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.