for it...

Voting

What is the point of allowing a mail-in ballot request to a certain date if the voter won't receive the ballot in time to mail it back?

Now, rather than feeling good about voting today, I'm angry that I don't get to exercise my right to vote.  I'm sad.  I feel like a bad citizen.  I don't really care that I'm not voting for a president, because my vote was going to be about not voting for one man to shift the tide, rather than voting to elect one of them.  It would be easy to say I didn't vote because of that, because I don't feel it's right to elect the lesser of two unpleasant choices, because I don't feel it is.  Electing a president should be about supporting a candidate who represents my hopes and dreams and needs and requirements for my life and country and conscience.  But voting isn't just about which man sits in the oval office, it's also about the issues of my state.  About my schools and the use of my taxes.  It's about civil liberties.  It's about the future as much as the present.  And it's about exercising my voice, because my foremothers fought, body, mind, and soul, to ensure that I had the same right to self-government as my brothers, not even a hundred years ago; because my more-distant forefathers fought, body, mind, and soul, to give generations forward the ability to vote for their own good.

So thank you, to those who voted.  Even if you voted differently than I would have.  Even if you make changes, or don't, that make me angry.  Showing up is important.  I'm sorry I let my life troubles get in the way of joining you.

End of October

How is it Halloween tomorrow??  We were thinking about carving pumpkins, but it didn't happen.  Carving is a bittersweet thing for me.  I think I've only done it once, maybe twice since my grandfather died eleven years ago.  It was so much a tradition attached to him, I couldn't bring myself to override the memories with new ones.  I will happily do so when the berrykin is bigger, but...it's still going to be hard.  Just thinking about it makes me want to cry.  I miss my grandfather.  Halloween must be why I dreamt about my grandparents the other night.  They're on my mind, even when I don't realize it.

Halloween is also making me feel like an inadequate mommy.  This is Berrykin's third Halloween.  I put him in a Halloween footie the the first year, and last year did nothing.  This year, also nothing.  I was hoping to make him a costume, but then we moved.  My momberry considered making one for him, but other aspects of her life got in the way.  Fabric can be pretty expensive, too, so I'm not upset with her.  I'm just sad that I've failed to do more for him.  I know he doesn't know the difference, and that next year will be the time to start traditions, but I still feel like I'm not doing enough.  It's really more a matter of "keeping up with the Joneses" than it is about how I feel and what I want to do, and I think that bugs me more than the rest of it.

Other things...

That secret thing we were waiting for finally gave us an answer, and it wasn't the one we wanted.  Jeremelon was waiting to hear on a job.  He had two interviews, and was essentially perfect for it.  My guess is, they went with someone who had actual theatre experience, rather than *movie* theatre experience.  It's a pretty massive bummer.  I really thought he'd get it.  Intuition pointed that way.  Which means there's something that hasn't happened yet to come out of it or take away from it.  Don't know what that'll be...if I did, I could call my intuition seeing the future. :)

I don't have the faintest idea what we'll do now, instead.  He has the job he started a few days ago, but it's apparently a very slow year and they're not sure how much work they'll have for him.  He probably won't have a job after the start of the new year, and that's so not what we were aiming for.  I still can't get an interview.  I don't know where else to look or what else to try.  Really, I'd like to learn new skills and enter a different career track.  But what should that be?  I can't even tell where interest becomes a more solid thing than "passing" anymore.  I'd made plans, knew what I was doing, but now that the hoped for outcome fell through, none of them seem viable anymore.

It's been a really sucky three days, all things told.

And now I'm going to go sulk so I can get all this frustration out.  Then, hopefully, I'll have a clear enough head to figure out better options.

In Lieu of Facebook

Apparently not using Facebook means that I have a lot that still needs saying, and ends in more blog posts.  I'm okay with that. :)

Right now, my brain is full of money.  Unlike usual, it's not filled with how to make money, but with how much things cost.  Like the new collection of shoes I hope to buy, but will probably remain a set of two for quite some time yet.  And aaaaaaaaall the work that goes into launching this writing project of mine.  It costs money, too, if I want it to be professional (and why wouldn't I?).  It's not a ton of money, but it's enough to give me pause.  Not pause enough to stop, just to figure out exactly what I want to do.  I was excited and confident, until Jeremelon started compiling all the people who'd spend money on it just because we're related.  Now I have nervousness.  A bunch of strangers thinking my work isn't up to snuff, no problem.  People I know whose opinions matter to me personally?  Eeee.

I wonder if I know anybody with mad English grammar skills...that would cut costs dramatically.

So much work ahead of me!  So worth it, though.  I don't care if it doesn't make much of an income, at least in the beginning.  It's so new and exciting and awesome, and I'm so thrilled to be moving forward and doing something for me that nothing else matters.  Right now, anyway.  I'm sure I'll feel differently later. :)

For now, I have to go do something else, so that I can work off all this excitement and eventually go to bed.  (Or maybe not.  It was a bad, bad, bad, bad Berrykin day...)

Writing Amusement

Every so often, I seriously amuse myself while writing.

I never posted this on Facebook, but I'm happy to post it here.  If you'd like to see what amused me, go to CaptainKYSO this Monday and Tuesday.  A new shirt every day!  Next week, all the stories that go along with them are mine.  Enjoy!  :D

And if you feel like it, buy a shirt.  It helps pay me!

Do Not Move Across State Lines...

...the month before a presidential election.  Especially if it's not necessarily a permanent thing.  And if you might be wanting to maintain in-state tuition or other benefits in the state you're leaving.  It makes figuring out how to vote a tricky thing.

Because honestly, the move is such a big drain on the mental capacities, there's a solid chance you won't remember you need to get your voter registration figured out.  Where is my residence if I have yet to apply for a new license?  If I haven't paid any taxes in my new state, but did for 90% of the year in the old one?  Should I really be voting in a state with entirely different needs and issues that I know absolutely nothing about, or will my conscience have issues with it?

Seriously.  Do yourself a favor.  If you're moving to another state, do it after you vote.  Or at least have a better long-term plan than, "Uhhhh...survive?" when you show up.

And It Continues...

This waiting is going to kill us.  One of us.  I'm not sure who it's going to be.  We're waiting to hear on a job for Jeremelon.  It shouldn't be so hard to wait for three days.  But when it's one day, then two, then three, and still nothing...well, let's just say that everybody's on edge.  I keep making random plans to run away to California to visit my mom, then remembering I have to wait until Jeremelon starts his job and, you know, makes some money.  Then I'm just right back to the beginning.

Argh!

And now I have to go write for money.  Yay!

Random To-Do

Things Cluttering Up My Brain:

- 6 freelance pieces, due Thursday before bed.
- Keep going with TdC.
- Research ebooks.
- Practice (and practice and practice and practice) patience.
- Get back to the doula stuff!
     - Write up 1st birth
     - Read another book
     - Complete paper
     - Research area hospitals
- Restart potty training.
- Wash linens.
- Make brown sugar & garlic chicken.
- Plot a pair of novellas for NaNo?  Maybe?
- Call bank to finish opening account.
- Work on application.
- Go bye-bye on Facebook.
- Figure out new schedule when schedule is possible.
- Make a menu for the three of us for four days.
- Keep up stretching & strengthening hips.

Waiting...

We were hoping to hear news today.  No news arrived.

And so we wait.  I honestly don't mind waiting in this case.  It's big enough to warrant it. :)

However, what an exercise in patience doesn't do is open other doors.  It provides time to explore those already open, I suppose, but these are the same doors I've had around for years.  The ones I want to explore are the ones I don't know about.

Perhaps that sounds like ambiguous gobblety-gook.  I'm currently in a writer's phase of "nothing I write comes across clearly and succinctly!  Argh!"  Normally, it's because I've gotten rusty.  Not my skills, my...mmm...channels?  The way writing works for me, if I don't use it, the imagination pipes get all dirty and corroded.  It makes what flows through them less than pristine.  The pipes just need use to clean themselves up, thankfully.  So I just need to keep at it.  You know, once I figure out what's wrong with the story and don't despise it so much.

In other news, Berrykin has gone through a huge growth spurt.  His whininess went unnoticed as part of the move, but none of his pants fit very well anymore.  He was sitting on the floor facing me earlier, doing a puzzle with his legs stretched out to the sides.  I glanced up, and his legs looked sooooo loooooong!  They no longer look like baby legs.  Now, they look like kid legs.  My baby's getting so big. ::sniffle::

He's now used to sleeping here, thankfully.  We no longer have to lie beside him until he's all played out and ready to sleep.  I sat with him for about five minutes tonight, and then left, and he didn't make a peep of protest.  Whew!!  Now if only naptime would be as smooth...

The Weekend Writer

Yes, indeed.  It looks as if my weekend is currently Friday and Saturday, as that's when stuff happens around the home and I don't end up with a chance to write.  Well, blog.  Saturday is shaping up to be a very fine writing day!

I didn't actually write yesterday.  I did, however, get a great deal of plotting done on a project I've had swirling around my intention and imagination wheels for a year and a half.  I have very high hopes as well as a great deal of excitement about it!  No sharing yet.  I need to keep it to myself.  But I shall be calling for beta readers when they're needed.  It's sci-fi, and it's somewhat ambitious, really, but I like a challenge. :)  I surprised myself with my own creativity yesterday; that's always such a wonderful feeling.  The rest of this week will be given over to my "work" writing.  That's a great deal more difficult.

Camerpillar reminded me the other day, though not on purpose, that "crap" is a necessary part of the creation process.  Not only does it serve as a helpful point of clarification (the brain saying, "Wow, this part REALLY needs help!"), but it also means there are words on the page.  That creation is actively HAPPENING, rather than just being imagined.  I might feel like everything I wrote last weekend is so utterly lackluster, slugs could write a better scene even without appendages (and oh, I so do!).  Yet I spent three hours doing this thing I love so much, and I had fun doing it, and it woke up my brain, and, the best part, I put words down.  I made the story move someplace.  I may have to chuck the lot and try again, but I have a better idea of where I'm going.  As much as the actual words on the page and the sentences they create might make me cringe, the session provided a perfect plot point that I hadn't considered before.  THAT is the beauty of writing.  No matter how well one imagines ahead of time (unless a writer has a very specific, detailed, linear, plot-driven, outline-organized mind, and some do; these sort can actually write such detailed outlines ahead of time, they actually write half the story without ever doing "real" writing as the rest of us might define it), there is no substitution for the act of writing.  It can create unexpected twists.  A character might spout a line that is so perfect for the scene, so defining for the character, it becomes a central point for the rest of the book.  Or, in this case, a character might find themselves a little tired, and then accidentally discover they've been slipped a mickey, instead.  I never intended to drug him; it just happened.  Those are my favorite moments of writing.

So even though I was having a tremendously bad week as far as self-belief and writerly confidence goes, it ended well.  I've been reminded of the old post-it I used to have next to my computer that said, "1. You cannot fix a blank page.  2. Write crap; crap can be fixed."  I loved that post-it.  Also, my brother reminded me that fear of screwing something up, of not being good enough at one's art to ever be recognized or validated, is actually a good thing if it happens while making art.  It means I'm invested in what I'm doing, that it means something to me, way down deep where I generally find things too gooey to tread.  That fear is born out of passion, hope, and dreams I'm in the process of fighting to achieve.  Also, it'll be productive later one, because that fear will help me ensure that what I put out there into the world is the best I can make it right now.

And so I pass the lesson on to whatever readers might be out there.  Embrace the fear.  Embrace the awful, horrid attempts at creating something you care about.  Because they're good for us.  The crap is a stepping stone to something better.  We can work with awful and horrid, but there's not a thing we can do with a blank page, or canvass, or staff, or pottery wheel, or formula.

Writing, Writing, Writing

NaNoWriMo starts exactly two weeks from today!  I don't typically get really involved.  I want to every year, but I can never keep up the pace.  However, it does make me rethink my career goals and focus on what I want to work on.

This year, I already know what I'm working on.  I don't have much else to do except write and play with the berrykin.  So maybe I can manage to actually put a thorough effort into the crazy challenge of 50k in 30 days.  We'll see.  If I do try, I won't be posting about it.

In fact, I think perhaps I will take my writing efforts off the grid for a while.  I'm even going to stop reading industry blogs, which is even harder.  Some of them have been daily reads for six or seven YEARS.  Right now, though, they only remind me of what I'm not doing, and not in a good way.

So!  Here's my current plan.  It isn't in any way set in stone, and it's not thoroughly plotted.  What I do know is that I'm going to disconnect from social media.  I'm barely on as it is now, and I've stopped posting status updates and the like.  I WILL continue blogging here about life and the berrykin, that way anyone interested enough to read it can come and keep tabs on us.  I don't know how many people will - this election year has driven people away from Facebook, I think, what with all the political garbage spewing everywhere.  Maybe they'll come back in a month.  Maybe they'll be more like me, and enjoy the lack of frustration.

Otherwise, I have six freelance pieces to get done in the next week, and then I move on to writing, writing, writing!  

Mostly Quiet on the Southwestern Front

Today has been quiet.

In my head.

Outside my head, it was a day filled with zany energy.  The berrykin bounced off the walls all afternoon, then napped, then woke up cranky and tantrumy.  When we finally got him calmed down from that, he babbled like a babbling thing.  I don't know that he stopped making noise for a two-hour stretch!  I really wish I knew what he was saying.  It's terribly adorable, his toddler language, but it would be fascinating to know what all he has to say.

Alas, my two-year-old still barely says more than a couple English words every day.

Part of me is concerned.  It listens to other kids his age talk using partial sentences and worries about why he doesn't.  The rest of me says that logically, it makes sense that he doesn't talk.  I don't talk a lot. I talk to him more than I talk to anyone, and I still don't talk a lot to him.  Jeremelon talks more than I do to him, but still doesn't talk a whole lot otherwise.  It's usually just one adult and the berrykin all day.  He has no siblings to talk to.  What few needs he has presently, he makes known with gestures.  Wet diaper?  He pats it or pulls on his shirt.  Want to play in that room instead of this one?  He grabs my hand forcefully and drags me in there.  For milk, he uses the sign for "more."  For food, he hands me his bowl.  If he wants to watch something, he turns it on by himself.  Two nights ago, completely out of the blue, he used the sign for "bath" because he wanted to get ready and go to bed. What does he need words for??

Plus, Jeremelon apparently didn't talk hardly at all until he was five.  Unknown languages abound in the kids up and down my family tree.  It's normal for us, I guess.  I know he understands most of what we say.  Just the other day, he was playing with some wall decor instead of napping.  I told him not to touch it.  He stopped.  Then he picked up his stuffed animal and used that to touch it, instead.  I told him not to play with the grandfather clock in the living room by referring to it as "that."  He took "that" to mean the particular pendulum he had his fingers on, so he moved on to play with a different pendulum.  He gets it.  He's got smarts.  He just doesn't talk.

He will, however, read books.  He finds it great fun to read to himself, and I really need to film it one of these days.  Because it's The Most Adorable Thing Evar.  He'll sit there for ten minutes going through pages and rattling off his own words in ways that perfectly mimic the way we read to him.  His tone rises and falls.  He pauses to turn the page.  He takes breath where he would need them.  And he "talks" so fast!

I try really hard not to be a worrier about this.  We had an appointment scheduled with speech therapists for an evaluation, and I backed out because I didn't think he needed it.  But...part of me still worries.

Ah, to be a mommy! :D

Settling In

I'm trying, somewhat desperately (which should really be counterproductive, now I think on it), to find an even keel this morning.  Not with the day - it's been fine so far.  An even keel is essential for not imploding in this current environment of mine, of a sort that spans all of what it is to be me here.  That sounds overly dramatic.  :P  What I mean is that all this stress and the compound interest it creates, combined with the massive energy drain that is the MIL (she can't help it, but there it is), leaves very little room for calm.  As calm seems to be necessary to organized thought, and as I need organized thought by the barrel right now, it seems a good idea to try to calm the heck down.

I started today with a 20-minute relaxation meditation.  It ended up morphing into a visual relaxation exploration.  I'm okay with that.  Meditation is, by my definition, more for seeking guidance and answers and information.  For finding inner peace and growing as a person.  For all that I want and need those things, I realized about a minute into it that there can be no meditation with all the tension I'm carrying.  I feel like a taut wire, full of electricity, vibrating with the strain of staying still.  I need to...er...not be that.  I need to be a limp noodle in order to properly meditate, if such a state is possible for me.  It is for others, but...yeah.  I've never been able to manage it.  Maybe I just need a good massage?

Anyway, that's what my next week or so is going to be devoted to.  We're playing a waiting game this week, possibly through to the beginning of next.  That's a perfect time to find that even keel so that I can apply a sturdy rudder to the raging river of life.  (What fun! :D)

My relaxation visualization showed me that A) my body is desperate for good, productive use.  It went through about two weeks of *hard* use, and now it's stiff and sore and achy.  My muscles need to be exercised cleanly.  (Not only for my body, but exercise is also my primary way to expel tension, so there's that, too.)  And B) I need to work on self-belief.  That's really more of a meditation byproduct usually, but I realized just how much of this tension is from the fear of screwing up.  I really need to boost my faith in my own legitimacy, and my own abilities.

My ultimate goal is to find direction for myself, here in this new life space.  It's driving me crazy not having one.  So I suppose perhaps I should make my direction, for the moment, one of finding calm and self-belief again.  I can't work on anything else until I have a least a modicum of that, so I suppose that works...

Doctors and Decoys

There are only two things on my mind this morning.

1. I need to leave the apartment at some point so that I can call my endocrinologist.  We get no signal inside the complex, and there are spots in town where we get no service.  It's frustrating.  Especially when I've forgotten I made a six-month recheck appointment to have a look at my thyroid.  Oops.  I'd get it checked next month when I hope to be back in CO, except we no longer have insurance while the Jeremelon is between jobs.  Durrr.  I'm not worried that my thyroid is getting worse.  I've accepted that it's going to grow and shrink nodules for the rest of my life.  Even though it feels worse than usual right now, that might just be stress.  Still, I have to go out into the low 90-degree weather just to make a phone call to cancel an appointment I forgot I have.  Irritating.

2. Jeremelon has somewhere to be in two hours.  It's a great deal more important.  Of course, because I don't want to jinx it, I don't want to say what it is!  I'm not really superstitious, but it always seems that as soon as I comment on something big and important that would mean really good things for us, it falls apart.  So I'm being cautious, not superstitious. ;)  Hopefully I will be able to comment later this week.

Other than that, it's been a morning of trying in vain to get the berrykin to eat.  His gums are too painful right now for him to want anything more than milk, though.  According to his shorts, he's also gone through a big growth spurt that went unnoticed during the move.  Those three things completely explain this morning's pilliness that has him pulling everything out of whatever drawer, box, or pile he can find, and then whining at me when I make him put it back.

Flubbed Already

So much for actually managing to post every day!  We'll pretend I took a weekend break...hrmph.

Actually, I have a legitimate reason for the misstep.  The Berrykin is cutting his last two molars.  That plus the move is making him a crazy hyper monster.  AND I took a writing day yesterday.  Jeremelon is going to try to make it a weekly thing, that every Saturday they all go run errands for three to five hours and leave me to write.  Works for me!  I got 3300 words done.  My short story is now just over 8k words long.  Not sure how much longer it's going to be...that'll depend on what all I decide to do with it.  I was hoping to make it a novellette, maybe a novella, but I don't know that that will happen.  Unless I add a subplot, which seems kind of silly.  It'll need a lot of reworking in edits, anyway, because I always get overly verbose of narration when I pick things back up again.  It means lots of cuts later and probably extra scenes to take up the space previously used by extraneous exposition (say that three times fast).

I started playing Guild Wars 2 this weekend, as well, so I'm sure some of my blogging time went into it.  I probably wouldn't play except that it allows me to hang out with my sister, albeit virtually.  And all the connections I hear about in the writing world made in WoW and City of Heroes and other MMORPGs suggests that for internet networking, a good MMO guild can't be beat.  Which gives me a happy glow of geek-joy. :)

Goals for this coming week:
- Write 7,000 words, preferably to the completion of Colony #3.
- Figure out some way of exercising so my body will stop hurting all the blasted time.
- Work up a better bedtime routine so Berrykin doesn't fight so hard.
- Track food every day this week.
- Finish setting up the bedroom.
- Get freelance work x3 done.

Roller Coasters

I really wish this post were about Castle 'n Coasters, a fun park here in Phoenix.  We went once when I was pregnant to play mini-golf.  I had seriously messed up depth perception because of all the fluid retention, but I still managed to beat the socks off Jeremelon.  I love putt-putt.  My grandparents used to take Chazberry and I when we were little, and because golfing was important to them, we learned how to putt properly.  We also learned how to take it seriously while still having fun (or at least I did!).

But this post isn't about amusement parks.  This post is about emotional roller coasters.  Really, I probably shouldn't call them roller coasters.  They're more like emotional log rides.  There have been few emotional highs to quantify the lows.  There's no up and down, no elation and depression.  Nope.  My life has lately been like a gentle winding up, a building of tension instead of joy.  The cart of my life spirals slowly up a freakish mountain of perils, and all the while I the stress grows and grows and grows because not only has a terrifying yeti jumped out of the darkness to try to maul me, but I know that once my energy and momentum and carefully meted control wears out, the only way off the ride is to fall all the way back down.  I know that frightening drop with no emotional parachute or brakes or gentle return to baseline is coming, and some part of my brain is always aware of it.

And here we are, falling, falling, falling.  The fear precipitating the fall has disappeared, and now all I have left is exhaustion and the desperate hope that the Designers That Be knew what they were doing and my emotional cart of life won't explode in a million fiery pieces on impact.  Except this time, I don't think there's any way I can escape that sort of end point.  This time, I know it's going to be messy.  I know there's going to be a long, agonizing period of clean-up before I can even think about rebuilding.

All I can do now is practice my Zen arts.  And maybe figure out a way to apply that invaluable lesson I learned about putt-putt so long ago, and learn to have a little fun even while my emotional self is exploding (something which, by nature, needs must be taken seriously, as do the expressions of it, as I don't want to be a horrific houseguest).

Oh, and don't think I've missed the symbolism of my new city converging with my life status.  The Designers have a great sense of humor.

Something New

I want to try something new.  Well, something old remade new, I guess.  I used to be a much more faithful blogger...then came Facebook!  But I don't like Facebook.  Its new algorithms mean I don't know whose updates I'm missing, and that irritates me to no end.  So I will be posting updates here for a while.  In fact, I'm going to try to post once a day for a month!  It may just be a to-do list, or an updated to-do list, but I'm hoping it gives me a little sanity retention.

So, the big news is that we moved to Phoenix.  We just didn't have enough money coming in to survive.  It didn't matter how well I managed our money, or how much I pared down the budget.  There just wasn't enough money.  Because my shoddy, spastic job history mixes badly with a flooded job-hunter market, I couldn't get a job.  A friend of mine DID get me my first paid writing gig (WOOHOO!), but it doesn't pay much.  It looks good on a resume, though, so it absolutely does its work for me. :)  Still, not enough money is not enough money.  We are so far behind financially, we had no way of ever getting ahead in our circumstances.  So we moved in with the in-laws.

Phoenix is HOT.  The first day we were here, it was 100 degrees.  The forecast promises that we're going to settle in closer to 90 for a bit.  In October.  That just strikes me as wrong.  But!  For all that it's hot, and for all that the in-laws don't run their AC (the MIL has juvenile-onset arthritis, and she's gotta be close to 1/4 synthetic material at this point, so the cold is hard on her), the concept of not having to pay rent is a huge relief.  I applied for a job at the school I desperately wanted to go to several years ago but couldn't pay for, and I had really high hopes I'd get it.  No such luck, though.  So far, I don't really like the area.  I DO really like Tempe, though, which is sort of like a bigger, more culturally-oriented DTC.  One of ASU's campuses is there, which means it's also full of everything, as a good college town should be. :)  They have a lot of volunteer archaeology work here, too, so if things go one way, I hope to do that a couple days a week.  Then, even though I never got a field school under my belt, I may still be able to get a job doing lab work.  Field work might not be conducive to family life, but lab work certainly is!

The berrykin is getting huge.  He's super skinny and getting taller all the time.  In the last couple of days, his favorite game has become "Stick my finger in my nose."  He finds it hysterical.  His bottomless pit of a tummy has given way to the typical toddler pickiness, so he eats like a bird.  I have to train his plum-pa not to give him milk whenever he asks for it - he fills up on milk all day and never eats anything.  Boo!  I'm hoping today marks the beginning of a new routine for us.  I've decided to see how long Berrykin and I can share a bed before I go crazy.  One, because I enjoy it.  I get cuddle time while he's sleeping, and that's tremendously helpful for my feelings of stress and overwhelming out-of-place-ness.  It's hard on my back and pelvis, though.  Of course, now he probably won't ever sleep alone again, but we'll deal with that problem when it's actually a problem. :)  Jeremelon has been letting me sleep in, too, but today I got up when Berrykin did and let Jeremelon sleep.  I've been exhausted enough to go to bed at midnight since we got here, which is pretty early for me.  Getting up at 7 isn't nearly so painful this way.  Anyway, I'm hoping this can be our new routine, because we have the house to ourselves in the mornings.  I'm not so sure what to do yet, but I'm sure that will change.  This way, too, I can trade with Jeremelon.  This way, I can spend the morning with the toddler and Jeremelon can take evenings, when I'm more likely to write.

On the writing front, I'm working on a new book.  Working title: Aurora Hesperialis.  It will NOT end up being named that, but I shall be referring to it as AH until I pick a new title.  I've also been futzing with a short story project for a year and a half.  The first story I rushed through to use as a final project for my Women's Spirituality class.  I need to go back and actually write it the way I want it to be.  I also started a second story over the summer, and I want to finish it.  Ideally, I want 13 - 14 stories.  It may stop at 3 - 4 for its original intention, which is to introduce/gain readers to a universe that I'll be writing novels in later.  My intention is to launch them as ebooks to gain extra income without having to go through the lengthy traditional publishing process.  But!  To do that, I need to write at least three novels before they're up for sale.  Or maybe I'll make them novellas...I dunno!  First, I want the shorts done.

And now Berrykin is telling me he needs a new diaper (we're starting up potty training again when we're more settled).  He doesn't say much, but he makes himself very clear most of the time anyway. :)

Until tomorrow!

At Long Last...

I just sent off my last paper for my correspondence class.  Which means I have officially completed my work for my Bachelor's degree in Anthropology.  Since the paper was two days later than I'd hoped to have it sent, I'm still riding the tide of "holy procrastinating rush, Batman!"  I'm sure it will sink in soon, though. :)

I started my degree in Creative Writing in the fall of 1999.  I so didn't want to be there.  I wasn't ready to make so many changes all at once, and I knew my social skills needed more time to grow.  In an emotional whirligig (reflecting back upon which now, I see that had a lot more to do with my grandfather's cancer diagnosis and my parents' arrival at the final descent into divorce than anything going on in my life directly), I left English and CSU behind permanently in January of 2001.  I chose to work instead.  Had I not, I never would have gotten to know the Jeremelon, never dated him, married, and had all the adventures, good and bad, that brought us the Berrykin and to where we are right now.  Still, I didn't leave school behind.  I wanted a degree, and I was determined to get one...I just realized it was going to have to be on terms that would work for *me,* as an individual.

I enrolled in classes at the Metropolitan State College of Denver, assuring myself (ironically, it turns out) that this would not be the school listed on my diploma.  I was only there to fulfill some of my general requirements and boost my GPA before moving on to a better school.  That endeavor was moderately successful.  It was much better for improving my outlook on my own abilities.  I registered to begin classes at a school in Pennsylvania, but after a trip to find housing with my mother sent up warning signals in my brain, I withdrew without ever going back.  Instead, I moved to Albuquerque to pursue Anthropology at the University of New Mexico in January of 2003.  I liked Albuquerque.  It was new.  It was different.  Best of all, it was mine.  And, okay, it was also close enough to home that I could come visit on weekends if I got homesick but far enough away that I felt detached from my family and on my own.

A year later, I was told by an authority I trusted that the career I intended to pursue was likely to be defunct by 2013 (he was wrong, by the way, but I had no way of knowing that).  Plus, when Jeremelon and I got married at the end of 2004, I realized that the lifestyle we intended - which required at least one of us to be away from home for extended periods of time - wasn't conducive to raising the family I so dearly wanted.  We took a year to make plans and decisions, and then we moved to Florida, my degree only half-finished, so that Jeremelon could pursue his film dreams while I figured out what I wanted to do.

In the fall of 2003, I had also officially begun my journey toward becoming a professional writer.  I joined professional organizations and gobbled up all the business, industry, and creative information I could find.  I also started writing what was to become my first completed novel.  Upon arriving in Florida in the summer of 2006, I decided that this, having been my "dream" career since high school, should become my focus.  Jeremelon agreed that I should have time to pursue it, and we elected to become a starving-artist couple, free and willingly.  Florida and I didn't agree with each other, unfortunately, and I came home for an extended visit only a year later.  During that time, I got a job and made plans.  I got accepted to CU, and began the process of transferring.  This period of time was very tightly wrapped up in my marriage and various troubles we were having.  I had two paths in front of me.  I chose the one that took me back to Florida.  I attended Jeremelon's school, now Full Sail University, with the intentions of receiving a degree in interactive art that would, hopefully, lead to a design career that meshed well with Jeremelon's plans.

That path soon led us to California.  We landed there, green and eager, in the midst of the writer's strike of 2008 and the downturn in the economy overall.  Realizing our monumentally bad timing (not to mention how poorly the planning we had done was actually going to work, given that we were living entirely at the whim of his parents and grandparents), we left all of our belongings in Jeremelon's grandparents' garage (not having the money to transport it again) and moved in with my mom.  That not working so well either, we took the room generously offered by some friends and began piecing together a somewhat desperate present in the hopes of surviving to make a more solid future.  While there, I enrolled in the University of Advancing Technology's distance program in Game Design.  I was hugely enthusiastic about their Artificial Life program, and we made plans to move to Phoenix to follow that excitement.  Fortunately (and with regret), a paperwork error on the school's side led me to investigate more fully the overwhelming situation with our student debt.  I immediately withdrew and went back to the drawing board.

2008 was a very, very hard year.

(To be continued...)

Procrastination Prevails

I'm supposed to be doing homework.  But I'm so totally not doing it.  I made the decision not to nap while the Berrykin napped, in the hopes of fixing my bedtime schedule (going to bed at 5am just doesn't work with a toddler who gets up three hours later, even with a helpful Jeremelon who gets up with him).  I was supposed to do homework rather than sleep, 'cause I anticipate being too darn sleepy to get it done after he goes to bed.

Instead, I have so far accomplished the following today:
- 5 loads of laundry cleaned
- 4 loads of laundry folded and put away
- 1 load of dishes put away
- 1 load of dishes done
- Baby dishes soaking
- Mattress rotated
- Computer mess picked up
- 3 piles of paperwork sorted
- Husband's side of the bed restored to order
- My side of the bed restored to order
- Space under the bed cleaned out
- Books back on shelves
- "Lost" textbook rental determined not to be in bedroom
- 3 bags of trash collected, consolidated, and waiting to be dumpstered
- 2.5 energy bars used up in Hidden Chronicles
- Dinner mentally prepped
- 3 episodes of Avonlea watched
- Berrykin read to twice, fed 3 times, played with four times, and taught to put away Daddy's socks once, then put down to nap
- 4 diapers changed
- Fed self twice
- 1 email sent to aunt I haven't talked to in too long
- 1 message sent to a friend with questions about a writing gig
- 5 examples similar to writing gig read and analyzed
- Bills checked and due dates entered into calendar
- To-do list started for things I keep forgetting about
- One post about procrastination written

This is what my days have been looking like:
- Eat lunch
- Play with baby as possible
- Feed baby dinner
- Watch Thomas twice
- Get baby read for and into bed for the night
- Write for 30 minutes
- Play all the games of Hidden Chronicles ever
- Zone out
- Studiously ignore mess in kitchen
- Try not to kill self maneuvering through bedroom
- Dance
- Shower
- Chat with hubby when he gets home from work around 3am
- Go to bed
- Repeat.

So...yeah.  Sometimes procrastination is very very useful.  For housework.  Not so much for the bazillion papers I have to write between now and the 24th...

Totally Unplugged

We've decided to unplug ourselves from the internet for the summer.  It will no doubt be hardest on me, because even with selective unplugging, I feel like I need the activity.  And the berrykin will need us to buy a Thomas and Friends dvd to replace what we get from Netflix, because I don't know that he will ever sleep again without it (she said only somewhat sarcastically).

This move is mostly financial.  Because the job search can be long and difficult, and because our schedules for said new job are themselves tricky, I don't know when we'll be able to plug back in.  Saving $100 a month is good, and this is really the only non-essential thing in the budget.  I'm looking forward to being forced to use my time both more wisely and more productively.  It will also give me something to "go do" outside of the house that doesn't cost much.  I can walk the two-mile-round-trip to Panera, buy a healthy snack or drink, check email, job hunt, send in school work, and update various blogs for some nice "me" time.  And then if I'm feeling strong enough, I can pick up a couple groceries at Sunflower for cheap and tasty dinner.  I'm not entirely sure how that will work, though, because it'll get too hot for me to want to go anywhere before too long.  But still.  Better use of time at home!  More creative play!  A reason to leave the house! :D

What I'm REALLY hoping for is a word count boost.  I did well enough last week, but I've been really slacking with writing this week.  I have tonight, tomorrow, and Thursday to get in 7,000 words.  Bad me!

I'll try to update occasionally with anything big.  I hope everyone has a great summer!

Summer Plan

Welcome to June!

I have no idea how we're in it, but here we are. :)

Official news: We're not moving.  I made the decision when the Jeremelon first put in for a transfer that we wouldn't do it if we would lose insurance indefinitely.  A couple months while switching jobs would have been fine, but not knowing when we would get it back would not be.  Result: There were no positions for him on the same level, so he would have had to step back a rung.  That would mean losing insurance.

I'm not sad about not moving.  I'd finally reached a place wherein I could be excited at the prospect of change and trying something new.  The living situation we would be undertaking was not, however, my first choice.  By any stretch.  While staying means a lot more work, a lot less family time, and more financial/time stress, it also means a lot less moving stress and loss of funds from getting ourselves to California.  Neither is ideal.  If I can get out of moving at this point in my life, though, I'll take it. :)

I AM excited about staying here because of what it will mean for my doula work.  I can compile my resources list using things I'm already familiar with, for one.  The bigger bonus is that I know the hospitals, I know the area, I know how long it takes to get around town at various times of day.  I know that I can take clients in the Springs and clients near DIA.  I know that trying to take clients from the northwest side of the city is a bad idea.  Plus, I have contacts here.  I know other new doulas I can use as backups, as well as educators, midwives, doctors, and shops that cater to pregnant and new mommies.  Rather than waiting even longer to really get into marketing and the actual work of being a doula, I can start when I feel I'm ready for the birth aspects.

That's getting a little ahead of myself, though.  July is going to be my month to really focus on doula stuff.  June is about finishing school.  I have my health class to finish and my final history class to take.  I have every expectation that it's going to try to kill me before the month is out, but we'll see. :)  I'm registering to graduate tomorrow (again, but for the last time), and I am so very ready to be finished.

I've got some fun and rousing things planned for this summer, other than the above (as if they aren't enough :) )!  Through FLOWE, I'm running our annual GEM of the NILE challenge.  Each participant strives to reach 90,000 words by the end of August.  Starts today!  90,000 is the basic length of a full novel, so it's really "write a book in a summer!"  And I plan to. :)  I've never actually won this, but I'm determined that I shall do it this year.  Updates on that can be found on Twitter and my Facebook writer page, as well as my LiveJournal (ask me if you want to know how to access them - this is my personal, somewhat anonymous blog, so I don't want to add direct links).  This will actually be two separate projects - one novel for submission sometime toward the end of the year, and one internet project that I've been planning for over a year now.  The latter WILL need beta readers, so if you feel like reading something and giving your opinion, let me know! :)

One of my major goals for this summer is to go "selectively unplugged."  I spend way too much time surfing and obsessively checking Facebook in the hopes I might find some internet chatter to feel like I have social contact with the world outside my apartment.  I didn't realize that's what I was doing until last week.  It's a total waste of time, because unlike my teens and early twenties, I'm not in the right places to find online socializers.  I need to find the right places, and be more particular about how I spend my online time.  To that end, I'm likely not going to be blogging here that often.  I will, however, be posting things on my Berry Patch House blog (link on sidebar).  Perhaps not frequently, but it will chronicle my many, many planned projects for making a home out of my apartment.  That's in addition to our family goal of paring down our food budget while increasing our nutritional intake, and spending better time together even while we spend more time apart.  Please feel free to pop by and leave comments!

I also have another blog in the works (I know, I know).  This one is going to be an entertainment review blog, a place where I can showcase other people's professional stories from all formats while also honing my analytical writing abilities.  I will post a link when it's ready.  I'm really looking forward to this project.  Not only will it help me become a better writer and potentially help me get a job in the future, but it also means I get to read, watch movies, and play games for more than just something to do! :D

As lesser hopes go, I'm also hoping to learn some Javascript and how to use Dreamweaver, design three professional websites for myself, and build a few mods for games like FallOut 3.  If I really manage to get my stuff together, maybe I'll also dabble with that video game script I've had in my head for years.

Basically, I've wanted to use this year as The Year of Crazy-Awesome Productivity.  I have as yet not made it live up to that nom-de-guerre.  This summer, I'm aiming to change that.  I'm unplugging from my personal social networking and plugging into my professional side.  This will hopefully mean less random time wasting, and more purposeful, productive use of my days.

Whatever happens, please do come along for the ride!  Visit my writing networks and my projects, keep in touch, and ask questions if you're so inclined. :)

Above all, have an amazing summer!

See you on the other side. :)

Promise Walk

I participated in my first 5k today!  (Well, yesterday, technically...but I haven't gone to bed yet, so it's still Sunday as far as I'm concerned.)  It was small, but fun.  Harder than I anticipated to do my normal thing due to weirdly paved roads.  Especially since I forgot to stretch.  Interested parties can read more here, at my exercise and wellness blog on SparkPeople.

Hm.  I was going to type more about my life right now, but I'm falling asleep at the keys.  Maybe tomorrow. :)

One More Down

That's one more semester down.  I'd be happy, except...er...I didn't do very well.  I started with 5 classes, and ended with 3.  Within those 3, I'll probably get two Ds and the Incomplete that will shortly become a (hopefully) B.  And that is massively disappointing.  It's my own dumb fault, for not choosing to do what I needed to do.  For biting off more than I could chew.  Between classes that overloaded me (the two I dropped), my doula training, and the big family trip to California, I just couldn't handle it.  Plus, I had MASSIVE senioritis.  I should have been done in December.  I think my unconscious mind rebelled at having to take another semester.

And now, because I didn't have time to finish my correspondence class, I have to take ANOTHER semester.  Actually, at this point I'm not so bummed about that.  I don't want such an awful GPA to be my last.  The whole point of taking easy intro classes was to improve my GPA, not kill it.  Aghlglgle.

Oh well.  Onto bigger and better things.

I have 7 holistic health modules to finish to replace the I with a (hopefully) B.  Then my Spanish class starts two weeks from Tuesday, and my History class a week later.  They end on July 1st.  So I'll be done, officially, July 2nd.  FINALLY.  Unless we move before that, and then I have to switch out the campus History class for the same correspondence class over again.  Then I will have to do ALL of that work, too.  But, I'll be done by August, regardless.  I'm SO done.

And then I have new plans that I'm super excited about!  I'll be able to get to know the California birth community, and launch my...hm.  What do I call it?  Practice?  Business?  Operation?  Hee.  I will be launching my doula career there.  I was kind of hoping one of the half-dozen friends I have here in Colorado would ask me, but no such luck.  I know, I know.  It's a really intimate, exposed time, and most people don't want to share it/deal with the potential embarrassment of having a non-close friend there.  I get it.  We were warned in training that disappointment was going to be a big problem until we learned to accept it and deal with it.  It's a personal rejection, after all, albeit one that's also professional.  I'm sure once this batch of friends delivers, I'll be better at it.  Right now, I'm stuck worrying about them because I KNOW I could help, and I KNOW I could improve their experiences.  It was a knife in the gut when two of my friends delivered their firsts a week apart, both with 40+-hour labors, one with an early induction, and the other an apparently horrible experience.  Stab and twist.  Augh!  To know I could have helped and yet there wasn't anything I could actually do because it's not like it's my birth to decide who shows up.  AUGH!  I can't exactly make them accept my help.  That's hard for me, even though I completely understand.  It's like sitting at an oasis, watching a friend crawl on their belly across the desert floor, parched and thirsty, and not being able to give them the water all around me.  It makes me sad, more than anything.  But it's also part of the process of really becoming a doula, and I understand that, too.  Sigh.

I totally lost track of where I was going and what I was talking about before that...hmmmm...

Oh!  Story stuff.  There's gonna be story stuff.  Stay Tuned (though don't hold your breath - it's a slooooooow process!) !!

Summer Madness

Wow.  I can't believe it's May already!  This weekend is officially summer open at the movie theatre.  Geesh!  I have so much to do, I can't seem to wrap my brain around it all.

See, Jeremelon just put in for a transfer.  I don't want to officially announce that we're moving until we know for sure that he'll have a job waiting for him, but I also need to get it "out there" to make it solid and tangible.  So, here it is.  We're most likely moving to Los Angeles next month.  Jeremelon's gramberry lives out there, and she welcomed us to stay with her or in the tiny garage apartment we stayed in after Jeremelon graduated.  Or both, which I think is what our current plan is.  Sleep at the house, play at the apartment.  'Cause it really isn't big enough for all three of us - the bedroom is barely large enough for our queen bed when it's pushed up against a wall!  But, logistics like that still need to be worked out, obviously.  What I DO know is that it is rent-free, and I can't find a job with a decent amount of hours in our current location.  If we are going to be able to keep a roof over our head after I graduate and no longer qualify for financial aid (they kind of frown on giving student loans to non-students...), I have to have a job.  I'm looking at California as a stop-gap measure.  Something to give us breathing room to be able to find a better fit that will work for the long-term.  You know, time when we can think about it instead of scrambling to make ends meet and never being able to see past the 1st of the month when rent is due again.

My mom is over the moon about it, since we'll only be about two and a half hours away.  And we'll only be six or so from the in-laws.  AND Jeremelon will be perfectly situated to search out the elusive film job he secretly yearns for, though he's too bummed about the job market in general to admit to it.  And there's Disneyland.  And the beach.  I haven't even started looking at hospitals, but I'm sure there are TONS of opportunities for doulas, too.  (I do know California has 11 free-standing birth centers.  Colorado only has 1.  While there's a good chance a good percentage of them are in San Fran and Diego, it's still a good sign.)  The berrykin also has two sets of cousins his age out there, and Jeremelon's old roommate is 45 minutes away.  I'll miss the family and friends I have here, but I am SO TIRED of never having enough money.  I'd really like to pay off the $12,000-ish in medical debt all those collectors keep calling about someday, too.  And purchase a car that isn't literally falling apart.  Someday maybe even have a house.  Ah, to dream!

The one thing I would change if I had a time machine is my timing.  I would really like to go back and tell my 2006 self to put the writing on a back burner and get a job while I still had the chance.  I don't regret not going that route - there was no way to know the writer's strike was about to destroy all chances Jeremelon had of finding a film job.  Or that the job market in general was about to crash.  Or foresee any of the personal setbacks that I had no control over.  Before the baby, the starving artist thing worked for us.  We chose that path in order to pursue dreams, fully aware of the financial burden we'd have in the future.  It just didn't quite have the weight when we thought of it then as it does when there's another life depending on us.  I don't think one can really understand that difference before kids.

Since I have no shiny, fusion-powered DeLorean on hand, I will have to sacrifice having personal space to provide better opportunities for our future, and slowly build up some kind of financial stability for the berrykin.  I'm okay with that, so long as it isn't a long-term plan.  Some days, I also wish I'd picked a more stable career path.  Then we'd have stability and security now, even if I felt much less fulfilled because I didn't have the guts to follow my dream.  Oh well.  The really beautiful thing about this short-term plan is that hopefully I'm also accepting more emotional stress into my life in exchange for being able to continue writing, instead of working a regular job.  So long as I make myself accept and cope with that stress, I'm really, really glad I can do that.  I stopped writing for a lot of reasons several years ago, but I'm ready again, finally, to move forward.

And isn't this just a mammoth post?  So there it is, in its giant form.  We're moving.  To California.  I'd really rather move to Texas.  But that's a cheater comparison, because moving to Texas would mean I'd gotten the dream job I let other people talk me out of applying for.  Ah well.

Resetting the Clock

Unlike Daylight Savings Time, resetting my inner clock takes a ton of effort.  Some people can simply go to bed earlier or wake up earlier.  For whatever reason, that's never worked for me.  I will go to bed and lay there for hours until my body says, "Okay, NOW it's time to sleep!" which generally tends to be the time I normally would have gone to bed.  This can also sometimes trigger week-long bouts of insomnia.  Waking up earlier in the morning likewise doesn't help.  It just ensures I will be cranky and tired all day, and I'll still go to bed at the same time at night, only to need more sleep the next morning.

So I'm going to try the one thing I know that works.  I'm going to exhaust the heck out of myself.

It didn't work so well last night - I was feeling sleepy enough for bed at 9, but did I go to bed?  Nope.  I still hadn't eaten dinner.  Hadn't had any time to relax.  My body was super stiff.  So I made myself food, and vegged.  I probably would have gone to bed a little earlier than normal, but I was waiting for the hubby to get home so he didn't interrupt my pattern.  And I was up with him until 2, when HE went to bed.  After which I began my going-to-bed ritual, so that I was asleep by, oh, 3.  Since he also opened this morning, I ended up getting five hours of sleep.  Oh, and I also ended up crying all over myself because I was too tired to fend off the emotional onslaught of post-trip processing.  Yuck.

The trick, I think, is so much physical exertion that I WANT to go to bed before midnight.  That this seems an appealing option, rather than a loss of the only time to myself I get all day.  After all, I will get two hours during good daylight to write or read or blog or whatever, I just have to be rested enough not to nap with the berrykin.

Yesterday, I backpacked the baby down to the market.  2.5 miles.  27 pounds of baby.  8-ish pounds of food on the return trip.  It was more than exerting enough.  Today, I'm sore.  I don't have to worry about dinner or sorting the car or ANOTHER day of laundry.  Which means we can go for a walk, wear me out again, and then let Jeremelon handle the food.  Hopefully, because he'll also be home early, I can go to bed when I want to go to bed, instead of when it works best.

Then I just have to do it again tomorrow.  And the next day.  And the next day.  I'm already much more awake and ready to get up this morning!

Home!

We are home from the insanity of vacationing!  That was a LOT of driving.  Whew!  The Jeremelon let me sleep for 12 hours more or less straight yesterday.  I haven't slept that well since the Berrykin was born.  It was unbelievably beautiful sleep.  *__*

And of course, I sat down for a couple minutes to blog after putting in the last load of trip laundry, folding and putting away the last load of clothes, and actually getting around to getting dressed, and the Berrykin wakes up from his nap.  Every.  Time.  It doesn't matter how long I think I have left before he gets up.  The second I sit down and open up the blog, he shouts at me from his room.  Because we are in tune that way, I guess.  When I'm the one on baby duty, I still wake up five minutes before he does.  I love knowing the brain/body of two different, separate people can do that!  And when I think about it, it makes me want to snuggle him up.  :)  But when I don't, when I really want to sit and blog because my brain feels like it's going to explode from the whirling vortex of chaos inside it, I heave a heavy sigh.  Give a little groan.  And go snuggle him anyway.